Amos couldn't believe his eyes when he joined Cassandra and Carlos for lunch, and she slid him Carmela's address. Cassandra's patient, a retired police offer who did private investigations, had managed to find the address by tracking backward to who originally sold the guitar. As it turned out, it went through a few different owners before falling into Amos's hands, but the original was Rodrigo.

Which raised so many questions. One of them being how the hell Carmela's journal ended up in his guitar case!

According to records and former employees of Eargasm Music Store, Rodrigo needed money and fast, so he sold several instruments that day, which made Amos even more curious. Why did he need money so quickly?

The answers weren't far as Amos sat in his truck, the engine idling while staring at the olive green bungalow with its ivory trim and glossy black door. Just a few paces across the flagstone path, and he would be face to face with Carmela. Yet, he remained there, his palms sweating and his stomach twisting.

His phone chimed, so he glanced down and read the message.

Carlos: Stop being a chicken shit and knock on the door!

Amos: Are you spying on me?

Carlos: No. I just know you. Now stop being a pussy and knock!

"Fine!" Amos said to himself. "I'll go."

Shutting off the engine, he blew a long breath and rubbed his palms against his knees. Then, before any more doubts settled in, he opened the truck's door with a squeak and stepped out.

The late Sunday afternoon breeze carried a scent of someone barbecuing nearby, and his stomach gurgled as he hiked onto the flagstone. The entire way, his heart rattled, and he kept swallowing the surge of saliva filling his mouth from anxiety. Finally, he raised his fist and rapped on the glossy black door, his stomach churning and the sudden urge to pee pushing on his bladder.

Birds chirped in a Magnolia tree, and two small dogs barked in the neighbor's front window, but Carmela's home was silent. He was about to give up until there was the tap of shoes approaching and the clink of locks unbolting.

When the door opened, he sucked in a breath, his eyes creasing with a smile forming on his lips. "Carmela. It's you..."

There, in front of him, was the woman whose life he'd come to know intimately—the woman who now owned a piece of him and left a tattoo on his heart. She was even more beautiful than he imagined in her red, thigh-length, floral dress and dark curls cascading down her chest. Her skin glowed like honey catching sunlight before dissolving into tea, and he wanted to wrap her in his arms.

"No." She crooked her brows and pointed to her chest. "Emmy."

"Em—" Amos glanced at the GPS on his phone, then looked back up to read the numbers on the home. "I'm sorry. The person I'm looking for must have moved."

"Wait," she said as he turned to leave. "Do I know you?"

"No." He shook his head and stepped back. "I've got the wrong house."

"But wait, my mother is inside."

"Your mother?"

"Yes, Carmela. She's who you're looking for, right?"

"Your moth—" he repeated, the words catching on his tongue. "You're her... She's your..." He rubbed his forehead, his brows creasing as he struggled to form thoughts. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven. How old are you?"

"Twen-twenty-eight," he stammered and lost his footing on the short flagstone steps with his arms flailing at his sides.

"Whoa, easy! You alright?" Emmy rushed forward.

"Yes, fine. Just, uh..." His gaze darted to the doorway, where a shadow shifted.

"Emmy, what's going on out here?" 

"Everything is fine, mom. It's just this man—he's looking for you."

"Who?"

Amos froze, yet his heart drummed wildly as he set his eyes upon Carmela, the real Carmela, for the first time. She was just as beautiful as Emmy but with slight creases at the corners of her curious eyes. Scattered strands of grey bordered sharp cheekbones, while the rest of her dark hair sat in a messy bun. Her brows crinkled as she took Amos in, her eyes searching his as if trying to figure out where she knew him from, but then her gaze landed on the guitar case in his white-knuckled grip.

"Is that..." she gasped, her hand reaching out before retracting and going to her mouth. "Your father's SG!"

"The one he pawned twenty years ago?" Emmy asked.

