Sing - Vivi Greene

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soup as a starter, not soup-and-something-else, not a hearty soup, even, like bouillabaisse or bisque. Just a mug-size bowl of minestrone that, when it arrives, turns out to be tomato juice garnished with a few confused carrots.

      This is Jed Monroe we’re talking about. The same Jed Monroe who eats an entire stack of pancakes when I make them for breakfast every time he’s in town. The same Jed Monroe who has “two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts (or similar)” on his tour rider and who polishes off an entire bag of mint Milano cookies in one sitting. The first time we were photographed together, the caption read something like “Beauty and the BFG.” Everything about Jed is oversize, most of all his appetite, so the soup is definitely alarming. Which is why I spend the rest of the meal trying to decide if he isn’t eating because he’s anxious, or because he wants to fast-forward his way through dinner.

      When we leave, I can feel the strained, nervous energy in his grip as he grabs for my hand, gamely smiling for fans between iPhone flashes outside the restaurant, and for the duration of the relentlessly quiet car ride home.

      “I think we should talk,” Jed says as we ease into a spot across the street from my building. As if on cue, the privacy window slides slowly up. The driver’s blue eyes look disappointed in the rearview mirror before vanishing behind the clouded glass.

      “Talk?” I try to keep the hurt out of my voice. I want to remind him that I’ve been talking all night. He was the one sulking into his soup. But I don’t. I take a breath, and I smile. “Sure,” I say. “Let’s talk.”

      Jed stares at his reflection in the window, his perfectly pouty lips twisting to one side. I remember the night we met a year ago, at a party at my manager’s Brooklyn loft. Terry swore he wasn’t trying to set us up, but to this day I have no idea why Jed was there. I didn’t even want to be there. Sammy had dragged me out on a pity mission less than a week after we moved to New York from LA, after Caleb and I had finally called it quits. I was hovering near the sashimi bar, swearing to anyone who would listen that I’d never date another famous person again.

      But then I saw him.

      Jed was alone on the balcony, staring out at the city lights like they were blinking a code he was trying to decipher. His large frame was hunched over the railing, dark against the twinkling bridge. Right away, something about him seemed different, like he was above the party and its meaningless chaos, the empty small talk, the industry pressures to always be searching for the Next Big Thing. Sure, he’d been on the cover of Rolling Stone just a few weeks before, but something about him appeared almost … normal.

      I knew I shouldn’t go out there. I knew I should stay inside, where it was warm and safe. Where I would be immune to the flop of his hair as it brushed across his forehead. The shy, crooked tilt of his smile. But I didn’t stay. I went outside and fell in love. Again.

      Big mistake.

      “I don’t think this is working anymore,” Jed says now. He says some other things I’ve heard before, too, about “timing,” his “priorities,” his “career.”

      I stare into his amber eyes. I know he’s in there somewhere, the one person I thought truly understood me. Understood this life, and how we’d get through it together. Jed is the first man I’ve dated. Caleb, Sebastian—they were boys. Jed’s older than they were, older than me, but it’s more than that. Being with him is so easy, because there aren’t any games. He knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. I just never thought he’d stop wanting me.

      “It’s … it’s a lot of pressure,” he tells me, his eyes suddenly hard and focused. “My fans are crazy. Your fans are really crazy.”

      A sick, hollow feeling sweeps over me. “My fans?” The one thing Jed and I always agreed on is that our fans come first. They are the reason we get to do what we do, and if that makes it harder for us to buy our own groceries, or take a leisurely walk in the park, or have a quiet dinner out, that’s the price we pay. It makes having a relationship harder, but we’ve found a balance between going out and staying in, being accessible while still living our lives. It’s not always easy, but it’s worked. At least, it’s worked for me.

      Jed rubs the sides of his forehead, a telltale sign that he’s feeling run-down. I try to convince myself that he’s just tired, that all he needs is a good night’s sleep. But I know Jed. Once he’s made up his mind about something, there’s no turning back. “I thought I could do it, but I can’t,” he says.

      There’s a lump in my throat and I want to scream at him: Why are you giving up? We can have all of it! But a part of me, the part I try to keep hidden, knows he’s right. After all, we chose this. We get to make music and sing our songs and live our lives in front of millions of people. We don’t get to be normal.

      I’m just the fool who keeps trying.

      Jed holds my gaze and for a moment I see something flicker in his eyes: regret, maybe, or disappointment. But he quickly looks away, digging in the pocket of his thoughtfully distressed jeans and slipping the keys to my apartment into my palm.

      There are three keys: a thick, magnetic one for the front door; one for the elevator; and one for the private stairs to the rooftop deck. They’re on an I ♥ NY keychain—a gift from Tess when I moved to the city—and when I think about how many times I’ve done this, handed over my heart, the keys to my home, to my world, I feel dizzy. Over and over again—it’s not enough. I’m not enough. The keys come back, warm from somebody else’s pocket, and I’ll stash them in the end table drawer, with the stray bobby pins and spare batteries and other orphaned objects, until I’m able to forget just how much this hurts. Until the next party when I can convince myself that it’s worth it to keep trying. To step out onto yet another balcony, where the next guy is waiting, and start all over again.

      I slip out of Jed’s car in heartbroken silence, slam the door behind me, and watch his red brake lights bleed into the sea of cabs and limos on Hudson Street. I lean against my building, eyes still locked on the road. For a moment, I feel like I’m dreaming, like the real me is still in the car beside him. We’re on our way back to his apartment. We’re playing Ping-Pong and talking through his set list for tour. We’re pulling up our schedules and figuring out when we’ll be in the same city next, laughing about how crazy our lives are, how insanely difficult it can be to arrange the same nights off. We’re nestled together in his king-size bed, arguing over which bad reality show to watch while we—finally—fall asleep.

      I climb the steps to my front door, waiting for the tears to spill over. But they don’t. It’s like something inside me has shifted, and all I feel is numb. Usually I’d be rushing upstairs, ready to mess around on my guitar and scribble into my journal. The louder songs would pour out first, in fits and angry starts, and then the melancholy ballads, and finally, the full-circle, girl-power anthems. I’d have an album’s worth of material jotted on napkins and notepads in less than a week, the quick-and-dirty chronicle of my latest doomed affair, from meet cute to up-in-flames to I’m-better-off-without-you.

      Repeat.

      I can already hear Sammy and Tess insisting that it’s not me. It’s him. But this time, I’m not so sure. Every relationship I’ve ever been in—from the big, sweeping romances that have spanned years and states to the little flirtations that were shorter but no less intense—has had two things in common:

      1 The fact that they’ve ended, and

      2 Me.

      There are only so many songs a girl can write about being better off alone before she starts to believe she has no other choice.

      I turn the spare keys in the lock and wedge the heavy front door open. It clicks shut behind me and I cross the lobby to the trash chute, chucking the keys inside. They clank along the sides and I wait for the satisfying sound of a final thud. But all I hear is quiet—quiet, and the bored, steady hum of the city that doesn’t care how many times you fall apart.

      

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