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Aww, he’s still trying to get Zoe’s attention. True love.
This woman named Annie was right. I would never stop trying to get Zoe’s attention. I lived for it. Starved for her like the seagulls that I’d seen at the beach. Desperate for any crumb.
I waited for a few moments in case Zoe saw fit to toss one at me in the form of a snarky reply or even a threat about stolen property.
Anything.
Of course she might be busy. She was on a journey of her own, and I didn’t know how often she checked Instagram. But she’d certainly been tagged plenty, and not by my hand.
With a deep breath, I set my mobile aside and picked up my notebook. Those words lodged inside me seemed pointier now, stabbing through flesh on their way out of me.
The next time I looked up, the light in the room had changed, the shadows shifting and growing deeper. Past lunchtime already. Far past from the looks of things. But I had a song. No, better than that, I had two. Neither of them would win me any awards. That was okay. At least I had some words on the page.
Semi-decent words.
Though my stomach protested, I hit record and moved to the boxy microphone that was my favorite. Flynn had a few to choose from, and they all produced different effects. I picked up my guitar and started to strum the first halting notes of the melody still forming in my mind.
Letting you go
Is what I’m supposed to do
Made you that promise
You made one too
But leaving you behind
Feels like dying inside
The best part of me
Is still in love with you
Just that part of the song took forever to get right. I spent what felt like hours adjusting the notes and the words and even the distance of my mouth from the microphone. Every piece of the puzzle mattered when it came to building a song. Including getting the diction right. When my voice broke on the last line of the first verse before the chorus, I moved to the board to delete the take.
“Leave it.”
I went still at Flynn’s voice. I hadn’t realized he’d been listening. I wasn’t aware of much when I was in the box, as Simon called it. Flynn’s studio was far bigger than one, but still, it was such an isolated environment. Nothing outside those four walls registered.
And now he’d stepped into them with me, and instead of feeling crowded, I was glad.
I was so fucking tired of being alone.
Sleeping alone.
Working alone.
Making music alone.
I missed my band, the one that had mostly been put together for me yet had somehow begun to become my own before Margo’s kidnapping.
That moment had fractured everything.
“How long have you been listening?” I pulled the monitor out of my ear and swiveled on my chair to face Flynn.
“Hmm, since you first came in here. So, what, a handful of days now, give or take?”
“Excuse me?”
