These Five Words

Before there was a song, there was silence. This biscuit finds Jon, years after Ari's goodbye holding the letter she left behind—and finally writing the melody she could never say out loud.

Red Bank, New Jersey

Sanctuary Sound Studios

1999

 

It had been five years since These Days—a lifetime by industry standards. The time apart had given the band room to breathe, to chase their own projects and private distractions, but now the tide was shifting. Quietly, almost tentatively, they were beginning to lay the first stones of what would become their seventh studio album.

There was no title yet. No grand vision. Just scraps—scribbled phrases in the margins of notebooks, melodies hummed into a phone at 2 a.m., and a handful of tentative studio dates penciled into the calendar with more hope than certainty.

Jon needed the calm before the storm. The silence that came before sound. That rare, suspended space where songs first began to whisper.

The studio was exactly as he liked it before a writing session: still, stripped bare, free of distraction. His guitar rested nearby, waiting. A few battered notebooks sat stacked on the desk like old friends, their edges curling with time. Outside, the world pressed faintly at the windows, its low hum reminding him that life went on out there, even as he closed himself in here.

He wasn’t looking for ghosts. But they always had a way of finding him.

His hand hovered before settling on a worn, leather-bound notebook, one of many tucked away on a shelf in his home studio. Dust clung stubbornly to the cover, but the weight of it was familiar, grounding. He eased it open, pages whispering against one another as though reluctant to give up their secrets.

Lyrics. Fragments. Thoughts that had once mattered enough to jot down but never made it into song. Half-finished lines that broke off mid-idea, trails leading nowhere. He turned the pages slowly, deliberately—like a man pacing himself through a memory he wasn’t sure he wanted to revisit. Every line carried the risk of cutting deeper than he intended, the kind of slow reckoning that only comes when you’re searching for beginnings and stumble into pieces of yourself you’d left behind.

Then it fell loose—

A folded piece of hotel stationery, yellowed at the edges, tucked between the lyrics of something he’d never finished.

His fingers froze.

He knew what it was before he even opened it. He remembered the weight of the morning sun spilling into their hotel room in Montreal, the air still warm with her scent—soft, familiar. The mattress where she’d been sleeping—cold. The silence that screamed louder than any goodbye. And that letter, left on her pillow.

He’d kept it. Moved it from city to city, album to album, tucked into whatever notebook he happened to be working in at the time. But he hadn’t read it in years. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

He unfolded it carefully, the ink faded but legible.

He didn’t expect the wave that hit him.

The memory was so sharp, it sliced through the years in an instant—October 1996, cold and sterile, the beeping of hospital machines, the weight of Ari in his arms as she let her father slip away. Her cries. Her breaking.

And now, with the letter in his hands again, each word pulled him back. He’d dropped everything to be there. Of course he had. There was never a question.

But reading it now, years later, with the grief somewhat faded and the world a little quieter, he saw it differently.

He saw her differently, too.

The girl who had pushed him away to protect what was left of her heart… and the woman who had somehow said everything in a single page she hadn’t been able to say out loud.

He had tried to write a dozen songs about that time. For her. About her. The way she’d fallen apart in his arms and then vanished in the night. But none of them felt like enough.

None of them had said what he needed to say.

Until now.

He swallowed hard.

Maybe it was already there—hidden between her lines and his silence. A song she’d begun, and he was only just learning how to finish.

“Thank You For Loving Me.”

She had written it first. In her own way. With her own pain. Her truth folded up and left on a pillow, asking for nothing in return.

And he’d carried it with him all along, even without knowing.

Setting the notebook aside, he stood and walked over to the piano. Gently, he smoothed the fold, as if the paper might bruise. His fingers hovered, then moved over the keys—soft at first, uncertain. Just feeling.

A chord. Then another. Searching. Testing. Remembering.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, letting memory and music blur together. Time folded in on itself—Montreal, the hospital, the funeral, her broken voice, the absence that hollowed out the room.

All of it was here, echoing through the studio with every note.

Then the melody was just… there—soft, simple, steady. As if it had always belonged to her.

His fingers stilled, landing on the shape of something true.

His voice, low and rough from disuse, found the opening lines without effort.

