In the Band

by Jean Haus

  Romeo glares at him. “Until we get it right.”

  “We’ve got it right. It’s just Riley, who keeps screwing up. So she’s off today. I’m sure by the next practice she’ll have her shit back together.” He turns to me. “Right?”

  “Yeah, right. Sorry,” I say with a frown. I should have just canceled practice.

  Sam sets his bass against the wall and fishes out his cigarettes from his pocket. “I’m taking a break.”

  “Good idea before I grow hoarse,” Justin says, flopping onto a metal chair.

  Lifting his strap and guitar over his head, Romeo gives me a questioning look. I shrug then push my sticks in my back pocket and pull out my phone.

  There are several texts waiting on my phone. All from my mother. My fingers quickly press buttons and scroll. Skimming them, I realize Jamie actually sent them. I go back to the first one and read through them.

  Mom is crying.

  Mom is acting weird.

  Something is wrong with mom.

  Mom won’t get off the couch.

  Come home.

  Please.

  I’m off my stool, pushing my mother’s number, and across the room in seconds.

  “Riley?” Jamie answers in an expectant tone.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mom’s…drinking,” she says in a hushed whisper.

  “Drinking?”

  “Yeah, like beer, but its red. And she keeps crying, but she won’t get off the couch.”

  What the hell? “I’m coming. Send me a picture of what she’s drinking, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Hurry,” Jamie says.

  I change my phone to vibrate, turn around, and nearly run into Romeo.

  He catches me by the shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  “My mom…I have to go.”

  He doesn’t release me. “Is she okay?”

  “No she’s losing it,” I say and rest my forehead against his chest.

  His arms wrap around me. “Do you need me to come with you?”

  At the idea of him seeing my mother drunk, I shake my head vigorously and repeat, “I have to go.” But my hands clench at the muscles of his back. My face digs into his chest. He feels solid and indestructible and safe. “I have to go,” I mumble into his shirt.

  Somehow understanding my dilemma, he gently unwraps my arms from around him and steps back.

  Justin comes up from behind Romeo. “What’s going on with you two?”

  “Nothing,” I say while my phone vibrates in my hand.

  “It sure as shit doesn’t look like nothing,” Justin says.

  Romeo crosses his arms as Justin glares at him.

  I stare at the picture of an empty wine bottle on my phone. My mother rarely drinks—usually just at parties and during the holidays—but she drank a whole bottle in a little over an hour? Alone with my sister?

  “Are you two seeing each other?” Justin demands.

  “No,” I say as Romeo says, “Yes.”

  “What the fuck!” Justin roars, pointing at Romeo. “You said none of us could hit on her! You’re the one who made a big deal about the whole thing!”

  Romeo glares at Justin but softly says, “It’s not like that.”

  My phone vibrates again. This time the picture is of my mother with her mouth hanging open and almost falling off the couch.

  “I don’t give a fuck what it’s like! Your rules always stand, which means she’s out.” Justin tosses a thumb backwards.

  Romeo’s eyes narrow to slits. “Justin—”

  “This is such bullshit!”

  My world slowly disintegrates as I look back at the picture in my hand again. Perhaps I’ve been blinded by hope, but the picture tears all hope away. My mother is broken. And I’m at band practice trying to play some stupid song.

  “We’re not getting rid of the best drummer we’ll ever have because of your ego,” Romeo snaps.

  “My ego? Listen motherfucker, you’re the one with the ego. You’re the one who makes all the rules. You’re the one who didn’t even want her. And you’re the one who’s going to stand by your shit ass rules!”

  I glance up from the horrible picture to see Romeo and Justin standing inches from each other. Both have their fists clenched. Romeo’s jaw is tight. Justin’s teeth are clenched in an opened mouth sneer. Someone is going to swing soon.

  “This doesn’t matter,” I say softly.

  Leering, Justin leans closer to Romeo. “How long you been taping that ass?”

