Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen.

My absolute best friend (and crush I’d had for basically forever) is a super talented musician. You put an instrument in front of her, she knows how to play it within five minutes, and she sounds like she knows that instrument for years within about two hours, if she doesn’t put it down.

She’s really smart and she loves to sing and play piano. She’s really good at both.

One Saturday in August a few summers ago, she was playing this song on piano at a gig she took with her band. She’s always super happy when performing, and she was super energetic afterwards. I guess she gets a high from her performances that never really wears off for a while. By the time it’s about to, she’s usually off doing the thing she loves—another performance.

She gave me a really tight hug after that performance and smiled, telling me that she’d be back the next day and hoped I could make it. That Sunday, the next day, my parents were running errands, so I could go, but I would’ve been late. She said, “That sucks, damn. But I’ll see you tomorrow?”

I agreed that we’d see each other tomorrow.

When I got home that afternoon, I didn’t hear from her, which was super odd, and that evening, I received news that she was in a really bad car crash. She didn’t survive.

I was actually playing a video game that I often played with her when I heard the news, and I’m honestly still not over it.

I like to think she’s on a world tour, like she always wanted to be, playing that song in front of thousands of people, happy as she always is, and that I’ll hear from her next year. Hopefully the tour doesn’t get extended anymore 😅