Page 36 of Every Shattered Note
The booth I always claim is by the window, fogged halfway with condensation from the cold outside, warmed just enough by the old radiator groaning beneath it.Outside, the Seattle drizzle has become fine mist, soaking through collars and slowing everything down.The air smells like fried onions and rain-drenched pavement, and maybe that’s why I told her to meet me here.This place is too small to pretend in.It’s just real.
I don’t even know if she’ll come.
She didn’t say yes—didn’t even flirt with the idea of a maybe—but I can only hope that Aly will let herself pause for a moment and relax.
She’s a fixer.
One of those people who carry their own bones like scaffolding for everyone else’s world.She chases perfection for strangers and calls it purpose.Probably doesn’t realize how often she forgets to breathe unless someone reminds her that she still can.
I know that type.
One of my closest friends is still fighting that same disease—perfection disguised as purpose.He’s the one who dragged me out of the hell I’d made home, pulled me back from the edge more times than I want to admit.These days, he calls himself a fixer in recovery.I should probably ask him for pointers before Aly turns forty and wakes up realizing she spent her life making magic for everyone but herself.
I recognize the exhaustion in her voice.The micro-pauses between her words.The way she apologizes before she even realizes she’s done nothing wrong.She’s running toward something that’ll never stop moving.
One day she’s going to turn around, look at her life, and say,Fuck.I can’t remember a moment where I was happy.
I know because that happened to me.
My life wasn’t color palettes and event timelines—it was self-destruction dressed as devotion.A search for meaning in the middle of noise.Trying to figure out how to make people stay, even when I wasn’t worth staying for.
It started early.My father left when I was seven.He wanted his freedom, not a family that would pull him down.My mother followed him, not physically, but her heart did.She drifted until she didn’t wake up one morning.The doctors said it was an aneurysm.I knew better.She died from loving someone who had already left her.From trying to hold together a life that was already crumbling.
After that, I stopped believing I could be enough for anyone.
My grandparents took me in.They were good people.Grandpa tried, though.He handed me his old guitar, placed my fingers on the strings, and said, “Music doesn’t leave, kid.People do.”
I believed him.
By ten, I could play every instrument in his house.Piano, guitar, mandolin—anything that made sound, I could bend it into something close to music.I memorized melodies by ear.I thought if I could be exceptional enough—talented enough—my father might be proud of me.If I followed in his footsteps and was capable of keeping up with him.He would realize I was worth coming back for.
He never did.
By fifteen, grandpa was connecting me with bands who needed a last-minute fill-in for recordings, concerts ...anything.I could match anyone’s rhythm, slip into their sound like I’d always been there.That was my gift—adapting, becoming whatever version of myself someone else needed.I was the chameleon of other people’s dreams.
It worked too well.
I was on tour with Dreadful Souls, sometimes filling in for the occasional train wreck of a night with bands like Guns N’ Roses or The Wild Electric.Too young for the rooms I was in, too naïve to realize how fast those rooms could eat you alive.
The rest of it blurs.
Spotlights.Crowds.Applause that felt like affection until it didn’t.People calling my name like they owned a piece of it.
Then came the noise.
The noise that doesn’t stop when the music ends.
I learned early that whiskey took the edge off better than applause ever could.Booze, pills—whatever was within reach—they didn’t make me better.They just made me quieter.I told myself it was part of the process, that every real artist needed a few vices to bleed something worth hearing.I called it inspiration.Truth is, it was maintenance.Survival.Maybe both.I wasn’t chasing greatness—I don’t even know what the fuck I was chasing.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped writing songs and started disappearing, one night, one bottle, one line at a time.
Anything that made the world quieter felt like salvation.
Until it wasn’t.
That’s not what’s happening to Aly, of course.She’s different.Her vice is control.
She doesn’t know yet that control is a myth.That even if you plan every minute, triple-check every name card, make the table linens match the centerpieces down to the thread count—shit still falls apart.
