#eflat

send me a prompt and i’ll write a thing!

call me now. It’s urgent, is a text message you receive halfway through a set list in Indianapolis. You check your phone offstage during a quick break and it’s dark besides the light of your phone and the chatter and general busy noise quiets to this buzz you can feel in the tips of your fingers and at the back of your neck. What you don’t have is time, however, so you place your phone back down on that little stool backstage with your discarded jacket and bag and your extra water-bottle.

It’s an hour before you even get a chance to breathe. Afterwards you sign a few autographs by the edge of the stage, smiling at the small swarm of fans as they reach out their phones and record sleeves and uncapped sharpies. They tell you how happy they are that you’re here, about how much your music means to them, and you feel what you offer isn’t enough to express the gratitude you feel.  

It’s only after Gustus leads you backstage, back to that empty dressing room, that the worry comes back in full force. You pull your phone from the confines of your jacket once your through the door, and among the notifications and reminders you see it.

“How long will you be?” Gustus asks, still in the doorway. It’s curt, but far from impolite, and you offer him a small shake of your head.

“I don’t know,” you say, looking up at him. 

He nods once. “I’ll be right outside.”

You toss your things onto the table in front of the couch when the door closes and you sink into the cushions with this bone-weary sigh. The back of your neck aches and you feel like you could sleep through till next week if given the chance, but you push back the hair from your face, the roots still damp with a little sweat, and you call her back.

Clarke picks up on the second ring.

“Lexa?” Her voice is rough – a little raw, and you know she had a show in San Fran a couple days ago. She puts her all into everything and she knows you do too.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing you think to say. And while you do try, sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. It isn’t.

Clarke doesn’t say anything for a while. You sit there on that dressing room couch with your phone pressed to your ear and it’s like you can hear the tension she keeps in the space between her shoulders. If you close your eyes tight enough you see her with her head in her hands.

“Is everything okay?”

You hear shuffling, this forced, uneven exhale the receiver of Clarke’s phone catches. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not,” you say.

“I just missed your voice.”

It so matter-of-fact, and you swallow around the dryness in your throat. “Clarke.”

“I’m sorry.”