  Romeo lunges and they crash against the wall. “Shut. Your. Filthy. Mouth.” He enunciates each word with a shove and dust flies around them.

  I rush next to them and pull at Romeo’s grip. “Stop it!”

  Breathing hard under Romeo’s weight, Justin sneers again. “Does she fuck like she plays?”

  Romeo takes a small bounce back, and though I have hold of one arm, quick as lightning, he punches Justin in the jaw with the other. Justin slides down the wall. Romeo leans over his falling body. “I warned you.”

  With a slight shake of his head and rage flying out of his eyes, Justin starts pushing himself up. “You wanna go, asshole?”

  “Stop it!” I yell again, stepping between them. With my arms on both of their chests, I say, “This doesn’t matter.” They ignore me and stare daggers at each other. “Because I quit.”

  Finally, both of their heads snap to me. As confusion changes their furious expressions, I step out from between them and race down the stairs. Romeo calls my name as I push out the door but I’m in my car and gone before he can catch up.

  Chapter 28

  It’s my birthday. Nineteen long years on this earth. So far today, I’ve shut my phone off when it wouldn’t stop beeping, got Jamie ready for school, and dropped her off. Next, I’m going to confront my mother. She’s still lying on the couch, where she passed out last night, and staring out the window. But instead of puffy, her eyes are blood shot.

  Over the past year, my mother has deteriorated into a stranger. Yet somehow between stuffing the washing machine and filling the crockpot I missed the complete transformation. Or maybe in its daily gradualness I became blind to her full change.

  I collapse in the chair next to the couch.

  Her eyes don’t leave the window, but she says in a gravelly voice, “I don’t need to hear it right now.”

  Happy fucking birthday, Riley.

  I shoot out of the chair. “You don’t need to hear it?” My fists clench at my sides. “Well, you’re going to hear it.”

  “Riley,” she says weakly.

  “No, you need to listen. I cook. I clean. I babysit. I do the damn yard work. Why? Because I know how hard this divorce is for you. And because I’m hoping if you have less to do, you’ll have more time to heal. But you’re not healing! You’re getting worse!” My arms flap out in frustration. “I’m not even sure why you have custody. I take care of Jamie most of the time. You just sit on your ass and stare into space. And now you’ve added drinking to the mix.”

  She sits up slowly. Her brown eyes filled with hurt stare at me. “You don’t think I should have custody of Jamie?”

  I tell myself to shut up, but the words come out anyway. “I’m not sure. I don’t know what to think anymore.” I walk past her hurt expression. Her sobs come at me in the kitchen. Ignoring them, I open the door to the garage. At the moment, she can cry all she wants. I don’t care.

  ***

  I end up at the skate park. Luckily, when Marcus and I skateboarded in August, I was too lazy to take my board up to my room and threw it in my trunk. I’ve spent two hours trying to do nearly every trick I used to do. I sucked at most of them. Since it’s a cold though sunny November school day, I had the ramps and grid rails to myself. No one witnessed my many wipeouts. Not that I really cared. I was going for mindless, but somewhere in between the multitude of face plants, the truth began to sink in.

  I s
hould have never left my mother alone last night. Deep down, I knew that, but I wanted to see Romeo. So I went.

  Guilt bubbled up in me until it exploded like a geyser and I went to a bench to get my head together.

  Now I sit and face reality while absently rolling the skateboard under my feet.

  My mother’s afloat in depression. My sister’s losing her childhood. My father’s getting remarried. And I’m the stitching holding the taters of my family together. But instead of putting my family first, I’ve been selfishly busy lately. With Romeo.

  Like a growing drum beat guilt pounds in my head. Boom. Boom. Boom. The guilty echo has me whipping my phone out. I stare at it for several long seconds then force myself to text Romeo.

  We can’t see each other anymore.

  I slide my phone back into my pocket. The booming guilt abates but a different guilt mixed with sorrow pounds through me. I pull my hoodie tighter around me, lower my chin on my lifted knees, and let the tears fall.

  My mother’s broken and now I feel like I’m breaking.

