The Only Song (Only You)

37. Jaxon

Chapter 37

Jaxon

T hump. Thump. Thump.

Heart beats ringing in my ears. A muted mallet on the face of a timpani. The repeated slam of a door after the love of my life left two months ago.

Over, and over, and over.

My dreams have turned it into a symphony and even though I’ve retired from performing, I’m still a soloist. But I don’t want to be solo in life anymore. I want Sadie.

I hear the thumping again. It rattles the ache in my neck, the twinge stretching down to my shoulder. I haven’t played music since the end of the tour and yet, I still feel pain. My muscles knot, and my life has lost all rhythm, like music with no beat—chaotic, calamitous, catastrophic. Every day I wake, it feels hard to breathe and I’m haunted by the ghost of Sadie touching me, massaging me through my pain, soothing me with her voice. It’s not real. She’s not here. What would I do to be with her again? Anything. But I know she doesn’t want me. She hasn’t reached out to me since the day she left and now, I’m living my worst nightmare. And I’m living it alone.

I reach across my bed sheets, knocking off a pillow in my search for… What? I’m not sure. Am I looking for my phone? Am I looking for my shirt? Am I looking for her?

Thump.

The sound grows louder until I finally crack an eye open to sunlight filtering through my bay window. It illuminates the dust on my grand piano like dirty white glitter, and I feel a pang in my chest. I’d never let it get dusty like that. But that was before I decided to quit my career and live as a dejected, purposeless mess.

Thump. Thump.

The bed, I realize, is not my bed. I reach and my hand thwacks painfully into something hard, wooden, and when I finally find my glasses, what I suspect is true. I fell asleep on the couch. Again. The bed sheet was the sweater I lent Sadie, and it falls off the couch as I sit up.

The thumping continues. It jars my brain and my shoulders tense in a way that’s never disappeared since she did. Around her, I was pain-free. I should’ve known once she left it’d come back tenfold.

Thump .

I groan. Who is pounding on my door?

“Coming!” I shout down the stairs, not bothering to find a shirt. When I open the door, my eyes are briefly scorched by broad daylight before momentarily shadowed by the broodiest face I know.

“Xander?” I ask, squinting as if it might sharpen the image before me or dull the sun’s rays a tad. I can’t even remember the last time I was outside. Three weeks ago, maybe?

Xander eyes me up and down, looking over my shoulder to the unwashed dishes stacked in my kitchen sink looking like a ready to fall tower of porcelain Jenga.

“Get dressed,” he huffs, pushing me aside in the doorway and letting himself in.

“What?” I trail after him like a lost puppy. “What are you even doing here?”

He pivots to face me, and I almost run into him. Instead, I stumble backward, reaching for a railing, or a table, or something to catch what would’ve been the world’s most painfully slow fall, until I’m steadied by a firm hand gripping my forearm.

Xander. My best friend and my brother.

Xander. Inky black hair and even more inked skin.

Suddenly, it feels like my ribs might collapse into my chest. The weight of everything I’ve been shying away from. The life I left behind. The love I lost crashing and burning. Whatever pieces left in me these past few months are all filled with painful, lonely agony.

He stares. His usually hard eyes a softer steel as he looks at me, not with the disappointment I expected of him, but with a shared pain. A mutual understanding that life fucking sucks , my eyes say. His adds, but we’re gonna get up anyway and fucking keep going .

He lets go of my arm once I’m steady, turning to lean on the stair rung and points upwards.

“Pack your bags. We’re going to LA,” he says.

I blink. LA? I have no reason to go to LA yet. The tour ended. I have no upcoming solos. My home renovation isn’t done. What could possibly be going on where I’m needed?

As if reading my thoughts, Xander adds nonchalantly, “There’s a reunion. And we’re all going.”