I spend the next half hour pretending I’m not falling apart.
It’s not hard.
Years in the industry trained me for this—step into a room, slide on a mask, let the lights bounce off something hard and shiny while the real parts of you hide where no camera can reach.
So I smile when someone compliments my last album, laugh when an old radio DJ misquotes my own lyrics back at me, nod graciously when a banker’s wife says, “You look so much…healthier than those tabloid photos from a few years ago.”
I even managed to sing a line or two when the director corners me near the stage, insisting on a “little something for the donors.” Just a verse, unamplified, the quartet picking up behind me like they’ve been waiting all night.
I do it all with my heart sitting like broken glass in my chest.
I d