  The wind blows. Sorrow flows from me. The sun shines. The bottoms of my sleeves become drenched. Dried leaves pelt me. My heart dries up and threatens to stop beating, but the world keeps turning.

  Minutes? Hours? Sometime later, I wipe my eyes one last time then lay my head on my knees.

  “Hello Riley.”

  My eyes fly open to find Romeo standing in front of me. The tight lines of his face are grooved with weariness. Dressed in a long sleeved thermal shirt and dark green beanie, he looks cold. Remembering the rough feel of it against my cheek, I wonder where his wool coat is. Then I wonder how he found me.

  Somehow he reads my thoughts. “Marcus guessed you’d be here.” As his eyes take in my red rimmed ones, he gestures to the bench. “Alright if I sit?”

  I nod slowly, drowning in the image of him. He sits close enough for me to reach out and touch him. His harsh profile is beautiful in the bright sunlight. An intensity flows through me and threatens to sweep me into his arms. I want to crawl in his pocket and be a part of his everything. I want him to play me music while my heart melts and drips for him. I imagining lying in his bed and breathing in the smell of him until it fills my lungs and becomes part of me. I want to lose myself within him and never get set free.

  Suddenly he scares me in an entirely different way than before, as I finally understand my father’s excuse of being in love. The entire world melts away when I’m with Romeo. There’s just him and me and the overwhelming connection between us.

  But even though I’ve been acting like him, I’m not my father.

  Falling in love isn’t a free ticket to shit on everyone else and live in a bubble of love.

  “I got your text,” he slowly says.

  Obviously. I silently build my wall of resolve and wait for the coming blow out.

  He turns to me, his dark eyes contrite. “I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have hit Justin, but I won’t let him talk like that about you.”

  I blink, realizing he thinks I broke up with him because of him and Justin fighting. “You shouldn’t have hit Justin, but my text wasn’t because of last night.”

  His skin whitens. “Then why?”

  “I don’t want to…I can’t…”

  His entire body stiffens and his eyes pin me to the bench. “Have you been mind fucking me the last two weeks?”

  I break our locked gazes. Leaves blow across the sidewalk. The high-pitched crunching scrape is a low whine compared to the roaring in my chest. “No. The last two weeks have been amazing.”

  “Then what the hell is going on?”

  “I…my family needs me right now.”

  “So it’s okay to throw me under the bus and break up with me in a text?” he asks in a condescending tone.

  “No, the text thing was not okay. I just…needed to do it at that moment.”

  The wind blows and leaves swirl around us while I feel him staring at me and imagine the starkness of his gaze.

  “Why are you doing this to us?” he asks hoarsely.

  I let out a sigh and finally look at him. The pain etching his face almost breaks my resolve. Almost. “There isn’t enough of me to go around for there to be an us. Nothing else matters when I’m with you. You’re like a drug to me. I always crave more. I feel alive and euphoric when we’re together. I feel free. I feel like the person I always wanted to be.”

  The breeze ruffles the locks of hair escaping his hat as thoughts tumble across his eyes. “Riley, we can take things slower.”

  A miserable laugh escapes me. “The last two weeks were me taking it slower. Slow and you don’t work with me.”

  His gaze moves past me toward the skate board ramps. His jaw is tight. His long musician fingers press into his thighs. Even the posture of his body screams anger, but when he looks at me again, the sorrow in eyes rips through me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasp while more tears threaten to escape from the well that I thought had dried. “I feel like I’m leaving you standing in the cafeteria, but it’s not like that. This…this is hurting me too. I don’t want to choose, but I can’t be there for them and with you. I just can’t.” I swallow tightly. “Don’t hate me for this.”

  He reaches for my hand. “I could never hate you.”

  “Please don’t,” I say, tucking my hands in my lap.

  “I can wait,” he says so lowly I almost miss the words.

