Page 75 of The Encore’s Crown

“She was crying. She was trying to pretend she wasn't but I could tell.”

The words come out flatter than they feel. Rithy’s expression changes, just slightly. Then he looks away and takes another drink.

“She’s grieving. That’s the whole point.” His voice gentles, but there’s that coldness beneath it. The same tone he uses when we’re about to walk onto a stage and he needs me focused. The same tone he used when we were kids and I told him he had to stop crying before Dad heard us and beat our asses. He would nod and say okay like a little soldier.

“She's all messed up right now. She's lost her brother, she's young and horny and hot. So, naturally, she's drinking and fucking the grief away. That sake bottle never saw her coming.” He gestures vaguely with his glass. “And you were standing right there, looking like her favorite flavor of bad decision.”

I laugh but there’s no humor in it. “Great.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rithy sets his glass down and leans forward, forearms braced on his knees.

“She was chasing a distraction. I know if I lost you, I'd be chasing every vice known to man.”

My jaw tightens. I remember the words she used, how she said she didn’t feel this way around anyone except me. How earnestly and openly she asked me to fuck her, on multiple occasions. There was pain in her eyes, yeah, but the way she felt seemed real. It's too hard to piece together. The more I try to separate what was real for her from what I feel and how heated everything became between us, the more it all runs together. All of it can be true. Or none of it. I don't know anymore.

“It didn’t feel like that was all it was.”

“Of course not. That’s how distractions work. Even she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

The words hit me harder than I thought they would. I hear her voice again.

You acted like this had a future.

I press my tongue to the back of my teeth.

Rithy keeps going. “She’ll be sad, probably hate you for a few months—”

“Forever, probably.”

“Fine. Forever, whatever.”

He reaches for the bottle and pours more whiskey into his glass.

“Then she’ll meet some nice guy in Seattle. Some fucking banker or tech bro or whatever the hell men with normal jobs are now.”

I say nothing but the picture builds anyway. Natalia laughing across a restaurant table at someone else. Smiling as she leans into someone else’s shoulder. Some clean-cut asshole with no abusive alcoholic in his family, no bad reputation, no years of noise and touring embedded in his bones.

Rithy grins, trying to drag me into the joke. “He’ll fuck her once, think he’s seen God and won the lottery in the same night, and marry her before she has time to change her mind.”

The glass nearly cracks in my hand but Rithy doesn’t notice. Or pretends not to.

“He’ll spoil her,” he continues. “Big house. Stupid car. Vacations where nobody has to sneak around in disguises. Christmas with the family. Kids, maybe. Whatever she wants. Big family dinners with the Sawadzkas, all that shit. Rafe will be delighted. So will Kasia. Life moves on.”

My chest feels wrong. So tight that the air in the room feels thin.

“She’ll be okay,” he says, a sincere look in his eyes. "The young ones are resilient."

I nod because that’s what I’m supposed to do. That was the whole point, wasn’t it?

She’ll be okay. Better off without me.

Natalia, with all that light and fury and softness she pretends she doesn’t have, will go on and find someone better suited to her life. Someone younger and easier. A guy Rafe won’t want to kill. A man who won’t make her hide in hotel rooms or wait for the scraps of time between flights and soundchecks. A decent man, who won’t tell her there’s a future while he’s touching her, then tear it away the minute she isn’t standing close enough to stop him. Rithy moves from the chair to the couch beside me. The cushion sinks under his weight. He pats my back once, hard enough to jolt me forward.

“You made the right decision.”

I stare at the phone in my hand. Natalia’s last words are still lodged somewhere in my throat.