Good-Bye

Riley

I manage to get myself across the country without really internalizing the situation.

Then, after switching planes in New York, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, I sit in first class, G&T in hand, and I quietly lose my shit.

Priscilla is still...well, she still is.

How is that possible? It calls into question everything I've ever believed.

Or not believed, I suppose.

Then again, somewhere deep inside me, I must admit, that's not really true. I always thought of her as...somewhere. Watching over me, I guess. It's why I never let go. I made that vow upon her grave, and the very thing that compels me to keep it is the thought that somehow I'm honoring her. My jealousy, my anger, my drugs—my inability to forgive her mistake—are what separated Priscilla from her life. Because of that, I vowed to separate myself from the life I had with her.

Rowan is not the only one who finds her sharpest focus, her true reality, on the stage. But I gave that up, changed the direction of my life, because I promised Priscilla I would become a good person. A better man. I would not let her death be meaningless. I cost Priscilla her life, but in her death, she saved me.

And I have spent my life taking care of people just like Priscilla. Creative, impulsive, vulnerable people. I've shielded my friends and my loved ones from the kinds of situations that I put Priscilla in. Ashlynn, Trace, Arabella, Bodie, even Row.

Good god, Row. And Priscilla. Together? With Dev?

My skin crawls with anxiety at the thought of what might be happening in London.

I need to get to them.

To her.

Bloody hell. Which her do I even mean?

Because I don't have an answer, I gesture to the flight attendant for another drink.

#

Priscilla is buried in a quite nice cemetery in West London. I can still remember watching her well-dressed, quietly weeping parents the day of her funeral. I was banned, of course. I watched from behind a monument, cursing them and their tough love. If they hadn't cut Priscilla off entirely when she joined our band, she would have been living at home, not with me and Avery. What happened would never have happened. I was so angry with them that day.

It didn't take long for the anger to turn inward.

I stand in front of the open iron gates. Once I cross into the cemetery, my feet will take me effortlessly to her grave. Although I've lived in American for over a decade now, I once visited during every trip to London. The last time was some years ago, however. After Row and I married, I let the habit fade.

"Oh, darling," I murmur, but then I take a long fortifying breath against the terror I'm feeling, and I walk briskly onto hallowed ground.

Dev is sprawled on Priscilla's grave, leaning against her tombstone, littering her plot with crumpled cans. He's talking to himself. Or to Priscilla, I suppose.

"It really is amazing, isn't it? When I see a picture of them as girls, they look exactly alike—sometimes in the still shots I can't tell which is which—and in my mind, I know they still share the exact same features, and even the same voice, yet I only have eyes for Bridge, yeah?  And I know he feels the same. I mean, the opposite way. Believe me, I've watched his sneaky ass just to make sure...he's mad for Row. Even after she cheated, and he bloody well hated her, he was still mad for her...oh. Wow. No, I didn't know. He never speaks ill of you, love. He guards your memory like a treasure..."

I kick the crumpled cans off Priscilla's grave in favor of kicking Dev.

"What in hell do you think you're doing, Devlin? Is this some kind of horrible joke?"

He's completely wasted. He looks up and me with bleary eyes and snuggles against her grave marker. "She wanted to meet you here. She has things to say to you."

I'm not sure how to...how to acknowledge that, so instead I say, "Where are the girls?"

Dev traces Priscilla's name on her marker. "We slipped 'em. Sil knows London even better than I do. Hard to believe."

"Not so much. You've ridden around in a hired car most of your privileged life. Priscilla and I hoofed the streets for years. Didn't even have money for the tube half the time."

Dev snickers and pats the marker. "I know right? She says stop being so growly to me. She says I'm brilliant. She says, she's completely over you and onto me—"

"Bloody hell, Dev. Do you mind not cavorting upon her grave?"

"Oh, she's not bothered, mate. She's not there..." he pats the ground.

I jerk him roughly to his feet. I'm not sure how I manage--utter rage, I suppose. "When I found her...I held her. Cradled what was left of her. Begged her to come back. I held her...do you understand? I felt what is for the body and the soul to be parted. So believe me, mate—a part of her is here. Always. So get the fuck off her," I growl.

My anger sobers Dev. He holds up his hands in surrender, stumbling backward off the plot into a bench, falling onto it. He has the good grace to fall silent as well, his longish shock of unstyled blue hair falls in his face as he bows his head.

