It's Never Just Goodbye // Ed Sheeran

Peroxide

Ed

I poured my aching heart into a pop song. I couldn't get the hang of poetry. - Arctic Monkeys. 

Three words: what the fuck? I held the papers in my shaking hands as I whispered those words over and over again. The words that cascaded around my blurry, wet eyes were written in black and smeared by her own tears.

I played around in my head how long it’s been since I’ve seen her – how long she must have been wallowing and writing while I was partying and not caring. I knew she was starting an album, I did, and I started to wonder if I was the main topic she thought of when spitting out lyrics during recording.

It had to have been over a month since I had seen her last. Finding a place to stay while lost in work in different states and countries. Writing, just as she had been – working with Pharrell. Previewing Taylor’s new album. Ellie. My time was filled so I wouldn’t have to think about her, so I could be busy and preoccupied and life could slip by me and I wouldn’t feel like the guilty guy I actually was.

“Fine.” I said. The things I’ve been avoiding had come back to me with just one slam and I couldn’t breathe. Everything I was scared of hearing her say was written out in front of me; in her lovely, squiggly handwriting that scrawled the hopeless truth of how she actually felt about me.

I knew she felt those things, I did, but I never wanted to hear it. Where I left her, at her mum’s place, is how I wanted it to be. Not her popping back up in words and screaming at me through reckless pages of things that stung just a bit more every time I read it – which now was about four times.

Alice had told me how she felt after I hurt her – or she hurt me – but it was never this intense.

I dial up Stuart and he answers, slightly annoyed, “You were later than expected, Ed.” He tells me. I knew he was just saying that so I would respect time more because I wasn’t late. They had me sitting in a spare room with a bottle of water while someone talked on the radio before me.

“I’m sick of her shit.” I say and he sighs. “Nina won’t let up. She’s great, okay? She’s fucking great and when she tells me I suck, I must really suck.”

“Ed, what is this about?”

“She sent me a letter! Directly to my flat, Stuart! It was raw and emotional and it tore me up!”

“What did it say?”

“Just a ton of shit about how much I suck! Was I really that much of an asshole? Jeez…”

“Listen, just get over it. She liked you and you screwed it up, so she was bound to write something. She’s obviously over it after that album.”

I choke on air as he says that. Of course she was writing a fucking album. “God, I can’t even wonder what she’s put on there.” I groan, rub my aching temple. The lights were too bright. I prayed that they were dimmer out there and that the hosts couldn’t hear me right now. “When does that come out? Do you know? Have you heard anything?”

“Ed, it’s already out.”

“What?”

“It’s on the shelves everywhere in the UK, I swear. She’s everywhere.”

“Since fucking when?”

“Last week or something.”

“And how did I not know she was recording one?!” I yell. “We just broke up! She would have fucking told me she was recording!”

“Were you ever that interested in her life?” I hung up on him and stood up. My stomach was sick from thinking about her. I was a wreck and it was my own fault.