IT WAS THE DAY of the concert. Everything was ready. I looked the part. I felt the part. I would speed up time if I could, to get to tonight more quickly. I’d found a way to help me move forward at last. A way to replace a loss with a gain.
The musician. It was luck that he’d come along at precisely the right time. It was fate that, after tonight, my Eleanor pieces would finally start to fit together.
How exquisite the anticipation – a pain, a churning pain inside me. I did not know how to assuage it – I felt, instinctively, that vodka would not work. I would simply have to bear it until we met, and that was the nature of this peculiar, blissful burden. Only a little longer to wait now, a matter of hours. Tonight, I was going to meet the man whose love would change my life.
I was ready to rise from the ashes and be reborn.
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