Page 142 of The Sound Between Us

The house is almost empty by the time they leave. I don’t bother locking the door. Let someone steal what’s left.

I walk back into the studio, the tequila bottle in one hand, the weight of everything else in the other.

There’s a box I haven’t opened yet. Marked SEREN.

I crouch beside it, hands trembling slightly, and peel the flaps open.

Inside: • A pink milkshake-stained sweatshirt • A folded napkin with her handwriting on it: vanilla > strawberry > chocolate (don’t @ me) • A Faith Jones vinyl. The Red Session.

I carry it over to the turntable. Blow the dust off. Set the needle down.

The crackle fills the silence first. Then the piano. Then her voice.

And mine breaks.

I sink to the floor with the tequila bottle between my knees and the vinyl spinning behind me. My notebook is on the floor, where I left it weeks ago. I pick it up. Flip to a blank page.

I write:

Serendipity You knew who I was, and you loved me anyway. Until you didn’t. I don’t blame you.

The tequila burns going down. The music continues. The door stays open.

And for the first time in years, I have nothing left to hide behind.

The drive up Topanga makes me feel vaguely sick. Hidden enough that the press can’t find you, expensive enough to make sure no one else does either. It’s all eucalyptus, canyon air, and rich people pretending they’re bohemian.

Jamie’s place is perched halfway up a private slope that smells of sage and dust. Cedar, glass, and steel. Looks surgically inserted into the hillside, all angles and mood lighting. A Bond villain’s weekend hideout, if the villain smoked weed and missed every child support payment ever.

I pull to a slow crawl, gravel crunching beneath the tyres.

“Still living fucking wizard,” I mutter to myself.

The house is quiet when I step inside. Not silent. Just quiet in that Jamie way—music still playing on the Sonos in some room no one’s in, incense burning out in a glass tray, open windows letting in the canyon night.

“Jamie?” I call out.

Nothing.

I move into the open-plan living room. There’s that ridiculous infinity pool spilling off the edge of the deck, that abstract sculpture he claims is “meditative,” and—on the very edge of the sofa, Jamie.

He’s sitting forward, elbows on his knees, face pale as chalk. He’s still in yesterday’s jeans and a Joy Division tee so faded it’s basically a suggestion. Phone clutched in both hands.

His eyes flick up when he hears me, but they don’t land. Don’t focus. Just... slide right over me.

I freeze. “Is Dex okay?”

It’s the first place my brain goes. Always is. Always has been. Dex, pale on a bathroom floor. Dex with no pulse. Dex the cautionary tale following our lost band brother.

Jamie blinks once, slow and delayed, his brain buffering.

“That was my lawyer,” he says.

I exhale. “Jesus. What’ve you done now?”

Because that’s the next fear—restraining order, lawsuit, another trash tabloid story we’ll have to spin into charm.

Jamie lifts his head. He looks wrecked.