I just needed one verse to start. One perfect verse to bring this breakup number toward the top of the story to life. I scanned a couple lines—but I stopped. I needed to understand how the lead actress sang first. If I couldn’t do her justice, I wouldn’t get the job.
I lifted my laptop up from the dusty wooden floor and pulled up YouTube, searching for Raini Parish—an actress I had never heard of before, the young woman who would be taking the lead role.
I pressed play on a video of a delicate-looking twenty-one-year-old in a sundress. She was sitting on a messy kitchen counter, eyes closed, heart-shaped face casually nodding as she sang Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” She sang it a capella. She approached the huge bridge like a casual shrug, and the result knocked me out. Raini seemed to hold all the world’s angst behind her large brown eyes—a gift we both shared. I was in love with her instantly. A buzzy grin splashed on my lips—when suddenly, my face fell. I couldn’t have read it right. I blinked back white spots of terror, confirming that I wasn’t hallucinating.
The email notification bounced atop the right corner of my laptop like a casual middle finger, a warning to the hope sparking through my body that I would never get off this easy.
To: Ms. Maggie Vine
From: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Scholl
Subject: Garrett and Cecily’s Engagement Party
My heart folded onto itself as my shaking hand clicked on the Paperless Post invite.
Why was I invited? What kind of masochist invites the other woman he loves to his engagement party?
The invite was an ode to muted florals—which reminded me of Cecily: classy, not too loud, in control, the kind of window dressing that made you sigh and say, “That’s nice.” Unlike Maggie Vine, who enjoyed chaotically mixing patterns and jumping up and down in quiet rooms. My eyes scanned the invite: dinner and dancing at W?lffer Estate Vineyard in the Hamptons. In two weeks. TWO. FUCKING. WEEKS?!
Why was I clicking “accepts with pleasure”？ What kind of masochist goes to the engagement party of the man she loves?
I did not accept with pleasure. I accepted with deep, melancholic longing. But I accepted all the same—and I had no philosophically sound reason why. I went to text my therapist for a long-overdue emergency appointment, but I was hit with the reminder that she was on maternity leave. I cursed, then silently forgave my hero for bringing a human into this world just as my life was blowing up—because her starting a family was not about me, even though, right now, her choice to push a baby out of her body felt super fucking personal to me! Fuck you, Wendy!
I ran through the scenarios in my head. The first hypothesis seemed like the most mature: I accepted this invitation for the same reason Garrett sent it—to move onward and upward, to acknowledge we could somehow get past this and be in each other’s lives as friends. The second hypothesis: my name was on the original guest list, and Garrett felt like there might be some explaining to do if he scrapped me from it, especially since Cecily knew how close we once were. The third hypothesis was the devil on my shoulder: Garrett sent this invitation because when you choose wrong, you want your soulmate present so you can blow your life up like in the movies! The selfish monster inside my brain liked this unlikely scenario the most—which meant it was probably the reason I RSVP’d without thinking about the brutal consequences.
I backed away from my laptop like it was a land mine, swallowing angry tears that were bubbling to the surface. Why were Garrett and I doing this to each other? Hadn’t we done enough? My chest caved in, and I curled into a ball on my bed, clutching my shoulders, letting mascara stain my pillow. All my relationships ended this way—with me in the fetal position. I had spent the last decade trying to prove to myself that I could love someone the way I loved Garrett Scholl. In doing so, I fell hard and fast, so by the time a “relationship” ended, I was already holding my knees. Secretly, my songwriting was at its best when I was at my worst—when I was learning how to stand again. Heartbreak fueled my art, and it was almost always worth it. Almost.
I angrily wiped the hot liquid off my cheeks, sucked in a furious breath, and sat upright. I was ready to pull the blade out of my chest and turn the ache into words that would cut like knives.
My favorite songwriting teacher at camp taught me that I should be able to boil down the premise of a song—the chorus—into one Big Idea. To do this, I had to know three things: what story I’m telling, from whose point of view I’m telling it, and the emotion it expresses. On the Other Side told Yael’s story, as a teenager desperate to escape a rough childhood. The Big Idea was that sometimes we have to leave the best of us behind to leave the worst of us behind. Yael was a teenager with dreams to travel to another planet and leave her restrictive childhood in the dust—but in order to flee, she’d have to leave the love of her life back on earth. She’d leave with nothing but the hope of one day ending up with her soulmate. In this scene, she’s imagining what her future will look like as she studies the galaxy from the roof of her childhood home. She dreams of herself all grown up, floating through the atmosphere in a place where all her dreams have come true—all but one. The emotion was complex: clinging to blind hope in a moment of loneliness. I wanted the song to look like golden rays exploding through charcoal.
I could feel the bleak finality of Garrett and Maggie swirling in my gut as I opened my songwriter notebook. My fingers knew exactly where to go. It was a line I had written when I was in my late twenties, after I introduced Garrett to a guy I was dating, Drew Reddy. For years, I tried fitting it in somewhere, but it never felt at home in any other song. It was a verse that I knew, without a doubt, would change my life. Here it was, in bright blue ink, calling me home.
Hope’s always the last friend to leave
19
TWENTY-SEVEN
“HOW MANY SHOES CAN ONE woman own?” Drew asked, wide-eyed. He shook his head, watching me step into a pair of white Vans.
“Never enough.”
I angled my body toward the full-length mirror, squinting at my reflection. The bottom of the epically distressed jeans—meant for a non-vertically-challenged human—were bunched on my shoes. I stood on my tiptoes, confirming that the jeans I had borrowed from Summer （and had forgotten to return） were meant for Summer’s long legs. I swapped the sneakers for heeled booties and studied all my angles in the mirror. Better.
Drew stood up off the bed and folded his strong arms around my body, pressing his lips to my ear and taking a playful nibble. We’d had the best couple days coming down from the tour, holed up in our cocoon with our bodies trying to remember what it was like to fall asleep in a room that wasn’t swaying and our lack of inhibitions enjoying the spoils of my queen-sized bed. But it was time to leave our lovemaking nest, which meant it was time for me to introduce Drew to the two people who mattered most. I was giddy about the disastrous potential of having Drew and Summer under one roof. Drew could be a little chest-puffy when faced with a fellow alpha, and Summer wasn’t shy about letting you know she was the smartest person in the room. I knew Summer would have no problem testing the limits of The Male Ego, and I knew Drew could more than take it. Tonight, the big question mark curling my insides was the equation of Drew plus Garrett…plus me. It wasn’t the idea of Drew seeing me interact with Garrett that made me uneasy. Rather, it was the thought of Garrett seeing me with another man. I had never introduced Garrett to a guy I was dating. Ever. And I couldn’t figure out why this specific scenario made me want to vomit on my suede booties. I wasn’t in love with him anymore, I had met plenty of his girlfriends by now. We were friends. Friends meet the people you’re having All The Sex with, so why was I about to take off my top and try on a fourth blouse to delay the inevitable?