I still didn’t have her name.
But I had her number.
I opened the message thread more than once, thumb hovering while I tried to decide what, exactly, I owed a woman I’d met in moments and glances. I’d canceled last minute. Work had come first. It would again.
Did that mean I shouldn’t try at all?
Or was that just another way of hiding behind ambition?
I never typed more than a sentence before closing it again.
One night, Frankie called.
I answered with my shoulder wedged between my ear and the phone, balancing class notes on my counter and peeling an apple I’d already forgotten I was holding.
“Okay,” she said immediately, no preamble. “I have exactly twelve minutes before sound checks and I refuse to waste them pretending I’m fine.”
I smiled. “You never pretend you’re fine.”
“That’s because I’m bad at lying,” she said. “And because I miss the guys.”
There it was.
“But you have Bubba there, right?” Because they toured together. They recorded together. There was no way in hell she was flying solo.
“Yes,” she said, a little bubble of happiness bursting upward with the word. “But I think he’s as tired as I am of being out here so much.”
We talked in overlaps—her tour schedule, my classes, the way time kept rearranging as priorities seemed to shift dayto day for our to do lists. She was home just enough to feel the absence more sharply, bouncing between rehearsals, flights, and school deadlines like her life was a particularly ambitious juggling act.
“I love touring,” she said, then corrected herself. “No—I love performing. Touring is… a lot.”
“And school?” I asked.
She exhaled. “I still want it. The degree. The normalcy. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I let everything else go because the music got loud.”
That struck a rather hard note with me.
“I feel like I’m always choosing,” she continued. “Between being here and being there. Between what I love and who I love.” A pause. “Is that what it feels like for you too?”
I leaned back against the counter. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Like if I stop moving, something important will fall.”
Frankie hummed in agreement. “See? This is why we’re friends. We understand the same kind of tired.”
I laughed, the tension easing just a little.
“You sound good, though,” she added, a thoughtful note creeping into her husky voice. “Maybe… maybe a little too drained for my taste, but… also lit up. Paris is doing something to you.”
“It is,” I admitted, cutting the apple into slices and crunching them quietly. “I don’t know what yet. But I can feel it. That seems almost a lame way to describe it, but… I feel more me than I think I ever have and I am not even sure who that is.”
“God, I understand that,” she said on such a harsh exhale. “Youdeservethat. You deserve so much more too, but—don’t forget to eat. Or sleep. Or text me back when I send you seven messages in a row.”
“I would never,” I lied at least about eating or sleeping. I didn’tignoreFrankie. “Sometimes it’ll be the next day but if it’s an emergency…”
“I know you’re there,” she hurried to tack on. “I do know that, Rach.” Someone called her name in the background and she let out the most expressive huff. It was hard not to laugh.
“You have to go,” I said.
“Yeah.” She sounded so forlorn.
