Her tender gesture caught me off guard. We were sitting on my porch, drunk under the glowing lights that came from the pool. People danced, and laughed, all around us. And yet, her hands were the only thing I cared about. 

Tracing my face, Anna leaned in. She cut my smile in half, the same way you cut a branch to make sure the tree grows healthier.

I can’t say I didn’t know it was coming. I had felt it in the way she held my hand, or offered to spend most of her time with me. With all eyes on me, that much I could tell. But if I wanted someone to look at me, I wanted her to do so. And she wanted me.

I wouldn’t have waited that long if she hadn’t. She had taken a good and long six months to do it. But my Anna kissed me first. A soft brush, delicate hands cupping my blushed cheeks, her lips against my lips, my shoulders falling back, her arms thrown out in the air.

Never had I even been that sure about something else. Her. Me. That porch. The party. As terrified as I had been, I realized we were completely invisible. Right there, kissing like only teenagers are allowed to.

Just my little Anna and me.

Back then, everything felt exciting. We were hiding in plain sight, holding hands and sleeping at each other’s places. She was shooting some film, struggling to keep up with Hollywood. I was touring radios and stadiums, getting my songs heard. Even when we had the craziest schedules, we’d find a way through. 

The first time I used my jet, I went back to Los Angeles to meet her for a long escapade.

I remember sleeping on her chest, barely twenty one years old. She brushed my hair softly, with her fingers, and looked at me, with tears in her eyes.

“You know?” she said. “Whenever I hear your voice on the radio, everything else fades away.”

I had heard those same words multiple times before, coming from very different people, but never in my life had I felt them that deeply. I moved, leaned next to her and looked at her with devotion sprouting from every fiber of my body.

“When I’m singing,” I vowed, my finger tracing her chest up and down, “you’re the only thing I’m thinking of. All the time.”

Anna shied away.

“You’re such a dumbass.”

“I mean it!” I felt my face change from the serious note on my voice to a different one, almost ashamed to be so naive.

Back then, I thought we could get away with anything. No one could’ve convinced me otherwise. We were going to get everything: Anna would find the perfect role, and I would be singing in the biggest arenas, and we’d run back home where no one knew who we were. When things got difficult to handle, we used to joke, we’d let Dickinson remind us that he was the only ruler of the house.

“You get so mushy when you do that…” she laughed, as she tried to tickle me. “Professing your love like we lived in a Jane Austen novel. Who do you think you are, huh?”

“First things first, Emma is probably one of the best novels ever written so I’d be glad to live in her timeline,” I laughed. “And secondly, definitely Darcy.”

“Darcy?” She scoffed. “You’re no Darcy. You’re Fanny Price.”

“What? No way!”

Jokes and laughter, wine and tears later, I found myself being twenty three and at the top of my game. Meanwhile, Anna was still in the same place. She was frustrated, angry, and very much tired of trying. I offered help every time, but she didn’t want it. I moved to New York, and she followed me.

It took us a month before everything came crumbling down.

We fell back in December, and then fell back in love in April, with the loveliest spring London had ever seen. After moving to Great Britain, she had found a small niche of theatre companies that liked her. Or she thought so. I attended every play I could, and hid at her new home for weeks.

But I guess love wasn’t enough for any of us, because I ended up going back to New York even when we kept dreaming out loud about our new countries, our new rules.

I wrote so many songs back then, thinking I’d sing her to sleep every night.

I caught her lying to me last march. We weren’t officially dating, as we had decided to take a break after a sad and terrible international call. Because we had done so before, I thought we’d grow to be happy together again. But we didn’t, and I was supposedly dating Joe Edenson, rising movie star, so I didn’t get a chance to be sad.

As the world laureated my songs and my music, my love was being stolen from me drop by drop. Until we both ran dry, and she found him.

I don’t want to talk about him.

It’s not his fault, and he’s good to her. They love each other in a way that’s far different from the way we love. Or loved. Their story is not one of passions or dreams or love, but one of comfort and healing.

Anna’s screaming words as she drove us off the road still echo in the back of my head.

“What else do you want from me?” she cried. We had been drinking, laughing on memories that weren’t going to last enough for us not to end up fighting again. “I’ve given you everything I had, Billie!”

But as we crashed the car, as she bled in front of me, I couldn’t stop asking myself: how did it come to this? And now, as I’m staring at the road ahead, with Matt standing on it, I know compassion will drive me insane. 

Amber is quiet, waiting for us to get some information so we know what is going on. Yet all I want to do is climb down this car and ask him what’s wrong once I reach him. I want to hold his face in my hands, brush his hair off and try to understand his pain the way I can’t seem to collect mine.

I don’t do it.

At least not until I’m walking out of the car and I’m thinking about everything that I’ve sacrificed already. My bruises are deep purple, hidden under the cardigan, but they’ll fade again. They always do. I’ll sing them all off, ink my papers with them. I’ll write about her, about me, about him, about Amber. 

I’ll tear my fingers off before anyone takes that from me.

And if I need to convince the world that this boy is the one that is breaking my heart for that, I will.

I’m not sorry that I’m holding his face, trying to slip some truth into our lies as I kiss him. He takes me in, always so gentle. I knew about Taylor when I chose him, and that is why I chose him precisely. I know he understands exactly how to kiss me –how to painfully try to take away my pain, even if he can’t carry more of his own. I bet he can feel it, the sour lingering taste right before he takes the sweet and mystifying one of a well crafted story.

Our story.

Because I know how to make it look as if he is the one holding me, not the other way around. And he knows how to dance to my calm heartbeat as Amber shoots at us from afar, framing us as the liars that we are.

“You’re a good kisser, loverboy,” I whisper, with a small mouth. 

My fingers are running deep into his curls. I can feel his hands shyly holding me closer. No one will know, but in this moment, we both do. We know we could make it work, and that I’m choosing him as my favourite disguise.

No one else could begin to understand the length we’d take this secret just to be able to scream at the top of our lungs.

“You too.”