Page 45 of Strings Attached
The kitchen counter has disappeared beneath a sea of mixing bowls, Alex and I falling into our old habits from the cramped apartment we once shared. It’s probably good Ethan’s at work—his methodical nature would surely twitch at the disorder we’ve created.
Ella Fitzgerald’s voice drifts from the record player, smooth as silk and infinitely more graceful than the chaos in my head. The steady patter of rain against the windowpanes makes the cottage feel like a warm sanctuary, all cinnamon-scented and glowing from within. The kettle lets out a soft whistle from the stove, promising another cup of the spiced chai Alex has brewed all morning, making the entire house smell like comfort.
“A little to the left,” Alex suggests, tilting her head to look at my cracker arrangement. She’s perched on a barstool, carefully cutting a block of cheddar into perfect triangles. Her wedding planning binder sits closed on the counter, its pages bristling with sticky notes in a rainbow of colors. “Last book club I made a cracker tower to go with the book.” She laughs and rolls her eyes. “It was this ridiculous romance Tom and Rhianna loved about a werewolf princess asleep in a tower.”
I stifle a laugh. “How did you get roped into reading that one?”
She snorts as she arranges a pile of grapes. “You’d be amazed what you can get roped into in Magnolia Cove.”
I wouldn’t, though. After my season with Dean, nothing about this magical town could surprise me anymore. Not the way sunrise catches in the air like possibility, how music resonates differently here, not even how loving someone could feel simultaneously like coming home and leaving it.
Alex hands me another mug of tea. I take a drink but the smell hits. Autumn leaves softened by cinnamon. With trembling hands, I place the mug down and try not to remember who smells like that. I focus on arranging another row of crackers, trying to lose myself in the precise geometry of the task like I’ve spent the last few days losing myself in recording the album with Jules.
But Jules’ music feels hollow now, each note perfectly placed but lacking something essential. I’ve spent endless hours in Rachel’s studio, trying to breathe life into arrangements that once would have thrilled me with their technical brilliance. Now they feel like architectural sketches of emotion rather than the real thing—beautiful outlines of feeling without the messy, vital pulse of actual life beneath them.
Jules composes like a mathematician mapping a complicated formula. Before Dean, I would have called it masterful. Now I understand the difference between precision and truth, between playing the right notes and playing the ones that matter.
I move on to a stack of chocolate chip cookies waiting to be artfully scattered across the board. Their sweet scent mingles with the tea’s spicy blend.
The quiet between us feels comforting, wrapped in Ella Fitzgerald’s crooning and morning light. Alex hums along, slightly off-key and utterly unselfconscious. I think about Ethanand Alex’s morning routine—how they’re both disgustingly cheerful before six AM, how they dance around each other in the kitchen.
Really, I’m trying to think about anything but Dean. Anything but his face at the lighthouse. Or how his voice caught when he tried to argue. How doing the right thing feels an awful lot like taking a hammer to my heart.
“You’ve been working really hard this week,” Alex says, her voice gentle in a way that means she sees right through me.
“Uh, yeah, I know. We’re trying to record this album before Jules leaves.”
She hums a reply as she continues slicing the cheese. “Have you had a chance to see Dean?”
The cookie slips from my fingers, landing with a soft thud that echoes the way my heart keeps dropping whenever I hear his name. The tears come before I can stop them—hot and insistent and mortifying. They’ve been doing this all week, ambushing me in moments when I least expect it: during rehearsals when the magic doesn’t sing beneath the notes, in the Hungry Gull cafe when I catch a whiff of autumn spice, or in the dead of night when I can’t decide if I made the right choice.
Alex drops her knife with a clatter and wraps her arms around me, pulling me tight against her shoulder. She smells like home. The tears come faster now, hot and insistent against her soft sweater.
“I ended things with Dean,” I whisper, the words falling like broken notes into the quiet kitchen. “I mean, I have a career that takes me across oceans. He’s the Head Warlock of a magical island which is a job with a lot of pressure. It was never going to…” My voice catches, remembering the way twinkle lights caught in his eyes at the lighthouse, how even his silence felt like a song I wanted to learn by heart. “It just wasn’t going to work.”
“Oh, Missy.” Alex’s arms tighten, and for a moment I’m transported back to every heartbreak she’s held me through—failed auditions, lost scholarships, the days we buried our parents. But this feels different. Those were wounds inflicted by fate or circumstances. This time, I’m the one wielding the knife.
“I’m sorry.” I manage as I pull back to wipe my eyes. “I know I said I’d come here to help you with wedding preparations, to be useful, and instead I’ve just been…” I wave vaguely at the mess of emotions I’ve become, at the half-finished charcuterie board.
“Missy.” Her voice is soft but fierce. “I never wanted you to come help. My only hesitation about you staying for so long was trying to figure out how to hide magic from you. Now that I don’t have to do that, I’d keep you forever if I could.” She brushes a strand of hair behind my ear then wipes a tear off my cheek.
My hands shake as I reach for another cookie. I’m going to make her late to her book club at the rate I’m going. “But Jules has monopolized Rachel’s studio, and I’ve barely seen you, and I got caught up in a fling instead of helping you, and?—”
“And you’re allowed to have a life that isn’t about making mine easier.” Alex grabs my hands to still their ceaseless movement. “When are you going to understand that you don’t owe me anything?”
“But you sacrificed everything for?—”
“I made choices.” Her fingers curl around mine, her engagement ring bumping against my knuckles. “Choices I’d make again. But they were my choices, Missy. Not chains I forged to bind you.”
Something in my chest cracks. Alex must see it in my face because she does what any loving sister would do. She grabs the bottle of chocolate sprinkles, pops the lid off, and throws them at me. For a moment, I’m frozen.
The sprinkles catch in my hair, scatter across the counter, and fall between all our carefully stacked arrangements on theboard. A laugh bubbles up, foreign and fragile. I grab another bottle—rainbow colored—and retaliate. Soon we’re ducking and weaving around the kitchen, pelting each other with candy like we’re kids again, like we’re not responsible adults with careers and obligations and broken hearts.
When we finally collapse against the counter, breathless and covered in dried colored frosting, Alex touches my cheek. “When was the last time you played just because you wanted to?”
The question hits on the soft part of my heart I’ve been trying to hide. “I…”
“Not for an audience. Not for Jules. Not your students. Just for you?”
