“Oh my God,” I breathe out. “Why didn’t I know any of this?”
Dez shrugs. “Even the other guys in the band don’t know all of it. The problem with Blaze’s plan was that he didn’t know he was going to meet you. He figured he’d come on tour, keep fighting with Lush, beat them however he could, win the Super Bowl slot, and finally show his father after all these years.”
I can’t believe this. While I was floating along, falling for the hot guitarist in the rival band, he was battling these demons, trying to manipulate everything around him, driven by this terrible need to prove himself to a man who doesn’t love him.
“I don’t understand,” I tell Dez. “How did I fit in to all of this? Did he think somehow he could gain an advantage over Lush by getting close to me? Or maybe I was just an easy lay.” The bitterness in my voice is apparent even to my own ears.
Dez stops pacing and faces me. “No. That is absolutely not what happened. I’ve been Blaze’s best friend since we were eighteen, and I know him better than anyone does. He was completely unprepared for you, Tully. And he was real with you. There was no manipulation, no ulterior motive, he wanted you and he went after you. It was as simple as that, but it complicated everything else he had going on. I warned him. The day he disappeared in San Francisco—we were arguing over this…and over you.”
I watch him, my insides feeling tangled and tender.
“He told me he was digging, and planning to sabotage Lush. I told him he’d ruin his chances with you. He said he could handle it. I knew he couldn’t. I even suggested that he break things off with you. He refused.”
That hurts. A lot. Because no matter how angry I am at Blaze right now I can’t seem to quit caring about him.
Dez pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket. “He’s getting help now. And if you could find it in you somehow, some way, to see him, I think it would go a long way toward his recovery.”
He places the piece of paper in my palm and gives my hand a gentle squeeze before he walks away. I sit motionless, feeling like I have a bomb in my hand, ticking silently, waiting to explode whatever bit of peace I have left. When I finally open my fist and look at the small scrap, my breath stops and my eyes swim with tears—because Blaze isn’t at a hotel or his house in Malibu, or a luxury resort somewhere, he’s in rehab. And it’s just outside of Portland.
Blaze
Rehab is fucking hard. But, I’ve worked hard at a lot of shit in my life—school, football, music, business—so there’s no reason I can’t work hard at this too. I quickly discover that the real struggle isn’t going without the drugs, it’s going without my standard way of looking at the world, because it doesn’t take a counselor to tell me that isn’t working anymore—if it ever really did. And I realize that regardless of whether it’s in football or business or music, it’s my old man’s way of looking at the world. The sad thing is that I’m twenty-five years old and I’ve never figured out what my way is.
Realizing that—really admitting that I haven’t been my old man’s competition, I’ve been his puppet—hurts like hell, and knocks the wind out of me for the first few weeks of my stay.
But eventually the counselors encourage me to start visualizing what my world and my life will look like without that to fall back on, without the idea that I have to win at everything all the time.
“This is going to be hard,” my counselor, Trent, explains. “Because now you’re going to have to really say goodbye to your father, Blaze.”
I spend a few days thinking about what he’s told me and realize what he means. My fixation on my old man and his values, my need to prove something to him, to beat him at his own game, that all kept me tied to him. It all made me feel close to him in a bizarre way. And I’m coming to understand that giving all that up means finally giving him up completely. In the sick, strange world that is my relationship with my father, I miss him. I admit to myself, and out loud to Trent, that I’ve missed my father since the day he threw me out. I’ve been scared, I’ve been lonely, I’ve been lost, and I’ve been stuck as this seventeen-year-old kid who’s faced with the big, bad world and no help.
“But I want you to realize that you’re not actually that kid anymore, Blaze,” Trent tells me as we’re in a session a month after I checked in. “You’ve done a lot of good things with your life. You have friends, you have a very successful career, you have a home. You’re not alone, and you’re not without resources. In a certain sense, the ideas you grabbed from your dad and took with you served you well. They helped you survive, but it’s time to jettison them. It’s time to find a new set of values, but that doesn’t mean that the set you’ve had all these years didn’t serve a purpose.”
I fidget in the armchair I’m seated in. I’ve been thinking about this shit for a week, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any clearer for me.
“I’ve been trying to come up with new ideas, but it’s not so easy. I know I want the music. But am I not allowed to want to be a success at it anymore?”
“Of course not. Success is built into you, but you don’t need to want it over everything and anything else. You don’t need to always put it first. You need other things that are important to you, and to let those things guide your decisions too.”
Tully. My mind flashes with an image of her and my heart aches with want.
“So,” Trent says, leaning back in his reclining desk chair. “You think we can finally talk about what went down with Lush?”
I swallow and take a deep breath. “It’s not so much what went down with Lush, but what went down with her—Tully.” I look at this guy who I didn’t know a month ago, but who seems to understand me better than anyone but Dez ever has. “I’m in love with her and I ruined it all. I’m not sure how to come back from that part.”
“There’s no coming back from some of the things we do when we’re addicts,” he tells me softly. “But if you’re willing to put the work in, we can try.”
“Yeah. I want to try.” God, how I want to try.
