Duo: Home

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

You stand on the balcony of your third-floor apartment, one hand holding a cigarette and the other bracing you against the railing. It’s twilight, so the sky above you is dense and heady, the clouds coloured a palate of purples and burnt oranges by the almost-set sun.

You came out here to be alone with your thoughts, away from the distractions your computer and your cell phone provide. You can hear people on the street below you and the noise of traffic is hard to blot out even at this hour, but the sounds are almost comforting; you’re alone, but you’re only just removed from everyone else’s reality. If you wanted to, you could shriek at the top of your lungs and they would all look up and see you, and for a moment you would exist in their world—until they all looked away again, of course. You refrain from distracting them from their business. The nicotine is all the company you need tonight.

It seemed like a good idea to go and see him at the time. You share the same friends, after all, and the coffee shop where he works when he’s not trying to take the music world by storm is something of an unofficial meeting place for the crowd you hang with. You went there with every intention of telling him you were there to meet up with the gang if he questioned you only to find that he wasn’t there. It wasn’t his shift; four months ago, you would have known that.
The nicotine’s kicking in now and your hands are starting to tremble from the hit. You think it’s the nicotine doing it, anyway. You hope it is.

Your friends tell you that you’re only making things harder for yourself and no matter how much your protest that you know what you’re doing, you agree with them secretly. It doesn’t make it easier to think about him all the time, and it most certainly doesn’t make it easier when you catch yourself fleetingly wondering what he’s doing and, rather than push the thought from your head, embrace it. You don’t know what he’s doing, can’t imagine what he does to fill his free time now that you’re apart, but even if you did know it wouldn’t matter; all that matters is that he doesn’t devote two-thirds of his day to wondering what you’re doing and probably hasn’t for a very long time.

For him, the ending was a long time coming. A week after getting back to LA he told you things hadn’t felt right for some time and when you nodded your head and coolly replied that you had thought the same thing, it had been a lie. For months you had worried that every night you spent together would be the last, yeah, but there had always been hope there—had always been the relief that came with discovering that each night wasn’t the last, that he still had it in him to say ‘I love you’ in the morning and sound like he meant it.

You know he’s single but you’ve heard he’s got his eye on somebody, and that kind of makes it worse than if he had left you for someone else in the first place. It’s the fact that he can get over things so quickly that hurts the most; you know that for every day you spend wondering where it all went wrong, he spends one carrying on with his life. He’s happier now that you’re separated and you’re not, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

You toyed with the idea of leaving town after it happened. It seemed like your only option, really; if you stuck around you’d have to live the exact same life you lived before, just without him there to make the days seem a little less tedious. The prospect of running into him on the street by chance had almost made your mind up for you but the realisation that you had nowhere else to go kept you right where you were. You never left and you probably never will; the thought that you’ll most likely die in this godforsaken city is too depressing to handle.

It was a mistake to go to the coffee shop and as you stand there soaking in the glare of the dying sun, you tell yourself you won’t make that same mistake twice—you tell yourself this, but you know you’ll be back there next time you catch yourself thinking about him on some lonely afternoon.

Even as you watch the sun finally slip away beneath the horizon, you wonder if he’s out there watching it, too.

It’s hard to let go of something when you don’t know how to function without it.

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Rowan, November 13th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: Sixth Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night - Sixth Night – Home

Same city, same venue, last night of the tour. You’re headlining this time—if it can be called ‘headlining’ when the club is the size of your mom’s living room and the crowd are probably only here for the drinks promos—and you’re a little nervous. At first you think it’s because it’s the closing night of the tour and there’s a sense of things riding on tonight, but when he steps out of the shower in your motel room two hours before the show and you catch his eye and feel your stomach flop, you realise your nerves have nothing to do with the performance. You’re worried something will go wrong tonight like it has almost every night on this trip, and even as he waltzes over in a towel and kisses you on the forehead, you can’t shake that feeling of impending doom.

It could be worse, you figure. You could be going into your last show in a bad mood with each other and God knows you don’t need a crappy finale adding yet another spanner into the strained works of your relationship. You try to remain hopeful about it all, try to remind yourself over and over that things have worked out okay. You’re still clinging stubbornly onto that scrap of positivity when you later exit the motel with him, clinging as though your life counts on it.

It’ll be fine, you tell yourself. It’s better now. He apologised and you did too, when you lay together in the early hours of the morning, he with his head lolling lazily on your chest. You can’t help but flash him a watery smile just before walking into the venue and for an instant you think you can see doubt on his face, like he knows something’s up. You hope he’ll pull you into his arms and allay the worries running rampant in your mind, but he never does; instead he ruffles a hand playfully through your hair and slips past you through the entrance.

