3:56 PM.

Sunlight dances across my walnut-wood desk, flitting across my idle hands, casting burnt orange shadows that look almost bloody. The cursor blinks accusingly on my screen, the blank page glaring at me — a testament to my failure. More more more, give more my screen seems to chant. Whatever I write never seems to be enough, it’s never satiated. A black hole of ideas, greedily sucking up the pathetic shreds I throw at it every few weeks. Always demanding more. 

I sigh, shaking my head in what seems to be exasperation, but stems from the tiredness gripping every part of me. Tired of writing, tired of thinking, tired of sitting in this fucking chair when all I want to do is anything but. The slight movement of my head causes my haphazardly cut bangs to fall over my eyes, blurring my vision. It’s irritating, scratching against my eyelids, but any distraction from the screen is welcome. 

4:28 PM. 

I can’t take it any longer, I have to brush the hair from my eyes, tears threatening to spill over from the chafing. 32 minutes wasted wracking my brain for words I know won’t appear, sentences I know I cannot form. Write what you know, my editor’s voice echoes. Can’t she see I’m trying? Fucking Stella. She couldn’t have an original thought if someone shoved it down her throat. 

What do I know? 

I know how great I look when I pair my brown boots with that tiny black skirt you gave me 2 years ago. 

I know how to style my bangs just so, so I look good, but just threatening enough. 

I know how to simultaneously turn the key and bang on the accelerator, so my shitty blue 2011 Camaro that my dad bought for me as a graduation present can start. 

I know how to cook the best spicy rigatoni, nothing else, but no one dares to tell me it isn’t good. It’s that good. 

Writing, I do not know, not anymore. Not since you died, leaving me alone in this massive house with that beautiful baby-blue front porch covered in ivy we stupidly bought 7 years ago, putting that hole in our bank account that’s practically impossible to recover from in this economy. 

A faint ringing jolts me from my stupor, becoming louder the longer I ignore it. Right on time. If I ever needed proof that God exists, it’s this godforsaken alarm that rings exactly when I start spiralling. Where would I be without it? 

4:30 PM.

My body screams for coffee as I push myself up from the rickety leather chair, probably created during the Industrial Revolution. You loved it, though, so there’s no way I’m throwing it away. The things I do for you. 

Like clockwork, Aikō sprints up the stairs, his nails scratching against the wood, letting me know he was coming in. I yank the door open right as he reaches it, barrelling into me, a blur of white fur. 

“I’ll let you out, let’s go downstairs,” I laugh, the tension marginally dissipating from my shoulder blades. “Where’s Yoko?”, I ask, as if he can understand me. I know he can, as he cocks his head to the side and bounds back down the stairs you adamantly refused to carpet. It takes away Her character, Inaya, you’d say with that pointed look, exasperation painting your face. Her, as in this house that’s boring it’s way through my bank account, more trouble than She’s worth, yet I could never sell her. She was yours. Ours. 

A small wet nose pressing against my shin breaks my reverie, and I glance down to see Yoko wagging his caramel tail, silently begging me to let him out. Shaking my head in amusement, I walk down the stairs and slide the back door open, letting the sunlight flood in uninhibited. 

4:37 PM.

The kettle hisses, steam floating out the spout. I pour it into your favorite mug, the brown paint chipping off, the cat on it starting to look more like a floating head. Coffee. Black. And 3 tablespoons of sugar: a terrible habit I picked up from you that’s definitely going to give me diabetes some day. 

Some things never truly leave us. 

4:48 PM. 

The steam from my cup lessens, signalling that my coffee’s on the verge of becoming completely lukewarm and utterly disgusting. 

“That’s it, back inside! We’ll go on a walk at night, I swear.” 

Yoko immediately runs inside, but Aikō takes a bit more convincing. He was your choice, after all. 

The weight settles back down on my shoulders, doubly heavy combined with the February chill of London. Time to sit on that chair again, stare at that blank page again, until I’m forced to crawl into bed with a migraine. Like every night. 

The dogs know they won’t be going on a walk tonight. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. 

5:01 PM.

The blinking cursor bores into my head, branding itself. The blood rushes to my head, the pounding slowly increasing in frequency. 

Thud. 

My mind is devoid of all thoughts. My contract would be up soon, and if I have nothing to show for it, there would be a hefty fee to pay. 

Thud. 

Anything. Please. Just one idea that isn’t already splattered all over BookTok. Anything that will sell. 

Thud. 

Thud. 

The tension builds up in my chest, indicating an oncoming anxiety attack. 

Thud. 

Thud. 

Breathe. 

I lurch forward, fingers grabbing onto the edge of the weathered table, grappling for any sense of safety. Your voice. Your voice in my ear, telling me to breathe. 

Thud. 

Thud. 

Thud. 

No, please. Not a migraine, too. I’m already hearing things, hearing you. I’m losing my damn mind. I have this insatiable urge to laugh. I’m going crazy. Absolutely batshit crazy at 31. 

