Page 123 of Before You Fell

Pain, I am learning, has shitty timing and no manners.

I’m better now than when I first arrived.

The notebook sits open on my lap as I sit in the shade of a tree in the courtyard. My knees are drawn up and a pen sits loose between my fingers.

The afternoon is bright and the grass smells freshly cut. Somewhere behind me, a woman laughs too loudly before apologizing as if joy were something she needed permission for. A bird lands near the path, takes one look at all of us recovering from disasters, and wisely fucks off.

I stare down at the page.

There are words on it. Not enough to become a song yet. But they belong to me. Two weeks prior, that would have seemed unattainable.

I have written little lines in the margins. Half-thoughts. Phrases with teeth. One set of words that keeps pulling at me, almost close enough to become a chorus. And because my heart apparently enjoys terrible ideas, I can already hear Phoenix singing it.

A shadow falls across my notebook.

I gaze upward.

Marigold Hayes stands at the edge of the path, wearing black leggings, oversized sunglasses, and a cream sweater that probably costs more than my first song ever made. Her blond hair is twisted into a messy knot. A tiny gold pendant rests against her throat, the letter A catching the afternoon light. I have never seen her without it. Everyone calls her Goldie.

Some people wear their grief loudly. Goldie wears hers like expensive perfume.

She is beautiful in the sort of way that makes people look twice, then feel guilty for staring. The kind of beautiful that magazines love because they cannot photograph the damage beneath it.

Her husband was Adrian Hayes. The Adrian Hayes.

Famous singer. Beautiful voice. Tragic death. The kind of man the world mourned so loudly for that they forgot grief was not a fan club.

Goldie married him young and buried him young. Then fell apart in front of people who thought that loving his music gave them ownership of her pain.

The world did what it always does. It turned a woman’s worst year into something to click on. Because she had once stood beside a man they loved, they decided her grief belong to them too.

She drops onto the bench beside me.

That is how our friendship started, too. On day three at lunch, she sat across from me, looked at the untouched soup in front of me, and said, “You know, sweetheart, eating it is generally considered the easier option.”

I stared at her and she stared back, before she stole my bread roll.

We have been friends ever since.

“What have you got?” she inquires, moving closer to examine my notebook.

“Seven lines.”

“Promising. Most artists have built careers on less.”

I laugh.

Goldie leans back against the bench and stretches her legs, ankles crossed, face tilted toward the sun. She looks annoyingly beautiful doing it. All sharp cheekbones, blond hair slipping loose from its messy knot, oversized sunglasses hiding eyes that always seem to see too much.

“Did you write about him?”

I don’t ask who she is referring to. We have discussed the men in our lives.

“Not directly.”

“So yes.”

I open the notebook again and gaze down at the page. One line is darker than the others because I wrote over it three times.