Deep Cuts

by Holly Brickley

I personally like to pretend the phrase “deep cut” has a totally different meaning, one that has nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. How deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it?

I hated how objectively desirable he had become—his off-center attractiveness now rewritten as plain fact, no longer my little secret—but of course that’s the old line about why guys learn to play guitar, isn’t it: get your chicks for free.

This annoyed me—the idea that Joe and I were each other’s answers, no matter how we arrived; that he got to travel the world, playing music and gorging himself at a groupie buffet, while I waited patiently at our inevitable destination.

The is how it was to talk to Mom: like one of those old-fashioned dances where your partner steps back whenever you step forward, choreographed to maintain distance. “Sure.”

Why do we listen to those voices, calling from just outside our door, that tell us to reject contentment in search of something more?

Honestly, how many different ways is it even possible for the same two people to break each other’s hearts?”

She wants him as her deep cut, a B-side unearthed from a rarities bin, proof of her own specialness because she’s the one who discovered it, because she doesn’t know how to sing her own damn song.

“Her worst brought out the best in him, but she wanted it better. And every time she found perfection, he was always better.”

“Have we ever even really tried?”