Undone, Volume 3 (21 page)

The song was a complete
departure from his previous work. Everything in the past had been
straight-up RAWK. The kind of music that made you want to head bang
and stick out your tongue KISS-style and quit your job just for the
hell of it.

This was a love song.
Heartbroken, stripped down, bare and raw. Critics went wild over his
new sound. It was his first solo release, just Ash Black on piano
with what sounded like percussion and maybe cello in the background.

The song was called
“Undone.” His voice ached like he was bleeding into the music. In
the refrain, deep and tortured, Ash sang, “I’ve come undone.”
The longing need in his vocals gripped you fierce as he described the
love he’d found and lost. How he’d had everything he’d ever
wanted and then it fell apart, slipping through his fingers.

I tried to tell myself
that I didn’t really know if the song was about me. He’d admitted
he’d used ghostwriters in the past. Maybe this was all an
engineered stunt by Lola to capitalize on his public heartbreak, just
like Mandy Monroe had done back in December.

But deep down, I knew.
And every time I heard it, it felt like Ash was calling out directly
to me. Because the entire song was about us.

I heard the song a lot.
The second Ash released it, it went straight to number one. The song
was a bonafide, runaway, gobsmackingly huge mega hit. I heard it
everywhere, at the deli where I went for a sandwich. From the earbuds
of the person sitting next to me on the subway who was clearly going
deaf from the volume of her music. Even in my own apartment, where
Jillian set her iPad to Pandora. Sometimes none of us could get to it
in time to stop the song from starting to play. Once the song started
up while I was in the shower. Running out with soap in my eyes, I
knocked straight into a stool. It slowed me down so much the song
played all the way into the chorus.

“I’ve come undone,”
Ash sang, playing the notes we’d created together, describing how
he felt in such heartbreakingly raw terms. Expressing exactly how I
felt going on two months without him.

Jillian met me
breathless in the kitchen, finding me standing there in a towel with
shampoo in my hair and a wet puddle at my feet.

“Maybe we should stop
listening to music?” she offered, clearly not sure what to do with
me.

“Or we could play a
different station,” I suggested.

“It comes on every
station I have!” she cried out, taking the iPad out of my dripping
wet hands. “It’s a huge crossover hit!”

“I know.” The song
was off, but I could still hear it, echoing in my soul.

“Do you think you
should, you know, get in touch? He sounds, kind of, upset.”

I shook my head. The
way I saw it, it was at least a 50 percent chance the whole thing was
just a publicity stunt. I’d spent enough time in Ash’s world to
understand how it worked. Everyone used everyone else to get ahead.
Chances were good that Lola and the rest of the team behind the Ash
Black brand had orchestrated the entire release.

But what if it were
more than that? What if that was how he really felt? I sometimes felt
that it was, late at night as I lay awake and stared at the ceiling.
And, yes, once or twice in the darkness I allowed myself to listen to
the song. Pure and gritty, his voice hitting every note with growling
intensity, he spoke directly to me.

At times like that, in
the dark with just me and Ash telling me how deeply he felt for me,
how devastated he was to lose me, I thought it had to be the most
romantic thing I’d ever heard. If I allowed myself to slip into the
fantasy, that song just about killed me. Word-for-word, it was
literally everything I’d always dreamed he’d say, singing it out
from his heart straight to me.

But that was just it,
wasn’t it? If that was how he felt, wouldn’t he speak directly to
me? He would get in touch. He could send me a letter or email or
phone the library or deliver a dozen roses to my apartment or, hell,
he could probably land a private helicopter on top of a nearby
building and offer to whisk me off to any destination of my choosing
if only I’d say yes.

Each day I heard
nothing from him was another day I knew he didn’t really want to be
with me. I told myself this, too, would pass. Even mega smash hit
songs went away, eventually. Sure, they made their way into your DNA.
Just as you knew you’d always be able to sing along with “Don’t
Stop Believing” you knew you’d always remember that song. But it
wouldn’t be so bad once it finally made its way off the airwaves.

