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“How could I? I didn’t own one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world at that point.”
“Tell me you tried, and I’ll give you a point.”
I flopped back onto the bed in exasperation. She was right, of course. “...Fine. I’m a dirtbag. I’m not saying I was being a martyr or anything. I knewIcouldn’t cope with having anyone dependent on me...”
“Dependent? You think I’d have been dependent?”
I sat back up and tried to correct my mistake. “No. No. I’m saying all the wrong words. I mean, couples depend on each other, don’t they?”
She was staring into the middle distance. “They’re supposed to.”
“Right, and me and my bandmates depended on each other.”
“You did, once upon a time. You’re telling me that’s why the rest of the guys hate you? You did that on purpose?”
“You might not believe me, but yes. It wasn’t fun.”
“I dunno. I read the accounts of it, sounds like you were having alotof fun.”
“Whatever. It was the decision I made at the time, and I didn’t love it then, and I don’t love it now, but I thought that was the only option.”
She stood up and clambered out of the bed, turning on me in a sudden flare of anger. “Are you... are you insane? You could havetalkedto us. Explained things to us. Offered us the choice.”
I stayed sitting in the bed, trying not to look at her nude form, though it was difficult. “It wasn’t your choice. It was mine. I couldn’t handle it, alright? I had too much on my plate. And feeling guilty about you, about the guys, I couldn’t handle it. It’s not that I didn’t care about you. Any of you. You guys were my family. And you... I loved you, Luna. More than you’ll ever believe. But it was too much. I wasn’t even an adult when I got the news, and I was barely an adult when I ditched the band. You can think whatever you like about me, but you know the truth now. If I ever made you feel ‘shiny and special’, it’s because I think you’re shiny and special. Thought. For fuck’s sake.”
She stared at me, then stormed out into the living space and started gathering up her clothes. “Yeah, well, you made a shitty choice. I need to get out of here.”
The door slammed behind her after she’d finished dressing. I considered running after her, at least to show her the quickest way to the exit, but I didn’t feel like receiving another earful of criticism from her. Instead, I slumped back on the bed and held my hands to my face.
After a few minutes, the sounds of the party reached me yet again. Oh yeah, that party that I was hosting, that I ought to get back to.
It was surely a sign of the apocalypse that I really didn’t feel like returning. All I wanted to do was lie sulking in my bed, wallowing in the doom and misery that I was feeling in that moment.
God, maybe I have been turned into a teenager again. Get a grip, Sylvester.
I shook off the resulting bad feelings from the sex-turned-argument and rolled off the side of the bed, forcing myself into action. I collected up the items of clothing I’d strewn across the place, sluggishly pulling them back onto my body, and shambled like a member of the undead in the direction of the loud music, talking, and laughing.
The next morning,I woke up with a fresh feeling of dread and groaned. What was it this time?
Then it all came back to me. Hooking up with Luna the night before, and our argument after. My life was suddenly complicated, and it was somehow all Apollo’s fault.
Since we’d signed the contract, Luna and I were stuck together, unless she decided she’d rather pay the cancellation fee than have to be around me. We’d need to find some way of getting along.
It had always been music for Luna and me. That was what had brought us together, even before we realized we loved each other, before we had devoted ourselves to each other, before I had eventually had to tear us apart.
I’d never meant to shatter her music career like that. I pulled my laptop off the bedside table and searched her name and ‘music’. There were a few results, but not a lot. Most of them were archive articles of small local interviews just before she’d been dropped from our tour.
She had uploaded some music onto a music-sharing site, though. In fact, as I scrolled down, I realized she’d been uploading demos for years and years. There were often gaps of a few years, but in general, this archive covered the span between the time we’d parted ways and now.
I braced myself and clickedplay. Her voice, ethereal and a little scratchy, faded in over the top of the guitar melody. God, she was good. I’d forgotten how good. She may not have the knack for rescuing a career in the music industry, for networking and for self-promotion, but damn, she was a good songwriter, a good guitarist, and a good singer. Her voice had rangeandpower, but the best moments, for me anyway, were when she sang so softly her voice blended into the guitar part, working in harmony.
I lay back on my bed and let the sound wash over me. There was a certain level of talent that no production values could make up for, and there was a certain level of talent that didn’tneedany production in order to shine through. Luna needed nothing for her voice. But if she recorded in a studio, with a producer, her tracks would beincredible.
There was nothing I could do for her, not now, and especially since I’d been the one to scupper her career. I simply lay there and listened in melancholy, and nostalgia, feeling her emotions seeping out of the songs.
In real life, in her interactions, she was so spiky and guarded. It was only in her music that she let herself become raw and vulnerable. That had been part of her appeal to me, I guessed, as a teenager: that I was one of the only people to see that softness in her that she so carefully guarded. She was special.
It was important, somehow, to remember that the Luna back then and the Luna now were not too separate people. Though she was allied with my worst enemy, she’d gone on a long journey to get there. She’d had to survive. I should cut her some slack, let her in a little bit. That’s what I’d had to do in the first place in order to bypass the numerous levels of defense that she put up.