Inevitability—that’s the word that springs to mind. The feeling of powerlessness to stop the hurtling train coming right for you; the tight sensation in your gut as you see clearly what lies ahead of you and realise there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s easy enough to shake such thoughts from your head and tell yourself you’re being melodramatic, but before long those same thoughts creep right back in again.

It plagues you while you perform; it dogs your every heartbeat and drags you down like a lead weight in your stomach. You know it’s ridiculous that you should be worrying when things are going so well between you but you suppose that’s the way it’s always been—enough periods of contentment to fill the palm of your hand and enough spells of arguing and worrying and giving each other the cold shoulder to leave you wondering if any of it is really worth it. You tell yourself that the good makes up for the bad, no matter how infrequent the good might actually be. You always tell yourself this, and yet the doubt is always there.

When the show passes without event and you ready yourself to leave the stage, he takes to the microphone. He looks a little bashful; he’s never usually like this. He taps the mic once, twice, clears his throat to get everyone’s attention.

‘Thanks for being such a great audience tonight. I don’t know if you guys are aware of this but we’re on tour right now and this is our last show. We couldn’t have asked for a better crowd to share it with.’

There’s a cheer around the room. Partly this is the usual sort of concert banter these people are used to by now, partly it’s sincere. Maybe it’s just down to how much emotion you both put into the performance, but it felt like there was a connection with the crowd tonight and they seem to have felt it too.

‘Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for being such a great crowd.’

When he chimes in again his voice is a little gruff. You think maybe he’s choking up and you fight the urge to tease him, contenting yourself with a subtle little smile where you stand on your part of the stage.

‘Since this is the last night of our tour, I thought I’d treat you guys to one last song. Only I’m going to ask my partner to sit this one out.’

It’s unexpected, and you have the horrible realisation that he’s probably going to sing to you. The prospect is somehow worse than performing in front of a roomful of strangers; at least then they’re focused on the music and not the god awful look of embarrassment on your face.

He only makes matters more embarrassing when he picks up his guitar and strums out the opening chords. It’s a song you both know well; your song. It’s the one he played for you on your first Valentine’s Day together, when you’d only been dating for a couple of weeks. He really did a number on you, sweeping you off your feet like that back then. You feel a little weird knowing that everybody else gets to hear the song he wrote just for you but you try not to think about it; it’s not like you’ll ever see these people again.

You’re happy now. He seems happy, too. Maybe things really will be okay.

Once the car’s loaded up with your gear and safely parked in the lot at the motel, he takes you out for a walk in the crisp night air. It’s a pretty densely-populated city so the light pollution blots out all but a few of the stars overhead, but it’s romantic nonetheless. He turns to you every once in a while to kiss you on the cheek or just catch your eye and every time he does it, you can’t help but grin like an idiot. It’s easier now to believe that you each have it in you to make this work, to find your own happy ending. It’s easier to hush the voice of doubt in the back of your mind.

He says he loves you at some point along the walk and you say it back without pausing to think. You do love him; no matter how much you might fight with one another, you’ll always have that.

You remember all the times you stopped to wonder if maybe that wasn’t enough to salvage things, but before such thoughts can blacken your mood you’ve pushed them right back out of your head.

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Rowan, October 19th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: Fifth Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

Just two more shows and you’re done, that’s what you keep telling yourself. Two more shows and you can go home, although you’re filled with dread over the prospect of what things will be like when you get back to LA. You don’t even know if it’ll still be home when you get back, don’t know if you’ll have survived the drive over in his company without bashing his skull in. You feel irrationally angry with him, and as you sit alone in your hotel room on your double bed that he should be sitting on with you, you realise you’re more upset than you like to let on. Damnit if you’re going to spend the last few hours leading up to the show crying, but you can’t be sure you won’t burst into tears in front of him if you don’t let it out now. It makes you feel sick. It makes you feel like you care about this more than he does.

He’s late to the venue. Nobody’s heard a word from him. You can check your phone as many times as you like; a message isn’t going to magically appear from him letting you know where he is. You’re all full of apologies as you sidle up to the organisers of the show twenty minutes before you’re due to go on, ready to lay yourself on your sword. They can barely hear you over the opening band, but before you can get your point across you spot him on the other side of the club. He’s looking around like he’s lost—you think maybe he’s looking for you. You decide to put him out of his misery and make your way over, brushing between groups of friends and couples as you go.

