Oliver sat alone at the piano nursing a snifter of scotch. He wore his nicest suit, a black Italian three-button. His tie hung loose around his neck. He knew that his attire had gone out of style long ago. His face was worn, with bags under his eyes that made him look like he had spent far over forty years alive.

The overheads in the penthouse were off. The only source of light in the room was from outside the large floor-to-ceiling windows to the right of the piano. This late at night and the rain pouring as hard as it was, there was no moonlight either. The shadowy gleam came from billboards, advertisements, and parties happening across the New York skyline. The technicolor aura reflected off the raindrops on the glass and created an odd illumination inside his apartment.

Oliver’s glass was empty again. It was his fifth round of Pappy. He only broke out the bottle for special occasions. This qualified. He put the glass on top of the piano and stared out the windows. With nothing in his hands, he placed them on the keys. His dirty fingers darkened the ivory. No matter how many times he’d washed them the earth stuck to him, refusing to let go.

From this height, he could view all of Times Square and all the little people milling about, despite the rain. He turned away from the glass and faced the piano, a Steinway 1909, his prized possession. Rosaline had given it to him as a wedding gift. It was the most expensive thing he owned for a significant amount of time.

His fingers moved without him noticing. They drifted across the keys, playing the first song he ever had on the instrument. He closed his eyes, remembering the keystrokes.

It was a sad tune, melodic and slow, the type that Oliver knew Rosaline liked. He spent a year writing it and never expected to play it on a piano this beautiful. It felt like a paltry gift compared with the wealth that she had spent. He knew that Rosaline didn’t care; she wanted to listen to his work. She knew he never had money, yet she loved him anyways. She heard none of it when her dad got on him about not being a suitable match for the family. He couldn’t help but feel a twang of guilt for bringing nothing but a song to celebrate their marriage.

When he had finished playing, she ran and kissed him. Ros was of average height and had short black hair. She had bright green eyes and a small face, usually in a resting scowl, but not today. When she released him from her grasp, he’d said she wasn’t supposed to do that until the ceremony, and she laughed. He loved her laugh; she didn’t do it often. Whenever he could squeeze one out of her, it always got him to smile. It was uncontrolled and wild. As lame a joke as it was, when she found something funny, there was no stopping her outburst. She was a driven and serious lawyer, whose tongue was as sharp as the daggers she could shoot from her glare. If you could get her to be vulnerable, she was a goofy ball of energy. When she’d stopped giggling, she told him it was her favorite piece yet.

That was the first thing that Oliver composed for her. He notated it and kept it in a folder labeled Ode to Rosaline.

His thoughts traveled to her thirtieth birthday and to the fight they had the night before. It was a stupid argument about how he didn’t want her father at the birthday party. He’d been childish and said that he didn’t want to be around someone who thought that little of him. He regretted saying what he did as soon as he said it. Rosaline wasn’t happy with that response. It was her dad; she loved the man no matter what and spent the night in the guest room while he sat alone in their bed. Furious, he thought about how much of a mess he’d made of the situation. To fix it, he wrote a melody and played it for her the next morning. It was a raucous song. The notes fought each other, dueling for dominance. Combative chords struggled against one another to come out on top. But through their fighting, they created an inadvertent harmony, slowing until they came to work in synchrony. They talked out the fight afterwards. Oliver apologized for making her choose between him and the man who raised her, and Ros said that she would talk to him about giving Oliver grief. She would call it cheating whenever he would play to her to soothe her anger, but it always worked.

As he finished, another song came to his memory. He didn’t want to remember it, but his fingers had a mind of their own. They played the melody that he’d written when she’d gotten her diagnosis.

She’d sat on the couch for days, numb to the world. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get her to come back to reality. Ros had always dissociated in the past, whenever she was in pain or felt blue, but this was different. She refused to eat and slept in the living room. He’d sit out there with her. He called out of work, moved the piano out of the study, and he played.

By the time he had written his song, she had come back to the world. As she listened to him tweak the finishing touches, she told him what happened. Panic set in. He wanted to scream, to shake her, to tell her it wasn’t possible. He wanted to hurt whoever had given her the diagnosis. But he didn’t. Instead, he held it in; he needed to be strong for her. He wrapped Ros in his arms and squeezed tight; the pressure both intended to comfort her and to plead for her not to leave. They lay for hours, holding each other.

The next few months had been harrowing. Trips to and from the doctor, weekly at first, later daily. There were arguments, debates, fights, but they persevered. Whenever she felt like giving up, Oliver would push her harder to keep going. He’d write her more and more arrangements, to give her something to smile over.

But things didn’t get better. He remembered a song he had gotten halfway through writing when she collapsed in the kitchen. He’d rushed her to the emergency room as fast as he could. The doctors told him she was lucky that he was there. They talked about options. They said a great many words when they could have said, “There’s nothing to be done.”

His mind wandered again, to the last good day that she had in the hospital. His fingers played a different song; one Oliver had composed for her while she was sick. It was a companion piece to Ode to Rosaline. It was somber, which she preferred it. He had recorded it on his phone and played it for her. When it was done, she clapped as enthusiastically as her frailty would allow.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. She went on to say more, but a coughing fit cut her words short. While she recomposed herself, he explained he was going to put all his songs together and have them produced in a collection.

“Good, I’ve always wanted you to put your work out. It’s selfish to hoard them all to yourself,” she said. She paused for a moment.

“Dear, can you promise me something?” she asked. He agreed and would do whatever she needed.

“When I’m gone, write what you want to hear,” she said. “I know the type of music you like, and you’ve written none of it. You’ve only ever composed songs I’d like. It’s sweet of you. But soon I won’t be here to listen.”

He broke eye contact, his eyes welling with tears.

“Write a new arrangement, this time for you,” she said, grabbing hold of his hand and pulling it towards her chest. “You will always have the songs that you’ve written before; those won’t go away if you write something new. But my song has already been written; you’ve done it beautifully. Now it’s time for you to write yours.”

“I don’t want to,” he said, head bowed.

“But you must,” she said, squeezing his hand as she did.

He buried her a week later. The funeral was long; friends and family came from all over to pay their respects. It didn’t matter. Truth was, he didn’t care that the world had lost her; he only cared that he had. Her dad came to him after the ceremony. He expected the old man, who had given him hell for not being good enough for his daughter, to give him one last disparaging comment. Instead, he said nothing and hugged him. When he let go, he patted Oliver on the shoulder and walked away.

When he got home, he grabbed the bottle and sat at the piano, staring out into the rain.

He finished playing the last song he wrote for her, letting the final note ring through the apartment. He took his hands off the ivories. It was excruciating, the idea of being done. He could have written more, could have improved her time. His fingers moved back to the keys ready to play more. He thought of what that meant, of what he liked, what composition would be his, the notes that represented him. The truth is, he didn’t know. He’d spent so much time devoted to making her happy. That’s what made him happy.

He stopped playing. He turned back out the window at the colorful lights and all the people. Two in the morning, and there were people walking around, side by side. Each with a life and a story. Hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of songs to be written.

It hit him; he had only written her side of the story. Now it was time to write his. He thought of how she made him feel, not how she felt. He brought his hands to the keys and played. The story of their life—how bright it burned for the short time they had. The notes were joyful, bouncy, caring. It was happy, and when it wasn’t, it was real. This wasn’t what she had in mind, but his story wouldn’t be complete without her part in it. Though her time was up, she would always be a piece of his life. He played until the sun rose and he kept playing.

Editor: Michelle Naragon