Page 125 of Before You Fell

She looks out over the courtyard. “He was also the greatest love of my life.”

The words land softly.

“He was a beautiful, talented asshole, and I’d still choose him. That’s the part nobody understands. Loving someone doesn’t end just because they were hard to love.” Her thumb drags over the tiny A again. “Death made him shiny.”

She lets the words sit.

“Grief does that,” she finally says. “It buffs away all the rough edges.”

Phoenix flashes through my mind so hard it almost steals my breath. The smirk. The voice. The version the world screams for.

“You only get one great love,” she says. “If you’re lucky or stupid. Honestly, most days I still can’t tell which one I was.”

I study her. “You really believe we only get one?”

“Yes.” She looks toward the fountain. “And no.” A sad smile touches her lips. “Then yes again. He was my great love. That doesn’t mean he was always good to me. People love pretending those are the same thing because it makes for prettier documentaries.”

I let that sit. “He hurt you?”

“Of course he did. He wasn’t an angel or a saint. He was human.” Her eyes meet mine. “When the whole world tells a man he’s extraordinary every day, sooner or later he starts believing the rules were written for everyone else. Loving Adrian cost me. Being loved by him cost me, too. Then losing him took whatever was left. But I’d still choose him.”

She turns her head away. “If someone offered me a life where I never met him, never buried him, and never had to crawl through all the shit that followed...” She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t take it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know who I’d be in a life where he never happened to me.” She lifts her sunglasses, and for the first time, I see tears in her blue eyes. “And as fucked up as that sounds… I’ve never wanted to meet the woman I would’ve become without him.”

That one gets under my skin and stays there.

I think of Phoenix at thirteen, lying flat on his back beneath the tree in my parents’ yard, hands behind his head, telling me that one day we’d have songs on the radio. Fourteen, stealing fries off my plate. Fifteen, showing up at my bedroom window after a fight with his mom. Sixteen, asleep on our couch after we’d spent all night arguing over one stupid lyric.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

Every memory I have seems to have him standing in it, usually talking too much, eating something that was mine, or making me laugh when I was trying very hard not to.

He is so thoroughly woven through my life that imagining it without him feels like trying to remember a song after someone has stolen the melody.

“Phoenix is an asshole,” I say.

Goldie’s mouth curves. “The famous ones usually are.”

“He wasn’t always.” I shake my head. “Or maybe he was. Maybe those parts were always there and fame just gave them a microphone.”

Goldie huffs out a laugh.

I glance down at the notebook in my lap. “When we were kids, he was still cocky. Still impossible. Still convinced the world would fall in love with him.”

I smile, even as I miss who he was. But the smile fades just as quickly as it comes.

“But before the world got him...” My fingers trace the edge of the page. “...I knew where all the soft places were. I’m just not sure they’re still there.”

Goldie watches me without interrupting me.