The house was small. White adobe with a red clay roof, near Encanto. It was at the end of a private drive with shrubs and skinny trees in the yard. A tall fence to hide them from prying eyes. There were two levels but the upstairs was only small enough for a bedroom and a bathroom. Bobby made the executive decision to use it for storage. He and Jack would both live downstairs, in bedrooms next to each other and sharing a bathroom. Though Bobby didn't say it, Jack knew it was to keep an eye on him. No way he could hide pills or bottles in bathroom they both used. It was sparsely furnished, but what they had looked nice. Silk sheets. A sturdy kitchen table. An abstract painting of a sunset that Bobby had insisted on so that the house didn't look like an empty bachelor pad. And a beautiful dark wood piano Jack had purchased from a music store in Phoenix while wearing a fully zipped hoodie and the only pair of sweatpants he owned. When the cashier stared a little too long into his mirrored sunglasses, trying to discern who he was, he slipped the middle-aged woman a $100 bill and thanked her for being discrete. Never was he one to care who took his photo or what the magazines were saying about him, but this wasn't about him. It was about Ally, and he didn't want her to know where he was just yet. She needed a clean break, and for the media to focus its attention on her success and not his whereabouts.
The brothers settled into a quiet routine. Bobby went to meetings with Willie. Jack went to AA meetings. Jack passed the time around the house relearning how to properly cook and playing old pieces on the new piano. They made plans for a pool to be built. In that way, they built a life again. Though it felt like limbo, it was still living. Time moved forward, not caring whether or not he wanted it to.
Empty drawers in their dresser. Empty rooms in their house. An empty space in her heart. The days themselves felt empty, meaningless. With him, her world had been filled with music. Now the silence reverberated in her bones. There was no one to sing to and no one to sing with. Charlie would nudge her hand with a wet nose as she lay on the couch staring up into space, the way she was now. More often than not she spent her days drifting aimlessly through the rooms – cooking meals, watching reruns of sitcoms or old movies, reading magazines she knew wouldn't mention her. There were stacks of National Geographic, Home and Garden, and Popular Science piled up on the coffee table.
The magazines, like almost everything these days, was brought to her by either Lorenzo or Ramon. Ever since the news broke, she'd been hounded by paparazzi. What parasites. Scores of them were waiting outside the airport for her when she landed back in the States, like a herd of wild animals, all flocking for a photo of her. A single image of Ally, the abandoned superstar. The tragic romantic who was tossed away at the height of her career. A woman in sorrow.
She wasn't about to give them that.
Since that day she'd been hiding out in the house for over a month, waiting for the media frenzy to die down. Aimlessly passing the time alone.
She heard her father's car pull up in the driveway, followed by the sound of a slamming door and his footsteps towards the front door. He paused before entering, and she could hear him talking to someone on the phone through the open window.
"And the bastard ups and disappears… No, nobody knows where he is… You know, I hope he is! He can be in hell for all I care, after what he did to her." The anger was evident in Lorenzo's voice. "I hate that man. I never should've trusted him with Ally."
Hate.
It would've been easier to hate him. To wish he were dead. She was upset with him. Angry with him. Wished that he had never walked into the bar that night. Somehow, she just couldn't bring herself to hate him. She'd always loved him too much for that.
The seasons changed. The air grew colder. Sometimes Jack would wake up in the middle of the night and half-awake reach across the sheets, expecting his hand to land on warm skin. He grasped only air. Rolling over his heart would skip a beat at the realization that his bed was empty, and the briefest hint of worry would wash over him before he startled into consciousness and remembered where he was – and that Ally hadn't been there to begin with. The bed was empty. And every now and then, that moment of epiphany would be enough to bring him to tears.
Her fingers moved slowly over the keys of the piano, like dancers weighed down, moving with heavy and uncertain steps. They found a melody though, a pattern she could feel in her chest.
Ramon poked his head around the corner. "What's that?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said quickly.
He tilted his head, giving her a well-practiced side-eye. "It doesn't sound like nothing." He walked over to the piano, leaning against it and spreading his arms over the top. "I don't see any sheet music so I know that's coming from your heart. Which means you've got a song in your head. So what is it?"
Ally shook her head. "It's nothing, really." It wasn't nothing but it wasn't something she was sure she wanted to share. There were times when the grief and the anger were felt so deeply that she felt she might drown in the depths of her own emotions. The only way she knew to stay afloat was to turn those feelings into music.
