I’m living my lyrics once more.
The next weeks pass in the forgettable haze of what’s become my life. I fly from Coachella to Chicago to continue my tour without Max. In every seat in Soldier Field, rings of light surrounding me from the floor to the sky, I see someone who might feel like I do, or might have, once. I put all my heartache into my performances, not letting myself forget the opportunity I have in the open wound from which I can let music spill.
I sell out stadiums. I play “Until You” on my guitar.
Whenever I catch myself wondering if I just saw Max’s face in the audience, or in the stadium corridors, or in the green room, I chase off the guilty hope. Whenever my mom asks, I say I’m fine with him leaving.
I’m not, of course.
Speculation has gone wild. Online and in magazines, everyone declares I’ve gone through yet another breakup. Instead of working to ignore it like usual, I indulge in the nasty commentary. When I read about strangers wondering if it’s some sort of performance art, I wonder with them.
I go on a late-night show, and the first question is whether I’m single. I smile. I say I’m never not in love. I perform my music under the studio’s lights, singing pain like it’s second nature. I return to my hotel, where I keep performing it in other ways. In some sense, I start to feel like I’m performing it every minute of every day.
I lie awake on the bus, fighting not to imagine Max sleeping just feet from me. When I fail, I seek solace in the living space, where song after song comes to me. It keeps happening. I’ve never slept so little in my life, nor have I felt myself so frighteningly in the grip of inspiration. I scribble lyrics everywhere. Coffee cups, receipts, napkins, even my hand.
I think about Max so much while I’m writing that the memory of us loses its sting. I still miss him in an ache that never fades, but I have no more tears to shed over him.
I continue from city to city. In St. Louis, I make excuses for not visiting home, knowing deep down I’m not ready to combine losing Max with what I know I’ll find, cardboard boxes of my mom’s possessions waiting for relocation when she moves somewhere new.
Whatever my feelings on the new shape of my family, the middle of my tour, with hours until my show, is not the moment to rattle myself with them. Instead, I hole up in the hotel, where I get nothing done.
My mom, I expect, does the same. We haven’t spoken more on the changes she’s considering in her life. Regardless, I’m guessing she’s using the tour to get some space from the collapse of her marriage, not to fit in some quick packing in the suburbs fifteen minutes from here.
My dad joins me for lunch in my room. It’s really, really nice, even if he sees right past my upbeat, prepared veneer to the wounds I’m hiding. Of course he’s read every headline. He knows how, just months since my divorce was finalized, my next relationship has now failed. Yet here I am, playing for fans like I’m the same old Riley.
He says it worries him. I laugh it off.
I give my St. Louis show everything, like the city has given everything to me. The next morning, I’m gone.
Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Stadium is unexpectedly one of my favorite stops. Inside the stadium’s stately walls, I guess I just feel for the first time recently like everyone is glad to see me instead of curious. After the first show, I don’t return to my hotel. I’ve found writing in the hotel is harder. The rooms are designed to feel like blank slates.
I don’t need blank slates. I need texture. I need the place where Max shaped piano chords with his hands on the table in the middle of the night, where he made us laugh and stunned us in the costumes I chose for him. I need the home I’ve known for the past few months, the hardest and happiest of my life.
It’s pleasant outside in the middle of the night. The bus waits in the hotel’s rear lot where we parked. I hum the melodic line I have stuck in my head while I walk up, the urgency of exciting ideas speeding my steps.
When I reach the doors, though, I find . . . duct tape on the window.
I stop, confused, remembering the conversation I had with Max about how we should indicate we’d brought someone back to the bus. Max is gone, though. Only my mom—
I feel the color drain from my face. It’s safe to say the melody I was humming has disappeared from my head. Slowly, delicately, I retreat like the parking lot is littered with land mines.
It’s too late. The door flies open, revealing Frank.
I’m lost for a moment. How did Frank even learn the system? Did I misremember the duct tape discussion? Was he there? Did he bring someone back to the bus?
While I’m sorting out what I’m seeing, my mom emerges in the doorway next to him. Her face is the color of pink carnations.
There’s no fighting the way my mouth flies open.
“We were just, uh, finishing—I mean, leaving. We were leaving,” Frank fumbles to say. With effort he forces something like nonchalance. “What are you doing here, Riley?”
Honestly, he’s sort of adorably flustered for a hulking, tattooed long-haul driver. He shifts in the doorway, shoulder pressed to the metal frame.
I put a hand on my hip playfully. My mortification is subsiding under the strength of his.