I drop to my knees, hands digging into the earth that covers Priscilla's remains. For a long time, I sit, kneading the earth, trying to feel her, in my brain, as I have so much since the accident. But she's gone from me. I suppose because she's somehow attached to Dev.

Twilight was fading when I entered the cemetery. Now, as darkness descends, I find it doesn't feel so strange to speak aloud to her. Not even with Dev as an intermediary.

"Priscilla, are you real?" I say softly.

Dev sighs unhappily. I look up at him. He's avoiding my eyes. "She says not really. She says...she says she can't be real. Not here. She says it's time."

"Time for what?"

"For you to let her go." The dark is close, and I can't see Dev's face, but his voice is full of empathy.

"I don't...I don't know how." I squeeze the earth in my fingers, tearing roots, causing a tiny pebble to pierce my palm. I ignore the pain, squeezing harder, forcing the sharp face of the rock into my flesh, hoping to feel something—anything but the old grief.  I have an overwhelming desire to see her. If she's a bloody ghost, I want to see her. One last time.

I clench my fists. "Priscilla!" I cry out. "Come here, my love. I need you!"

Suddenly Dev inhales sharply and lets out an explosive gasp.

"Don't. Christ, Rye." He says urgently, climbing over the bench. His voice is tight, but also somehow softer than normal, his accent entirely like his own. Either of them—the fake UBE or the more genuine uppercrust lilt. Yet the cadence of his voice is perfectly familiar to me. "A plea in blood on my grave? Are you mad?"

I look over to the bench. Dev is panting in fear and confusion behind it. A dimly lit mist remains in his place on the bench. The face is vague, the shape is distinctly feminine. The figure holds out her arms.

"What did you do?" her voice calls from somewhere distant. "How did you...Riley...can you see me?"

"You're real," I whisper to the mist. "Oh my love, you're really here. I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry, Priscilla."

"It's not your fault," she whispers. Or rather, Dev whispers behind her, in her voice. Her voice is still coming from him, but it's her. It's entirely her. I'm in the presence of the girl I loved and lost so long ago, and though its perfectly horrible, her presence is also perfectly familiar.

I let out a sob. "Priscilla—"

"It's alright," she says again. "It's alright."

"It's not. It's all my fault. You dying and also, me keeping you here. You told me—I've kept you here. You told me you had almost found a way to move on, but then I almost killed myself in that car crash and I...I don't how to let go..."

"It's alright, my sweet man. It's alright. None of it is your fault. Especially me dying. I cheated. I tried to escape that guilt with drugs. I took too much."

"Because I made you feel so guilty—"

"No. No because I was too far gone. I made a reckless horrible mistake with Avery, and then I made another reckless horrible mistake and accidentally took my own life."

I feel my face is wet, as if the tears started all at once. "How do you bear it, love?"

"You mean...being alone in the shadows, watching you with her?"

That's it's exactly what I meant. She always knew me, she did.

I nod.

She laughs softly. "Rye, all I have ever wanted, since the day I left you, was for the pain of my passing to fall away from you. You were so good to me, and I caused you so much pain. I could feel it, here in this netherworld. I don't know how your heart could keep beating, under the weight of that much pain, but it did. You went on. You went on and you got clean, and you came back here, to my grave, nearly every day for awhile. The day you made that vow upon my grave never to take a stage again? Was the day I vowed to remain, to see you break that vow. And you did. With her. You sang with her."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"Don't be sorry, Rye! Be happy! You were bloody brilliant!"

Dev clears his throat. "She's right. You were brilliant. You've got no business, running my business. Or Soundcrush's. You belong up there in the lights. With Row."

"You stay out of it," I snarl at him. Part of me is terrified he's broken the spell, but the vague mist remains, unwavering, just, dimly lending her light to me. "Go," I say to him. "Leave...leave us."

Dev retreats into the shadow of a tree. I crawl across Priscilla's grave, closer to her spirit. My heart throbbing in pain and fear and longing, I reach into Priscilla's misty feet, bowing my head toward the amorphous shape of her knees.

I feel it at once. Her presence. Her energy is here before me and because I'm touching her, she is once again back in my head.

"Forgive me," I sob. "Priscilla, please forgive me. For all those horrible things I said to you, that last awful day. I know I drove you to those drugs. I know it was my fault."

I can feel her.  This time, when she speaks, it's perfectly her. Her voice in my head. "My love, it was never your fault. But for the things you said? I forgave you long ago. You've asked for my forgiveness before, here at my grave. It was granted then. You have to let go."

