The Elements Series Complete Box Set

by Brittainy Cherry

  She shook her head. “True, that happened.”

  “Where’s Jason?” Mama asked.

  “Well, funny story actually. The woman who did my dreads ended up also doing my boyfriend, too.” Everyone’s faces dropped, and Cheryl smiled. “Aw, come on, now. No sad faces. You know what I always say, when life gives you lemons, find vodka.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “And find family, too.”

  Mama shifted in her seat and looked at Daddy with sad eyes. Without words, they held a conversation, until her lips parted. “Girls, now that you’re both here, I think this is the best time for your father and me to tell you the news.”

  I sat up straighter, and Cheryl did, too. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Your mother and I…we’re…” Daddy swallowed hard and gave me a tight smile. “We’re separating.”

  What?

  No.

  “What are you talking about?” Cheryl questioned, confused. She laughed nervously. “Come on. You’re not separating. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Well, it’s been a long time coming actually,” Mama explained with a shaky voice. “And now that Maggie has been able to leave the house, we just think it’s time.”

  “It’s the best thing, really. For all of us,” Daddy lied through his teeth.

  I knew he was lying, too. Because if he were telling the truth, his eyes wouldn’t have looked so sad.

  After dinner, Cheryl came into my room, where I was lying on my bed, listening to music on my iPhone. She lay down beside me and took one of my earbuds so she could listen, too.

  “I’m twenty-seven years old, and somehow I feel like I want to become my angsty teenager self again, crawl into my closet, and listen to Ashlee Simpson’s Autobiography album over and over again, because my parents are splitting up.”

  I’m twenty-eight and feel the same.

  “How’s Brooks?” she asked, tilting her head in my direction.

  I shrugged. He said he needed space, to be alone.

  She nodded. “I get that. When you asked him for space, he gave it to you…so I understand you feeling as if you need to give him the same.”

  We kept listening to the music, and Cheryl chuckled. “Remember when we were kids, and I said to you. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,’ or something?” She started giggling. “Ten years later, and the words still ring true.”

  Even though the thought was depressing, we couldn’t stop laughing at it. Sometimes all a person needed to relax their troubled mind was their sister and some laughter.

  Within seconds, we were listening to “Pieces of Me,” by Ashlee Simpson, rocking our heads back and forth. We listened to the album a few times, until our minds were back in our childhood days.

  Whenever the song “LaLa” came on, we’d stand up and dance with one another. Even though I was proud of Cheryl for traveling the world, I would’ve been lying if I said I wasn’t happy she came home.

  Even though Brooks asked for his space, I needed to remind him the same way he always reminded me that he wasn’t alone. I’d send him a text message each morning.

  Maggie: You okay today, Brooks Tyler?

  Brooks: I’m okay, Maggie May.

  Then, a message each night.

  Maggie: You okay tonight, Brooks Tyler?

  Brooks: I’m okay, Maggie May.

  Even though it wasn’t enough to make me stop worrying, it was enough to help me sleep sometimes.

  33

  Brooks

  The town of Messa was tiny. The lake took up most of the area. There wasn’t much to the place except a grocery store, a high school, one gas station, and a library, which were all lined up on the coast of the lake. It was all on the opposite side of Mrs. Boone’s cabin, though, which was even nicer. It kept me feeling more alone. I’d only traveled into town for food, then I came back to the cabin.

  The only other place I’d found worth visiting was right on the outskirts of Messa—a bar.

  It was a hole in the wall.

  No one knew it existed, which made it perfect for me. It had whiskey, and pain, and loneliness wrapped up in its quiet walls.

  I hadn’t stopped reading forums online about me. I hadn’t stopped watching fans turn against me, tagging me as a drug addict, calling me a liar and a cheater. They believed every lie the tabloids fed to them, turning their backs on me as if I hadn’t given them my all in the past ten years.

  As if I were truly every negative word written about me.

  I knew I should’ve stopped reading, but I couldn’t put down my phone or the whiskey. The comments from those who claimed to once love me stung more than they should’ve.

  Just replace the druggie. It’s been done before!

  My brother died from alcohol abuse. The fact that Brooks is so reckless is concerning. I hope he finds help in the rehab center.

  He’s a disgrace to music. Millions would kill to have his life, and he just threw it away.

  Piece of shit celebrity. Just another tale of fame going to a person’s head.

  This is like his fifth time in rehab. Maybe it’s time to start realizing nothing’s going to change.

  He’ll be dead by thirty, just like all the other ‘late and great’ drug addict performers.

  I reached out for more whiskey as the words became engraved in my mind. There were supportive comments, too, but for some reason those felt like lies. Why is it that negative comments from strangers seem to hurt you the most?

  “I think you had enough,” the bartender said sternly, a gentle undertone to his speech as he moved the bottle of whiskey farther from my reach. He had a silver, thick mustache filled with secrets, lies, and potato chip crumbs. Whenever he spoke, the mustache danced above his upper lip, and his words fell from the left corner of his mouth. Long, curly gray hair sat on his head, which he wore pulled back into a bun. An old man bun. The guy had to be over seventy, and he somehow seemed to be effortlessly cool, calm, and collected.

