Page 138 of Every Shattered Note
That she doesn’t try to be perfect for anyone—not even me.
I’m in the music room.
Not a studio.I never wanted that here.Barret’s studio is ten minutes away, and even then, I barely go.Mostly because any time we book space, Cleo and Eddie show up and turn it into a make-out session.Barret kicks us out before we hit record.
Rosie rests against the couch—tuned, waiting.My other guitar leans near the window, where the sun filters through its strings like it’s trying to coax out a song of its own.
There was a time I couldn’t look at them.Couldn’t touch the fretboard without feeling like I owed something I couldn’t give.Like every chord had to cost me something.
Now?
Now I play because I want to.
Because sometimes Aly falls asleep next to me on the couch with her fingers tangled in my shirt, and the quiet feels too wide unless I fill it with music.
Funny how love does that.
Takes what used to break you and turns it into rhythm.
I head toward the kitchen, bare feet against cool wood.The light has shifted—no longer early, not yet late.The fog’s lifting beyond the glass.Out past the deck, the sound shimmers silver, stretching wide and endless.A ferry hums in the distance.Seagulls dive low over the water.
She’s already out there.
Barefoot.Hair tangled from sleep.Wrapped in my old navy sweatshirt—the one she “borrowed” months ago and never gave back.The sleeves cover her hands.Her legs are bare.She’s pure poetry against the morning.
When she hears the door creak open, she glances over her shoulder and smiles.
It’s small.Lazy.
Fucking devastating.
“You made coffee?”she asks, voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Trying to earn my keep,” I say, offering her the mug.
She takes it, her fingers brushing mine.“You’ve already earned it.”
We sit on the back deck, side by side, the wood groaning beneath us like an old friend stretching awake.Her knee touches mine.Her shoulder brushes mine.We don’t speak for a while.
We don’t need to.
The quiet isn’t something to escape anymore.
It’s the music between moments.
Just us.The wind.The salt.The unremarkable miracle of a morning where nothing hurts.
“Do you ever miss it?”she asks softly, eyes on the water.
“The penthouse?”I sip my coffee.“Last I heard, the teenager downstairs set off the fire alarm trying to cook ramen.I think we made the right call.Who wants another cherry bomb incident?”
She snorts.“No.The stage.The world.All of it.”
I think about it.About the crowd roaring like a tidal wave.About the ache in my chest before the curtain rose.The lights.The hangovers.The applause that never filled anything real.The silence that came after—wide, loud, punishing.
I shake my head.“Not like I thought I would.”
I stopped chasing redemption and trying to get a career that I thought I needed because I was a Vaughn.These days, Dead Moth Parade plays unplugged concerts around Seattle, but we don’t announce them.We just do our thing and forget about what’s expected from us.
