Strummin' Up Love

by Erin Wright

  But his very best glower did nothing at all when he pinned it on her. Wasn’t he just appreciating how she wasn’t one to be intimidated by him? He realized the flaw in that particular characteristic. There were times when she needed to know to leave something the hell alone, and touring was definitely that topic.

  Still, she just laid there, her hair a mass of silk around her head as she looked up at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. He glared at her, the kind of shut-the-hell-up look that could stop a stage hand in his tracks.

  She just blinked.

  Fine. He’d tell her the same bullshit story he told everyone else. If she was going to pry like this, she deserved to be lied to.

  “After Tamara died, I decided to take some time off. Take care of Skyler. He’d lost a parent; he needed me to be there for him.”

  She laughed.

  Not in a you’re-so-funny way, like she had been earlier, but in a you’re-not-fooling-me sort of way.

  “I imagine that excuse probably worked on most people, didn’t it?” she asked rhetorically, swooping her hair out from underneath her head and letting it cascade off the side of the couch in one smooth movement that he doubted she even realized she did. It was the kind of movement that had been done millions of times before by someone who’d dealt with the reality of long hair all of her life. “It is a very sweet excuse, after all. Your son’s lost his mom – of course you’re going to spend time with him. But you forget – I was here at the beginning of the summer, when I’m quite sure you had absolutely no idea that your son hated bread with nuts in it. You knew almost nothing about him, because you have not been spending time with him since Tamara died.”

  He got pissed then. “How dare you say that,” he hissed. “I’ve been doing nothing but spending time with him since Tamara died. I’ve been here, not back in Nashville, all summer long. I—”

  It was her turn to get angry, and she sat up, her black hair swinging around her, getting in her way, and he could tell that she wanted her hair tie back. She wanted to hide that gorgeous hair away again. He balled it up in his fist, refusing to let her see it.

  “You sent your son to Sedona, Arizona – which is across the country from Tennessee, in case you fell asleep during geography class – with only an aide by his side, to attend a music therapy camp. Now, the art therapy camp was closer to home – at least it was in the same state as you – but still, he was sent to it without you. You could’ve toured either time. Your son didn’t need you waiting at home in Nashville when the camps ended. I asked him – both of those camps were supposed to be eight weeks long. The kinds of camps that rich parents send their kids to during summer break because God forbid they actually spend time with their own children.”

  He flinched.

  He hated that she said that. He hated that she was right. He hated that they were discussing this at all, instead of snuggling together and making out like two horny teenagers like he’d planned that night.

  “And let’s not even touch boarding school. That’s where the rich parents really shine – they hand their kids over to a private school and let them do the raising. You know what? Here’s the God’s honest truth: I lied to you. That’s how I first got you to spend time with your own child – by lying. Through. My. Teeth.” She punctuated every word with a stab to his chest with her finger, her eyes flashing.

  He stared at her, bewildered. Louisa wasn’t someone who would lie. She had an innate honesty about her that was so interwoven into her soul and who she was, this was akin to her announcing that she actually ate small children for breakfast.

  It couldn’t be true.

  “The night you got drunk in your den and hit on me, I asked you to go out kayaking with Skyler and me. You didn’t answer me. You were too busy pawing at me. The next day, I told you straight to your face that you’d promised that you’d go kayaking with us because I knew you wouldn’t remember well enough to call me out on my lie. And after Skyler was so damn thrilled that you’d said yes, you couldn’t back out of it. I’m going to have to confess my sins the next time I get into a confession booth with a priest, but it was worth it. That day on the lake was the first time that you saw your son as someone you could not only love, but also like. So don’t give me no bullshit about how you’re not touring because you’re taking care of your son. You let your wallet take care of your son.”

  “You don’t get it!” he roared, a wounded animal, wanting to come out and defend himself. Fight back. Make her hurt like she was hurting him. “I don’t get to tour. At least, not for a while. Maybe not ever. I. Don’t. Get. To.” He bit off each word as if spitting them out like that would force Louisa to leave him the hell alone. Leave this whole topic alone.

  “You are an extrovert,” she said softly. Placatingly. She put her hand on his arm, and he could tell she wanted him to calm down, but he didn’t want to calm down. He wanted to roar with anger. He wanted to make her regret ever bringing this question up. “You thrive when you go up on stage. You come alive. I’ve watched some videos online. I’ve seen a few of your concerts. I can see the light switch flip inside of you as you go up on that stage and make your fans forget, if only for a little while, that they have any worries or problems in their lives. You were born to be on stage, Zane, and not touring is slowly killing you.”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter 30

  Louisa

  “Exactly?”

  She stared at him, completely bewildered.

  “Don’t you see? This is the price I have to pay. I screwed up in so many ways. I am the reason that Skyler is in that godforsaken chair. I don’t get to tour anymore. I don’t get to sing in front of audiences. I don’t get any of that ever again. This is my penance.” He tilted his head back, gulping down the last of his beer and then standing up to grab another from the bucket of ice next to the buffet table.

  It all clicked together then. She’d been so stupid not to see it before. How had she missed it?

