THERE WAS A CHANCE THAT I’d dreamed everything up. I went to countless therapists, two hypnotists, and a quack psychic who tried to sell me a thousand-dollar crystal to restore my true memories. I never could find Dolly’s Mirror again, and after my last breakup I was starting to believe that maybe I had made all of it up.
“Cheer up,” Danny says, trying to get me in an after-party vibe
“I’m cheery. I always get like this at the start of a tour.”
I’m about to give my standard reason why I’m not in the mood when I see him. Like magic, a decade in the making. Poof and he’s there.
Laugh lines around his mouth. Broader, maybe even taller, and starting to gray just the tiniest bit at the temples. I like it. A lot. He’s talking to some girl. She likes him. He’s being polite, a little standoffish. He really has changed. The old Fay was an incorrigible flirt.
“Why don’t you just summon him?” Reina, my manager, jokes, and I flick water at her from the sides of my glass. “He is cute,” she offers.
“I know him, from when I was younger,” I tell her.
“Isn’t that like now? Since you’re turning back time and not allowing us to acknowledge your real age,” she says, and laughs.
“You know the paparazzi keep track of all that. No pictures,” I warn her.
“Booo. Why can blast-from-the-past have a party and not you? It’s your third world tour!” she yells excitedly.
“Excuse me,” I say to them, and start to make my way over to him. “Danny, don’t follow me, okay?”
“It’s dangerous,” he says in his uncharacteristically high voice. Must be all them damn steroids. I told him to lay off that crap. I put a hand on his chest when he tries.
“Really. It’s fine,” I say, reassuringly.
Like always, eyes follow me when I wade my way through the crowd. I’ve gotten used to the attention, but I think it might be time to focus on songwriting instead of being out front. It’s not a question of money anymore, and I’ve seen every corner of the world. I’m not too old to change things up. I’m not too old to make a different choice. I’m ready.
I tap the shoulder of the girl he’s with and watch as her eyes bug out of her head. She stammers over herself, congratulating me on my latest Grammy. I hear her, but my eyes are on Fay. No ring on his finger. Good. That little bit of fear is dropped, along with any apprehension I had about what I was going to say.
“You see that big guy over there? He’s my bodyguard and he thinks you’re cute. Can you go talk to him? For me?”
The girl looks a little confused. If I had to choose between Danny and Fay, it’d be Fay all the way, but I asked, so she trots off.
“Does he really want to talk to her?” Fay asks.
“No. But you didn’t want to talk to her either,” I reply.
“What makes you think that?” he asks, and offers me a slight smile.
“Because I know you,” I say.
“Yeah, but I need to get to know you. I followed your career for a bit. I’ve got all your albums,” Fay says.
“Even Gemini’s Tale?”
“Uh…” He quickly looks down.
We both laugh. Gemini’s Tale was horrible. I’d just broken up with my fiancé and I was really on a single-and-sever-all-ties kick.
“At least you’re honest,” he says lightly. “You know, I wrote you a letter after everything that went down at the diner. I bet your aunt got to it before you were able to read it,” he adds.
“No, I got it. I…”
“Oh. I… uh want to apologize for it. I know it doesn’t mean a lot after all these years, but it was too much. I was doing too much. I just loved you, completely, and I couldn’t bear to let you go. Over the years I realized that I was suffocating you. You were right. You knew better.” He seems relieved to have finally been able to say this.
“I didn’t know better. I was just scared. I thought I had to cut you out to get what I wanted, but I didn’t even try to bring you with me. I still have the letter,” I say.
He blinks hard. I’ve surprised him.
“My cousin Letitia has it locked up with some of the special things I don’t like to move between homes.”
“Homes. Wow!” he exaggerates.
“Shut up. Doesn’t look like you’re doing too bad for yourself, Mr. Designer Shoes.”
He kicks up a leg and turns the expensive sneakers from heel to toe so I can get a good look.
“I run an exploration company,” he says in mock offense.
“I know. Skyward Dreams. You’re not the only one who can use the internet.”
He reaches out and takes my left hand, and that electricity, that feeling like I’ve had a shot of espresso and the light’s just been turned on, ripples throughout my body. I moved on. I did. But this was missing.
“No ring?” he says, and I shrug.
“No ring. I got this, though.” I pull up my sleeve and shake my bracelet. It’s silver with tiny diamond guitars, a cello, a small platinum spaceship, and other charms. It’s cheesy, completely antithetical to my eclectic-but-sexy aesthetic. My stylist hates it, but it’s mine, like your first tattoo. He smiles, mildly interested, turning each of the charms over with care until he finds it. “Is that…?”
The cross is small, perfect for something like this, and it also seems out of place.
“Rosary beads,” I say.
He barks a laugh and pulls up his shirtsleeve to reveal a tattoo on his forearm.
“Is that a slice of cherry pie?” I squeal.
He nods.
“It reminds me of you and reminds me that the right decision might also be the hard one. How much do you remember?”
“After a while it didn’t seem to matter what had happened in the past. It was the future that was important. The feelings didn’t change, though,” I say.
After Auntie O flew to DC to pick me up, my memories of my other lives started to fade. But my memories from this lifetime rose from those ashes. I grieved a long time for my sister and wondered about Fay.
The settlement from the airline, after they determined the explosion was negligence, helped me stay afloat all those years I was searching for a record deal. My therapist thought everything I believed happened had all been a hallucination, and my neurologist thought Fay and I had had a shared delusion, but I needed to mark us with something solid. The bracelet seemed like a good way to commemorate the connection and the break.
“The cherries look, uh… juicy?” I say, struggling for words, totally unlike the international star I pay my manager to say I am.
“Your cello looks… jingly?” he replies, and laughs. “I used to be smoother than this.”
The silence between us stretches out, and it’s like we’re at the diner again. A choice that needed to be made, but then again, maybe not. He holds out his hand and I lace my fingers into his. His palm is warm, a little calloused, and perfect.
There’s no script for this. It’s never happened before, and hopefully it won’t ever again.