Page 2 of Stolen Harmony
There's always tomorrow with you, until there isn't.
Somewhere in New York, Rowan was probably alone too, carrying pieces of the same broken woman's love. Maybe it was time to stop carrying them alone.
I looked at my phone, at the number that could connect me to the only other person who understood what losing Elaine really meant. The storm raged outside, but inside something was shifting. The silence no longer felt empty—it felt expectant, like the moment before music begins, when every note that could be played hangs in the air, waiting.
Chapter 1
Static
Rowan
Present Day…
The bass line from the stage felt like someone taking a sledgehammer to my skull, each thump reverberating through the concrete floor and up into my bones until my teeth ached in their sockets. I pressed deeper into the cracked vinyl chair, the split seams catching on my jacket as I tried to disappear into what The Underground generously called a greenroom.
Really, it was a storage closet with delusions of grandeur. The ceiling hung so low I'd cracked my head on a pipe walking in, and now condensation dripped steadily onto the concrete floor in a rhythm that didn't match the music bleeding through the walls. Water stains bloomed across the ceiling tiles like liver spots, and the whole place reeked of stale beer, cigarette smoke that had soaked into the walls over decades, and something else. Something sour and desperate that might have been sweat or might have been dreams rotting in real time.
My phone buzzed against my thigh, the vibration cutting through the fog in my head. Another notification from a dating app. The preview showed a headless torso, smooth chest catching bathroom lighting, and text that started with “Hey sexy.” I didn't bother reading the rest. Just swiped it away and added it to the collection of meaningless pixels that passed for human connection these days.
Two years. Two fucking years since I'd been home, since I'd stood in that cemetery watching them lower my mother into the ground while some stranger in a good suit stood ten feet away like he belonged there more than I did. Two years of telling myself I was building a life in New York, when really I was just burning through days like cigarettes—lighting one off the ember of the last, never quite extinguishing the need for the next.
The setlist was taped to the wall next to me, my handwriting from three weeks ago when I'd still given a shit about the order of songs. The edges curled now, corners lifting in the humid air that tasted of mold and broken air conditioning. I couldn't remember the last time I'd looked at it during a show. Most nights I just played whatever came to mind, if anything came to mind at all.
I reached for the water bottle balanced on the arm of my chair—the one that definitely wasn't water. My hands shook just enough that the liquid sloshed against the plastic. Vodka. Cheap shit that burned clean and familiar down my throat, leaving heat that almost felt like it belonged to me. The bottle was half-empty already, which meant I was half-full of liquid courage, half-empty of reasons to care about anything happening beyond this closet.
The door creaked open on hinges that needed oil, the sound cutting through the bass like fingernails on metal. Caleb's head appeared, his usually perfect hair disheveled and his button-down wrinkled like he'd been running his handsthrough it. Dark circles shadowed his eyes—he'd been my best friend since we'd met at an open mic four years ago, back when I still believed music could save people. Back when I still believed in saving anyone, including myself.
“Dude, where the hell have you been?” He tried to keep his voice light, but I could hear the edge underneath, sharp as broken glass. “We’ve been stalling for twenty minutes. Marcus is doing his entire repertoire of dad jokes and people are starting to leave.”
The bass line shifted to something heavier, vibrating against my ribs like my heart was trying to escape. I took another pull from the bottle, longer this time, letting the vodka coat my throat until the burning became white noise.
“Needed some air,” I said, though the air in here was thick enough to chew.
“In here?” Caleb stepped fully into the room, closing the door behind him with a click that sounded too final. The space immediately felt smaller, more coffin-like. “Ro, you look like shit. When’s the last time you ate?”
I tried to remember and came up empty. “There was pizza… sometime.”
He snorted. “Cool. A diet of whiskey and maybe-pizza. Revolutionary. When you die, I’m putting that on your headstone.”
“At least it’ll be honest.”
Caleb sat down on a milk crate, rubbing his face. “You know, you used to be late because you were flirting with bartenders. Or because you locked yourself in the bathroom writing lyrics. Now it’s because you’re?—”
“—fashionably late,” I cut in, flashing him a crooked grin. “Rock star mystique, man. They’ll wait.”
“Yeah, they’ll wait right out the door.”
Despite myself, I laughed. The sound was raw, cracked, but it loosened something in my chest.
He pointed at the guitar case in the corner. “Remember when you used to actuallytouchthat thing outside of shows?”
“I still touch it.”
“Wiping the dust off doesn’t count.”
“Neither does using it as a coffee table, apparently,” I muttered, earning myself an eye roll.
For a moment, the heaviness in the room lifted, like we were just two idiots killing time before a set instead of me trying not to drown in my own head.