Tully
The entire band agrees that a break is in order after the six weeks on tour and the emotional drama of the gossip columns. Returning to Portland I get back to my normal routine as much as possible—working at the bar, taking care of Savvy’s kid, trying to avoid my mother’s family dinners.
“We really don’t expect you to keep working at the bar,” Savvy tells me one Saturday afternoon as we’re cleaning up after the lunch crowd.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask, putting some dirty dishes in the caddy for the busboy to take into the kitchen.
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because you’re now a member of a super-successful rock band and you’re bound to be a millionaire in a few months if you aren’t already.”
Yeah, I haven’t mentioned how much I got paid for the six-week tour. I’m already a millionaire a few times over.
“Well, I don’t expect you to pay me anymore, but I do still want to work here,” I tell her.
She pops the cash register open and starts to count out the til. “It’s ridiculous, Tully.”
I bristle at that. “No it’s not. It’s normal. I like normal.”
“You’re avoiding,” she tells me with a raised eyebrow.
“What? Avoiding what?”
She sweeps the extra money into the deposit bag and slips it through the dropsafe. “He’s about six foot four, tattooed, sexy as hell…”
“No.” I shake my head vehemently. “There’s nothing to avoid, Savvy. He’s a selfish bastard and a drug addict, and bad news. Avoiding him is what every woman with any sense of self-preservation ought to do.”
She sighs and reaches over to grab my hand, stopping my frantic arranging of condiments and bar napkins.
“All of those things are true on paper, Tully. But I’ve met him, more than once. I’ve seen how he treats you and looks at you. I’ve seen how you are with him. He’s so much more than bad choices and drugs. The guy cares about you a lot, and he’s polite, supportive, consid
erate. I can’t believe that someone who would punch your brother out for disrespecting you, and charm our Irish Catholic mother into respecting rock as a profession could be all bad.”
I hang my head and scrape at something stuck to the surface of the bar with one fingernail. She puts her arm around my shoulders and leans to my ear. “No matter what, you need some closure. I can tell you’re going through the motions here. Go up to the rehab facility and see him. It can’t hurt anything.”
I don’t think Savvy realizes just how much it could hurt, but I don’t tell her that, I simply nod and promise to think about it.
Three days later, as if the universe is conspiring against me, I get a call from a guy named Trent at the rehab facility where Blaze is a patient.
“I’m calling to ask you a favor Ms. O’Roark.”
“I’m listening,” I say, my voice chilly at best.
“Blaze Davis is asking to see you.”
“That’s nice,” I snark as I balance the phone between my shoulder and ear while I unlock the door to my apartment. “But I have no interest in seeing him.”
“And I can understand that, but part of the rehabilitation process is apologizing to those we’ve wronged. He’s asked to see your whole band, but it’s required that he speak with each of you one on one.”
Something inside of me knots up in disappointment. I don’t want to see him, I don’t care about him, yet knowing that he only wants to see me because I’m part of Lush hurts.
“I’ll talk it over with my band,” I say, “and get back to you.”
The next day I sit down at a coffee shop with Walsh.
“I assume you want to talk to me about going to see Blaze?” he asks as we settle in to a back booth where we’re not so visible.
“You got the call too?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He chuckles. “Never thought I’d be on the other end of one of those babies.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that they bothered you—”
“Why?” He looks at me in confusion.
Once he asks the question I realize I don’t have an answer. “I guess I feel responsible for what he did.”
“Well you shoudn’t,” Walsh chides, taking a long sip of his oolong tea. His thatch of floppy brown hair hangs over his eyes and he gives me a small smile. “You didn’t have anything to do with Blaze’s choices. He made those all on his own, and you can’t blame yourself for getting involved with him either. He’s an addict, Tully. We lie. A lot. He was just doing what we do. It doesn’t mean we don’t care about people or that we didn’t mean most things we said, but we lie to ourselves all the time, and then we have to lie to other people too. That’s no one’s fault but our own.”
I realize that right here, right now, I have a unique chance to understand Blaze a little better, and even though I tell myself I hate him, I still can’t walk away from an opportunity to get inside his head even just a little bit.
“What did you lie to yourself about?” I ask.
“That I didn’t need to take responsibility for my actions,” he says without a pause. “I spent most of my life letting other people take care of things for me. Tammy and Joss paid the highest price for that, and the fact that either one of them could ever forgive me is a miracle.”
“But wait,” I pause, not wanting to offend him.
“How can I talk about them forgiving me when they were the ones who slept together behind my back?”
I nod, shocked by how blunt he is about the whole thing.
“Because I put them there, Tully. I put them in that place together that night. It was the culmination of years of me dropping out and them picking up my pieces, of codependence and irresponsibility. Could they have made a different choice that night? Sure. But do I hold it against them that they made the wrong one? No, because I’d left them in the exact right place to make that mistake. That part was all on me.”
He picks up my hand and holds it in his, warm eyes focused on mine. “I’ve been blessed to get forgiveness for a lot of shit in my life. It’s the best thing anyone can ever give an addict. Not enabling, but true forgiveness. Go and listen to what Blaze has to say. I’m going to. He deserves that much at least, because until we hear what put him in that place, we’ll never know how all of this happened.”