"I don't know how," I tell her again. "Every time Row does something reckless, I feel you. Cold in my arms. I feel you gone, and I feel so..."

"Alone. Afraid. Angry at me, for leaving you. But you take it out on her."

"Yes," I admit.

"You will always be alone, afraid, and angry if you don't let go. You can't let the fear of losing her like you lost me rule the rest of your life. Just let go. Love Rowan with your whole heart and soul and song. Let me go."

She means it. There is so much of her flowing through me in this moment. She means it. She wants me to be happy in this life. She wants me to let go. She doesn't know what comes next for her, but she's not afraid. She wants to sever this connection we have. She wants to move on.

Inside my chest and inside my head. I can feel her love, and I can feel her soft acceptance of her fate, spreading all over me. It feels like...surrender. Something happens inside me. My fear for Priscilla evaporates and with it, all my other fears settle down into the earth, coming to rest after all these years.

She's right. I have to let go now. But I don't want her to go with me sobbing at her feet. It seems like a rather selfish way on my part to say goodbye. I stifle my sobs, wipe my tears and rise to the bench, sit beside her. Tentatively, I reach out in the dark, just beside her apparition. Her glow, and her warmth encompasses my shaking hand.

"Remember our first performance?" I say to her, nudging up against what should be her shoulder but offers no resistance to my weight.

"We were bloody awful," she laughs softly in my head.

"The band was terrible, but you were fucking gorgeous," I refute. "Your voice, your presence. Absolutely bad-ass and brilliant. You were the only reason we got any gigs."

"That's true," she smirks. "Punk wasn't your really your genre, Rye. You're too much of a romantic."

"Don't tell anyone, love." I murmur. "I have a reputation."

"As a stoic, stalking, know-it-all manager. Yes, I can see why you want to maintain that..."

"It's worked."

"It hasn't. Remember who you are, Rye. Remember for me."

"I do remember," I tell her. "With you, here, now. I remember."

I remember wanting her, the thrill of winning her, then loving her, pleasing her and making her proud, trying to keep up with her on stage. I remember being happy—truly happy—for the first time in my young life. It lasted for a time, before the drugs, before the abrupt and brief descent into depravity and mutual disappointment, from which I emerged scarred, but she did not.

But before the last six awful months, it was a real love, if a love in its infancy that never grew to maturity. The feelings were simple and sweet compared to the depth and strength and devotion I've found with Row, but I give myself over to the boy I once was, so that Priscilla can feel loved and safe and happy one last time. She died miserable and guilt-stricken and thinking I hated her. She deserves love at her last.

"Good god, I loved you, Priscilla.  I really and truly did."

"I know. I loved you, too. But that was a long time ago, wasn't it? These days, I get rather tired of watching you love someone else."

"I can imagine," I say dryly. "Is that why you took up with Dev? A rebound thing?"

"Well, he is rather handsome."

"He is," I agree.

"But honestly, I wasn't serious about fancying him. He's just easy to possess. All that tough thug business is rubbish. He's super sensitive."

"He is," I repeat. "Have you ever possessed anyone else in my life?"

"No, just you because of our connection and him because you've been around him long enough that I was able to find my way in. But it's not for lack of trying. I tried to possess Matt del Marco. Thought I might be able to knock some sense into you and Row that way. Especially since you keep mucking it up. Royally."

I laugh. "The last thing the world needs is a possessed Matt del Marco. I'll try harder not to muck things up any worse with Row, if you'll promise never to possess him."

"Promise?"

"Yeah."

"You'll do what makes her happy? What makes you happy?"

"Yeah. I'll give it a go." I shrug and give the apparition a smile. I crave the music I make with Row, but it doesn't seem right to show Priscilla how much.

"You'll give up all this controlling manager nonsense and hit the road with your girl and your guitar?"

"It does sound quite nice, doesn't it?"

"It does."

"Alright, then."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

"Promise me you won't give up. Even if it's harder than you think. Even if you get scared again."

She's right. Fear is behind all my reluctance. Row deserves better than a coward. "I promise."

"Truly?"

"Bloody hell, Sil. I promised. What do you want, more blood?" I hold up my hand, where the small cut has already crusted.

"No. But I will find a way to come back and haunt you horribly this time, if you don't keep your promise. Are we clear?"

"Crystal." I say that, yet she's anything but crystal. She's dim and vague, and I can't even make out her features. She's not here, she's not there, wherever there is. I loved a girl, but she's that not that girl anymore. It's time for something better for her. I know in my heart, there's something better than being a ghost, fretting over the living.

