Page 172 of Paint the Town, Dove

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Of course she was right.

My Dove was always right.

It didn’t make the pain hurt any less.

It didn’t make the reality go away.

It only broke the fragments of glass separating me from the euphoric, blind state I’d been living in for the last fifteen months.

Drags and Smoke hailed number one since its release forty-six days ago, and I couldn’t enjoy a lick of success.

Only the taste of salt on a rim of a shot glass, and the burn of powder in my nose.

It became habitual… this routine of mine.

She sold my song to Avenue, our mutual label – she’d been shagging Pierce, isolating me slowly behind my back, took all the credit – all the credit for a song that didn’t apply to her, a piece of my heart now shared with the world that she owned –

And Avenue dropped me.

A contract, written in blood by the vultures who made me, me.

Scarlett was right.

I had an iron chain wrapped around my neck –

And I couldn’t cut it loose.

That was until my faded ass walked into a random music store in a corner back alley, neon lights flashing:

TIMB’S TUNES

There was a man in there, sitting on one of those retro barstools – kind of like the ones at Cobalt Blues way back when – and he looked…

Happy?

Was that the word for a man who wore a smile?

My mother wore a smile…

They were never real.

Emory smiled.

Until she didn’t.

I loved Yasmine.

She never did.

I smiled.

When my Dove smiled.

But we rarely smiled anymore.

We rarely laughed anymore.

She was always busy. I was always gone.

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