The Mixtape

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to comfort her over this issue, because I knew how Cam’s comments appeared. She’d painted me as a sick devil.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, not knowing what else to say, because shit. I was so fucking sorry. And sad. And hurt.

She pulled me in closer and laid her lips against mine, kissing me hard. Her kisses didn’t taste like new beginnings anymore. Her lips tasted like goodbyes, and that broke my fucking heart.

“Please,” I muttered against her mouth, not even knowing what I was begging her for. Because I knew it was too much to ask her to stay. I knew it was too much to beg her to give us a chance. I would never want to be a roadblock in Reese’s life. I would never want to be a cause of Emery losing her daughter.

But damn it, it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her lips still grazing mine. I didn’t want her to pull away. I didn’t want her to walk away from me, because I needed her more than I’d realized. I loved her. I loved her so much, and the thought of losing her was killing me second by second. And that was exactly what was happening. I was losing the woman who’d saved me.

“This is just a bad track,” I said, my hands against her lower back, holding her to me as I shook my head. I rested my forehead against hers and closed my eyes. “This is just a bad song on our mixtape, Em. This isn’t the end of us. Okay? This isn’t the end, and I will wait as long as it takes for everything to work out for us. I’m not giving up on this, I’m not giving up on us,” I told her.

She gave me one last goodbye kiss as she slowly removed my touch from her. With one big step backward, she let me go.

“I’m so sorry, Oliver,” she repeated, turning to walk away. “I love you,” she whispered, walking out of the front door quickly, almost as if she had to run away; otherwise she might’ve thought about staying.

She didn’t even hear me tell her that I loved her too.

The next several days all felt like night. Even though I wanted to turn to my familiar demons, I didn’t do it. I wanted to drown in the whiskey and wake up with vodka in my hands. I wanted to shut off my brain and forget how I’d lost the two girls who meant the world to me.

But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t spiral, because that would prove that Emery’s parents were right about me. That would prove that I wasn’t good enough for the two girls I loved.

I missed Emery. Every second, every minute, and every hour of every day, I missed her. I turned to the only thing that kept me sane in the darkness: I turned to my music.

I wrote nonstop, almost in a manic state. The words poured out of me until my studio floor was littered with paper. Then I wrote some more.

When my mind felt emptied, I called Tyler over to come listen to a few of the tracks I’d created that week. I wasn’t even sure if they were any good, but I wanted him to hear them, because it felt like the first time in ages I’d been able to truly tap deeply into my emotions. I was learning to use my pain to create beauty.

I didn’t only write about Emery and Reese. I wrote about my brother. I wrote about the pain and sorrow that flooded through me. I wrote about hurts and happiness. I worked through every single emotion that hit me because I was no longer pushing everything down within me. I felt it all and didn’t criticize myself for the need to feel. When anger built up in my system, I wrote it down. When love was heavily in my heart, I created from that place of being.

I created a mixtape and set it in front of my friend to hear.

Tyler’s jaw sat on the floor after I played the tracks for him. He raced his hand over his head. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “You did all of this over the past two weeks?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Holy shit,” he repeated, running his hand over his mouth. “Oliver, this is the best music you’ve ever created. It’s raw and real, and holy shit,” he huffed, shaking his head in disbelief as he pushed the palms of his hands against his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’re crying,” I joked.

“Fuck off, will you? There’s nothing wrong about a grown man expressing his emotions.”

“So, that means you like it?” I asked.

“That means I think you’ve created your comeback album.”

“I don’t really care if the world hates it,” I started to argue, but he cut me off.