“Does that mean you can’t play the guitar anymore?”
“Are you going to keep doing music?”
“Can we buy you a shot?”
“Can we get a picture?”
“I love you so much!”
“Is it true about the drugs?”
“No! He wouldn’t…would you? I wouldn’t judge.”
“I smoke pot.”
“My cousin was hooked on prescription pills.”
“Brian?”
“No, West.”
“What happened with Sasha?”
“Did she cheat?”
“Did you cheat? I read an article about you and Heidi Klum…”
“You don’t know me!” I snapped, my hands forming fists. “Why the hell does everyone keep acting like they know me? On the news, the Internet, the tabloids,” I shouted, my throat burning as I hollered at the kids who weren’t trying to be offensive. “No one knows what it’s like to be me. No one knows what it’s like to not be able to do what you love. My life was music and now I can hardly talk. I can’t…no one knows…” I couldn’t talk anymore. I was drunk and my neck hurt. Too many words. Too many emotions. The girls went quiet, unsure what to do, what to say. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay,” one said, her eyes filled with guilt. “We’re sorry.”
They left me alone after that, leaving the bar.
Bert stood near me, staring my way, not saying one word. His head tilted to the left, and then to the right, and within seconds, he sat back down at the booth across from me. His hand landed on top of mine, and he gave it one light squeeze, a squeeze that reminded me of Maggie, because everything in the world reminded me of her.
Bert picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured me another glass.
He didn’t offer me his apologies; he didn’t feed me bullshit words to wash away the hurt.
Instead, he gave me whiskey to drown out the memories.
As I sipped the drink, it burned down my throat. The burning sensation reminded me of the rumors, the lies, the accident, the scars. It reminded me of every single pain that lived in my chest until it managed to completely shut down my mind.
I woke up each morning out of habit. I brushed my teeth, showered, and got dressed because of my lifelong routine, but that’s about all I did. I woke up, I read lies, I drank, I went to sleep.
The band tried their best to convince me to allow them to come stay with me, but I refused. It wasn’t their fault what happened, it was mine. I forced us to go out on the boat when they wanted to chill inside.
Mrs. Boone’s cabin was the best place to escape from the world. There weren’t cameras in my face at all times, trying to figure out my future. I was able to just be alone.
The only days I changed my daily activities were on the days it rained.
During the rain, I’d go sit in the middle of the lake, in a small canoe.
I’d boat out to the middle of the water as the raindrops fell against me. As the sky was loud, I always remained quiet and still.
Even though I was supposed to come to the cabin to find myself, each day I became more lost. I could feel it too, the shift in me. I was becoming colder. I was becoming a stranger to myself.
I was walking a road that would never lead me home.
“This will do,” Daddy said, bringing in the last box from the truck outside. We’d somehow traveled back in time to when it was just him and me in a tiny apartment, dreaming of a bigger world. Only this time there was a sister with dreadlocks, who wouldn’t leave our side.
That night, Cheryl went home to stay with Mama, and I slept on an air mattress in one of the bedrooms, while Daddy slept in the other on his air mattress. Around three in the morning, I woke up to hearing movement throughout the apartment. Sitting up, I tiptoed into the kitchen to see Daddy wide awake, making a pot of coffee. When he turned to see me, he almost jumped out of his skin. “Jesus, Maggie! You scared me.”
I gave him an apologetic grin, and grabbed my dry-erase board before sitting on top of the countertop.
“You can’t sleep?” he asked.
I heard you walking around. Are you okay?
He grimaced. “I thought that was it, you know? I thought she was forever.” He poured two cups of coffee, then handed me a mug. “When I first met Katie, she was a ray of sunlight. She had this energy about her that spread through me, you know? I don’t know what happened to her over the years, but she started changing. She became colder… I wondered if it was something I did, something I said, but I lost my wife a long time ago. But heck, I changed too.
“I convinced myself she was just going through some things, that what had happened to you somehow happened to her too—not directly, just a cause and effect kind of thing. But things got worse each day. The woman I knew disappeared right in front of me each day. And the man I knew myself to be went away, too.”
You miss her?
He brushed his fingers against his temple. “I miss the idea of missing her. Truth is I stopped missing her even when she was in the same room as me. Over time, I wanted to leave. But, I couldn’t rush you. I couldn’t make you leave when you weren’t ready.”
My heart landed in my throat. He only stayed with her because of me. He stayed unhappy to keep me safe.
I’m sorry I made you stay.
He shook his head. “I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.”
We sat up drinking the blackest of coffee and not saying a thing. Daddy and I were pretty good at being silent with each other. It always felt right. Right before I was about to head back to bed, he paused. “An English teacher asked a student to name two pronouns. What did the student ask?”
I smiled at his joke and answered it. Who, me?
He chuckled to himself. “Who, me.” As he walked toward his bedroom, he turned back my way and told me the truth he’d been avoiding telling himself.
“I miss her.”
Even through the struggles—even through the hurt—he still loved her. That was the thing about love. It didn’t leave because you told it to go. It simply stayed quiet, bleeding out from the pain, still praying you wouldn’t let it slip away.
“He hasn’t unpacked,” Cheryl said to me from the living room.
Daddy sat at the kitchen island drinking yet another cup of coffee. It’d been a week since we moved into the new apartment, but his bedroom still lived within boxes.