Free Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story by Sarah M. Glover Page A

acoustic. The mood of the room shifted with the dimming lights. He stood before the microphone, all riled up from the previous set, his legs still rocking through his tattered jeans. His Doc Martens were tapping a beat, slow and steady. He strummed a few chords and hummed to himself, tuning his guitar.
    He seemed ready now. Emily stood straighter, high on her toes, willing his eyes so filled with fire to find hers in the darkness. Please see me out here. I’m here. I’ve always been here.
    At that precise moment his eyes meet hers. His strumming faltered. Emily immediately pulled herself into the shadows, unable to breathe, unable to move any further. Then he blinked as though shaking himself out of a stupor.
    “Forgive me,” he said, his voice a bit strained, “thought I might be losing my mind there for a moment. But just in case I’m not mad, this next song is about a girl. It’s always about a girl, isn’t it?” He sighed and glanced at the floor. “Well, this one is, because it has always been about her.”
    He began to play.
    When the heart breaks there is no sound. There is only the sensation of threads of hope held taut and cut. Then the ghost pain comes, pain that exists in their absence.
    She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t stand here and watch him sing of his love for another woman; it was too painful, too humiliating. What had she been thinking? What fantasies had she spun to get her to this point? How ridiculous had she become?
    Blindly, she reached for her coat. She had retreated only two steps when she accidently knocked into a group of startled students. One of them, angered at being nearly pushed into a table, shoved back into Emily, sending her flying into a nearby waitress who bore a large tray of drinks. The impact knocked the tray from the waitress’s hands and catapulted its contents clear across the stage. In the uproar, glasses shattered and ice scuttled everywhere. Andrew barely escaped being hit by a beer bottle that crashed near his feet.
    Frantic, Emily tried to help the waitress up but was pulled off balance, causing them both to tumble to the floor at the edge of the stage. Skinning her elbow across the cement, she cursed loudly.
    Despite the mayhem, Andrew’s eyes narrowed as he scoured the darkness. He muttered something unrecognizable, then his eyes met Emily’s. He froze and his face blanched, “You? No. Christ, it is you! Bloody hell.”
    The sharpness of his voice sent a shock down her spine. “What?” she managed to get out, struggling to retrieve her coat from the floor.
    “You’re here. How did you find me?” he demanded more loudly now, ignoring the crew attempting to clean up the debris around him. “How?”
    She took a step backward. She felt all the eyes in that room glued to the specter she must have made standing there, mortified, holding that blackest of blue coats. She felt his glare most of all, demanding an explanation.
    “I didn’t…I’m sorry.”
    “But it’s you,” he insisted, beyond vehement now, pushing aside the microphone stand. “It can’t be you.”
    Panicked, the memory of her own words haunted her—the words she had spoken on that damp park bench the first night she saw him. He had recognized her after all. His personal stalker had crashed his show. How the hell had she descended to these depths?
    Suddenly it all became too much. The riot of her emotions and the crush of the walls closed in on her and choked the air from her lungs. Gasping for breath and desperate for escape, she shoved the onlookers aside and escaped toward the exit. Zoey and Margot shouted her name in confusion.
    She did the only thing she could do—she ran. She had to get out of there. Humiliated, she ran into the black, cold, foggy street. She ran until she couldn’t move anymore, couldn’t drag herself another foot. Ten blocks she ran, fighting back tears. She ran until she collapsed against a vacant alley, her lungs on fire, her body bent over and panting.
    And