Page 101 of Every Shattered Note
We can stay here.
Just this space.Just words.Just ...something.
—A
ChapterForty-One
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
From: MustLoveMusic
To: AlyEuphoriaEvents
Date: February 28, 2001 11:59 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Are you there?
I’ll stay.
At least here.
You know what’s crazy?
I wrote a song tonight.First one in months.It’s quiet, slow.Half-finished, like everything else in my life.
But it’s got this one line that won’t leave me alone:
You were the silence I mistook for peace.
Maybe I’ll finishthis song when all this ends—If it ever does.
Goodnight, Euphoria Girl.
Don’t stop writing.
—D
PS I shouldn’t have left like that.I’m sorry.
ChapterForty-Two
Dexter
The apartment hums with static and sleeplessness.
The lights are too dim, the hallway bulb pulsing like it’s short on time or patience.Somewhere outside, a siren wails and disappears, swallowed by the hum of late-night traffic.Tires screech.A voice shouts, then slips into nothing.I haven’t been here long enough to know if that’s normal—or something I should be worried about.
And yet here I am.
Wide awake in a borrowed life while I try to fix ...my past, my future.I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing.
This is Los Angeles—sprawling, burned at the edges, trying to convince everyone it’s beautiful when bleeding underneath.
Lolita rests against the couch, her strings a little off—maybe it’s the air in here, or maybe it’s me.Still, her body settles into mine like muscle memory, like she hasn’t forgotten who I was before everything cracked wide open.
She and Rosie are the only ones who haven’t asked me to explain myself.The only ones who don’t twist the truth into something sellable.They don’t reframe the story to fit the latest spin.They just wait and let me play at my own pace.
The cursor on my computer blinks in time with something pulsing in my chest—some ache I can’t get rid of.