In April, the song was
nominated for the Billboard Music Awards. For a lot of things: Top
Artist & Top Male Artist, Top Digital Song, Top Hot 100 Song, Top
Streaming Song, Top Rock Song. That wasn’t surprising.

What was surprising was
how I found out that the song had been nominated. On the first
Saturday of April, I got a big, thick package in the mail. Inside was
an invitation to attend the Billboard Music Award show in Vegas in
May. And a letter congratulating me on my song’s nomination. Not
Ash’s song. My Song.

Because I was the
songwriter. Ash had given me full songwriting credit. For his smash
mega hit song “Undone.”

I stood there sporting
a giant sweatshirt and jeans, package at my feet, letter in my
shaking hands, mouth open in shock. There were a whole bunch of
things I couldn’t process. First, what? Ash had made me the
songwriter? He’d come up with the original melody. Sure, I’d
helped it along, but I really thought he’d written that song.

Second, what? I was the
songwriter of a smash song? And I was only finding out about it now?
Didn’t there have to be lawyers involved? Documents signed, that
type of thing? I remembered the NDA Ash’s attorney Nelson had given
me in multiple forms. How had this managed to escape my notice over
the past month?

I dug back into the package and
that’s when I saw the note. A blank card in an envelope with my
name scrawled across it. I knew in an instant, it was from Ash. I
didn’t even know when I’d seen his handwriting in our time
together, or how I remembered it from when I had, but there it was.
My hands trembling, I opened it up.

Please
come.
This is your song. If it wins, it will be your award.
I’ll
stay away from you if it’s what you want.
Don’t skip this
because of me.
Hope to see you there.
-Ash

I stood there
trembling, staring at the note. Thankfully, my roommate Liv was home.
I’m not sure how long I would have stood there otherwise.

“What’s that?”
Liv asked, coming to take the note out of my hands. “Are you all
right?”

I managed to explain
what was happening, or what I thought was happening. Liv could read
better than I could at the moment and verified that, yes, I had
received an invitation to the BMA show in Vegas in May because, yes,
I was identified as the songwriter to the current number one
international hit “Undone.”

The passing of days
didn’t make the news any less shocking. If anything, my surprise
grew as I started receiving paperwork and tax forms and all sorts of
legal documents explaining royalty rates. Apparently, I was going to
start earning quite a nice chunk of money off of the song. A song I’d
co-written at best, but Ash had chosen to give me full credit.

I thought of calling
him a million times. I held my phone in my hand and imagined pressing
call. I still had his number in it, even though I’d blocked any
calls I may or may not have received from him. But I didn’t do it.

If his note had been
warmer, I would have. If he’d said he missed me, or if he’d
sounded less businesslike, or even if he’d signed it ‘sincerely’
instead of just using a dash, I would have. But he’d spoken only of
the song. And he seemed to assume that the next time we spoke would
be at the awards show.

Which I decided I would
attend. Why not? How many chances in life did you get to attend a
huge, celebrity-studded awards show? And to attend it as one of the
nominees? Not often.

Which was why I invited
my parents to come with me. At first they were not overly
enthusiastic about heading to Vegas, or Sin City as my mother
insisted on calling it. But then my father pointed out that if they
didn’t come, I’d be there on my own. They bought plane tickets
the next day, and I booked us rooms in the reserved block at the MGM
where the show would be held. I hadn’t become a classical pianist,
but I had been nominated for a songwriting award. That was something!

Days before the show, I
was still deliberating over the right dress to wear. Without a full
team of stylists, I was finding it a bit more challenging to clothe
myself. I’d rented a couple of gowns from an online service, the
kind where if I returned them in good condition within the week I
only had to pay $50. But I couldn’t decide what look I wanted to go
with.

Time to enlist Jillian
and Liv. I’d choose whichever dress neither of them liked. I came
upon them whispering to each other in our kitchenette.

“We have to tell
her,” Jillian insisted.

“Do we? I’m not
sure.” Liv looked grim.

“Tell me what?”

They startled like two
kids cheating on a test in school. After sharing a resigned look,
Jillian started in.