I don't know how to tell her that, though. I start at the only place that makes sense to me.

"Row and I had a child that we lost. Did you know that?"

"Yes. I watched her go."

Ah. So she knows. Better than I do, Priscilla knows.

"Where?" I ask gently.

"On," she said vaguely. "The little ones, they go by instinct. They never look back. They just know, where they are supposed to go. I can feel it sometimes. I can feel it now. I think I might could go, if I go straight from you, like this. It feels right."

"Do you want to go? I mean, are you ready?"

"Yes. There's just one more thing I need. From you."

"Of course. What can I do, love?"

"Forgive me, too."

My sweet Silla, caught all these years in her own guilt for one awful drugged mistake, a witness to my pain, because she couldn't let go anymore than I could. "You were a beautiful person, and I loved you, and one mistake didn't erase all that came before. I forgive you. I forgive you, and I will never again forget the song you lit in my soul."

"Rye," is all she says in my brain, but everything she ever was seems to resound in that one syllable. Her light grows very bright, so bright I unconsciously close my eyes against the blaze.

One blink. That's all it took. She's gone.

I can't feel her at all anymore. She's really gone.

Perhaps it's terrible to admit, but I laugh in relief. She took with her something I thought I would never be without again.

She took the guilt from me. She took the fear.

I turn my face from her grave, to the stars. "Rest in peace, Priscilla. Thank you, and good-bye."

#

Dev is passed out in a hedge row. When I rouse him, he's completely flummoxed.

He stumbles around, finds one last full can of Gordon's, downs it, takes in his surroundings and says, "Bloody hell, Mate. How in hell did I wind up here? In a cemetery?"

I squint at him. He looks completely earnest. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Being at Heaven with the girls. Where are they?" He looks around.

"That was two full nights ago," I tell him. "You've don't remember anything between now and then? You don't remember calling me? Demanding I get on a plane?"

"I remember giving the girls the rest of my gummies and buying some sketch drugs off a promoter...he said is was just X but now I'm wondering if it was LSD..."

Jesus. No wonder Priscilla was able to possess his addled brain.

He rubs his head and pulls his phone. Alarm spreads across his face. He stumbles over to me and grabs at my shirt. " Oh good god. I have hundreds of calls and texts from Bridge. And Row. And Chili. Have you talked to them?"

"No. I've been ducking them as well."

"Why not?"

"Because, because..." Because I didn't know if they knew what I knew about you and my ghostly ex-fiancé, Mate. "Because you seemed out of your head, and I didn't want to speak out of turn until I found you safe and sound."

He pats himself, checking for injuries, I suppose.  "Well, I'm relatively sound, I suppose, but what in the hell are we doing in a bloody cemetery?" He whirls, and finally he takes in the name on Priscilla's grave. "Oh. I see we've made a bit of detour on your account."

I take off my glasses, wipe them. "Yeah." The less I say, the better. Somehow, I think the whole story might throw Dev into an existential crisis, and I can't deal with that. Especially since I'm officially getting out of the sensitive artist hand-holding business.

Dev squeezes my shoulder. "You alright, Mate?

I nod, slowly. "I am."

"You loved her." It's a statement, not a question.

"I did."

"And Row? Are you ever going to love her like she deserves?"

I give him a glare. That's a bit hypocritical coming from him, but I suppose it's a fair question.

"I hope so, Dev. I really do. What I feel for Row is incomparable to what I felt for Priscilla."

A gasp behind us and then a volley of low murmurings catches our attention.

"Hallo?" Dev calls.

More murmurings, then a scuffle. A dark figure rises from the behind the hedge row and moves away at an alarmingly fast past. I'd recognize that retreating back anywhere.

"Row!" I call, but she doesn't stop. Unlike Dev, I can't simply leap over the hedge row, I have to shuffle around. His act of agility isn't rewarded however, because he lands on Bridget and Chili, who both screech in pain and begin to curse him.

"Row!" I'm finally through a break in the hedge, but she keeps going. Behind me, Bridget is scolding Dev and Chili is shouting at me to stop.

It's slow going for me, in the cemetery with all the graves and tree roots. Row fades into the night and Chili catches up with me quickly.

"Leave her alone, Riley! You just admitted to Dev that what you have with Row can't compare to what you had with Priscilla. Just...leave her heart to break alone."

I shirk my elbow from Chili's grasp. "That is not what I said. You've got it backwards."