No. You’re not. Breathe. 

I squeeze my eyes shut, tighter, until I see stars. 

Thud. 

Thud. 

Thud. 

Inaya. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I never should’ve left. It’s my fault.

My eyes frantically locate the calendar on the opposite wall, stark white against the champagne wallpaper. 4th February. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

My chest contracts, and my lungs crush themselves against my heart. I can’t breathe. 

A year ago today. You died a year ago. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

I stopped looking at the calendar on 7th December, our 11 year dating anniversary. It was too painful. How could I forget this? Forget you? 

Sit down, Inaya. I owe you this. 

Owe me what? I want to ask. It hurts too much to cry. 

Thudthudthudthudthud

I shakily sit back down, the chair creaking as it takes all of my weight. You’re right, I want to say. It is your fault. You never should’ve left. 

I know. I know I shouldn’t have. 

“You knew there was ice on the road! You could’ve waited, just a day! I didn’t need that DVD so badly!” my voice cuts across the silence, echoing in the empty room. 

I know. I just wanted to do this for you. 

Your voice is everywhere. Beneath me, behind me, inside me. You died on the way back from Target, clutching a limited edition Taylor Swift DVD that I had been wanting for months. That’s how they found you — head bleeding on the steering wheel, a few hundred metres off the side of the highway. Driven clean through railing, they said, the faceless nameless policemen whose voices I never want to hear again. “We found this in his hands, ma’am,” one of them had said, handing me a bright white DVD case with Taylor’s signature scrawled across the front, your blood stark against the black of the marker. 

I want to throw up. Just as I did last year. 

I won’t justify it, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone. I’m sorry I’m sorry. Let me do this for you. I owe you this. 

“Owe me what?” I ask out loud, aware of how foolish I sound. But your voice. I miss it. I want to keep hearing it. 

Thud. Thud. Thud. 

The pounding slows down, your gravelly voice calming it. 

Let me tell you a story. You type. I narrate. Write your name on it, send it to your editor. Let me pick up the pieces. 

5:17 PM. 

My fingers dance across the keyboard, clacking loudly, as the words flow out of you. Two pages completed already, more progress made in 6 minutes than I made in four months. The third page magically appears, and you keep talking, breathlessly, like if you stop, you may disappear. 

So I keep typing. 

5:59 PM. 

I don’t realize it at first, but then the mindless typing gives way to actually hearing what you’re saying. Narrating, as if committed to memory. Our story. It hurts it hurts it hurts. But I let you. 

11:11 PM. 

Okay. It’s all there. 

“No no please, there must be more!” I hear myself beg. Pathetic. My eyes are blurring, I can’t lose you all over again. 

Read it. You won’t lose me again. As if you read my mind. 

“I’m afraid,” I whisper, “I can’t relive this. I killed you.” 

Read the end. Please. You know the rest, just as well as I do. 

I do. Stories doused in sunlight and happiness, of holding hands and rumpled bedsheets because we both hated making the bed and dog shelters and painting the walls of this stupid stupid stupidly expensive house that I love so much but I want to hate but my bank account does very definitely hate and begging you to slow down when you drove way too fast on the highway and flowers just because and your mismatched socks and the way your hair stuck on your forehead that I itched to brush away and 

Stop. Stop. 

So I stop. 

You’re torturing yourself. It’s torture for me, too. If I had a choice, I’d be there. 

“You did have a choice!” I scream, my head dropping to my chest, held up by my hands. 

Please read it. It’ll make everything before it hurt less. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But someday. Just remember I love you.

I take a deep breath. I can do this. He wants me to. It’s just one page. 

She never asks me for anything. So the one time she does, of course I’m going to get it. Even if it is a Taylor Swift DVD that she can never actually listen to because she already has the tracks downloaded on her phone and we don’t own a DVD player. Who owns a DVD player these days? 

Was that the beginning of the end? No. That’s probably what she thinks, though, but it wasn’t. The beginning of the end was the day I fell in love, watching her mindlessly flip through books at the Barnes and Noble we always met at, eyes lighting up every time she found another one to tick off her never-ending-ever-growing list, brown hair swept over one shoulder, pink glasses propped up on her head, the green thread of my favourite sweater (on her) coming undone at the wrist. 

I couldn’t have stopped myself from falling in love, I was too far gone. So, no, it wasn’t her asking for the latest Taylor’s Version DVD, but the fact that I fell so hopelessly in love. 

The car creaked and whined all the way to Target, stalling every few minutes. I made a mental note to gift her a new car for her birthday in June, maybe a Jeep or an SUV. She’s always loved those. 

Her message popped up on my phone screen: COME BACK. BLIZZARD WARNING. I sighed and flipped my phone around. I was almost there, might as well pick it up now. One wrong decision. Mine. 

Tires skidding on the tarmac, I wrestled with the steering wheel till the car fit between the two white lines, just about. I jumped out, slamming the door behind me, but leaving the key in the ignition. Who in their right mind would come to Target right now? Maybe someone as crazy about Taylor Swift as Inaya. No one, then. 

