Hallelujah
Gail had played piano growing up. It was a compulsory activity like the majority of things she did outside of her bedroom while others her age were coming into their own. While they explored, and laughed, and kissed, Gail resisted and grew rigid and bitter. She refused anything positive that may have come as the result of her mother's mandatory exercises. Piano was no different. Although Gail was quite a gifted piano player, she despised it. When she played, all she could hear was her mother. The high notes filled the rafters of the room with her mother's fake laugh, the one pleading with everyone to notice her at every gala and charity event she attended. The low notes slid along the floor carrying the serious tone of her mothers unabashed bragging or perhaps of the "inspiring" criticism meant to encourage Gail to achieve Elaine's loft expectations. Now, the feeling of the ivory under fingers summoned up the repulsion that had wedged itself solidly between her gut and her heart.
But, still, Gail loved music. The hours Gail spent in her bedroom away from the instigatory words of her mother were spent listening to it. She listened to it to feel all the things she thought she should be feeling through her own experiences. She opened herself up and invited the words in to break her apart and build her back up. She sang along, quietly, feeling the notes ring in her chest and throat when she hit them just right. It was emotionally freeing. She loved it and she was good at it, and, more importantly, it was something that was just hers.
And that's how it remained . . . hers. Years passed. Lovers came and went, and then came and went again. No one cared enough to really try to get to know her. Or maybe it was that she didn't care enough about anyone else to open up and let them in. All those days and nights of living through the music were still the most living and feeling she had ever done. So she kept the music locked away, aside from the occasional singing along with the radio or drunken karaoke escapade.
Until Holly.
Gail's fingers walked slowly over the strings of the guitar, letting each note ring in the empty room that was Holly's bedroom. Holly loved to play guitar. Like, she really just loved it in a way that Gail recognized. Holly was a kindred spirit. She fingered the strings with the same reverence with which she caressed Gail. It wasn't uncommon for the acts of veneration to actually occur in succession. They spent several evenings in Holly's living room, naked or wrapped in blankets with Holly playing and Gail singing, over-dramatically emoting and laughing, or legitimately feeling with tear filled eyes over the beauty of the songs.
Holly told Gail that she had to learn. It was part of her lesbian heritage.
"Be all you can be, Gail." Holly smirked and strummed a few measures of Closer to Fine.
So here Gail was in this empty room, cradling an acoustic guitar. Her fingers moved on the strings in the familiar pattern of their favorite song. She let those motions be ghosts of Holly's fingers on her skin. She let the notes be Holly's breath on her skin. As she sang, she let the words remind her that she would never feel those things again. She would never love or be loved like that again.
Holly was gone. She left today. Gail had let her go.
With Holly, Gail was as whole as she could ever be, the cost of which was to become more broken than she ever thought possible. In the end, it was Holly's beloved science which destroyed any hopes of divinity their love may have inspired in Gail. The Theory of Relativity and Newton's Third Law of Motion claimed victory in this battle. Love was a cruel fucking joke. Gail was worse off for having loved Holly. She would never be okay again. She wondered if she knew she could feel this bad, if she still would have allowed herself to love in the first place. Then again, she wasn't even sure she "allowed" herself this time. Holly was the unstoppable force. A beautiful gust of brown-eyed devastation.
Now Gail truly knew what it was like to be broken in a way songs only hinted at. She used to be in awe at the depths of anguish songs could express. She thought she could feel the lives shatter in those words. She could feel the reasons for living carried away in the measures of woven notes. But the feelings the music inspired, before this song, this farewell ballad to Holly, and to Happy Gail, were only whispers of misery.
As she sang the final "Hallelujah" she let go, let the pieces fall in this empty room where they used to make beautiful music together. Now, there was no music left for her. No song that wouldn't be a reminder of Holly. No song that wouldn't be a reminder that it would have been better to never had loved at all.