"We all heard everything, Riley. You crying at her grave. You were talking to her, telling you that you love her. It's pretty clear that you are not over her. All this time, Row has just been a substitute. No wonder you couldn't treat her well. Row knows now you never really loved her—"

"That's rubbish, and you know it, Chili. I love her. I love her more than my life."

"You can't love two people at the same time—"

"Perhaps not, but you can absolutely love two people at different times, Chili. Especially when one of them has been dead fifteen years," I growl. "Priscilla is gone. I loved her, and she is gone, and I have loved Row much much more for a very long time now, even though it's taken me quite a while to figure out how to treat her well, because of the way I lost Priscilla. You need to butt out of things you don't understand."

"I understand just fine, Riley. I understand that you will never get over your dead fiancée, and you're making Row's life a living shrine to that love. She deserves better than that."

"You don't know what you are talking about. Especially now."

Chili shakes her head. "No. I'm right. I'm so glad I turned the tables on you and was finally able to prove it to Row. You came all the way to London without telling her, and you came immediately to Priscilla's grave. I think that says everything Row really needs to know."

Now, I'm in a quite rage. "What do you mean, you turned the tables on me?"

She crosses her arms. "I used your own methods against you." Her smirk lands on my cane.

"You...you and Row...have been tracking me?"

She shrugs noncommittally. Ah. Not the two of them, then. Just Chili.

I hand her the cane. "Take it out."

"Why? You still have trackers on Row."

"That she is aware of. Take the tracker out of my cane. Now."

"Why is it wrong for me to see what you've been up to while Row's been out working, but it's not wrong for you to keep tabs on Row?"

"It's wrong to keep tabs on people without their knowledge, which is why I haven't pinged Row once since we've reconciled. The difference is she knows her panic bracelet has a tracker and the cars too. She was kidnapped once, Chili. Whether or not she has a tracking device is between me and her and her security and even her overbearing father. What you've done? It's not concern. It's not even controlling, which I admit I once was. It's just shit-stirring. Why would you do this?"

"Because people that stalk other people having something to hide."

"I have nothing to hide. I was here visiting Priscilla's grave for...closure. And now you've caused Rowan a lot of unnecessary distress."

She huffs and rolls her eyes, but she grabs my cane, takes it apart at the joint, reaches inside and pulls a tiny device from it. Then with more than a little spite, she hands me back the tracking device and walks away with my bloody cane, following Row.

There is no way I can safely navigate this cemetery in the dark without a third leg for stability, and she knows it. She's keeping me from going after Row.

"Goddammit, Chili!"

"Dev will be along to help you any minute!"

Dev is still getting an earful from Bridge.

"No! That's it, Dev! This is just another one of your stupid games to prove how bad you are for me. Well, you know what? This time I agree. Two days I've wondered where the hell you are! And now I find you here with Riley at his dead girlfriend's grave, having some kind of drunken seance when you know how devastated Row is over his hang-up with Priscilla?  What the hell is wrong with you? You're just...ughhh...you're never going to grow up!"

"Bridget—I'm so sorry, it's not what it looks..."

"It looks like you've been high out of your mind for two days!"

"Alright, it's possibly exactly how it looks but I swear to you, this is my last fuck-up. I'm serious. I can change. I am changed. I swear—"

"I'm done. We're through!" She pushes him over the hedgerow. He cries in alarm: possibly he's been impaled on a branch. Bridge rushes past me.

"Bridget—"

She rounds on me, stalking back, one strappy heel dangling from her hand, one stiletto weaponized against me. "No, Riley. I love you, but just...no. My sister is not second fiddle to dead girl. I'm sorry Priscilla cheated on you and you fought right before she died, and I'm sorry you are so messed up by that, but you have to move on! You can't hold Row hostage because of what happened to Priscilla!"

"You're absolutely right!"

She doesn't even bat an eye that I'm agreeing with her. "You say all the right things to all the right people at all the right times, Riley. It doesn't work with me anymore. And it damn sure doesn't work with Row. Not after this."

She stomps away in the dark, leaving me on shaky ground.

"Riley, a little help, mate? I think I've lost a kidney to this hedge row."

"Are you joking?" I say in disbelief.

"Not at all. Come help me out."

In my exasperation, I turn around too quickly, lose my footing on a tree root and barely catch myself on the aggressive tree in question. "Bloody fucking fuck!" I yell.

"I completely agree," Dev groans.

By the time we make it out of the cemetery, our twins are on a plane to Hawaii, where dear old dad will most certainly close ranks against us.