Page 95 of Riesling with My Roommate

“How is Zoe taking your break up?”

“At first, pretty terribly, but even she can admit that I wouldn’t be happy in that lifestyle. I think she’s more depressed that she won’t be cool by association now. All my life, I avoided dating again, in part because I didn’t want either of us to get too attached. As her mom, I just didn’t want to bring a guy around that wouldn’t be good with her. Go figure that I chose a man who wouldn’t be good for me.”

At least one place I didn’t screw up was with my friends. Tessa, Jade, and Emma have been such an amazing influence on Zoe. Yes, she’s closest to Jade, the “cool aunt,” but each one of these women has touched her life in a big, impactful way.

“I know I’ve said this before,” Tessa says, “but I can’t even imagine what it’s like to date for you and Emma. At our age, it feels like the dating pool is so small. You two have an extra challenge and responsibility with your kids. You are such a good mom.”

I smile weakly. I don’t feel like it. “Despite everything—the drugs, the groupies, the fame, the likelihood that even though Chris has quit smoking cigarettes, his choices will hang over him for the rest of his life—I still want to be with him. I still—” I cut myself off before I say the truth: that I fell in love with him.

Me, the health nut yogi, fell in love with the rockstar. I fell in love with him because he was so humble, he was so driven, and yet he was open to trying new things. Despite a lifetime of bad habits surrounding him, he wanted to explore the things that I loved.

“That sounds like it has more to do with Kit than Zoe.”

The pain in my chest is sharp, but it’s a fraction of what I went through when Kit died. Even though Chris has quit smoking—whether he continues without me around is a whole other thing—he’s going to have a lifetime of looking over his shoulder, a lifetime of screenings. If he gets cancer, he’ll have to go through treatments and chemo and surgeries, and just thinking about it makes me want to scream.

I put my head in my hands. “I can’t do it again.”

“Sara,” Tessa says gently. “You know that you could find some nice, vegan, yoga-loving guy—the male version of you, so to speak—and he could get hit by a bus and die?”

“I know.”

“And you know that even if something happens, you’ll never regret loving someone?”

Tears are welling up now because, as terrifying as it is, Tessa’s right. I lost Kit, but don’t regret a moment of loving him, even putting aside our daughter.

Even with all its flaws, like our youth and inexperience, I don’t regret it. And now I have something that’s so deep it makes my heart ache, so passionate that even now, thousands of miles away and emotionally wrung out, my toes still curl thinking about it.

And I gave that up?

“And just to be clear,” Tessa continues. “You deserve to fall in love again. And if it’s not with Chris because of the drugs and lifestyle, I get that. You deserve a healthy, happy relationship.”

I lift my head and sniffle, giving Tessa a small smile. “Thank you.”

“What are you going to do?” Tessa asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. My future may be uncertain, but Chris’s future is Verduistering.

36

Chris

I thoughtSara was my muse, but heartbreak changed that idea real fucking quick. I was writing more than ever now.

Was it that she was gone? Was it that the meditation sessions, which I was still doing, had finally kicked in? Or was it that despite everything I’d been through with her, it didn’t change the fact that we had a sophomore album to write, and it was going to be a good one?

The day Sara left, I packed up a few basics and flew to London. Marcus had magically arranged for people to box up and transport my stuff over too.

Signs of her were everywhere in that house—she’d boxed up a bunch of meals for me in the fridge, the empty front room echoed now that her yoga studio wasn’t in it, and I’d found one of her sports bras mixed in with my laundry.

I cried over laundry.

That’s the kind of person I am now.

But over that week, I’d written a hell of a lot. I stuffed all those song ideas—some a few lines, some full songs—into one spiral notebook that I tuck under my arm as I exit the hired car at the recording studio.

It’s a nondescript entrance in an alley, nothing to signal that it’s a place where magic happens. There’s a pub across the street, and it smells like curry and the incoming wet winter.

“Thank you,” I tell the driver as I close the door, and he backs the car out.

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