My Boyfriend Turned My Grief Into His Hit Songs

The living room smelled like cold coffee and lavender candles. It was two in the morning. I sat curled on the sofa, scrolling through my phone while the city of Los Angeles hummed outside our apartment window.

Dante wasn’t home. He was out celebrating his new single topping the charts. *Our* single, really. But nobody knew that part. To the public, Dante Chapman was a lyrical prodigy. To the world, I was just the quiet girl living in the shadow of a rising star.

My thumb stopped over a glossy headline from an entertainment magazine: *Dante Chapman Reveals the Heartbreaking Muse Behind ‘Ghost in the Garden’.*

My breath caught. I tapped the screen.

*Ghost in the Garden* was my Nana’s song.

Nana had raised me after my mother walked out. When she died two years ago, I fell apart. I spent three weeks sitting on the floor by my keyboard, sobbing until my throat burned, pouring every ounce of grief into those verses. The line about the dry hydrangea bushes. The line about her woolen shawl. I gave the notebook to Dante with trembling hands, whispering, *“Take it. Just sing it for her.”*

Now, my eyes scanned the interview text.

*“People think it’s about an old love,” Chapman says with a soft, brooding smile. “But honestly? The emotional core came from Dallas. During my darkest days, she handed me a little silver charm bracelet. She told me to keep going. She brought me back to life. Every lyric grew out of that bond.”*

There was a photo below the quote. Dallas Payne, leaning back in a leather jacket, laughing beside him with a whiskey glass in her hand. Dallas. His "girl bro." The tomboy best friend who called him "bro" and punched him on the shoulder, but somehow ended up on his lap at every after-party.

I read the paragraph again. Then a third time.

Each word hit like a slap. Nana’s death wasn’t a silver charm bracelet. Her passing was a hole torn in my chest.

*Maybe the reporter twisted his words,* I thought quickly, clutching the phone to my chest. *Yes. The media loves a romantic angle. Dante probably talked about my Nana, and they cut it out. Dallas probably just showed up to the interview and cracked a joke. I’m being crazy. I’m overreacting.*

I repeated the excuses like a prayer. But when I closed my eyes, sleep didn’t come. The dark apartment felt hollow, like an empty stage set. Something inside my chest had cracked, cold and sharp.

***

Two days later, I drove to the Los Angeles Music Festival. Dante was headlining the main stage.

I needed to see him. I needed to look into his eyes, hear his laugh, and feel foolish for ever doubting him.

In my purse rested a small black velvet box. Inside was a brass guitar pick. I had spent two days hunched over my desk with an engraving tool, carving a tiny sprig of lavender into the metal—Nana’s favorite flower—and our anniversary date on the back. It was quiet and small. The kind of gift I had always made for him.

I flashed the backstage pass Dante had tossed onto our kitchen counter months ago. The bass from the soundcheck rattled my ribs as I walked past production tents and catering carts. The air smelled of burnt stage smoke, damp dirt, and spilled beer.

I turned down a narrow alley behind the green rooms, stepping carefully around a wall of black road cases.

Then I stopped.

A few yards ahead, half-hidden by a heavy velvet curtain, stood Dante.

He wasn’t alone. Dallas was pressed against his chest, her hands resting casually on his leather vest. Her head was tilted back, grinning up at him. Dante’s arm was wrapped low around her waist. His thumb was tracing slow, lazy circles on her bare hip above the waistband of her denim shorts.

He was looking down at her with a soft, lingering gaze. It was a look I hadn’t seen on his face in over a year.

My feet stayed glued to the gravel. The air vanished from my lungs.

“You’re terrible,” Dallas murmured, swatting his shoulder lightly. “Your publicist is gonna kill you if you keep hyping me up in the press.”

Dante chuckled. It was a low, intimate sound. “Let them. It sells the record, doesn't it? The fans eat it up.”

“What about Sylvia?” Dallas tilted her head, her voice dropping into a fake, breezy innocence. “Won't she get mad? You basically erased her whole sad story.”

Dante let out an amused breath, rolling his eyes toward the sky.

“Sylvia?” He shook his head. “Come on. She won't say a word. She’s too busy crying over her dramatic little diary entries. She thinks every time she gets sad, it’s high art.”

Dallas burst into a soft giggle, burying her face in his neck. “Honestly, bro, you deserve someone who doesn't make everything so heavy.”

“Tell me about it,” Dante smiled, leaning down to press his forehead against hers.

I stood behind the metal road cases.

*Her dramatic little diary entries.*

My Nana. My best friend’s suicide. My father’s cancer.

The blood, the tears, the nights spent staring at the ceiling wishing I was dead—all reduced to a joke between him and his girl bro.

I looked down at my hand. My fingers were locked around the velvet box in my coat pocket. I squeezed the brass pick so hard its sharp edges sliced into my skin.

A sharp sting. Then the warm, wet slide of blood against my palm.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t push past the curtain. The tears burning behind my eyes suddenly dried into ash.

I turned around.

My sneakers made no sound on the dirt as I walked past the road cases, past the bustling crew members, and straight out toward the parking lot.