Ramon elbowed him. "Come on. Play it for me, please? It's been so long since you wrote anything." His playful teasing suddenly turned earnest, and when she looked at him there was a concern in his eyes that surprised her. "I know you need to get this out."
As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She needed a release from the sorrow. And of course, she did have words. Her fingers found the keys once more and she closed her eyes, trying to forget that Ramon was listening. Falling into the pattern she felt comfortable with, Ally began to sing the words that had already been playing in her mind.
"I don't need eyes to see, I felt you touching me,
High like amphetamine, maybe you're just a dream
That's what it means to crush, now that I'm waking up,
I still feel the blow but at least now I know," she sang. Her voice was soft, testing the limits and the feel of the lyrics, but she imagined belting it at the top of her lungs, screaming until the part of her that felt so shattered didn't hurt anymore.
"And then, um, I think the chorus is something like…" Ally changed up the pattern of the notes. "It wasn't love, it wasn't love. It was a perfect illusion." She shrugged, letting her hands fall away from the piano. "I don't really know where it goes from there."
Ramon was grinning at her. "What is it?" she asked, shying away from his eager gaze.
"It's just – you said there's a chorus. So it's not nothing. You're writing a song. An actual song."
"I guess," she said. But it had been a while, and she knew it. Music had always been her first love. It was the only way she knew how to really express herself. But somewhere along the way it had become their thing, and after the divorce she had stayed away from it. Then the music had started coming back to her. Bits and pieces of a song in her mind until she just couldn't resist. And for the first time in almost a year, music felt like hers again.
Ramon let out a victorious whoop, playfully punching her shoulder. "That's my girl! She's back, baby!"
Bobby thought he was crazy when he proposed the idea. "A bar? Are you outta your fuckin' mind?"
"Hear me out," Jack said. "It's the best space for musicians to perform. It just is – because people will come for the drinks and the chance to dance and stay for the sound they fall in love with. You can't have live music at a restaurant like that. People are too busy thinking about whatever shit they're eating to really listen. I want the music to be heard, what they're saying needs to be heard."
"You want to be around alcohol all the time? You're nowhere near ready for that."
"I'm going to meetings every damn week, what more do you want?" Jack asked. "I know myself. And I know that in the real world there's gonna be alcohol. There's gonna be drugs. I need to know that I'm strong enough to handle being around it without going fucking crazy."
It took weeks of arguing, but finally Bobby gave in. A bar was to be made. Jack threw himself into the work of renovating the space he purchased. Laboring to restore the house – hammering nails, painting walls, planning the pool – had been strangely soothing. Absent from music, he needed some way to get all of his energy out, and building was still a form of creating. He could still make something that hadn't existed without him. He could still be needed in this world. Do something good for once.
After planning and working and approval and zoning, this amorphous idea came into existence. Jack would own the place, book the acts, and take care of the place. They'd have a small staff for a small bar – he wanted something cozy and intimate. It took a lot of work to find and interview people who weren't just drawn the possibility of working for disgraced superstar Jackson Maine.
In the end, he hired only three. Kashvi, a middle-aged mother and classically trained chef who spoke fluent Hindi would be in charge of creating appetizers and ideas for new drinks including, she promised him, plenty of non-alcoholic options. Whitney was a recent graduate of Howard University who'd moved back home to Arizona to take a gap year before grad school. Her gifts in math and music meant that when she wasn't bartending, she could help Jack with bookings and accounting. And Mateo, whose father still lived across the border in Mexico, was a former addiction counselor who was in school to get in his master's degree in psychology – if any of them suspected a patron was self-medicating, Mateo would sit them down to talk. The last thing Jack wanted was for this to become a place where people could fall into the same dark spiral he had.
In total, it had taken nine months to prepare for the opening of this small dream of his. It felt a little like the birth of a child, this new beginning. He sure hoped he wouldn't fuck it up.
It was to be called The Deep End. A place one could metaphorically dive in to the music scene and into new possibilities. And a place that was far from the shallow, far from where his heart still wandered in the moments of quiet.
On the day before opening, he had a neon sign installed in the back corner. Mateo poked his head out from behind the bar. "What's that?" he asked.