And I’m right. There’s one clerk in the store, nobody else. Some poor new employee who drew the short end of the stick, whose manager abandoned ship at the first sign of trouble. Not my issue, but I’ll slide him an extra fiver. I glanced out at my car, smoke billowing out the back. 2 more minutes and I’ll be out of here. 

There it is, in all it’s glory: the new 1989 (Taylor’s Version) DVD, advertising 10 never-seen-before Polaroids of Taylor, her signature scrawled across the front. I picked it up and jogged out of the aisle, pulling out my wallet to pay. “Hey, man, bad day today, huh?” I asked, but all I wanted was to go back home to you so I could see your smile. I have no idea what the clerk said in response, in all honesty. 

Before I knew it, I was back in the car, the engine spluttering in the wind. “Come on, you’ve been through worse,” I coaxed the car. Thankfully, it listened, and I pulled out of the parking lot. The nameless radio jockey warned of terrible conditions, imploring me to take the backroads instead of the highway I was already hurtling down. Oops? 

I swear, the highways ended out of nowhere, that tiny path wasn’t there before. Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso reverberated through the car, singing “I walked in and dream-came-trued it for ya,” and I thought of her. I think I knew there was no way out of this. There was snow, there was a tree, there was whiteness, there was Inaya. The car horn kept crying endlessly, yelling for help. And it all turned black. 

It didn’t end there, though. I saw myself, my fingers clutching the DVD. In my head, though, I was holding her hand. I knew you’d blame yourself, but I prayed. In the last few moments, I prayed for her to understand that this was a choice I made, a choice I could never forgive myself for. I prayed for whoever was out there, anybody’s God, to hear me, and to keep me around so I could look after you. 

Those last few moments, she kept me company, soothed me, convinced me it would be okay. One day, I hope she thinks of me in the same way. I didn’t know love till I met her, or, as Taylor Swift would say, “I love you, and that’s all I really know.”

Thank you for being there when it all ended. For you, I would do it all again. 

11:23 PM.

I’m vaguely aware that my cheeks are wet. I don’t know when I started crying, but I did. 

“If this was meant to make me hate myself less, it didn’t work, you know,” I call out to the empty room. “But thank you. For staying back for me.” 

No response. 

“Are you there?”

Silence. 

No no no no. You can’t have left me, not again. 

But he didn’t leave you again. He left his words. His ending. It’s all yours. This time, it’s my voice that speaks to me. Were you ever really here? 

I read everything this time. Beginning to end — desperate for a piece of you to stay here with me. 

1:32 AM. 

My eyes are tinged pink, I can feel it. At some point, Aikō came inside and curled up near my feet. I feel like I’ve run 50 miles; I’m completely drained. I know you aren’t here anymore. The dreaded day is over, but with it, so are you. You’re gone. 

Were you ever really here? Am I insane? 

I know you loved me. I didn’t know how much. The girl you wrote about… was that me? It doesn’t sound like me. I’ve never been that perfect. So fun, so lovable, the cool girl that Nick Dunne craved in Gone Girl. You made me sound like that. 

Or was it all me? 

I will never know the answer to this, will I? What I do know is: it’s time to start living for myself. You left me twice now; you gave everything up for me. I can continue to live: for both of us. 

“Yoko!” I yell. He comes bounding up the stairs, tail wagging in anticipation as Aikō yawns and gets up. “Let’s go for a walk, both of you.” 

Yes, it’s 1 in the morning. But I’m too scared to crawl back into the grave I dug myself. You came for a few hours and disappeared. But I know what you want from me. And what I want from me. It’s time to start living again. 

And so we go on a walk for the first time since you died. 

Maybe I’ll be okay after all. 

2 YEARS LATER. 

Indian Author Inaya’s Book Debuts at No. 1 Spot in The New York Times

Inaya Walia’s new book is taking the world by storm, flying off the shelves faster than they can be printed and restocked. Widowed 3 years ago, Walia’s book follows her and her husband’s love story from his perspective, delving into the nuances of grief, loss, and love. Titled Love Story (Walia’s Version), alluding to Inaya’s deep obsession with Taylor Swift, and a key factor in her husband’s death, Inaya has shot to fame, and rightfully so. In an interview with the New York Times, when asked about what inspired her to write such a story and how she channeled her husband’s point of view, Inaya eloquently stated, “he was there with me while I wrote it. I can’t take complete credit for it, thus the title. This isn’t my story or his story. It’s ours. It’s his voice, too, maybe more so. Writing this book was the first step towards healing: it didn’t fix me immediately, but it allowed me to lift some of the blame off of myself. I hope this helps other women, or men, struggling with their grief.” Quite an interesting answer, but regardless of what Inaya says, we see you for the brilliant author you are! Inaya concluded the interview by thanking her editor Stella, her 2 dogs, and Taylor Swift. Turn to page 16 to read more!