“Can you do it?”
She laughed. “I don’t exactly have a choice. Besides, that’s what booze is for, right?”
“It’ll burn like a motherfucker on the way back up if you’re puking before every show.” Was this how she normally coped on the road? Drinking to dull her nerves?
Her back stiffened and she shot up from the couch. “What’s that supposed to mean?” With folded arms, she paced in front of me.
I scrubbed my hands down over my face. This wasn’t about my question. It was about her fears and worries. I’d seen the difference between Performance Bay and Musician Bay. They didn’t come close to each other in terms of how she lit up during each piece of her world. “Are you happy?”
“I’m living the life anyone would dream about. My face is on billboards. I get to see the world. I have people who’ll do anything for me. Get anything for me.”
“That wasn’t the question I asked.” I leaned forward, pressing my palms together and resting them against my lips.
Coming at her like this hadn’t been the right way. I needed to back off, so she didn’t feel like I was attacking her choices, but to show her I’d been there.
“My dad died four and a half years ago. Cirrhosis.” I tapped my pointer fingers against my lips. “He must’ve been on his last legs when he showed up in California.”
She stopped pacing. My subject change catching her off guard. “I’m sorry. Had—had you spoken to him before then?”
“No. He tried to contact me a few times in LA, but I refused to let him cause more trouble for me. And I stopped letting me cause more trouble for me—at least I tried to.” The sound escaping my lips teetered on the edge of laughter.
“That messed with my head for a while—him dying. The night I found out, I’d just finished my first season off the practice squad. I got a nice signing bonus. I’d been good with my money when I was on the practice squad, but felt like blowing it all.” The edge of the cliff I’d been standing on had disintegrated out from under me in a snap.
“Knox and I had a wild night out in Vegas. Got blitzed beyond belief. Almost got into a few fights. I’d been coming to practice drunk too. What the hell did it matter if I wasn’t playing? I made it on the team. Had the money. Had the championship ring. And I was trying my damnedest to flush it all away.” The vise in my chest tightened telling her all this, opening myself up to let her know how fucked up I’d been.
“I thought it would be a great idea to take a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, show up somewhere and land like I was one of the guys out of Entourage. Knox had hit his limit and he was done for the night. We got into a fight. Something stupid.” I squeezed my eyes shut. It had been him telling me it was time to go back to the hotel.
But my attitude had been ‘fuck him’. My dad was dead, there was no one left on the planet who could tell me what to do.
“So I decided to go by myself. I didn’t need anything or anyone.”
I rubbed my hands together. “What I wanted was to be numb, and to test the depths of my numbness by doing something exhilarating. With a bottle of Jack Daniels and more money than a twenty-three-year-old should have, I went to look for my big adventure.”
Her arm tightened around my shoulder. “What happened?”
“For the first twenty minutes, sweeping views, aerial tricks and a downturn in my alcohol tolerance. I sat with my head against the glass looking down at all the people living their lives. At the taillights moving through the streets. None of it felt real. I didn’t feel real.” Sweat beaded on my forehead. My pulse ratcheted up and my throat tightened.
“The life I was living was unrecognizable from what I’d had growing up in Greenwood. But there I was, alone with a bottle of booze, having fought with someone I loved like a brother.”
She crouched in front of me, her hand reaching out. Fingers wrapped around my forearm. “And when you landed things were different.”
“Not exactly.” I closed my hand over hers, centering myself on this moment. I drew a shuddering breath to help me get through the rest. I was safe here with her.
She scooted around to sit back on the couch beside me.
“First, it took a little engine failure.” I shuddered, sweat beading along my hairline thinking back to the stomach-plummeting feelings. My fingers gripped the edge of the couch, and it was hard to breathe.
I’d lived through a lot of shit, but I’d never doubted I’d make it to the other side. I might have been bruised, beaten, and battered, but I’d known I’d survive. Free-falling in the helicopter was the first time I’d felt the cold finger grip of death on the back of my neck.
“The pilot recovered, although he was probably just a few sheets in the wind behind me. But for the ten-second free fall—god, ten seconds feels like a long time when you think you’re plummeting toward your death.” There hadn’t even been time to yell. No chance to scream or shout. All sound had been clogged in my throat by fear.
When we’d landed, I’d literally kissed the ground, sunk to my knees with my hands clenched on the back of my head and my nose touching solid ground. “I got a little clarity on what I was doing to myself. On who I was in danger of becoming.
“Drowning myself in alcohol, puking before practice from hangovers, I was trying to kill myself and ruin my life. I’d vowed to myself I’d never be like my father. I’d never do what he did.” I’d started working with Monica a few days after that on a recommendation from some of the guys who’d had to see her for anger management sanctions.
“I worked my way through it. It sure as hell wasn’t easy. It took a long time to figure out that he was never really my father. Not in the way I deserved, and not in a way that allowed him to teach me what it was to be a man. He had so much anger in him, and in a way, him dying freed me from so much of mine. If I hadn’t changed, it would’ve eaten me up inside.” There had been a lot of questioning of my humanity when I’d first realized how good his death had been for me.
“The helicopter gave me two gifts: a slap in the face to wake up and start seeing a therapist, and a crippling fear of helicopters.”
Her head jolted a bit.
“Sometimes I’ll wake up at night feeling like I’m free-falling, not only through the air, but also back toward my old path. Just hearing the rotor blades can send a cold panic running down my spine.”
“At SeptemberWeen…that’s why you didn’t want to go up.”
I nodded, feeling a bit like a coward. With my feet solidly on the floor I could be up high, like staring out my windows. But once my soles left the ground, all bets were off.
“But you let me go.”
“My hang-ups aren’t for me to force onto you. You were happy and excited to go.”
“You were freaking out the whole time, weren’t you?”
“Berk and LJ helped distract me, but yes. I was definitely losing my shit for a good portion of your ride. If you love what you’re doing and can’t imagine doing anything else, I’m behind you one hundred percent. But I know what it’s like to have everything you’ve ever dreamed of and still feel like your life is spiraling out of control.”