"Just a finishing touch," Jack answered, as the crew installing it packed up their things.
The bartender peered at it, trying to make sense of it. "What does it mean?"
"None of your fuckin' business," Jack replied, though his voice carried no trace of meanness. Mateo just laughed, and Jack smiled, flipping a switch on the wall so that the sign bathed the room in a soft red-pink glow.
"La vie en rose," Mateo read. "Hm. Never would've pegged you as an Edith Piaf fan."
Jack said nothing. He just stood staring up at its soft light, wondering if she still turned the original one on sometimes.
She stopped searching for his name on the internet. Muted any words related to him on her social media. No longer scanned for his face on magazine racks at the store. Ally heard rumors of course. Conversations passed in streets and at events. Whisper of Arizona and isolation. Going off the grid.
Good for him. Wherever he was, it wasn't here. It wasn't with her. And she could be okay with that. He'd been her whole world. But she had built one for herself, too, all on her own. A world with her words and her music. People who wanted to hear her. That could be enough. That could be a kind of love she could give instead, offering so freely so much of herself.
But every now and then, an old song of his would come on over the radio. A low, crooning voice. She would always have to leave the room, before something deep in her heart tried to whisper that once she had loved him, and it hadn't been enough.
"What do you think happened between them?" Whitney asked Mateo.
"Don't know, don't care," he answered, not looking up from the glass he was polishing.
Whitney leaned closer across the bar as she wiped it down. "Come on, you're not even a little bit curious?"
"All I know, Mateo replied, "is that the man pays my salary. And that's all that matters to me."
"You're no fun," she sighed. "I just wonder sometimes. I mean – they seemed so happy. She clearly loved him. And everyone thought he loved her, too. I mean the way he looked at her in all those videos of his tour? I guess I just wonder if he ever thinks about her."
Jack closed his office door quietly, blocking out the rest of their conversation. Did he think about her? The ninth step was to make amends. He'd done it with just about every fucking person in his life. Made sincere amends with his band, his manger, with Noodles and his family. Even with Bobby, in a two-hour long conversation that brought them both to tears that they never spoke of again. Not because it was bad to be that emotionally vulnerable with each other, but simply because they weren't sure how to.
But Ally? He was pretty sure he'd written her twenty-letters at this point. Even a goddamn song or two. All of which he'd never send. Never play. Because this was his amends. This was his penance. Freeing her of him and all his baggage. Letting her go. Disappearing from view so that she could shine.
It was the only way he could still love her – by leaving her alone.
At the time, she hadn't been sure she would survive that year. Now here she was, a year and a half out from the tragedy that could have defined her career and things were finally looking up. Ramon came to meet her at the studio that afternoon.
He sauntered in with two coffees in hand, pretending to be more annoyed than she knew he really was. "Alright girl, this had better be good because I cancelled lunch plans with Lukas and he is not thrilled about it."
Ally laughed, stepping away from the piano she'd been working at. "Your boyfriend will get over it. And I promise, it's something pretty good."
Ramon rolled his wrists and raised his eyebrows, gesturing for her to get on with it.
"You know those songs I've been writing? Well the label actually likes them. I mean, really likes them." She struggled to keep the glee out of her voice. "And they might want me to make a new album!"
Ramon broke into a grin. "That's great! I mean, it maybe could've waited until after lunch but I am so excited for y-"
Ally held up a finger. "I'm not done yet. If I'm going to do this right, I'm going to need a manger. After what happened with Rez, I talked Interscope into giving me a little leeway in choosing my new one." She looked at Ramon, her best friend, the person who had never once doubted her ability to be one of the few who made it. "I want you to be my manager."
His jaw dropped. "I'm sorry, what? You said manager?"
"Well, yeah, I mean I was just thinking," she said. "We get along great. You've always been the person who fought for me to perform even when I was afraid to. And you managed gigs at Bleu Bleu so it's not like you have no experience. I want to work with someone I trust, and you're my best friend in the whole world. There's nobody I trust more. You don't have to say yes," she added quickly. "But if you want to – the job is yours."
Ramon covered his face with his hands, his eyes wide. After a few breaths he asked, "What's the salary look like?"
Ally pulled a folded up contract out of her back jeans pocket and handed it to him. It had all the details the label demanded. Hours, benefits, duties, payment. Ramon's eyes quickly scanned it, and he gasped when he landed on a line about halfway through.
