In the Unlikely Event

I stopped answering him because I didn’t pity him. I had my own problems, my own issues with life.

The thing is, I didn’t know she would come back home, plop down next to me on the couch, notice the roses and sashimi on the counter, the traces of the masculine cologne he’d left behind, and say: “You’re right. I’m so stupid. I should just get over Mal and give this thing with Callum my best shot.”

That’s what she said when I could still smell the rubber of her boyfriend’s condom wafting from my pajamas, even after I took a shower. And Callum wasn’t doing much better guilt-wise. I’d watched from the window half an hour earlier as he shoved himself into the back of an Uber, on the verge of sobbing.

“I think you should,” I told Rory, thinking, but please don’t.

So now you see why I’m carrying five tons of guilt on my shoulders.

I never thought it would pan out this way. And even though I want to throw up every time the three of us are together in the same room (which doesn’t happen often), I just can’t be the one to let her break up with Callum.

My conscience can’t handle the failure of their relationship, no matter the reason. But secretly? If you asked me in a closed room—padded and soundproof—what I thought, I’d tell you my best friend, whom I love to death, is a brat.

She should just choose a guy and put everyone out of their misery.

I wish I had a pouty napkin boy who would rip the world apart to be with me.

I wish I had a rich, selfish-but-irresistible boy who would do anything he could to make sure Napkin Boy couldn’t.

Present

Mal

It is worth mentioning how I ended up writing songs for a living, when initially, I made having people beg to buy my songs somewhat of a competitive sport.

The answer—as it is to many questions—is Rory.

After she left, I worked through the pain. I wrote songs about love, and about hate, and about indifference. About loneliness and alcohol and the dark corners of my soul that frequently sent a hostile breeze through the rest of my body.

Hundreds of songs became thousands of songs, and thousands of songs became something bigger than me. Like a monster in my closet, lurking every night. Every song became a demon, and each demon was out for my blood.

I bled onto the pages until there were no more words to be written. Still, I wouldn’t sell them. I couldn’t sell them because I didn’t want to change my circumstances. I didn’t want to become big and famous and rich (not that I thought I would, but one can’t take any chances). I didn’t want to brush shoulders with Ashton Richards and his likes. I wanted to busk till I died, and come back home to my small cottage, and live a life where I didn’t chase inspiration—it chased me. Where my art didn’t stem from the need to have a bigger house or a fancier car or more money in the bank. I did it because I wanted to, a luxury not many paid artists have. It helped that I’d never been a particularly materialistic person.

But then the accident happened.

Katherine died. But before she did, there were a series of surgeries that required specialists to fly out from Switzerland and America and whatnot. The medical bills began to pile up. Mam and Elaine, Kathleen’s mother, needed a place to live. There was shite to buy and people to pay, and I felt the world cornering me into a place I couldn’t get out of.

So I sold out.

I unchained my demons and sold them to others as pets. These people put leashes on those demons, slapped them with a cheery tune, and sold them to the masses as Billboard hits.

I sold out, hoping Rory would hear, listen, make the connection, and hopefully find me.

It was the kind of stupid, boyish hope I’d admire in a fictional, hopeless character, but hate in myself. Then again, what were the odds of her not deciphering the unmistakable words?

“…summer rain on Drury Street. Stupid me, I thought you were mine to keep.”

“…underneath the stars, you ask, do you believe in God? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but after we’re through, I think I won’t.”

“Across the ocean, there’s a girl, made out of marshmallow and cyanide and shiny dew.”

Then I thought, I don’t know, maybe she simply hadn’t had the chance to listen to some of the BIGGEST FUCKING BILLBOARD HITS IN THIS DECADE because she had something against the radio and YouTube and TV and Western culture.

But I promised myself not to be bitter—especially after finding out Rory hadn’t, in fact, sent me the pictures and letter. She might’ve written those nasty-ass things on the backs of the photos—okay, fine, it was her handwriting, she did—but she didn’t intend for me to see them. To read them.