The Fair Grounds were already half-mud, half-beer by the time we pushed our way toward the stage. Naomi wore a straw hat, giant sunsses, and a sundress that made my brain stutter. She had a sk of water, which she handed to me between songs like we’d done this a thousand times.

    And maybe we had. In some other life. In which I didn’t ruin us.

    It’s not over yet, Gage, she’s here with you. Make the most out of it.

    We’d had an early dinner at Café Degas, tucked under the live oaks on Esnade Avenue, where the wine was crisp and the candlelight soft enough to make anything feel like a maybe.

    Part Parisian bistro, part New Orleans dream, the restaurant was open-air and intimate. We shared the Escargots à Bourguignonne for an appetizer and their excellent sd Ni?oise as an entrée.

    It was like being back to when we didn’t have my stupidity to deal with—just two people enjoying each other’spany. Naomi was open, like before, which I was grateful for and knew I didn’t deserve.

    Was I taking advantage of her big heart and the fact that she loved me? Yes.

    Was I feeling guilty? No. Not about wanting her back—but yeah, I was wrestling hard with the way I’d handled things when she told me she loved me. I’d thrown it in her face, stomped on her feelings, like they didn’t matter. That guilty heavy.

    Now that I’d admitted how I felt about Naomi—and was feeling the sting of her rejection—I could finally imagine just how deeply I must’ve wounded this remarkable woman.

    “They’re about toe on.” She gave me a look full of unfiltered delight. “Still time to run if you’re secretly not a Stones fan.”

    I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and brushed my nose against hers. “Baby, I spent half my childhood stealing my old man’s Sticky Fingers LP. I’m not going anywhere.”

    When The Rolling Stones hit the stage, the crowd roared like a living thing.

    People screamed.

    Danced.

    Cried.

    Naomiughed so hard I thought she might actually explode from happiness.

    She nestled into me during the slow songs and hopped around during the fast ones.

    The hell with the Stones—I watched her, falling more in love with her every second. I now knew that I fell for her a long time ago—maybe that first time I’d seen her. Now that I was moving past my pain, my trauma, thanks to Auntie Griselle, who was seeing me once a week, I was allowing myself to break down the walls I’d erected so I could feel honestly.

    “That was exhrating,” she announced when we walked through the crowd after the concert to make it to the Jazz Tent, where Aurelie was performing.

    We sat together, wrapped in each other and the music, as Aurelie and her band, Bossa Bayou, took the stage like they’d been born to it.

    She wore a beaded pper-style slip that shimmered under the low lights, her voice warm and smoky as she slid into a set of French jazz from the 1920s and ’30s.

    Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, édith Piaf—songs that felt like they’d been pulled from the faded corners of Parisian cafés and smuggled into New Orleans with opera gloves and lipstick-stained cigarette holders.

    The soft thrum of the upright bass rolled under every note, the ordion sighing between verses like it knew heartbreak personally. I kept my arm draped around Naomi’s shoulders, my fingers tracing absent circles against her skin in time with the rhythm.

    The noise of the world fell away, leaving only this—the music, the heat, and us.

    Later that night, when I kissed her outside her apartment, she let me.

    She let me hold her, feel her, show her that I loved her.

    Then, almost shyly, she bid me goodnight. I waited until the lights were on in her ce before I went to find my truck.

    For a while, being with her, I’d forgotten everything else. The past. The wreckage. My crimes against Naomi. I’d felt whole for the first time since she’d left, since I’d pushed her away.

    Maybe it was because I was unraveling the trauma in my mind, trying to heal, because when the nightmare struck that night, it wasn’t violent—but silent, like the air had copsed on itself.

    The crunch of broken ss.

    Copper in my mouth.

    The echo of Lia’sugh in the cab of the car.

    This time, she looked at me, calm as anything when I called her name, and said, “You don’t have to stay in the wreckage, cher.”

    I woke up drenched in sweat, the pillow wet, my chest aching like I’d been sucker-punched.

    The next morning, I texted Delphi, telling him I’d being inte to work.

    I drove out to the cemetery in Metairie.

    It had been a while since I’d been there.

    I always thought that it felt more like a quiet city than a graveyard. Rows of marble crypts and live oaks draped in Spanish moss, everything sun-bleached and solemn.

    The air smelled like cut grass and stone dust.

    Angels watched from their pedestals with chipped wings, and names older than memory were carved into crumbling facades. It was peaceful in a way only New Orleans cemeteries could be—equal parts holy and haunted.

    I stood at Lia’s final resting ce for a long time, hands in my pockets, the morning air thick and buzzing with insects.

    Her vault was modest—white stone streaked with age and weather, tucked into a shady corner of the cemetery beneath a low-hanging oak. The namete was bronze, already starting to patina, and someone—probably her mother—had left a bouquet of lilies not long ago because they were only slightly wilted.

    There were no grand angels or marble columns, just a single carving above her name: a crescent moon and stars.

    I knelt on the grass and ced my hand on the stone; it was warm under my palm.

    “I never knew how to let the ident go,” I said out loud. “So, I just didn’t.”

    My throat threatened to close. The emotions inside me were chaotic. But I kept going.

    “I thought that if I loved someone else, I’d lose you—and eventually I’d lose them, too.” I stroked the stone. “Sometimes I don’t even remember what you look like—and I feel guilty. I lived, and you died. Would we be together? Married? Have a couple of kids? Who knows. But the thing is that I wanted those things—not just with you, but for myself, and I gave it all up because I was afraid to hurt like I had after you were gone.”

    Some truths, as Auntie Griselle said, had toe from within; no one could tell you and make you believe them.

    I was finally speaking my truth, the one I’d submerged beneath a mountain of fear.

    I kissed my fingers and ced them on her name. “Goodbye, sweet Lia. Wherever you are, I hope you’re smiling.”