"There's a cream-colored SG Gibson in there, right?" Carmela pointed, her voice rising a few octaves. "With a Rosewood neck?"

"Yes." Amos fumbled with the buckles on the case.

"Come inside! Open it in here." Carmela disappeared into the house.

"You heard her." Emmy nodded towards the door. "After you."

Blowing out a breath, he stepped inside, and his eyes rolled over the small foyer where a giant painting of a broken guitar faced him—it was the SG Gibson held together by the strings as if one snip would cause it to crumble. Emmy nudged his back with her finger, and he continued into the living room, where Carmela cleared the rustic coffee table, hurling magazines and coasters onto the floor.

"Here, right here!"

Setting the guitar case down, he pressed the lock release buttons, the clack-clack sending his heart into a tizzy like the day he purchased the Gibson. Except this time, he stared at Carmela as she brought her hands to her face, a gasp escaping her lungs while her eyes swelled with tears.

"I can't believe it." She extended her hand to Emmy, her fingers flexing. "Look, my love."

"It's beautiful." 

"I never thought I'd see this again. Out of all of his guitars, this was your father's favorite because I bought it for him! How did you find it?" Carmela glanced up, then shook her head with a laugh. "I'm so sorry. I never asked your name."

"Amos Castillo."

"I'm Carmela, and this is my daughter, Emmy."

"Yes, I know."

"Right." She smiled. "So, where did you find this thing?"

"A pawn shop."

"A pawn shop!" Carmela chuckled. "How funny." She caressed the guitar's surface. "I wonder how many hands this baby has passed through over the years."

"But..." Emmy pursed her lips. "How did you find us? And why did you bring it here?"

"Your journal."

"My journal?" Carmela quirked her brows.

"Yes, I found it inside the lining of the guitar case." Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out the folded journal and presented it. "See?"

"Oh, my god." Carmela snatched it. "Did you read it!"

"Yes..."

"And then what? You googled me!" She stepped back, her arm jutting out in front of Emmy protectively.

"No, ma'am."

"Then how!"

"I... I had some help from a private investigator."

"What the hell for, you creep!"

"Wait, wait." Amos held up his hands. "I came here to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"Yes. Reading your journal—how you struggled with your husband." Amos darted his gaze to Emmy and then back to Carmela. "It made me realize I was in a toxic relationship too. It made me ask myself if I was happy, and the truth is, I haven't been happy for years. So, I ended things with her, and it's one of the best decisions I've made as an adult."

"I see..."

"Because of you, I realized I deserve more. I deserve someone who appreciates me and takes me for who I am, flaws and all. Know what I mean?"

"I do." Carmela nodded, the creases between her brows relaxing, and she eased down onto the couch. "Sit. Please."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Stop calling me, ma'am." She scowled. "I'm forty-seven, not seventy-seven."

"Yes, ma—" Amos began to say but cut himself short. "Sorry. Respectful habit."

"It's fine. Emmy why don't you fix our guest some lemonade?"

"Sure," Emmy replied, then narrowed her eyes at Amos. "Just so you know, the kitchen is only a few feet away and full of sharp knives. So don't get any crazy ideas."

Turning on her heels, she spun away and headed for the kitchen, leaving Amos alone with Carmela. Deep golden rays seeped through the windows, revealing the navy hue of the dark suede couches and the triangle patterns on the white area rug at their feet. He glanced around, absorbing that he was sitting in her home, where photos of memories lined the mantle over the brick fireplace. 

In one image, an elderly couple smiled as they held a baby. In another, that same couple played on the beach with a small child. A few photos over, Amos spotted Carmela in a candid shot with two women who resembled her. The three of them laughed around a backyard fire pit, with the little girl from the beach sitting on Carmela's lap. Judging by the captured memories, Carmela had rekindled her relationship with her family, and it sent a ripple of warmth through Amos, which spread into a smile. 

"So," Carmela said, breaking the silence. "I don't think you came here just to thank me."