  She closed her eyes, shaking her head at her stupidity. She heard the pop of the lid on the bottle and then him swallowing, practically chugging the beer down like a frat boy at the induction party.

  The sound spurred her to action and she sprung to her feet before she could think through what she was doing. Before she could carefully reason it out.

  “No more beer for you,” she cried, yanking the bottle out of his hand and dumping it into the trash. He gaped at her, quieted for the moment into stunned disbelief. “You are drinking your life away, feeling sorry for yourself, your own little pity party in your den, your own little pity party every day. Poor Zane. His wife died. His son is in a wheelchair. Now he is trying to drink himself to death. But not on my watch.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him, blockading the ice bucket.

  “I don’t – I’m not—” he sputtered. “I drink to take the edge off things. So sue me! Everyone I know does that. Hell, at least I don’t snort shit up my nose or stick a needle in a vein. Compared to most major music stars, I’m practically a priest.”

  She shook her head. “It does not matter what other people do,” she said softly. “It only matters what you do, and why you do it. You are drinking because you don’t know how to deal with the life you’ve been handed. You have more money than everyone else I know combined together, but that doesn’t matter. Money does not make you happy, any more than it’s made anyone else happy. You are an alcoholic, and I will not love an alcoholic. My father used to be one. I will never live with a drunk again.”

  All of those nights, lying in bed, trying not to breathe too loudly, hoping that night would be the night her dad simply fell into bed and went to sleep. That it wouldn’t be the night when he hit her mother or broke dishes or smashed up furniture.

  It was almost losing her mother after she gave birth to Alex that finally turned her dad straight. He came so close to losing his wife then, and ironically, it wasn’t his drinking that had caused the childbirth complications. Her mom had simply been
worn out from having too many kids and shouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place, but she’d been a good Catholic and hadn’t used birth control. After she almost bled out, her doctor removed her uterus during emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. She’d been so angry with the doctor for taking that choice away from her, but Louisa had always been grateful. Another pregnancy would’ve killed her mom as surely as a bullet through her brain, but even knowing that, her mom would’ve refused all forms of birth control.

  But that wake-up call of almost losing his wife in that hospital had scared her father straight, and he never touched alcohol again. It was one of the reasons why Louisa could actually come home to her parents’ house after Matt threw her out of his home. If her dad had still been drinking…

  She didn’t know where she would’ve ended up, actually, but definitely not her parents’ home.

  Which all of this made her blindness to Zane’s drinking problem even more surprising. She should’ve known. She should’ve realized. More than anyone else, she should’ve seen the signs, but she hadn’t.

  “God,” he said bitterly, jamming his fingers into his curls, and even as she watched him, she saw his eyes flick towards the bucket of alcoholic drinks and then back to her face. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of me having a few beers. It’s not like I’m hanging out over the porcelain throne every morning.”

  “When was the last day you did not drink? Name the last day you made it through without a single beer.” She crossed her arms and glared at him, waiting.

  She could tell the moment that he realized he couldn’t remember, because his shoulders went back and he looked ready to pounce, ready to fight her for daring to ask such a question.

  “I haven’t been stumbling drunk in a while,” he snarled. “I really don’t see how a single beer in a day means that I’m an alcoholic.” Again, his eyes flicked, ever so quickly, to the bucket and then back again. He wanted a beer in his hand so badly in that moment, she rather thought he was going to lose his shit if he didn’t get one.

  Stupid, Louisa. Stupid. You missed this. How could you have missed this?

  “You’re not in the final stages of alcoholism,” she said calmly. “If we were to run tests on you, I bet your liver would still come back as mostly functioning. But it is the direction you are heading. It is not a straight path. You can wander and wind your way through for quite a while before firmly ending up in the alcoholic camp. But it is the way that you’re headed. Think about it, Zane. Right now: What do you want right now? You want a beer in your hand. Your eyes keep darting over to the bucket.”

  His eyes jerked back to hers, his face flushing red.

  “Don’t try to tell me that it isn’t true,” she said mildly. “You’d just embarrass yourself. You know it’s true. It’s written all over your face.”

  He staggered back, shaking his head, wanting to deny it even as he kept his mouth shut, unwilling to be caught in such an obvious lie. He sat down with a hard thump on the couch and stared at the far wall of the theater, not talking, just thinking. Was he slowly coming to realize that she’d been telling the truth?

  She could only hope so.

  She kept quiet, waiting for him to think through it all. Whatever realizations he was finally having, she didn’t want to get in the way of them. She was absolutely sure that the knowledge he was becoming an alcoholic was just as much of a shock to him as it had been to her. No one sat down with the plan to become addicted to alcohol. It snuck up on a body, stealing away your independence and self-respect when you weren’t looking.

  “I didn’t think I was drinking that much,” he rasped, and when he looked up, his eyes were pleading with her to believe him. “I just thought I was having one or two occasionally. How could I have become a drunk without noticing?”

  “Because no bottle of beer ever comes out of the fridge with a warning label on it. This is the beer that will turn you into an alcoholic. Proceed with caution.”

  His lips twisted with humor at that. “It would sure be helpful if it did,” he mused.

