33
When the show ended, a woman dressed all in black came over to Emily and invited her backstage.
“It’s okay,” Emily said. “I can wait for him out here.” She was trying to keep her distance. Trying not to get too swept up in the drama of the evening, the choreography of the night. She could wait here, with easy access to the door.
“Are you sure?” the woman asked. “He really wants to see you.”
“I know,” Emily said. “I promise I won’t go anywhere.”
* * *
—
She sat at the bar drinking a club soda, wondering if she should go, despite her promise. If she should leave before she saw him. There was so much between them that she’d buried in her journal, so many healed-over wounds that she didn’t want to open up again. But he’d written a song about her. And she’d promised she’d stay. And she should at least tell him how much she enjoyed his show. Plus she was curious. Curiosity killed the cat, her father used to say. But her mother would shush him. Curious people are the most interesting, she’d say. Emily hadn’t been curious about much in the last few years, but she was curious about Rob. About what he wanted to say to her.
She was playing with the straw in her soda when she heard his voice, deep and warm, behind her. “You’re still here,” he said. He’d dropped the drawl. Sounded more like himself.
She turned around. “I’m still here.”
His face had aged like hers had—more visibly in person than on the headshot on his website—and he carried sadness in his eyes, too.
He pulled her in for a hug, and it took everything she had not to rest her head against his shoulder before pulling away. He smelled exactly the way he used to. Pine-scented soap mixed with hair pomade and something else that was entirely him. The scent transported her into her former self, into an overwhelming rush of memories. She focused on the now.
“I’ve been scouring the internet for you,” he said, looking at her as if she were a mirage, about to disappear when he blinked. “But I couldn’t find anything more recent than two and a half years ago. At every show I’ve played, I’ve been wondering if you would walk through the door, wondering if you’d heard the song, and if you had, if you’d known it was about you. That’s why I asked them to keep the house lights up, so I could scan the audience for you.”
Emily’s palms felt clammy. She hadn’t expected that he’d be so honest, so direct.
“How could I not know it was about me?” she said, refamiliarizing herself with his easy smile, with the width of his shoulders, the jut of his chin. It felt surreal to be there, like she’d woken up inside a dream, like she was in an alternate version of time, where things had gone differently, where they’d always known each other, never been apart.
“You look like you but grown up,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “Not quite as I imagined, but close.”
“You too,” Emily said, though until recently, she hadn’t really imagined him at all. She’d managed to keep him out of her head, out of her heart, for so long, but now that he was in front of her, all of those feelings came sliding back. The longing, the guilt, the passion—not just for him, but for everything. For life.
“Can I treat you to a drink?” he asked her, not taking his eyes from her face.
Emily glanced down at her phone, where she’d left it on the bar. Nothing new from Ezra. He hadn’t changed his mind and decided to come home.
“How about a coffee?” she said. “I’m not used to these late nights anymore.”
Rob laughed, a sound she had forgotten, but that, once she heard it, felt as familiar as if they’d laughed together that morning.
“Coffee it is,” he said. “Let’s find ourselves a diner nearby.”
They’d eaten in so many diners back then. All over the city. The one they called the Disco Diner that played disco music and served French fries covered in melted cheese and gravy. The one they called the Pie Diner, because once a guy had walked in who seemed totally high on something and ordered six pieces of cherry pie and proceeded to eat all of them, while Rob and Emily watched in awe.
“Sounds good,” Emily told him, still in shock that this was happening, that she was there with him, that he’d written a song about her, that she’d just watched him perform it, that she agreed to get coffee with him, that they were both slipping into the rhythm they shared more than a decade ago.