The drive to the rehab facility is pretty, full summer is in swing, and the pine forests are beautiful along the Columbia River as I drive the winding road to the facility that sits on several acres near the banks of the river. I arrive at the facility right after lunch, and I’m immediately shown to a small conference room with a table, chairs, and a view of a tiny courtyard outside the windows. I wait nervously, and when the door opens a few minutes later I nearly leap out of my skin. But it’s not Blaze, it’s his counselor, Trent.
“Thank you for coming,” he says shaking my hand when I stand. “Can I get you anything? Water? Soda?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
He stuffs his hands in his front pockets, looking very at ease. I can see that he’s a good match for Blaze, a little Zen to Blaze’s type A tendencies.
“Blaze will be here in a few minutes, but I wanted to see what you prefer. Would you like me to be here for the discussion or would you rather meet alone?”
I’d never considered that the counselor could stay, provide a buffer between us, a way to keep the conversation impersonal. Do I want that? I’m not sure. I remember what Walsh told me about giving Blaze a chance, really listening to what he has to say.
“What does Blaze want?” I ask.
The counselor looks at me with interest for a moment. “He’d like to talk to you one on one.”
I nod quickly. “Okay. I can do that. You don’t need to stay.”
He smiles. “Good. There is a button on the phone right there that calls a staff member to come if you decide that you need someone. But you won’t,” he adds. “Some of our patients get very angry trying to work through their stuff. That’s not Blaze. He’s been really committed to this and I think you’ll see that his progress is substantial.”
I nod again, feeling a little like a bobble-head, and Trent the counselor fades out of the room like a ghost. I’m still standing, staring at the door he exited, when it reopens and there is Blaze.
Everything inside of me goes cold then warm, melting, spinning, oozing into spaces I didn’t realize were empty. I stare at him, motionless, voiceless. His eyes are hungry, roving over my face like I’m the water he’s been craving for months in a desert. He’s had a haircut recently and he’s dressed in jeans and a plain white button-down with short sleeves. It’s cut narrow and hugs his torso, showing his broad shoulders and giving more than a hint at the spectacular pecs he’s graced with.
“Short stack,” he whispers quietly as we look at one another.
“Hi,” is all I can choke out because my heart is beating so hard and so fast I think it might explode out of my chest.
“Do you want to sit down?” he asks, gesturing to the chairs around the conference table.
“Ok.”
We sit across from each other and for a moment all he does is continue to stare at me, his eyes soft and his smile sweet. I have to look away because it’s so poignant, so intense, that I can’t bear it.
“Thank you for coming. I, uh, I didn’t think you would.”
“You can thank Walsh,” I say, my voice raspy. “He convinced me.”
Blaze nods, and looks down at his hands folded on the table in front of him.
“Tully,” he begins. “I have a lot to tell you, and a lot to apologize for. And I want to listen too. I want to listen to how you feel and what you think.” His voice turns thick with emotion. “I care about you so much. I just…” He clears his throat. “I just want to do anything I can to make things better with you.”
“I don’t know how I feel,” I confess. “I don’t know what I can manage when it comes to you.”
“I understand. Can we start just by listening to each other?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah. I can do that. I can listen.”
Blaze
Tully listens. I pour my heart and soul out to her, everything that’s gone on since I left home at seventeen, the way I’ve viewed the world, the twisted thought process that led up to doing what I did. I tell her every bit of it and when I’m done I feel like the weight of a thousand worlds has been lifted off of my chest. I had no idea how badly I needed her to hear all of this. How much I craved the sight of her beautiful face. I feel like the sun has come out fully for the first time since I entered rehab. Tully is my sunshine, she always will be.
When I finally wind down I sit back and try to smile. “I know none of this excuses what I did, short stack. I only wanted you to understand how it happened. Only you can decide if you want to forgive me or not, but you need to know that I feel just as much for you as I did that night of your welcome home party in Portland.” I reach across the table and touch her arm. She doesn’t pull away so I take that as a good sign and push on, because though I’ve been to rehab, and I know my priorities and methods have to change, I’m still me, and I can’t see something I want so despearately and not try to go after it. “I’d do anything to see you again when I’m done here. I know we can’t pick up where we left off, but if you could see any way for us to spend some time together, it would mean everything to me.”
I watch a million different emotions flit across her beautiful blue eyes in the span of a few seconds. She shifts in her seat uncomfortably and my heart pounds with the fear that I’ve pushed too hard.
“We convinced my mom that Joss and Tammy didn’t sleep together,” she says out of the blue. “She liked them so much she thinks the papers are being ‘horrible’.” She shakes her head and I sit back, relaxing a bit, waiting for her next revelation.
“My brother, Keith, punched a guy for saying shit about me at one of the job sites—” My stomach flips. “And my dad is so impressed with everything I told him about Lush’s foundation that he wants to start a smaller version with his construction company, and he wants me to help him set it up.”
A Lush Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel Page 25