  “No doubt,” she agreed dryly. “Look.” She settled down on the couch next to him, picking up his hand and looking him straight in the eye. “When you were touring full-time, were you also drinking? Not a few beers or a few shots of tequila occasionally, but were you drinking every single day, even if it was just a little bit?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, searching back. “I…no.” His eyes popped open. “I drank here and there to celebrate and whatever, but I didn’t drink every day. Not like I do now.” The admission was humbling to him and she knew that he would’ve given anything to not say those words. He was so embarrassed to admit that out loud.

  She squeezed his hand, proud of him for saying it anyway. God, how she was hurting his pride, and yet, he wasn’t lashing out at her – at least, not anymore – and refusing to look the truth in the eye.

  Yeah, she was damn proud of him.

  “I am not an alcohol or drug dependency expert,” she said slowly. “I learned about it in medical school, of course, but my unit’s specialty was spinal cords, not detoxing people after years of hard drinking. Here’s what I understand to be true, though: You can become what is called a situational alcoholic. In other words, you begin to rely on a substance to get you through tough times. If the tough times go away, then your desire to drink goes away.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said absentmindedly, only half-listening as he stood up and headed for the ice bucket. She watched, open mouthed, as he popped the top on a bottle and brought the beer up to his mouth, so frozen with shock that she couldn’t speak or move or yell at him and then he froze too, the beer bottle pressed to his lips but not drinking.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, he lowered the bottle, his eyes wide as he stared at her. “I didn’t even notice what I was doing,” he whispered. “It was like scratching an itch. I didn’t even know. How many bottles of beer have I drunk without even knowing I was doing it?”

  She stood up and softly pulled the bottle from his hand, pitching it into the trash. She picked up the heavy ice bucket, grunting with the weight of it, and carried it over to the door, wrestling it out into the game room and out of sight before coming back to Zane. “Automatic responses,” she said. “It’s how you can eat through a whole bag of potato chips without even realizing you were doing it. If you put the bag away in the next room over and only give yourself a small bowl to eat from, you’ll eat a lot less. The same thing is true of anything else. When you have beer right there, you can drink a bottle, or a six-pack, without thinking about it.”

  She pulled him back to the couch, sitting next to him, holding his hand in hers, willing him to understand that what she was about to say was oh-so-important.

  “Not touring is driving you to drink.”

  He gaped at her. “Wh-what?” he finally got out.

  “You are an extrovert. You were made for that stage. You were made to share your gift with the world. By punishing yourself and refusing to let yourself tour, you’re slowly driving yourself insane. And so you’re dealing with that pain by drinking it into oblivion.”

  His lips formed a perfect circle as he stared at her. She wished quite desperately that she could read minds, because she knew he was replaying scenes in his mind at the moment, rehashing the last 18 months of his life at least.

  “Oh. Oh, my God. That…”

  He was back to staring at her again.

  “I was punishing myself,” he finally said. “It’s what I thought I deserved after screwing up so royally. I still believe…I screwed up, Louisa. I made a mess of everything. My drive to always come out on top, to be the best…it killed my wife. Crippled my son. If I wasn’t a country music singer, we wouldn’t have been in that limo that night. My kid would still be walking around. My wife would…well, she wouldn’t be my wife anymore,” he flashed a small, wry smile at that admission that disappeared just as quickly, “but she would be alive. Maybe she was a bitch. Maybe she w
as an awful wife. But she didn’t deserve to die.”

  “No, she didn’t,” Louisa agreed mildly, and he flinched at her raw honesty. “I never met her, but it sounds like she loved Skyler a lot, and that alone makes her something special. But Zane, she could’ve died any other way. Did you know Wyatt Miller was married before?” Surprise registered in Zane’s eyes, and he shook his head. “She died on the way to the store to buy milk. Their daughter was in the backseat. They both died driving to the store to get milk. Tamara could’ve died ten thousand ways before Sunday. Drunk driver. Brain aneurysm. Cut gets infected. Food poisoning. Plane crash. I should probably stop before I freak you out so much, you never leave the house again.” He chuckled at that. “The only reason we don’t curl up in the corner and refuse to move an inch is because we humans are good at convincing ourselves that it’ll ‘happen to someone else.’ Except, it has to happen to someone. We can’t all die in our sleep of old age. Life doesn’t work like that. Your wife didn’t die because you were a country music star, Zane. She died because sometimes, life is shitty. Refusing to tour and share your gift with the world doesn’t change a damn thing, except to make you crazy to the point that you’re willing to numb yourself with alcohol.”

  He stared at her for a long while, clearly processing everything she just said.

  “How is it that you know me so well after only a few months?” he finally asked. “I went to the most expensive therapists money could buy after Tamara died, and all they ever wanted to do was talk about my childhood. I mean, my childhood was as screwed up as you can get,” Louisa cocked an eyebrow at that, her curiosity piqued, but he ignored it and continued on, “but that wasn’t what was haunting me. How did you know?”

  “I’m gonna guess your therapists didn’t watch concert footage of you,” she pointed out. “That’s how I realized how important touring is for you. Stupidly, though, I didn’t put that together with your drinking until tonight. So you can stop thinking I’m a genius right now. If anyone should’ve put two and two together, it was me, but I still missed the signs.”