Page 22 of Composed
A soft, supple melody plays in the background as her breath caresses the line. “Sorry it took a minute to call.”
I drop onto the mattress and press myself into the headboard. “No worries. Kinda figured you weren’t gonna bother.”
“Yeah, same. But turns out, curiosity does in fact kill the cat.” She laughs, a tinkling sweet sound and my heart clenches. “And you, Cole Hayes, have got me all curious by sweeping back into town and seeking me out. How did you find me, anyway?”
By begging my manager’s wife to ask around town…
I click my tongue. “Snitches get stitches. And I’m no snitch. Though I am intrigued.”
“About…”
“You.”
A crash sounds on her end, followed by a hissed curse.
“Opening a studio,” I rush out when I hear her fumble around. “Never knew you wanted to.”
She makes a noise in her throat, and coughs. “I didn’t know I did either. It just kind of happened. I started mixing a few years back, met Talia, and it all spiralled from there.”
I frown, my gut sinking. “You’re a mixing engineer?”
“Yep.”
“You still write, though? And produce?”
A beat of silence.
Then she answers, her voice almost a whisper, “No, I don’t. Haven’t for a while.”
“Why?” I curl tense fingers into the black bedsheet. “It’s all you ever dreamed of.”
I hear her slow intake of breath. “Dreams change.”
Those fucking words.
Heard them before.
“Right. Makes sense.”
Quiet stretches between us.
I bite my tongue as a barrage of questions rattle my brain.
She sighs, a thick, heavy sound.
“I’m not the same person I was back then,” she says. “Are you?”
I rake a hand through my hair. It’s a loaded question that I don’t really know how to answer. On one hand, yes, I’m the same. But on the other…
“Maybe not so much.” I drum my fingers on the bed. “Why’d you stop writing?”
“Would it sound really cliché if I say the music in my head just died one day?”
“Maybe a little,” I tease, though there's nothing amusing about her answer.
If I was good at writing music, Hendrix was exquisite. She was my superior, in every way. Where I created melodies, she crafted masterpieces.
Every note told a story. Her compositions lived and breathed inside you. She would tear you apart with a single stroke of her guitar, only to bring you back to life with the next.