"This number – this is starting salary?" Ally nodded and Ramon threw his arms around her. "Oh my god! Yes! Yes! I mean I was in from the moment you asked but holy shit! Yes!"
Ally laughed, hugging him back, the two of them giggling and dancing arm in arm around the recording studio. It felt good to feel this happy again.
"I'm going to make this the best album the world has ever seen, I swear. We have so much work to do," Ramon said. "But first thing's first. This-" he grabbed a strand of her long orange hair "- has got to go. No more day-glo girl. We're bringing back the O.G. Ally, back and better than before."
"Better?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm kind of a hot mess." There had been moments of good, of course. Time with her father. Running around with Charlie. Taking small gigs at festivals and televised events. Interviews here and there where the interviewer was notified ahead of time to keep questions about Jackson Maine to minimum. But she was still the same drifting popstar she was a few months ago. Trying to find her footing in a world she had never navigated without someone else by her side.
Ramon squeezed her hand. "Sweetheart, don't you know? Any beautiful star is just a hot mess of gasses and stuff all swirled together."
"I don't know what your astrophysicist boyfriend has told you," Ally teased, " but I've read enough issues of Popular Science to know that's not exactly how it works."
He shrugged. "I'll be honest we don't always do a lot of talking when we're together. But I know enough to know that we're all made of literal stardust. And you are no exception. So let's get you shining again."
"And speaking of rising stars, Ryan, let's talk about SUPERNOVA. Now, I'm sure all of you listeners out there are talking about this album as well, because it has been at the top of the charts from the day it was released. What's your take on Ally's sophomore album?"
"Well Kelly, I don't know what I can possibly say that hasn't been said already. It's incredible. Ally's self-titled debut album proved she was a force in the pop world but this is truly something else. It's so raw and so real, and to be honest this album moved me in a way I don't think any other album has before."
"That's what so many critics and fans are saying. It's so clear that this album comes from a place of just, like, pain and loss, but it's so beautiful."
"It's an understatement to say Ally has been through a lot in the last three years. I mean, who could forget the moment she won Best New Artist at the Grammys only to be completely mortified when her then-husband Jackson Maine stumbled onto the stage completely wasted?"
"Oh god and when he pissed himself onstage! And she had to try to cover him with her dress. God my heart just went out to her watching that."
"She was slammed by a lot of people for staying with him, while others said she was being a supportive partner to someone who clearly had a problem. Either way, it made major tabloid headlines. Then, Maine had his infamous suicide attempt, which landed him in rehab for a second time. While he was there, Ally finished up her tour-"
"Where she debuted "I'll Never Love Again" as a tribute to Maine, but when she returned, he filed for divorce!"
"Oh man, I remember seeing it on Twitter and I was just so shocked."
"I remember going out with my girlfriends that night and we were all talking about it, and – well, I don't think I can repeat the words that were said about him on air."
"The last show of her tour, she sang that song one last time, and the performance went viral – you know if you watch it, you can see her just sobbing through it, but she hardly misses a note."
"It just goes to show how talented she is, Ryan. And after two years of relative silence, other than festival appearances and a few collaborations, Ally made a triumphant return when she released the first single from the new album, "Perfect Illusion." If there was any doubt what her new album would be about, that song made it very clear."
"And two more singles were released ahead of the album, "In Too Deep," and "Leap of Faith," all of which are still in the Top 40. Now the full album is out, and three more singles have been released. And yesterday we learned that Ally was nominated for eight Grammies for this album."
"Eight?"
"Eight Grammies, eight G's – including Album of the Year and Song of the Year. I mean she truly has pulled herself off the ground and risen as an even bigger star than before. It's just incredible. So Kelly, what's your favorite song from SUPERNOVA?"
"You know I have to say "Ugly." I now that sounds pretty weird, but it's just so intimate and vulnerable, and I think so many women out there can relate to it. What about you?"
"For me, it's gotta be "Private Party." It's a total banger, and the lyrics are like, so serious, but you can really dance to it. Well, listen, we could talk all day about this album, but I think the music really speaks for itself. So let's get straight to it – here's the latest single from SUPERNOVA, here on Phoenix's top station, Kiss 104.7 – it's "Nova" by Ally."
Before the song could come on, he reached over and turned the radio off.