“We have something to
tell you.” She cleared her throat and tapped her fingers together
nervously. “There was a letter.”

“A letter?”

“A letter from Ash,”
she continued, looking ashen.

“Where is it?” I
exploded.

“I, um, I burned it.”
Now Liv spoke, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant.

“You what?” I
couldn’t have heard that right.

“Burned it.”

“Like set fire to
it?” Who did that? Then again, my roommate had also sewn herself a
shirt out of raw meat. She did out-of-the ordinary things.

She nodded. Apparently
burning my mail was one of those things.

“What the hell?” I
slammed my palm down on the countertop. I didn’t have much of a
temper, but this sure flared what I did have right up.

“You were so
depressed!” Jillian interjected. “It just seemed like—”

“Seemed like what? It
was a good idea to steal my property and burn it?”

“Do you remember the
ugly crying?” Liv asked.

Hmm. That gave me a
moment of pause. I did remember the ugly crying. But, wait, the
letter had come that long ago? “When did I get it?”

“Oh, like, late
sheme-dmn.” Jillian mumbled her response.

“What was that now?”

“January.” Liv
confirmed. “You got the letter in January.”

“January!” I could
feel cartoon steam coming out of my ears.

“Seriously, Ana, that
was back when you couldn’t stop crying.”

“But—” I
spluttered.

“You were such a
mess!” Jillian added. “I’m sorry we did it, but we were just
worried about you.”

“I wasn’t that
bad,” I protested.

“You wore your pants
backwards one day,” Liv corrected me.

“I did?”

“Yeah. But I made you
turn them around.”

She had? When had that
happened? “I don’t even remember that.”

“It happened,”
Jillian confirmed.

“You were really far
gone,” Liv agreed.

“He seems like such
bad news,” Jillian added. “And we thought a letter from him might
really send you over the edge.”

“So you burned it?”
I still couldn’t get on board with their logic.

“We burned it. And
that might not have been the best idea, so I’m sorry,” Jillian
apologized.

“I’m sorry,” Liv
added.

I exhaled, fuming. “I’m
still mad,” I insisted.

“We know,” they
both agreed.

Surveying them in
disbelief, I asked, “At least, did either of you read it before you
burned it?”

They both shook their
heads no.

“But it was thick. It
was a long letter,” Jillian said, looking awfully pale.

“Oh God.” I sank my
head into my hands. Whew. They were certifiably insane, that was
clear, but I guess I’d known that already. “You’re both crazy,
you know that?” I had to tell them.

“OK, but promise me
you won’t wear that dress to the awards show,” Liv exclaimed. “It
has sleeves! You might as well wrap yourself in a blanket!”

“You can’t wear
that,” Jillian agreed. “It’s way too short and tight. What if
you drop something? How would you bend over and pick it up?”

“OK, thanks, guys.”
At least I knew what I was wearing to the awards show. Now if only I
knew what had been in that freaking letter.

Because apparently Ash
had written me a letter. Four months ago. It had been a long four
months. I supposed I should feel like I was getting over him by now,
like I didn’t remember exactly how it felt when he held me or
kissed me. By now I should have completely forgotten about the way he
laughed over something silly I said or made me spaghetti or marveled
over my playing piano or made love to me like I was the most sexy,
amazing woman in the world.

I hadn’t been getting
over him. And it wasn’t just the fact that I heard his voice
yearning for me from every street corner. That didn’t help, of
course, but it was more than that. My attachment to Ash was like one
of those tricky weeds that drove my dad crazy in our lawn. You’d
think you’d removed it all, but somehow it kept springing up,
robust and new, withstanding any and all attempts at eradication. The
roots were deep and stubborn.

And now I was about to
see him again. My parents and I flew out to L.A. tomorrow. I knew
back when Ash and I had been together, I’d been full of doubts. We
lived in different worlds, he ran with a fast crowd, I liked to knit,
etc. etc. It all seemed stupid now. My heart felt like it had been
broken in two. If he felt the same way, if we were two parts of a
matching whole, then what the hell were we doing apart from each
other?