Page 28 of A Song for Another Woman

“He’s been between us for months. So has Melody. So has every camera you let point at me while you called it a bit.”

His shoulders drop. I shift the duffel higher.

“I’m leaving,” I say. “That’s all I can do tonight.”

He steps toward me again, slower this time, palms open. “Can I just hold you for one second?”

My body betrays me with memory. It remembers him at twenty-five, broke and sunburned, sleeping with one hand on my hip in a motel bed. It remembers his mouth at my temple. It remembers dancing with him in the Whippoorwill when thefloor stuck to my boots and I thought happiness could be built out of music, rent money, and nerve.

I want that man so badly I almost let this one touch me. Then I remember sitting in seat 4C with the camera light turning red.

I step back. “No.”

He stops. The word is small, but it changes the air anyway.

I've said no to interviews, to dresses, to parties, to another drink, and to one more photo. I have said no politely and gently in a voice people could step over. This no has a spine. Cade hears it; I can tell by the way he lowers his hands.

“I love you,” he says.

My eyes burn. I wish he hadn’t said it. I wish love were enough to make a home where there's only damage. I wish I could climb inside those three words and find shelter, but I've lived there too long already. The roof leaks.

“I believe you did at one point,” I say. That wrecks him. I can see it on his face and it hurts, but I'm used to swallowing hurt.

I walk past him. For one second, his body turns like he might block me, but he doesn’t. That may be the first kind thing he's done tonight.

In the garage, the air smells faintly of gasoline, dust, and expensive leather from cars I never drive. Daddy’s truck waits under a thin cover, dull blue paint and chrome pitted with age. I pull the cover off and fold it badly. My father would have fussed at me for that, and the thought cuts so cleanly I have to swallow.

Cade stands in the doorway behind me, not coming closer. “You don’t have to do this alone,” he says.

I open the driver’s door. It creaks like an old porch swing. “I've been doing this alone for a year, Cade. One more night won't kill me."

The duffel goes on the passenger floor, and the blue folder goes on the seat beside me. I buckle it in before I realize whatI’m doing, the strap crossing over paper and cardboard like the sketches need protection more than I do.

Cade makes a sound behind me, but I don’t look back. If I do, I'll see his face. If I see his face, I will remember every version of him except the one who left me alone in front of the whole world. I can't afford that kind of generosity right now.

The truck turns over on the third try. The engine catches with a rough, stubborn growl that vibrates up through the steering wheel and into my hands. I laugh once under my breath. It sounds awful, but it sounds alive.

The garage door rises, and cold pre-dawn air spills in.

Cade steps into the edge of my mirror, barefoot now. He must have kicked off his boots without thinking. His hair is a mess, and his arms hang at his sides.

For one suspended moment, we are both still. Then I put the truck in reverse.

He doesn’t chase me. He doesn’t pound on the window. He doesn’t perform the kind of desperation a camera would love. He only stands there and watches me go.

Nashville is quiet before sunrise. That feels unfair, somehow. A city that loud should have the decency to look guilty when you leave it. Instead, the streets are washed in gray, traffic lights blinking over empty intersections, the glass towers holding the last of the night in their windows.

My phone sits facedown in the cup holder. It buzzes once. Then again. Then keeps still. I don’t look.

The truck smells like old vinyl, dust, and the peppermint gum Daddy used to keep in the console. My hands grip the wheel at ten and two like I'm sixteen again and he's in the passenger seattelling me not to ride the brake down the hill. The blue folder slides slightly with every turn, caught by the seat belt.

Porch. Nook. Dogwood.

I should cry, but I don’t.

I make it past the expensive neighborhoods, past the sleeping studios, and past the exits marked with names that used to mean opportunity when Cade said them out loud. I make it onto the highway with the sky thinning at the edge, and only then does my chest finally unlock. Not all the way, but just enough to hurt.

A sound comes out of me. Not a sob, not yet, but more like my body testing whether grief still has access. It does.