‘You’re late,’ you tell him.

You figure he knows he’s late, figure he doesn’t give much of a shit or he wouldn’t have been late in the first place. You’re readying yourself for an argument when he reaches out and touches your arm.

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

The apology rings in your ears for the rest of the night. It’s not the sort of thing he makes a habit of saying, so even just a throwaway ‘I’m sorry’—no explanation, no fanfare—is progress. You’ve been with him long enough to know it took a lot for him to say it, and whenever you catch his eye during the show, you can’t help wondering with an excited little flutter of your heart if he was apologising for more than just being late.

You finish a little earlier than you normally would since another band is set to go on after your performance. They’re some hipster duo; the lead singer bears a harmonica and the waifish blond at his side—waifish and bearded—jams on a Moog not dissimilar to yours. About halfway through the first song you feel a hand take yours and look to your left. His face is turned toward the stage but his fingers are laced through yours and, without looking at you, he smirks and says, ‘They’re like us, if we grew up in Silver Lake.’

You don’t know what’s different between you two as you leave for the night. Nothing has changed, not really, and yet you can’t seem to stop smiling as you walk back to the motel side-by-side in silence. Maybe it’s the fact that he apologised. Maybe you were the problem all along, and it took one little concession on his part to make your stubbornness melt away. Maybe it’s just this city.

For the first time in what feels like forever, you write together. He shows you the song he’s been working on for the past few weeks, the one that he assures you will never see the light of day, anyway. You can see why; it’s a little disjointed and some of the lines are condensed purely to fit into the meter. It’s better than nothing when you know he’s been struggling through writer’s block, though, and when you scan down the lyrics you spot a line about the smell of the city when it rains. You’re brought back to four nights earlier when you said those words, when everything was all right. You don’t know if you want to cry or scream but it doesn’t matter; a big, dumb, ever-hopeful part of you points out gleefully that he does care.

You work on the rhythm of his lyrics while he strums shamelessly on his guitar. It’s a motel, some sleazy place that cost less than a drive-thru attendant makes in a day, but it’s close to the venue and was the best you could do on short notice and you can make all the noise you want in a place like this, anyway. You decide to take full advantage of that fact and the two of you take turns belting out the lyrics while he provides guitar and you drum out percussion on the nightstand.

You sleep better than you have in what feels like a lifetime, even though it’s only been a few days. As fights go, this was probably one of the shorter ones—and there were no threats of leaving each other, either. Maybe it’s getting better. Maybe you’re just growing up.


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Rowan, July 14th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

The Princess

· This story is dedicated to a friend. She knows who she is ·

She sits curled up on the windowsill of the study every evening, looking out wistfully from time to time through the panes of glass. She waits. In her hands is a book, the same book every time. She reads it in her head in her father’s voice, hoping that she’ll hear those same words aloud in that same voice, and feel the familiar scratch of stubble on her she as she gives her favourite man her trademark butterfly kiss.

She is heir to a great kingdom, her father the sovereign. His duties bring him to far-flung corners of the earth, to grand empires and barren lands for trade and war alike. She begs him to let her come along but always he tells her the same: ‘You’re too young, Princess. You’ll get to see the world when you’re older.’ He’s been telling her this since she was old enough to speak and he’ll probably tell her this until the day she loses interest in following around at her father’s heels. She doesn’t care; she asks him constantly just the same and hopes that maybe one day he’ll relent.

It’s getting dark out now, and there’s a chill in the air that forces the princess to clamber onto her feet on the sill and shut the window above her head. If she were to slip and fall, her father wouldn’t be there to catch her and he would scold her for doing just that even when he was there, but when you’re six years old you tell yourself that your parents will always be there for you, that they can magic away every scratch and bruise with a hug and a kiss.

Her evening is spent whiling away the time imagining what her father’s getting up to without her. She knows he’ll be home soon to tell her the tales of his travels, but while her stories never live up to his accounts, it’s comforting to think of him, to pretend she’s at his side on one of his perilous journeys.

When it’s after her bedtime, her mother comes looking for her. There’s protesting and whining, but her mother wins out in the end as she always does and leads the princess to bed. As soon as the lights are out, the princess slips silently from under the covers and crawls over to the window, sitting cross-legged as she looks out and waits, nods off and wakens and waits some more.