  For a second the promise of his words deadens the cold wind and warms me, but shaking my head, the chill blows through me until I feel empty. “That’s not fair to you or to them. My mother’s mental health can’t be tied to the possibility of us. I already resent her. If I hold on to the hope of us and can’t be with you, I’ll end up despising her.”

  He stands, paces in front of the bench, and pauses at a tree. Under his shirt, shoulder blades tighten like daggers. He raises a clenched fist at the tree trunk. Fury hangs in the air and reels into the wind until he drops his hand and unclenches it. His entire body rises with a breath as he turns toward me. “So you’re determined there’s no future for us?”

  “I’ve become determined to do the right thing,” I say while my fingers curl together. I want to touch him. I want his arms around me. The desire to give and receive comfort nearly overwhelms me.

  Several windblown seconds tick by.

  “I don’t think you should quit the band,” he says without looking at me.

  Strangely, abandoning Luminescent Juliet and drumming doesn’t seem too momentous compared to what’s between Romeo and me. “I have to. My family needs me too much right now.”

  He shakes his head. “What about you, Riley? What about the fact that you love to play?”

  “I love my family more,” I say simply.

  Dark eyes are hollow as he stares at me in silence. The wind grows colder and dry autumn leaves circle us until he takes a huge step and kneels in front of me. I’m caution at his nearness, pressing myself into the bench back but he leans forward. “I understand how much your family means to you. And I respect you for it. I even get why you need to quit the band. Though it’s killing me, I’ll respect your decision about us, but I need to be honest. So I’m only going to say this once.” His gaze holds mine. “I will wait for you.”

  Not wanting to hurt him anymore, I shake my head as he stands. Halfway up he bends, gently grasps my face between his callused palms, and kisses me hard. The kiss is searing and desperate and bittersweet. Then his hands and lips release me. “Happy birthday,” he says in a hoarse whisper before walking away.

  Tears fill my eyes and longing drills into my chest as I watch him walk away until he’s just a speck then gone.

  I let out a shudder into the wind.

  This has to be the worst birthday ever.

  Chapter 29

  My life has become a plodding beat. There are no exciting cymbal strikes or booms from the bass drum. The even plod is rarely broken except by small bursts like a high hat thump with
my mother’s slow changes.

  But she is changing.

  She took the long talk we had after I returned home from the skate park to heart. I firmly and honestly told her if she didn’t start getting herself together, that I’d be having a serious conversation with my father who’s been hinting at custody since her overdose. She’s been reading to Jamie at night as soon as she gets home. She had lunch with Jamie twice at school. She even made another appointment—I plan to drive her to that one—with a counselor. And she actually helped me cook on Thanksgiving. However, she did lie in bed for most of the day yesterday after seeing my father on Saturday—the night he comes over to watch my sister. I’m trying to be patient. I can’t expect her to change overnight so I’ve become her persistent shadow.

  College is the only time I’m away from home. Chloe has been visiting more, but I still feel lost without the band and music and drumming, even more so without Romeo. I try not to dwell on him. If I did, I’d become like my mother. Lost in depression. So eating lunch with motor mouth Kendra is actually wonderfully, mindlessly numb.

  Kendra saws her pizza into tiny bites. “So is it true you guys canceled playing at the Creed this weekend?”

  “I have no idea.” I shrug, but the numbness inside of me is hit with a twinge of guilt.

  She gives me an odd look.

  “I quit last week.” Another twinge of guilt hits me.

  “Why would you quit?” Kendra asks, smacking down her plastic knife. “I’d practically give my left tit to be near Romeo. Plus there’s you and the whole drumming thing.”

  I can’t help a smirk. “Your left tit?”

  Kendra grins and flips back her blonde curls. “I said practically. So what gives?”

  “I needed to be home more.” I twist my milk back and forth between my hands. “My parents are going through a divorce.”

  “Ah, divorce sucks. At least my step dad is loaded.” She stabs a square of pizza. “You’re a far better woman that me. Not sure I’d be able to give up something like seeing the sex god regularly for my family. But I guess it was about playing with you.”