Sour Notes
A prequel to the Songstress and DUO series. The musical love story of Beth and Joel
This prequel is fairly short, contains no sex and pertains to certain dialogue in 'Songstress' and 'DUO Parts 1 & 2', between Beth and Joel. If you've read these stories, first of all, thank you so much! If not, I suggest you back and read these first under my stories. This installment should clarify some talk of Beth ghosting Joel before becoming close friends, and then deeply devoted lovers.
A huge thanks to tool1952 for his fabulous editing as always. I highly recommend him if you're looking for a good editor.
JOEL --
My cell phone pinged indicating a new message coming in. I was busy working on a new song about recovering after a heartbreak. Music had always been my outlet to express my feelings, happy or sad. Normally, I could find a song to cover and pour my heart into it. This time, I couldn't find one that matched my feelings, so I decided to write my own. However, I was struggling.
How do you write about being ghosted by someone you cared deeply about? How can you reconcile or rationalize feelings when you don't know what you did wrong? How can you bring closure to something that remains open, like a wound that just won't heal?
I was writing a standard ABABCAB structure but was struggling with the bridge and last verse. Throwing my pen down in frustration, I decided to check my messages. There were a couple from my Facebook friends and one from my sister. Glancing downward, I saw the fourth message and froze.
It was from
H.t. South
. She was the one who'd ghosted me. It had been six months, six fucking months; six long, agonizing, tormenting months!
Her real name was Beth. We met online through Facebook when we both joined a couple of the same music groups. I was enthralled by her voice, and later by her stunning good looks. Still later, as I got to know her a bit better, she seemed to be a very gracious and kind person as well.
I was lonely. My wife had passed a couple of years before. I hadn't really had the opportunity to meet anyone due to Covid. Meeting Beth, if only online, made my days brighter. We had a common love for music and a mutual respect for each other's singing.
One day, I realized that I had fallen in love with her. I knew from the get-go, however, it was a pipe dream; to think that she could have any romantic inclinations at all towards me. I had to be a good thirty years older than her. What the fuck was I doing falling in love with someone so much younger? And to top it all off, she lived in Charlotte, North Carolina - in the United States, a thousand miles away from where I lived near Toronto, Ontario - in Canada.
I would have been content to just be her friend, to have any part of her I could. We were starting to collaborate on a couple of duets, and I was excited by this prospect. I was very careful not to let my feelings be known.
Then one day she just went SILENT! She wouldn't return my messages. I asked her what I'd done wrong, or if I'd offended her, but no response. Then she blocked me on all her social media accounts. She had very effectively ghosted me.
Never having had this happen to me before, I read up on all I could about ghosting.
It's her problem
, the articles read.