When the king returns later that night, his daughter will be asleep—just a normal little girl with a normal father in a normal house in the normal suburbs. He’ll pop his head into her bedroom and see her curled up on top of the covers, he’ll move over to lift her into his arms before tucking her in properly. She won’t remember it in the morning, but he’ll kiss her on the forehead and tell her he loves and say he’s sorry for breaking his promise to see her. She’ll blink her eyes open sleepily and say she loves him too, that she doesn’t care that he’s late because she got to see him in the end. She’ll forget all of this come sunrise, but she’ll be left with a feeling of contentment, and the knowledge that her father never lets her down.

They do this more and more these days as work keeps her father late, but still she believes in him. He might not be a real king, but she is his princess and she knows it. She’d forgive him anything for that very reason. She’d wait a lifetime for him if she had to.


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Rowan, July 12th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing

Duo: Fourth Night

First Night – Second Night – Third Night – Fourth Night – Fifth Night – Sixth Night – Home

When he doesn’t mention what happened the night before, you figure he’s going to leave it alone. As the morning passes without event, you’re left wondering if maybe things have returned to normal, or if you’re both just doing a great job of ignoring the elephant in the room. Normally you’d hope it was the former, but as you’re driving to the next town with all of your gear loaded into the back of your car—he’s too hungover to drive, and you don’t much feel like risking your life today—you notice after a while that he keeps shooting you sidelong glances. It makes you nervous, like you know he’s going to say something you don’t want to hear. Just when you start to feel like you can’t take the tension any more, he looks away. He has his eyes trained lazily on the road ahead when you hazard a glance in his direction and just like that, the moment’s gone. You wonder fleetingly what exactly it was he had planned to say to you before deciding it’s better if you don’t know.

You start to regret the decision to leave the travelling until today when you hit traffic coming into the city. With you being the practical one, you would normally have convinced him to travel yesterday when you were both free of obligations. It’s at that moment that you’re reminded all too clearly of how mad you were at him the day before, and you’re tempted to irritably snap that he should have spent the day packing instead of getting wasted. While you form the words, perfecting them so that they have just the right bite, it occurs to you that you were so busy avoiding him you didn’t think to suggest you both get a move on. You promptly shut your mouth; that’s another pointless fight you just don’t have the energy for.

‘Take a left here.’

His voice comes out of nowhere, and you jerk upright in your seat as if he’s just hit you with an accusation of his own. When you realise he’s just giving you directions, you worry at your bottom lip with your teeth and take his instruction, turning off when the road’s clear. You’re usually the route-planner, but it seems this time that delegating the duties to him has done you some good; the street he found is part of a rat-run, and you bypass most of the traffic in time to track down the bar and hurriedly lug all your stuff inside for soundcheck.

Tonight, thankfully, goes more smoothly than the last show you played. You don’t have your usual chemistry, and at times it feels like you’re both as eager to get to the end of it as each other, but considering that there are no hiccups and nobody walks out, you consider it a success. By the end of it, it feels a little as if you’re pussy-footing around each other on stage, neither quite willing to take the lead in terms of tempo even when the song dictates it. It’s not disastrous, but it seems to be no mystery to either of you that there’s something missing. You begin to wonder if this tour was such a good idea; it never feels like this when you play the venues back home.

Once it’s over and the band you’re opening for files onto the stage, you both discreetly make your exit without so much as stopping for a drink. You’ve got another town to be in tomorrow, and once you’ve wrapped up all the last-minute details with the event organisers you’re on your way. You manage to coerce him into hitting the drive-thru of the McDonald’s on the way out of town, your reasoning being that you haven’t eaten since morning and, in charge of the driving as he is, he has a tendency to get cranky when he’s hungry, but after that you stop for nothing and no one.

When you’re on the road again, it becomes apparent once more that there are words left unsaid between the two of you, just waiting to burst out. You’re almost grateful you’re both so busy eating—he stealing a bite of his hamburger every time the traffic lulls and you taking half-hearted bites out of your own—as it doesn’t leave much room for words.

In the end, he doesn’t turn to you and say whatever he had intended to that morning and you don’t give him a piece of your mind. You drift off at some point in the afternoon, and when you wake up he’s just turning into the parking lot at the motel. He tells you, gruffly, that it’s after three so you can use the room to get some proper sleep before the show. He doesn’t explain what he plans on doing and you simply assume he’ll do the same; when you disappear into the bathroom to freshen up and emerge a while later, however, the room is empty and there’s a scrap of paper on the dresser bearing the words ‘Meet you at the venue’. You’re too anxious to sleep.


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Rowan, February 23rd 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Prose, Writing
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