Yes, it’s a little weird knowing anything about my mother’s sex life, and even weirder that it no longer involves my dad. Still, I’m glad my mom is moving on. I know better than anyone how important it is. The recovery is its own ritual, with its own joys, its own opportunities. Sunrise has wonders sunshine doesn’t.
“How long has this been going on?” I ask, genuinely curious. From the way my mom naturally leans closer to Frank, I get the sense this isn’t the first time. I’m impressed how discreet they’ve remained.
My mom winces. “Since you left for Coachella,” she confesses.
With the pieces fitting into place, I smirk. “And you said you didn’t want to come because it was, quote, too hot, too loud, not enough bathrooms,” I chide, enjoying reprising the excuses I heard plenty in the weeks leading up to the festival. “You could have just said you wanted to spend time with Frank.”
“Riley, I’m sorry. I’m sure this is uncomfortable,” Frank says. He rubs his head, looking distinctly uneasy. “I’ve probably crossed a line here.”
“Oh, shut up,” I reply unhesitatingly. “I love you, Frank. If anyone was going to hook up with my mom, I’d want it to be you.”
Frank nods, still stiff, but he manages a smile. “Okay. Good. I have a lot of respect for, um, both of you. Obviously.”
In the funniest way, I’m reminded of how tours like this don’t just come with the self-evident, headliner joys. They’re full of secret gifts, unexpected flourishes of the universe. Perfect beignets, impromptu jam sessions, people I never would have encountered otherwise. Frank is one. Without nights on the road, I never would have met one of the most unfailingly loyal, profoundly kind men I know. Nor would my mom. “It’s okay if you leave now,” I encourage him gently.
“Thank god,” he says emphatically.
I laugh, exchanging a look with my mom, who’s fighting not to smile. Sweeping my arm aside, I usher Frank out of the bus. When he passes me, he stops and faces my mom.
“I’ll call you later,” he promises. It’s nice to hear his unflappable Frank-ness return.
My mom loses the fight with her smile. She doesn’t need to reply. The way she’s lit up says she would very much like it if he did.
She retreats from the doorway. I follow her inside, where she collapses into the booth. It’s dark in the little living space, the familiar stage for many moments I’ll never forget. This is definitely one of them.
“Now I know how you felt when we caught—what was his name? Nick something?—sneaking out of your room when you were in high school,” my mom says weakly.
“Nick Lynn,” I supply. “And I didn’t give you half as hard a time as you and Dad did me.”
She nods, knowing I’m right. I was grounded for weeks, including missing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show I was looking forward to. Nick’s nighttime visit was honestly not worth it.
My mom meets my eyes, her expression more serious. “Sincerely, you’re okay with this?” she asks.
I don’t hesitate. “Yes. I know Dad is dating. You should do the same. It’s weird, but weird isn’t bad. Just . . . something to get used to.”
My mom studies me, determining whether I’m being honest. Her conclusion reached, she nods. “You were right to bring me on tour,” she says. “I’m glad I came.”
I notice the pull of unfamiliar rhythms in her words. Interrupting my mom’s hookups is new, definitely. A discussion like this is revelatory in other, deeper ways. Here, I’m not the daughter, high school ground-ee or precocious popstar, or her the mom, weary with wisdom. We’re closer to equals, sharing life.
“I’m glad, too,” I say.
She straightens up, looking around like she’s realized something. “What are you even doing here?” she asks. “Why aren’t you in your hotel room?”
I gaze past her. My guitar in its case is leaning against the counter. I sift through everything I could say. I can’t sleep. I can’t stop writing. I can’t stop. “I write better in here,” I settle for saying.
Mom frowns. She can read volumes in verses no matter what I say. Knowing where this is going, I get up and grab the guitar. I’m hoping to signal I don’t want to have this conversation.
“Riley.” Her voice is patiently firm.
“I’m fine. Really,” I preempt her. “I’ve been dumped before. I’ll get through it like always.”
“You don’t have to put on a brave face, though. Not with me,” Mom replies. “I know what Max meant to you.”
I unlock the guitar case. The instrument inside is one of my oldest friends in the world. I pull out the Taylor, fixating on its shiny body, the strings silver in the moonlight. “I pour my heart out in song every night,” I remind her. “I’m not exactly putting on a brave face.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t mean then. I mean now, when it’s just us. No music.”
Only with my fingers on the strings can I fight off the frustration her words leave me with. She doesn’t understand. I resent myself for resenting it.
I let out my breath. “I can’t,” I explain patiently. “I can’t let a moment of sadness spoil this. I’ve worked toward this tour for practically my entire life. If I let breaking up with my boyfriend ruin this, I’m exactly what every one of my haters says I am. Overdramatic. Shallow. Besides . . .”
