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It’s why I fell so far off the cliff when she left. Even when I wanted to get over it and her, to run away from it and forget her altogether, every fucking day, I was reminded of what I lost.
I’m old enough, wise enough, to know now that’s what it was: me losing her. She’d talked to me so many times about the spiral I was on, and not only did I ignore her, but I started to hide things, and worse.
She left without a word and ignored the call when I needed her most, but I ignored her for months and months before that. My bitterness about it all is gone now, washed away with time, age, and clarity.
I wonder what my father saw with time and clarity and how that gutted him.
I don’t blame him anymore. I had Stella asminefor barely over a year, and it destroyed me. My dad was married to my mother for fifteen years.
But now I’m looking at the old phone, the cord spiraling down the table, and see the red blinking light of a message. It could be years old, for all I know. It’s probably just telemarketers, but before I head out to get food, I sit and tap in the password—my mother’s birthday—and listen to the message.
“Hi! You’ve reached the Greene’s. We’re unable to make it to the phone right now, but please leave a message with your name and number, and we’ll call you right back.”
God, it still hits me, hearing the voice I forgot all these years later.
Somewhere buried in this house are home videos my mom made, her voice saved forever, but I don’t even think I would have the ability to play the old VHS tapes. And even if I did, would I want to risk finding footage of Stella and I, of watching our once sure history being written?
But the world shifts on its axis a moment later, breaking me out of my thoughts about home videos and how to play them when the first message plays.
“Hey, Jeanette,” the voice says, and instantly, I know it’s her.
Stella.
I haven’t heard her voice in five years, but I could hear it whispered on the wind and know it was her. It instantly takes me back to late nights under the stars, writing songs, watching her gorgeous face pull out similes and analogies that still can bring me to my knees, and doing it with ease like she was born to do it.
Sometimes I wish I had recorded those sessions, that I had her voice saved somewhere so when the memories start to fade, I can replay them, resharpen the memories, since they’re all I have of her anymore.
It’s actually cruel that our mind saves memories, the more painful, the more crystal clear ones, but doesn’t save sounds the same way, doesn’t capture the way the end of a sentence dips lower, the way one single word can contain three emotions at once.
“It’s me. I know no one listens to these, and I feel so fucking lost right now, so I thought… I don’t know. You were always so smart. I can’t talk to my mom about it, and Evie’s at school… He’s been drinking a lot. Riggs, I mean. And it’s probably because I’m young and overreacting, but… Well, you know. I don’t know. I just wish you were here. You always knew what to say. Miss you.”
The machine beeps, and I hit back, wanting to listen once more and commit it to memory, and this time I catch the date.
She left this in November after our first tour, those days when we were happy to be together when I started to drink and party. But she was doing it too, I remember. I remember her smiling at me, watching me with those eyes that never left me.
But I also remember the panic in her face when I would grab yet another beer, the way she’d pick at her nails or bite her lips with nerves.
I think I knew then.
The machine beeps and goes to the next message, and I hear her voice again.
“Hey, Jeanette. It’s me. I finally got the nerve to talk to Riggs about his drinking. It’s getting out of hand, and it makes me nervous because some days, he drinks more beer than water. I think it helped. I hope it did, at least. And we just found out the guys have been nominated for Song of the Year! I’m so proud of him. He’s… he’s doing everything he said he would. You’d be so proud, too. I know it.”
The hope in her voice kills something in me, knowing how this story ends. The next message is months later, a few months into our first headlining tour and a week or two before we got Gracie.
“Hey Jeanette,” she says and this time, there’s tears, painting her voice. She’s been crying, the words strained. “I’m so lost, and I don’t know who to talk to. But you always knew how to handle Riggs and… I wish you were here. He’s falling apart, and I don’t know how to help him. He’s drinking so much, and I’m so scared I’m going to lose him. I just… I wish you were here. You’d know what to say.”
I don’t hit back to relisten to this one, hating it more than anything else. The next beep comes, and her voice comes again, this time filled with joy and excitement.
“Hey Jeanette, it’s me. I think… I think I got through to him. We talked and it went so much better than I feared. And we got a dog!” Her voice sounds so happy, so ecstatic and I remember that day.
I remember feeling heavy, soul-breaking guilt at the look of disappointment and hurt in her eyes when she asked me to stop drinking.
That was the day I started hiding the full extent of my drinking.
In the years following her leaving, I thought it was her fault she didn’t see it, that she didn’t notice the signs that I was drinking much more than she thought.
And then I’m reminded how fucking young we were and how fucking in love with me she was.
