Page 112 of Sounds Like Love

“No,” Mom agreed, “it’s not.”

Everyone always said that Mitch was Mom’s and that I was Dad’s, but families—or at least mine—never split down the middle that equally. Dad and I could just exist in the same room together and never say a word. We liked the comfortable silence, we trusted it. It was Mom I went to to fill those silences. With her, I could pour my heart out; I could tell her anything. She was my secret keeper, my confidant. She knew before I did that I had a crush on Mark Lowski in fifth grade, and then Esme Madden in eighth. She knew when I fell for Van Erickson my freshman year of high school. When I confessed where I’d been with Gigi the night we stole away to the Renegade concert, she never told anyone—not even the teachers, who asked where we’d been. She was the first person to see my acceptance to Berklee. The first person I told that I wanted to leave Vienna Shores. Mom was one of my best friends, and some of my best memories when I was little were when she pulled me up onto her toes and we’d sway to Roman Fell and the Boulevard’s “Wherever,” and we’d sing the song because we knew it from memory.

And when I was older and achy with heartbreak, she’d turn up the stereo in the house and we’d scream to Alanis Morissette and howl to Bruce Springsteen, because she knew better than anyone how well a song could heal a broken heart.Maybe not immediately, but eventually, like slowly drying cement. Records were always better, she used to tell me. “You can feel the grit in them. They make the music sound alive.”

And now whenever I heard the crackle of a record player, I thought of her, imagining the music breathing in and out, raspy and ancient and eternal.

It wasn’t fair. I wanted to cry over terrible men to her, and I wanted her to tell me I deserved better. I wanted to listen to Jimmy Buffett with her, and I wanted to talk about Roman Fell’s final world tour coming up, and I wanted her to tell me, for the thousandth time, how the moment she met Dad, she wanted him to be hers forever.

But I knew that, someday beyond this last good summer, I’d come back from LA to visit her, and my mom would be gone, replaced by a blurry reflection of herself, like a mirror slowly fogging over. What if I couldn’t take it, because she was rightthere, and also a thousand miles away in a place I couldn’t go?

And then there was this small part of my heart that whispered for me to stay. To leave LA to the shiny people like Sasha and Willa.

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about the ending of this summer, and how the minutes slipped by like sand through our fingers. “I wish I could write a song that you can never forget,” I whispered. “One that will make you remember. What’s the point of any of this if you’re not here?”

Mom stroked my hair softly, reassuringly. “You’re wrong, heart. I’ll be here. I’ll be here in every song, I promise.”

Hot tears brimmed in the corners of my eyes and fell down my cheeks. I held my breath, and tensed my torso, as I tried to hold the tears in. I was afraid that I’d never be able to put myself back together if I let go.

“You’ll be fine, heart. It’s okay,” Mom whispered to me, because I think she could hear me crying. “You should cry as much as you want. It’s not a bad thing. It never is. Grief is just a love song in reverse.”

That terrible, horrible knot in my chest tightened and twisted, making it hard to gulp for breath between my tears, and just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, the knotted sadness began to loosen. As Mom pulled her fingers through my hair, the strings began to come undone.

And so did I.

I sat there on the hard concrete in front of the storm with my head in my mom’s lap, like I used to when I was little, while I cried, and cried, and cried, until there was nothing left in me, and we simply sat in silence as her fingers wove small braids into my hair.

After a while, Mom whispered that we should probably try to sleep since the worst of the storm had passed, so I picked myself up and returned to the foyer, where Sasha slept curled against a blanket, and I sank down beside him again and pressed my face into his chest. And for the first time in so long, the emptiness inside of me no longer felt so large, so looming, as if I’d cried all of it out.

Sasha wrapped his arms around me and drew me into him.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I whispered.

“Is everything okay?”

“No,” I replied truthfully, closing my eyes, “but it will be, someday.”

Chapter41(When I’m Gone to) Carolina in My Mind

THE SOUND OFthunder woke me up the next morning.

I blinked the blurriness out of my eyes and stifled a yawn, still tangled in Sasha’s arms. It was much too early, but at least it looked like most of the storm had passed. Between the gray light, and the lessening rain, and the sound of his heartbeat against my ear, I just wanted this moment to last forever. A perfect snapshot.

Then I realized the thunder hadn’t stopped rolling.

I sat up quickly. Not thunder. This wasn’t thunder. I jumped to my feet and pulled him up with me. It was loud enough now, the thunder had turned into the striking of hooves on cement, the braying of horses. A moment later, Gigi came rushing into the foyer, dragging Mitch along with her, and then came my parents and everyone else, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. I pulled Sasha—who was confused and weary—outside with me, into the humid and damp early morning.

In all the chaos of the last few days, I’d forgotten.

It was almost like clockwork that on the first hurricane-soaked day of August, wild horses galloped through my hometown.

No one knew when they started their yearly pilgrimage, but it became something of a send-off to each sand-crusted summer in Vienna Shores, North Carolina. It was a kind of parade that we all prepared for during normal years. Townsfolk kept a lookout in shifts on the rooftop of the Rev for the first signs of the herd coming into town, and then they’d block all the roads downtown, and close all the ice cream and taffy and beachy knickknack shops that lined the roads, and quietly wait. During those years, you couldn’t get a good view of them for all the tourists in the way.

But here, now, we stood alone under the marquee of the Revelry, waiting. There was this silent anticipation—metallic excitement on my tongue. Mom swung our hands giddily, bopping up and down on her heels.

The thunder of hooves grew louder. Faster. A cacophony of them.

Then, suddenly, a rush of colors—brown and white and black and spotted, beady eyes bright, sweat glistening on their haunches, manes and tails fluttering behind them. It lasted less than a minute as the wild horses raced down Main Street, and turned themselves out down on the beach. I wanted to remember this moment. This snapshot. I wanted to brand it into my memory—Mom just there, laughing as she kissed Dad’s cheek, Gigi and Mitch making horse sounds, the rain dissipating, the marquee blinking with the name of an Elvis impersonator that never made it across the waterlogged bridge, and Sasha with his hair messy and loose and lovely.

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