My next words don’t come readily. It’s because I need my mom to understand, so she’ll let go. Sinking into the booth opposite her, I focus like I do in the middle of the night when I feel the perfect chorus just past my fingertips’ reach.
“I don’t really think I have a right to be upset. I mean, this, my career, is because of my breakups. I should be grateful,” I say, repeating words I’ve routinized into daily recitations. “I am grateful. Who’s to say I would even have all this if Max and I had lived happily ever after ten years ago.”
The truth is, I have details deep in me I’ve never dared write into song. I’ve rendered the hurts, the joys, the hopes, the fears. I’ve never written the could-have-been. Its images have become seared into my eyelids from how often I’ve imagined them. We go on tour together. We graduate together. We move in together, somewhere near Harcourt Homes. While Max helps his family, I never stop chasing my dream. We do it together.
It’s the only thing I’m scared of writing.
“That’s—” Mom starts to say. She stops herself, staring out the window into the dark of the parking lot, reconsidering. “I understand.”
My eyes widen. It’s certainly not the response I was expecting to my guiltiest personal quandary. I don’t know whether I’m more surprised or relieved.
“When your life is good, when you’ve achieved your goals, when you have reasons to look forward to tomorrow,” she goes on carefully, like she’s fitting puzzle pieces into place, “it’s easy to justify everything else. Everything that isn’t good. They feel like necessary sacrifices, or payments. What life wants you to put on the other side of the scale.”
I watch her, my nervous hands going still on my guitar. While I’m realizing where some of my poeticism comes from, this revelation isn’t what silences me.
“I . . . ,” she goes on. “Well, I never said it out loud, but I wasn’t happy in my marriage for a long time. I told myself the unhappiness didn’t matter. It was small on the scale of everything else my marriage had brought me—everything else I wanted. You, family, our home. I knew something was missing in the way your dad and I interacted. I just convinced myself it didn’t matter.”
I’ve never witnessed the sadness in my mom’s eyes right now. Years’ worth, like she’s never cracked the door where the feeling hides. I watch her close it now, smiling softly.
“It took your dad making that decision for me, and I’m so glad he did,” she says. The humor in her voice is self-conscious. She knows glad is not exactly how her daughter would describe the distraught conversations we shared on the floor of my new house, or how she knew I noticed when we would go weeks of phone calls without her laugh.
Writing has given me instincts for feeling each word’s every meaning, though. Sometimes glad means warmth without meaning light.
While I listen, she goes on. “I shouldn’t have suffered through anything just because of what it once gave me,” she says. “You shouldn’t, either. You don’t need to live with heartache, Riley. You don’t have to pretend it’s a good thing,” she says. “Because once you let go of the thing that hurts you, you could find so much more.”
She takes my hand. It’s funny noticing the different callouses we have. Mine from guitar strings, hers from gardening. With her hand in mine, they feel very much the same.
“I never would have come on this tour. I never would have met Frank. I never would have considered living somewhere new.” Her voice is choked up, the way it was in our newly divorced conversations, except with the exact opposite emotion. The same sound, yet subject to the universe’s incandescent revisions. “I’m so glad I have this chance, because I really believe great things are ahead for me.”
I squeeze her hand. “They are.”
She smiles. “They are for you, too.”
I let myself really hear her. My breath catches a little, almost a sob, almost a sigh of relief. I don’t know what to say. I know only how much I need my mom. Even now, with my name written on reverse in the windows I’m gazing out of, the sound of the stadium I filled still ringing in my ears. Especially now, maybe.
“I’ll leave you to your music,” she says, standing up. “But maybe not too late tonight, okay?”
“Okay, fine.” I laugh, nostalgic for school nights in my childhood bedroom, for songs I was only just learning to write, for dreams whose costs hadn’t revealed themselves to me yet.
Satisfied, my mom grins. She leaves the bus, heading for the hotel.
With only my guitar for company, I sit in the stillness of the night. I pull the instrument into my lap, thumbing the callouses on the fingers of my left hand. I’ve put so much pain into this. I’ve turned heartbreak into art, into success, into fame and wild fantasy. I’ve made it the cornerstone of monuments I’ve sent soaring into the sky, unable to be ignored. I’ve reveled in the splendor of my kingdom of sorrow.
But it’s fucking hurt.
I start to believe my mom is right. What if I have held myself back from something even greater? I’ve tried to believe my sacrifices were worth it.
Now, without Max, I’m not so sure.
On unsteady legs, I return to where the guitar case leans on the kitchenette counter. Fighting myself, I unlock the latches, exposing the velvet interior. I place my guitar inside, then close the lid.
In the moonlight, I let myself cry.