I have seen the world long before I truly understood it.

By the time I was twenty-three, I had already lived a life many women only dreamed of. My face smiled from magazine covers, my name echoed through gala halls in Bel Air, and my laughter floated through champagne-soaked summer nights like a song people wanted to remember. Diamonds rested easily against my skin, as if they belonged there. I learned early how to walk into a room and make it quiet.

Yet none of that prepared me for you.

You came into my life on a night soaked in gold and heat, one of those mid-July evenings when the city seemed to breathe faster, drunk on its own lights. The air smelled of gasoline and jasmine, and music pulsed from somewhere far away. I remember standing on a balcony overlooking Los Angeles, pretending not to be lonely, when I heard a guitar crying below.

You were playing on a small outdoor stage across the street, lost in your music like the world didn’t exist. Your hair fell into your eyes, your fingers moved like they were telling secrets only the strings could hear. You weren’t famous yet. You weren’t polished. But there was something electric about you—something alive.

That was the first time I felt truly seen without being looked at.

Later that night, someone introduced us. I don’t even remember who. I only remember the way you smiled, slow and curious, like you were trying to understand a puzzle you didn’t want to solve too quickly.

“You look like you belong in a movie,” you said.

“And you look like trouble,” I replied.

You laughed, and just like that, something ancient and dangerous woke up inside me.

Our love grew fast, the way summer storms do—loud, intense, impossible to ignore. We were young, reckless, and beautifully unaware of how fragile everything was.

We drove down empty highways with the windows open, your hand resting on my knee, my hair tangled by the wind. You played for me in dim bars where nobody knew my name, and I sat in the shadows, watching the crowd fall in love with you the way I already had.

You played with me like I was a child—spinning me around in parking lots, daring me to jump into cold oceans at midnight, teaching me how to laugh without caring who was watching. For the first time, I wasn’t a symbol, a fantasy, or a headline. I was just a girl in love.

Those were the crazy days. City lights, cheap wine, stolen kisses behind velvet curtains. Nights where we swore we’d never grow old, never lose this fire, never let the world touch us.

We believed we were forever wild.

But forever is a dangerous word.

Success came for you like a tidal wave.

One song turned into a record deal. One show turned into a tour. Suddenly, the boy who once played across the street was standing under blinding lights, his name screamed by strangers who loved the sound of his voice but didn’t know his soul.

I watched proudly from the wings, dressed in silk and confidence, pretending I wasn’t afraid.

Because I had seen this world before. I knew what it did to people. I knew how applause could replace love, how attention could become a drug. I had lived it, breathed it, worn it like a crown that slowly cut into my skin.

You told me I was your anchor.
I told you I believed you.

But late at night, when the music faded and the rooms grew quiet, doubt crept in like a shadow.

Would you still love me when the lights stopped shining on me?

I never asked the question out loud at first.

I asked it in mirrors, tracing the lines that didn’t exist yet but would someday. I asked it in silence, watching younger women laugh too loudly near you. I asked it when stylists whispered about “timeless beauty” as if time had ever listened.

One night, after a show in New York, I finally let the words fall between us.

“Will you still love me,” I asked softly, “when I’m no longer young and beautiful?”

You didn’t answer right away. You just looked at me, really looked at me, like you were seeing something deeper than my face.

“I’ll love you when you’re old and angry,” you said. “When you’re tired and sad. When all you have left is your aching soul.”

I wanted to believe you.

God, how I wanted to believe you.

Love doesn’t always end with betrayal. Sometimes it ends with distance.

Our schedules stopped aligning. I attended events alone, smiling for cameras while you were in another city, another hotel, another life. We spoke on the phone at odd hours, our conversations slowly losing their warmth.

You were becoming someone the world wanted.
I was afraid of becoming someone the world would forget.

We fought over small things—missed calls, careless words, forgotten anniversaries. But beneath every argument was the same fear, unspoken and heavy.

I was terrified of being left behind.

You were terrified of being trapped.

The night everything almost ended, we stood in a quiet church, hiding from the rain.

I don’t know why we went in there. Maybe we were both looking for forgiveness. Maybe we were both afraid.

I lit a candle and whispered a prayer I didn’t know I still believed in.

“Dear Lord,” I murmured, “when I get to Heaven, please let me bring my man.”

You watched me like you were seeing me for the first time again.

“I don’t care about Heaven,” you said. “I care about you.”

But love alone doesn’t always save people.

We broke up without drama.

No screaming. No cheating. Just exhaustion and tears and the quiet understanding that we were hurting each other by holding on too tightly.

I left for Europe. You stayed on tour.

I told myself it was temporary.

Life, of course, had other plans.

Years passed.

Time changed me.

The parties grew smaller. The invitations slowed. I learned what it meant to wake up without an audience. I learned how silence can be cruel and kind at the same time.

I loved again, briefly. I worked, traveled, lived. But no love ever burned the way ours had.

Sometimes, late at night, I would hear your songs on the radio. Your voice sounded older, deeper, like it had lived.

I wondered if you ever thought of me.

We met again on a winter afternoon in Paris.

You were older. So was I. Lines traced your face where youth once ruled, but your eyes—your eyes were the same.

We talked for hours, like no time had passed at all.

“You were my sun,” I told you. “You made me shine like diamonds.”

You smiled sadly. “You still do.”

We never made it to old age together.

Fate, cruel and impatient, decided we had already borrowed too much time.

It happened quietly—no drama, no warning. Just a phone call on a gray morning when Paris felt colder than it ever had before. Your manager’s voice trembled as he spoke, each word cutting deeper than the last.

There had been an accident.
A late-night drive.
Rain on the road.
Silence at the end.

I remember sitting on the edge of the bed long after the call ended, my hands shaking, my heart refusing to understand what my mind already knew.

You were gone.

The world did not stop when you died.

Cars still passed beneath my window. People laughed in cafés. Music played on the radio—your music. I heard your voice everywhere, haunting and alive, as if the universe was mocking me.

I went to the funeral alone.

I wore black, though it felt meaningless. Flowers surrounded your coffin like a cruel imitation of beauty. They spoke of your talent, your legacy, your brilliance. No one spoke of how you used to hum when you were nervous, or how you held my hand like you were afraid I might disappear.

I wanted to scream that they didn’t really know you.

But grief is quiet when it’s deepest.

Nights became unbearable.

I would lie awake, staring at the ceiling, asking the same question over and over again—not to you, but to the emptiness you left behind.

Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?

But death is the cruelest kind of silence.

There was no answer.
There would never be one.

Years passed, and time did what it always does—it moved forward, indifferent and unforgiving. My beauty faded slowly, gently, the way sunsets do. My name became a memory. Invitations stopped arriving.

All I had left was my aching soul.

And you were not there to hold it.

Sometimes, when the loneliness became too heavy, I would sit in old churches and whisper prayers I wasn’t sure anyone heard.

“Dear Lord,” I said once, tears falling onto cold stone floors,
“when I get to Heaven, please let me bring my man.”

But Heaven never answered.

Maybe love like ours wasn’t meant to survive this world.
Maybe it was too wild, too bright, too fragile.

Like youth.
Like beauty.
Like us.

On my last night, I stood by the window, watching city lights blur into stars.

I was no longer young.
I was no longer beautiful.

But I loved you still.

As my eyes closed, I imagined you waiting somewhere beyond time—smiling, guitar in hand, finally free from stages and applause.

And for the first time in years, I felt peace.

If love exists beyond death,
then maybe—just maybe—
you finally answered my question.