  The complete opposite of me.

  Each morning and night, I lied to Maggie when I messaged her back.

  I shut my eyes and tried my best to recall the bartender’s name, which he’d told me hundreds of times during my state of drunkenness.

  Kurt rhymes with hurt.

  Lately Kurt was the closest thing I had to a friend. I remembered the first time I met him, two weeks ago when I walked into his bar. I’d been a mess for the past two weeks. The first time he met me, my shoulders were rounded as I sat. My arms were crossed and my forehead met my forearms where I proceeded to try to stop my memories in the corner booth of his empty bar. He didn’t ask me questions. He simply brought me a bottle of whiskey and a glass of ice that night—and the following evenings to come.

  “One more,” I muttered, but he frowned and shook his head.

  “It’s one in morning, buddy. Don’t you think you should get home, maybe?”

  “Home?” I huffed, reaching for the bottle, which he refused to give to me. I looked up into his blue eyes and felt a tug at my heart. Home. “Please?” I begged. Begged—I begged him for alcohol. How pathetic. “Please, Kurt?”

  “Bert,” he corrected, a grimaced smile.

  Dammit.

  Kurt rhymes with hurt, which rhymes with Bert, which is his name.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Not what you said. Probably what you meant, though.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant, Bert. Bert. Bert.” How many times could I say his name before I forgot it again?

  He sat across from me in the booth and played with the handlebars of his mustache. “What are you drinking to forget?” he asked.

  I swallowed hard and said no words.

  “That bad, huh?”

  I didn’t reply, but I pushed my empty glass in his direction. When I went into the grocery store earlier that day, my face was plastered on magazine covers, speaking of a mental breakdown I hadn’t known I was having. Also, it turned out I was addicted to heroin, and I stormed out of
The Crooks due to my addiction.

  Then, I made the mistake of signing online and read more things about me. It baffled me how many of my fans fed into the lies.

  So, it was easier for me to stay drunk.

  Bert pushed my glass back toward me.

  “Dick move,” I muttered.

  Before he could reply, a group of drunken girls crashed through the front door of the bar. They were beyond wasted, loud, and all dressed in pink from head to toe. Except for one, who was in all white. Bachelorette party. Great. Bert stood up and headed over to the bar to help them all.

  “Oh my gosh! This place is sooo adorbs.” One giggled.

  “I can’t believe you found it!” another shouted.

  They were on what appeared to be a treasure hunt, and one of their stops was a hole in the wall bar—perfect.

  I melted into the corner of my booth, wanting nothing more than to be left alone.

  They all hurried over to the bar, giggling.

  “What can I get you, ladies?” Bert asked.

  In unison, they shouted, tossing their hands into the air, “FIREBALL!”

  My eyes shut, and I was back on that boat.

  “That’s just because America’s Sweetheart Maggie May doesn’t speak. If she did, she’d say some poetic shit, I bet.” He paused, and his eyes grew wide. “FOUL PLAY! I mentioned a girl. I need a shot! FIREBALL!” He launched toward the bottle of Fireball, and as he moved, his body bent over, hanging from the edge of the boat, and I gripped him tight, pushing him back toward the boat.

  I shook my head. Stop. As I was moving across the booth, with every plan to sneak out of the back door, one of the girls spotted me.

  “Oh. My. God,” she hissed.

  I dropped my head to the table, and tried to act normal.

  “Tiffany! Look, is that…?”

  The blonde turned my way. “Oh my gosh! It’s Brooks Griffin!” she shouted.

  All of the girls started screaming and rushed over to my table. I swore there were only a few at first, but my blurred version was confusing me more than normal. They were shoving their camera phones in my face, and I tried my best to push them away. Then, their questions and comments came flooding in.

  “Oh my gosh, Brooks. I’m so sorry about your accident.”

  “Oh my God! Did you lose your fingers?”

  “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.

  34

  Maggie

  “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.

  “Why do you think?”

  He’s waiting for her to tell him to come home.

  Cheryl’s eyes dulled, and her brows grow closer in thought. “Mom’s no better. Not trying to judge, but by the greasiness of her hair, and the swarm of flies following her around, I doubt she’s even showering.”

  I snickered at my dramatic sister.

  “Love is hard, isn’t it?”

  Yup.

  “That’s why I’m just going to get a cat. Cats don’t need anything from you except for food and a place to poop. That’s all I want from relationships, too. Give me some tacos and a toilet for the aftermath of tacos, and I’ll live happily ever after. I’m definitely going to get myself a cat. And maybe tacos for dinner. Will you come over and clean the litter box for me?”

  No. Probably not.

  “Okay then. I’m definitely not getting a cat.”

  I snickered. My cell phone started ringing, and I answered using FaceTime.

  “Hey, sis!” Calvin said, smiling into his phone.

  I waved, and Cheryl popped over to be seen.

  “Hey, Brother!” she shouted, waving.

  “Ah, two for the price of one. Digging the dreadlocks, little sister. I’m out in LA with the guys for some meetings and stuff, and I only have a few minutes before the next one starts. But I was calling to ask for your help, Maggie.”