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Lost so long, I don’t know how to be found
Wandering in circles, going ’round and ’round
I saw the light once, it was in her eyes
She pulled me in, she became my guide
We were tripping and the end was never
Until our road crumbled away into a broken forever
My knees nearly gave out,going weak and liquid. He’d taken our song, the one we wrote together in my bedroom, when we were madly in love, and turned it into a tragedy. How could this man keep breaking my heart?
I wasn’t angry, not really. Instead, a swell of despondence filled my chest. If my knees hadn’t been so weak, I might have fled, but I was trapped, stuck hearing Jude’s voice through three more songs.
While I stood there, I wondered if I should try to talk to him. If not tonight, then soon. If he still cared enough about what happened between us to rewrite our song, and if I still cared enough to be heartbroken by it, then it stood to reason neither of us were quite over our ending.
When the music ended and Jude left the stage, Nina grabbed my hand so we wouldn’t be separated by the wave of people all heading for the exits. We turned to follow just as a wall of a man in a security T-shirt reached us.
“Are you Tali, Nina, and friend?” he asked.
Bemused, I nodded. “Yes. Why?”
He held out three backstage passes. “Mr. Goldman asked me to give these to you.”
Nina took them from him when I failed to do so, thanking him before he went back to work. She waved them in front of my face. “What do you say? Shall we go backstage and see Mr. Goldman?”
Lydia laid her hand on my shoulder. “We don’t have to. It’s up to you.”
She meant it, sincerely. The gentle openness in her expression told me she put my feelings of comfort over her desire to go backstage.
Taking a deep breath, I hooked my arm through Lydia’s. “Let’s go back there. How bad could it be?”
Nina elbowed my side. “Shit, Tals. Never ask that kind of question. That’s a perfect set up for everything to turn out terribly. Have you never seen a horror movie?”
Laughing, I hooked my other arm through hers and we made our way backstage. At Jude’s dressing room, there was a line of people who also had VIP passes. We started to join them, when the same security guard as before caught us.
“You can go in since you’re Mr. Goldman’s personal guests,” he said.
Following his directions, we edged around the line and stepped into the crowded dressing room. My stomach brimmed with nerves. I had no idea what I would say or if he even wanted to talk to me. I assumed he’d spotted us in the audience; there was no other explanation.
We pressed against the wall just inside the door, and I scanned the room, taking in the few reporters I recognized, until my gaze landed on Jude. He hadn’t spotted us yet. There were still several layers of people between us, and he was busy taking a picture with one of the VIP pass girls.
“What’s the plan?” Nina asked.
“I haven’t made one yet,” I whispered.
I had no plan, but my feet did. I took a step, then another in Jude’s direction. He raised his head and found me through the throngs of people crowding the room. His lips formed my name, and his eyes saw straight into my heart. The sorrow in his gaze ripped me to shreds and put me together again.
Just as I was about to take another step toward him, to give into the pull that had always existed between us, his attention went to his right, to the blonde, tattooed woman coming up to him with her arms open. He welcomed her embrace, saying something into her ear.
“Oh shit,” murmured Nina, frozen beside me, watching Jude and Claudia laugh together like the best of friends. They didn’t look like a couple. In fact, I was fairly certain the man standing with Claudia was her boyfriend. But seeing them together was too much on a night already full of too much. It reminded me he’d married her when my heart had still firmly belonged to him. He’d laid in bed and held her when I was all alone.
“Yeah, I’m going to go.” I brushed by her, moving fast until I was in the hallway again, out of eyesight.
Nina caught my shoulders, stopping me so she could hug me from behind. “I’m fine, Neens. I’m just not ready to have any kind of reunion with him. Or her, for that matter. You should stay, though. Let Lydia meet him.”
I took out a piece of paper from my purse and scribbled a note.
