You counted days like someone in a prison cell. Days until production could start on your solo album -- your album, yours and yours alone. Days until its release. The album was important. It was your first and perhaps last chance to prove to the world that you could write and record on your own, an individual, a separate entity -- not just one half of Savage Garden. You wanted to show the world that Savage Garden was dead, that you were the phoenix rising from its ashes. You wanted to break the chains that held you to it; you wanted to shed that skin and start anew. You just wanted to be.

You also wanted to show Daniel that you didn't need him. You knew that was childish and petty but you didn't care. You wanted Daniel to hear the new album and realise that Darren Hayes could make it on his own.

On an even more childish and petty level, you wanted him to hear the lyrics you'd written about him and feel bad.

On a slightly less childish but probably no less petty level, you just wanted him.

That was probably how the wine bottle got uncorked and how most of its contents got into your bloodstream. You didn't usually drink, but someone from the record company had sent the bottle over as a pre-release good luck gift, and you didn't want to seem ungrateful. And as you didn't usually have guests over at your apartment -- you valued your privacy, after all -- you took it upon yourself to drink the wine alone.

You'd been doing that a lot, lately -- doing things alone, things you didn't normally do at all. Like the wine. And a year ago, you'd started eating white meat again; a couple of months after that, you'd started eating red meat again. Last week you stopped at a convenience store for eggs and milk and came home with a box of Marlboros. You didn't even remember buying them, and you didn't have the slightest idea what to do with them, so you just threw them away.

You guessed the whole wine thing started when you were thinking about Daniel. Actually, although you'd never admit it, you were always thinking about Daniel. But on the wine bottle night, you just happened to be thinking about Daniel with a pen in your hand and some paper on the kitchen table in front of you, and you just happened to be writing some things down. You knew they were lyrics -- songs for the next album, if there actually would be one. And you were jotting down some notes, some phrases, some lost words, and thinking about Daniel. And remembering.

You knew Daniel was leaving even before Daniel knew Daniel was leaving. You knew because he had that caged look more often, every day instead of every few days. You knew because he balked at the very idea of doing interviews. You knew because he always talked about the other projects he wanted to do, all the time. You knew because he started spending less and less time with you and more and more time alone.

You were scared shitless so you never said a word. You put on the Happy Darren face and used the Chipper Darren voice and never let on that there was any trouble in paradise. Because you were going to make this work, dammit, even if Daniel didn't.

Daniel didn't. And then you couldn't, and everything fell apart, and before you knew what was happening, Savage Garden was defunct and you were a solo artist. You were a permanent Australian expatriate and Daniel was a record producer in Brisbane. He was Daniel Jones, formerly of Savage Garden. You were Darren Hayes, formerly of Savage Garden, formerly a vegetarian, formerly an Australian, formerly a non-drinker, and now considering becoming a former non-smoker.

When you looked in the mirror in the mornings, you were afraid of what you saw. You kept looking for pieces of yourself but you couldn't find them.

And when you looked down at the paper beneath your hand, next to the empty wine glass, you were terrified. Because the only pieces you found there belonged to him.