Page 6 of Over the Edge

“Seriously, for all we know she’s a serial killer.”

“Honestly, that would be more interesting than what we know about her now,” Walt says, fighting a chuckle at his own reply.

A chirping ringtone blares through my speakers, interrupting the podcast and my startled heart clatters in my chest. I reach frantically to answer the call while wrestling the wheel of my car.

“Ev, you’re listening to that damn brain rot excuse for music journalism, weren’t you?” Avery accuses the moment I accept her call, completely forgoing any greeting despite the fact it’s been two weeks since I saw her at her going away party.

“I’m not,” I say as convincingly as possible. Headlines and podcasts are a vice I can’t shake. Being both Lyla West and Evelyn Mariano, I maintain most of my privacy. Still, I can’t help but be drawn to the opinions of others, drinking them in and then being driven to deliver what the public wants.

This need to deliver is part of why I’m fleeing Manhattan. I’m not necessarily running from my problems. I’m relocating them somewhere more scenic. Mountains rise against the horizon and the Hudson River glimmers through copses of wind-swept trees. It’s hard to imagine I’m only two hours out of the city.

“You absolutely were. I know you can’t help yourself. The fact that you listen to men who should never have been given the right to access recording equipment is the one thing I hate about you,” she huffs. There’s a rolling cheer in the background. From the sporadic updates she's sent me, I think she’s at a music festival in Washington, lounging in her trailer to avoid mingling as much as possible before she heads back to LA.

“I’m not listening to them. I’m talking to you. I do not have the auditory processing prowess to be able to do both,” I relent on the technicality. It’s not like she believed me in the first place.

“So, you were.”

“Yes, I was.”

“I need to figure out how to put a damn child’s lock on your phone. You’re a masochist for listening to that shit. It doesn’t matter what they're saying about Lyla, you're only going to get in your head about the next album.”

“Too late. I’ve been in my head since an article called unlucky album three ‘dry, uninspired, and lacking direction,’” I remind her.

Really, I think it was the perfect description of how I was feeling during and after the album. I was coming off the worst break up of my life, drained from balancing music and my day job as one of the heads of the design department at a boutique PR firm. Most of all, I was trying not to show it, keep it all in, and not let it disrupt the careful balance I was struggling to maintain.

“So, your solution is a trip to a newly discovered circle of hell to find inspiration? It’s not too late to come to join me in LA. Beaches, great food, parties, could be fun,” she says, and I’m tempted, but I need to focus.

“This place is cute…didn’t you get the pictures I sent?” I ask to distract her.

“Ev, the town literally counts the number of couples who get engaged there. I think it called me single in no less than forty languages,” she says, referring to Hartsfall’s welcome sign.

The sign not only displays the population, 3761, but also a running count of the engagements that have taken place over the last fifty-four years in the quaint town tucked in New York’s Hudson Valley. From what I’ve read, and the various social media rabbit holes I’ve fallen down at midnight for the last few weeks to combat my anxiety induced insomnia, whenever there’s a new engagement the bell rings in the clock tower so the entire town can cheer.

“What better place to write love songs than a town that has an entire economy based on it?” I ask.

I failed with my last album. I know it. The podcast bros know it. The millions of people who streamed it and supported me anyway know it. For weeks after, the public disappointment was crushing. I’ve always taken what people think of me to heart. It’s just one point on the laundry list of reasons I’ve kept my identity from the public and all of the people closest to me, excluding Avery. I thought separating me as a person from my music would allow for me to take things less personally, art issubjective and all that, but it still cuts deep, the wounds still aching every time I look at them too closely.

“You know what I think? I think you need a muse,” she purrs.

“I’m not having a torrid affair with an art student with a tragic backstory who thinks their life is an indie film.”

“Okay, then just a one-night-stand.”

“I tried. You remember how that ended!” I half yelp, half bite out the last word as I swerve to avoid hitting a rabbit that is close enough to the faded color of the asphalt that I didn’t see it until almost too late. As someone who shouldn’t have been given a driver’s license in the first place, months in the city without any practice have me on edge. I readjust my grip on the steering wheel, my knuckles going white.

“Noah was good at trivia, his efforts to carry us through the sports category will be missed,” she says forlornly.

Noah was my one and only failed attempt at a one-night-stand after I moved to New York. I was feeling the full brunt of my deadline, and Avery suggested I make use of her tried and true methodology. One night turned into breakfast and then weekly trivia with our small circle of friends that stretched for two months.

I would have let it go longer if it weren’t for the, capital C, Conversation.

“I don’t know, you just feel closed off. It’s like I don’t really know you,” he had said.

We’d been watching TV and he asked how my job was going. I gave him the vague “it’s fine, I’m just stuck on a project” response. He told me I could bounce ideas off of him, which, no, I couldn’t. It spiraled into him asking to be let in more and me saying that I’m an open book, an outright lie but one I tell convincingly due to practice and living in a state of denial.

“You know me. We have great conversations,” I’d said half-heartedly.

“Whenever I ask about certain things you just shut off. Like, it’s simple stuff too. You know everything about me. It’s so one sided.” He’d looked at me like he’d opened a gift at Christmas expecting one thing then getting something different.

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