"You're right. And to tell you the truth, I had no intention of looking for you at all, but when I got to the last journal entry, for some reason, it left me feeling lost. Here I had just broken off a five-year relationship, and I was rooting for you to leave Rodrigo and run off with Ben, but—"

"I never finished writing," Carmela finished the sentence.

"Yes!"

"And you want answers. Closure."

"Yes. As strange as that sounds, yes."

Carmela's gaze shifted to the guitar, and her shoulders drooped on an exhale. "It was so long ago. Where do I even start?"

"How about what happened after the tour. Why did Ben say goodbye to you?"

Carmela bit down on her lips, her eyes drifting towards the kitchen. "Emmy doesn't really know about that time in my life or Ben. She knows how her father and I met and the tour, but not the gritty details."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Then forget it. You don't have to tell me. I don't want to cause any harm to your family."

"It's fine." She shook her head, and her eyes took on a somber look, her brows creasing. "It's been so long since I wrote that journal. It was the only way I could talk about Ben without actually talking to anyone about him. I used to keep the journal hidden in the guitar case because Rodrigo stopped using it, so I thought it was safe there, but then one day I came home, and he sold a bunch of his stuff and said he was going to rehab, and this time he was going to take it seriously. Emmy was seven years old at the time."

"Wait, so you stayed with Rodrigo? Are you still together?"

"No." She shook her head. "By that point, we had been divorced for three years but co-parenting Emmy. He became homeless for a few months, so I allowed him to stay here."

"So, he's Emmy's father."

"Yes." Carmela nodded.

"And Ben?"

"Ben. Where do I begin with him?" she sighed. "When the tour ended, I packed a bag and left Rodrigo in the middle of the night. I stayed with Ben in his apartment, where we shared the cooking and cleaning, and spent nights making love or preparing to move to Seattle. But then I began feeling sick. At first, I thought it was stress from what happened on tour, leaving Rodrigo, and anticipating running away with Ben, but he urged me to see a doctor. I'll never forget how the color drained from his face when we learned I was around eight weeks pregnant. It turns out Rodrigo knocked me up the night I snuck away with Ben and went to the diner."

"So then what?"

"Well, I naively thought we could still have our happily ever after. That we would raise the baby together in Seattle, live in a cute little house, and be a family. But as the month went on, I could feel Ben pulling away from me. I could see the conflicting thoughts churning in his brain. So one day, he sat me down and proceeded to shatter me. Completely shatter me."

Carmela paused, her eyes collecting tears as the golden rays cast onto her skin, highlighting her warm brown irises. Amos leaned forward and touched her knee.

"It's ok. You don't have to continue."

"No. I want to. As I said, I haven't told anyone about this. It's always just lived in here." She pressed her palm over her heart and wiped the rogue tear trickling down her cheek. "Ben despised Rodrigo. He said Seattle was supposed to be a clean slate from everything, but it could never be one with Rodrigo's child as a reminder of what we left behind, and he didn't have it in him to raise Rodrigo's child. Then he asked if I was willing to have an abortion, so I thought about it for a few days, but it didn't feel right. Because Emmy isn't just part of Rodrigo, she's part of me too, and after turning my back on my family, I couldn't turn my back on her too. If that makes sense?"

"Yeah, it does. So then what happened after you realized you wanted to keep her?"

"When I told Ben, he broke up with me, and I understood his choice, but it still hurt like hell. It still tore my heart right out of my chest. That was the last time I talked to him, and I found myself alone. I was too scared to return to my parents, so I returned to Rodrigo instead, and for a long time, I wasn't ok. My heart was already glass with fine cracks running across it like spider webs, but that day, that final goodbye, shattered it completely. When Ben walked away, he took part of me with him, and I haven't been whole ever since. There will always be part of me that's missing. It's the part of me that loved him, and to this day, I still think about him. It doesn't ache as much as it did back then, but it still hurts, and do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because nothing hurts more than being cast aside—to be forgotten by someone you would never forget."

