I dragged myself onstage and went through the motions, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation.
I took a quick break halfway through my set and called her.
“Hey,” she said, picking up.
“I need to know you’ll do whatever it takes for us to have a life together,” I said without preamble.
“You want me to tell you I’ll be pregnant and dragging after you like a groupie while you go be a rock star?” she said, finally irritated with me. “Really? Why are you so dead set on arguing about this?”
“Why are you so dead set on making sure this won’t work? I’m a musician, Sloan. You knew this was what you were signing up for.”
“I signed up for touring with you. Me. Not babies who will grow up in hotel rooms. Not little children who won’t even be able to play unless it’s in a bus. It’s not fair to them. I wouldn’t even bring a puppy into this. Not until you have some balance.”
“I would have balance if you were here,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I can’t be your balance, Jason. I’m not doing it, I’m not further reducing the quality of my life just so you can check something off your list,” she snapped.
“Sloan—”
She let out a shaky breath. “Jason, I have to go.”
She hung up on me.
I hurled my phone against the wall.
Zane, who stood by the emergency exit texting, got pelted with shrapnel. “You know I’m not going to be able to replace that until tomorrow, right?” she said calmly.
“Fuuuuck!”
I clawed my fingers down my face and then turned my wrath on the nearest inanimate object and kicked over a fog machine. “No more goddamn motherfucking fog!”
My backup band milled around the water fountain, waiting for me, and they looked at me now like I’d lost my damn mind.
Maybe I had.
I yanked out my in-ear monitor and stormed off to the bathroom to splash water on my face. I leaned on the sink, trying to catch my breath.
So now what? The price for being with me had gone even higher? She had to trail after me for years on end, sick and exhausted, missing her friends and family, not painting, and now I was taking motherhood from her too?
I just wanted her to tell me that all of this was all right. That we’d figure it out. Get through it, do whatever we had to do. And she wouldn’t.
And why the fuck would she? None of this was all right.
Zane came in. She didn’t scatter after my rampage, which made me think either she didn’t have any self-preservation instincts or she thought raging, chronically exhausted, asshole rock stars were par for the course.
Fuck, maybe they were.
“Can you send Sloan some flowers?” I muttered, without looking up.
“You know what I bet Sloan would really like?” she asked. “For you to not be a dick.”
I looked up and glared at her. She had her arms crossed over her white T-shirt.
“You doing okay?” she asked dryly.
“Fine,” I muttered.
“You don’t look fine. You look like shit. And you sound like shit too, come to think of it.”
I narrowed my eyes at her through the mirror, but she leaned on the wall and crossed her legs at the ankle, unperturbed. “You’re taking an Ambien tonight and I don’t want to hear any crap about it,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re taking one every night until Sloan gets back. You’re not sleeping and it’s making you an asshole.”
I looked away from her and let out a long breath. “I’m sorry. I just…I just miss her.”
“I know. She misses you too. But you need to get it together. Pissing her off isn’t gonna fix anything.”
Nothing was going to fix anything.
Last week I’d talked to Sloan about recording the bullshit my label had sent over. I was getting desperate. I needed to start working toward an end date and I still hadn’t been able to write anything worth a damn. But she’d blatantly refused to let me do it. She was so upset about it I’d had to swear never to bring it up again. She said she didn’t want me singing astronaut cats, that she’d be deeply disappointed in me if I ever compromised my music like that.
So then what was I supposed to do? What was the out? It was like no matter what I did, I was making her unhappy.
I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten. Ernie’s words, that I couldn’t have my fame and have Sloan, streamed through my head like a prophecy come to fruition. And I didn’t fucking know how to fix it. There was no solution to this.
“Can I use your phone?” I asked, looking over at Zane.
She pushed off the wall, pulled it from her pocket, and slapped it into my hand. “Don’t fucking break it.” Then she left.
I called Sloan.
She picked up on the third ring. “Zane?”
“Sloan, it’s me. Don’t hang up.”
“What do you want, Jason?” And then she started to cry.
It was the kind of crying that didn’t sound like it was beginning. It was the kind that sounded like it was continuing. My heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I felt like the biggest asshole on the planet. My chest got tight and I had to clutch it with my free hand. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Sloan. You’re right. I shouldn’t be asking you to do more than you’re doing.”
“I hate this,” she sobbed. “I hate fighting with you.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said, a lump growing in my throat. “I just can’t handle hearing you won’t have kids with me. I already feel like I’m ruining your life…I just…I have to know we’re gonna be okay.”
I wanted to walk out of that bathroom and take the next flight to Minnesota. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a concert, I would have already been out the door, even if I got to see her for only an hour before I had to get back on a plane.
“You’re not ruining my life, Jason.” She sniffed. “I know what you want me to say to you. You want me to tell you that we can have everything. And you know what? Maybe we can’t. Maybe we just have to accept that our life isn’t conducive to certain things right now and be okay with that.”
How? How the fuck was I supposed to be okay with systematically taking everything from her?
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to say what I’d been thinking for a while, the thing that had haunted me incessantly since the first time I noticed she wasn’t handling the road well. “Sloan…have you considered that maybe us being together isn’t the best thing for you?”
She went silent on the other end for a long moment. “Why would you say that to me?”
“You’re miserable.”
I heard her swallow in the silence. “Jason, I don’t want to hear you talking like that again. We’re not breaking up. How can you even suggest that?”
I put my forehead in my hand. “You want kids.”
“And we can have them. When we can offer them more stability.”
I shook my head. “When? Ten years from now?”
“I’ll only be thirty-six,” she said. “I won’t exactly be an old lady. You know, life doesn’t always give you what you want, Jason. Being in a relationship means compromise.”