Page 197 of The Comedown

I couldn’t handle it.

Slowly, Julian stands from the stool, approaching me like the fish being reeled in by the fisherman—powerless.

My lips twitch with uncertainty. What do I do? Keep smiling? Or sing along because I wrote this song and have the lyrics memorized like the back of my hand?

I drop my eyes to his fingers, his wicked, skilled fingers. With the audience just as absorbed, Julian doesn’t need a microphone, so he leaves it behind, singing loud enough for everybody to still hear him as he continues playing.

Suddenly, the guitar is swung around to his back, then he drops to his knees in front of me, breaking into a rap that definitely wasn’t in the original.

“Buttoned up tight, with that pop of straitlaced.

Always strugglin’ to come undone, even when its written ’cross your face.”

I laugh through the tears because I’m pretty sure I’ve put the straitlaced image to bed now.

With a crisp punk rock sound carrying a raspy R&B undertone that he can transition smoothly into a rap, Julian’s a polymath of musicality, making him so damn hypnotizing to watch.

He continues rapping about how I was brought in to save his image but I ended up saving his life instead, then the last line he says to me and only me, as he gets to his feet, his forehead an inch from mine.

“You and I both know this shit ain’t ever gonna fade.”

I open, then close my mouth, nervous what might come out. Nothing I feel for Julian faded in our time apart. Nothing. Not even my worry.

What if he’s not actually healthy? It’s not fair to get my hopes up, or his.

Looking between my eyes, he speaks first, saying, “I’m back, and Imma make good on all my promises.”

That tug I’ve been feeling, it disappears, and in its place is that missing piece, making me feel whole again. I can see why Isis went through the trouble to collect the pieces of her husband’s body, and how she used her grief over him to become more powerful. She needed Osiris with her because they were one.

“You’re back?”

He nods and presses his forehead to mine. “I’m back…to stay.”

“Can we talk? After? I have—”

“Go ahead,” David says, taking the mic out of my slick hand. “Let me take the spotlight off of you for a while.”

“Thank you, David,” I tell him. “For everything.”

Julian bumps his fist with David’s, then takes my hand in his, pulling me behind the closing curtain to follow him backstage.

Axel gives a proud smile as we pass, saluting us, and beside him, Irelynn’s grazing a cymbal with one hand sporting a near-blinding diamond ring on it while waving enthusiastically at me with the other.

She was in on this surprise, too? Neither of them breathed a single word to me.

They didn’t tell me they were engaged either. Or…married?

Did they get married already?

One thing at a time…

“Since when are you and David friends?” I ask to Julian’s back, loving the way it shakes. I miss his laughs. I miss him.

“Since he bailed me out of jail and let me crash at his pad for the last four months.”

I tug on his hand, making him swing around to face me.

“What happened?” I didn’t know he went to jail. After he left rehab, it was like he fell off the face of the planet. There’s been no news about him.