It’s hard for me to say the things I want to say sometimes…

Without thinking, he stood, crossed the room, and grabbed a yellow legal pad from the edge of the console desk. He tore off the top sheet—some scribbled notes from last week—and dropped back onto the piano bench. Pen in hand.

He didn’t need to invent the words. She’d already given them to him.

He started writing, fast at first, just getting it down—lines from the letter, memories of her voice, her eyes, the way she’d looked that night in the hospital hallway, hollowed out but still holding on.

Thank you for loving me…
For being my strength…
For seeing through my darkness…

He paused, pen hovering, eyes flicking back to the letter. One line pulled at him harder than the rest.

“Once again, it’s just you and me, locked away from the world outside.”

A breath left his chest. That was them. Always closing the door on everything but each other.

He murmured the words aloud, as if testing how they tasted after all these years.

“Just you and me… locked away from the world…”

He scribbled the first part out. Too close to something else he’d written for her. Those words were his. Reassuring her that he’d always be there.

This was her song.

A spark caught. He scribbled down quickly:

There’s no one here but you and me
And that broken old street light
Lock the doors
We’ll leave the world outside.

He played the chords under his breath, shaping and phrasing, humming until the lyrics found their rhythm. It was rough. But it was right.

It wasn’t just a song anymore.

It was her.
It was them.

He didn’t hear the door open over the soft thrum of the piano.

“Morning, Sunshine.”

Jon glanced up, startled. Richie stood in the doorway, coffee in one hand, guitar case in the other, squinting at him like he’d walked in on something private.

“What’cha got?” Richie asked, nodding toward the legal pad—and then catching sight of the folded, yellowed piece of stationery resting just above the keys.

Jon’s hand moved reflexively, sliding the letter aside with care. “Just… something I’m messing with.”

Richie stepped in and set his coffee down on the edge of the console. He didn’t press. Just glanced around the quiet studio and back at Jon.

“Working on it since when? Last night?”

“Early,” Jon said, noncommittal.

Richie raised an eyebrow, listening as Jon tapped a few soft notes.

“Sounds like a love song.”

Jon gave a quiet half-smile. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Richie smirked. “I don’t need the whole Lifetime movie backstory. Just play me what you got.”

Jon huffed out a quiet breath. “It’s not finished.”

“Never is,” Richie said, sliding the guitar case to the floor. “Let’s hear it anyway.”

They settled into an easy rhythm after that. Jon at the piano, Richie with his guitar, tossing lines back and forth like they had a hundred times before. The bones of something lasting began to rise out of the quiet.

As the morning stretched on, chords tightened, verses shifted, and the melody found its footing. What started as a whisper was now shaping into something real. Not just for this song—others too. Ideas that had been circling for months finally had a place to land.

Still, Jon kept the yellowed piece of paper nearby like a quiet witness. Its edges curled, ink fading—but her voice still lived inside it.

When Richie left, Jon lingered at the piano, the quiet settling back into the studio like a soft breath. He let his fingers hover over the keys, then slowly pressed the opening notes they’d come up with—soft, tentative, but full of everything.

He glanced down at the letter resting beside the keys. The weight of those words no longer just a memory, but a living thread tying them together across time.

She hadn’t run because she didn’t love him. She’d left because she did—and couldn’t bear the weight of one more goodbye she’d have to survive.

And still, she’d left the door cracked open behind her. Just enough for him to find his way back in.

And he always had. Even when she didn’t ask him to.

This time, as he played the melody, it lingered—gentle, alive.

She was in it.
Not fading. Not gone.
Just… there.

Thank you for loving me
For being my eyes
When I couldn’t see
You parted my lips
When I couldn’t breathe
Thank you for loving me.

Maybe she would never hear it. Maybe she would never know.

But somewhere in this song, she would always be.

Jon let the last chord fade into the stillness, his fingers hovering above the keys as though reluctant to let go. The letter rested just beside them, edges curled, its ink dimmed by time, but its voice—her voice—still alive, still speaking.

He exhaled slowly, the weight in his chest shifting from burden to anchor. The studio around him was quiet again, but it no longer felt empty.

The melody lingered in the air, soft and steady.

She was here.
In the silence.
In the song.
And in him.