They had been looking forward to this gig for so long. The band had worked real hard to get there. But there was no way she could make it now.

Her beloved Fender Squier lay smashed on the pavement, the sight of the shattered pieces of wood spread across the road made her feel like crying. She was so mad at herself for not having been more careful.

---

The venue is dark and deserted but she’s sure that she will find him here. The sound of his guitar echoing thru the empty halls confirms her hunch.

She hesitates for a moment before crossing stage door, she’s not sure how she’s going to face him. The notes coming from behind the curtain are fast and furious, so unlike the way he usually caresses the strings.

The sight of his bloody fingers and the splattered stains they leave on the surface of the white Flying V fill her with pain.

She wants to say so many things, try to explain.

“I’m sorry. It was late. I was so tired and in a hurry to get home. I must have dozed off on my bike. I must have crossed the lanes. I never saw that truck coming. It was so fast I didn’t even feel it.”

She wishes that she still had a body so she could put her arms around him.

But it is too late now. She can feel time and space turning into a whirling vortex around her. The gentle but firm pull is erasing everything she had been, perhaps writing the first lines of what she will now become.

“No!” She thinks. “Not yet!” There’s still one last thing she has to do before she can really let go.

Holding tightly to the last vestiges of her quickly fading will, she reaches to him, and gently whispers in his ear.

“I love you.”

His hands freeze mid note.

The wall of bottled rage and pain inside him suddenly cracks and shatters.

For the first time since the accident, he allows himself to cry.