"You don't really think that, do you? Certainly, he's out there, thinking about you, wondering what became of you?"

"I doubt that." Carmela shook her head. "Ben was pretty stubborn. He had this way about him—this ability to adapt and adjust to situations. Except when it came to me, his solution was to adapt and adjust me right out of his life. Probably his memories too. After all, he could have reached out and kept in touch, but he chose not to, and that's the way it goes. Sometimes people come into your life, and they become more important to you than you are to them. You can't change it. You can only move forward, lick your wounds, and mend your pride."

"It's a shame. I was seriously rooting for him. I wanted so badly for you to be happy together."

"I wanted that too, but life had other plans, and in the end, I like how it turned out." She glanced at Emmy, beaming, and turned back to Amos. "So, does that answer your questions?"

"Yes, but one last thing I'm curious about." Amos scratched the stubble on his jawline. "You mentioned in the journal you've fallen in love three times. So Rodrigo and Ben, but who is the third? Did you remarry?"

"No," she chuckled. "I've dated and had long relationships, but as it turns out, I'm not a fan of marriage. So, to answer your question, Emmy is my third love. In fact, she's the love of my life. She saved me in so many ways. Had it not been for her, I probably wouldn't have mended my relationship with my family or dared to file for divorce, and because of her, I'm a stronger person."

"So, what became of Rodrigo?"

"Oh, he's still around. He's coming over for dinner."

"Whoa. So, you remain friends?"

"Yes. It took Rodrigo a long time to take sobriety seriously, so I knew it would be different when he sold all his instruments to pay for rehab. Especially because that SG Gibson was his most prized possession. So, I knew it would finally stick, and I'm proud of him. He's been sober for twenty years, and we have a healthy relationship now. But as friends."

"Ready for some lemonade?" Emmy strutted into the living room with a tray of beverages and winked at Carmela. "I made sure to take an extra-long time so you guys could chat."

"Thank you, my love." Carmela reached for a glass and passed one to Amos. "Would you like to stay for dinner?"

"Me? No, I've already taken up a lot of your time." He waved his hands and began to stand. "I should get going."

"Nonsense! You should stay. Besides, Rodrigo will want to meet the man who now owns his guitar."

"I don't know..."

"Stay," Emmy insisted. "I made chicken enchiladas, and my mom says I make them the best."

"She really does." Carmela nodded. "My mother taught her."

"So, now you have to try them! Plus, I made cheesecake for dessert. Who doesn't love cheesecake?"

"Alright, you've convinced me." He smiled at her.

"Good. And you can help me set the table." Emmy curled her finger at him and spun to head for the kitchen.

Excusing himself, Amos stood and made his way across the hardwood floor and into the bright yellow kitchen, where he found Emmy reaching for plates in the top cupboard. Her short floral dress had risen up her thighs, causing Amos's attention to drift over the striations of her sun-kissed legs, but then he shook his head, realizing his gaze was lingering too long. Still, Emmy was beautiful, and her smile even more so as she glanced over her shoulder. 

"A little help." 

"Oh! Right." He rushed forward and grabbed the plates from the shelf.

"If you could take those to the table, I'll grab the silverware." She nudged with her elbow. "Just try not gawking at my ass on the next trip."

Amos's eyes widened. "I... I wasn't." 

"Hey, maybe I was checking out yours too?" Emmy shrugged and opened the drawer for the utensils. 

It had been a while since a woman made him blush or flirted. If that's what Emmy was doing? Five years away from the dating game made him rusty about picking up on clues. As he helped Emmy set the table, they stole glances at each other and brushed arms while working their way around. 

It all felt so natural being in Carmela's home.

However, when Rodrigo stepped through the front door, the reality of what brought Amos to visit struck him. 

There was still so much more to the story, and he was ready to get to know the man behind the guitar.