“Jesus, Easton, can’t you, just for once, be a less authentic human being? Just once?”
“You know I fucking can’t,” he replies with a shaky breath.
“So, what’s your future now?” I ask, just as Joel raps on the hood and Easton eases away from me.
“New York,” he answers. “We’re kicking off the tour at the Garden in five hours.”
“That’s right,” I say. “A European tour. That’s so incredible. Are you excited?” He gives me a small dip of his chin.
The air of the SUV thickens with emotion as I blurt my truth. “Easton, I don’t want to not know you. You became my best friend. I miss that so much, outside of everything else. Can we at least try to be what we couldn’t be before? I don’t want to not know you,” I repeat. “It’s too hard. I miss you.” He remains quiet as I grab his hand, and he turns back to face me. “Maybe, one day, when it doesn’t feel…so much like entering the seventh circle of hell?”
He lowers his eyes to our clasped hands, and I’m not sure he’s going to answer, but he speaks up, his voice ragged. “Yeah, maybe then.”
Joel knocks again on the hood in warning.
“I’ve got to go. I’ve got a plane to catch,” Easton sighs.
“But this, right now, this isn’t goodbye, right?” My pulse picks up as panic sets in.
“Not for me. I really need to go,” he repeats.
“But we will talk again?” I ask, unrestrained tears flowing down as I gather my purse and laptop and clutch them to me.
He focuses on me, his expression pained. “If you ever…need me,” he utters softly, “I’ll be right where you left me, okay?” He turns back toward the window as the roar in my chest intensifies.
“Okay,” I agree easily. “You, too.” I pause with my hand on the door. “Easton?”
“Yeah, Beauty?”
“Did you just lie to me for the first time?”
“I don’t know,” he utters weakly as Joel knocks again. “I don’t want it to be.”
“Okay,” I say, opening my door. “Okay,” I whisper, “well, I won’t say goodbye then. H-h-have a good show tonight.”
He nods as I open the door and step out of the SUV. Joel gazes at me, reading my expression, before pulling me into him—my laptop smashed between our chests as we hug.
“Take care of him, please, Joel.”
“I’m trying,” he presses a kiss against my temple.
“I love you,” I sniffle, “you know that, right?”
“You too, sweetheart. I’m here for you always.”
“Same.”
A sob escapes me before I rip myself away from his warm embrace and turn, starting at a dead run toward my apartment.
Standing in Easton’s jacket on my balcony that night, holding my Edgewater teddy bear, wind whipping around me, I blur out the downtown noise as I replay our parents’ love story—clicking in the last pieces of the puzzle that has plagued me since I began my search a year ago. It’s on the wind, in an urgent whisper that Stella’s words come to me.
“Look up.”
And I do. Straining against the restraints of my balcony, I search for and fail to find a single star while standing in the haze of the bustling city below. Sniffing the collar of Easton’s jacket, I note the absence of a scent that used to be so present. He was just with me, his warmth within reach, but I couldn’t allow myself to get intimate or reacquainted with it. I wouldn’t have survived it. The only thing I regret now is everything left unsaid. So many things I wished I would’ve told him, knowing that we may never speak on that sort of unguarded, intimate level again. Remorse riddles me until I decide for what it’s worth to relay some of it by text, in hopes to open a window, even if the door feels closed. Just as I go to compose a message, a video attachment comes in from Joel. I open it to see Easton paused on screen, on stage behind his piano, a lone spotlight shining down on him.
Joel sent me tonight’s encore.
Heart speeding, I click play, and Easton begins to play the opening of “The Dance,” an old favorite of my father’s I’m oddly familiar with. But within the first few bars, I realize Easton’s playing a very different version than the one I know. When the words begin to pour from his lips, he sings about love found and lost. About being thankful for the ignorance of the cost of the toll that love would take. The music takes a haunting, drastic turn, and Easton goes heavy, gutturally screaming along with LL’s heavy guitar riffs. My entire body lights on fire, every hair standing on end with the knowledge that he’s singing of our demise. Every word burns through to my core as he plays expertly along the keys before tilting his head back and screaming, coming apart on stage. I see and feel it all, the bitterness and rage in his posture, the agony in his expression, the loss of us. Hysterical sobs leave me as Easton brutally echoes the most defining moments of my life. He leads the song through a heart-stopping crescendo…and then it’s just him and his piano, the final notes ringing in clearly as he whispers the last lyric into the mic before slamming it closed.