“I am an absolute mess,” she said aloud. She wondered if she should take some paper and start journaling again, write a letter to try to gain perspective. But instead she picked up Rob’s guitar. He’d taught her the basics in college, and though she didn’t remember much, she did remember the mnemonic for the strings: Elvis Always Digs Good Banana Eating. It was what his teacher had taught him, when he first learned to play. They’d spent a night once trying to come up with other sentences that worked. Everyone Always Dumps Garbage Bags Empty. Ellen Ate Dan’s Great Big Elephants. Every Austinite Does Goddamn Big Erections. Then they’d gotten distracted by Rob’s goddamn big erection and ended up in bed.

Ostensibly, knowing those notes, Emily should be able to make music somehow on the guitar. She plucked one string, moving her fingers down the frets, raising the notes a half step as she went. If she did that, she realized, she could use the guitar like a keyboard, using single notes to stand in for chords. She focused on the A string and started messing around with the song she’d been writing in her head for the last couple of days, changing the words again, trying to make them sound right.

There’s love in your heart

For everyone but me

You row across the water

While I drown in the sea

And when I reach for you

You just don’t see

Because there’s love in your heart

For everyone but me

And they say you’re kind

And they say you’re good

And I know it’s true

But they say the same

About me to you

When you look for me

Have I already flown?

When you want me there

Are you all on your own?

When I slip up

Is that all that you see?

Is there love in your heart

For everyone but me?

And they say I’m kind

And they say I’m good

But I know it isn’t true

Because of how I treated you

There’s love in my heart

That’s waiting there for you

There’s love in my heart

That’s big enough for two

If we reach for each other

I hope you can see

That there’s love there waiting

For you, from me

It would’ve been easier with a keyboard, but Emily was making do with the guitar. She incorporated more of the strings, slowly playing the whole chords she would have used on the piano. She’d started again, pulling the pencil out of her hair so she could write it down, when she heard the door open behind her. Rob was back.

Emily turned to face him. “Morning,” she said. “I hope I didn’t do anything too unforgivable last night.”