Blessed Fate (Blessed Tragedy)

by HB Heinzer

I hadn't often fucked up so bad Jon couldn't look at me, so I knew I had screwed the pooch with my drunken word vomit.

  The bus was stopped by the time I started to wake up. Not only were we stopped, it was eerily quiet, like everyone was gone. There was a note from Travis next to the bed telling me to call when I woke up so they could give me directions to the hotel. I struggled to put the pieces together, not remembering most of the details from the end of the night. I laid there trying to figure out how to fix everything I had screwed up when I heard someone moving outside of the bedroom. The footsteps were too light to be any of the guys.

  "Rain, is that you?" I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, praying she would hear me and actually talk to me. I didn't deserve it, but I needed to apologize to her.

  There was no response for a long time, and I was sure she was ignoring me. I knew she hadn't left because I hadn't heard the door slam shut.

  "Yeah, it's me," she said flatly.

  She looked almost as bad as I felt, which was pretty damn bad. I had been lucky enough to pass out; she looked like she had barely slept. "Where'd you go last night?"

  "Angie and I drove up here and got the suite early." She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, and still couldn't look at me.

  "Why?"

  I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head with as wide as they grew at my question. Ignoring my inquiry, she held out her hand. "Can I see your phone?"

  "Fuck, does this have to do with the pictures?" Bits and pieces of the night before started falling into place. Me showing Jon the pictures of Rain and the band director, accusing her of sleeping with him. Shit, did I accuse Jon of fucking her? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  "The pictures? What pictures?" She started grabbing for my phone, but I pulled her down on the couch next to me. I needed to get off my feet before I fell over, still feeling the effects of everything I had drunk.

  "I need you to tell me it's not what I think," I whispered as I handed over my phone. Finding it hard to breathe, I leaned forward on the couch, resting my elbows on my knees.

  "Is this what last night was all about?" She shoved the phone back at me. She sounded like what I saw was no big deal, like I shouldn't be upset.

  "What am I supposed to think? Why didn't you tell me you and the band director spent that much time together while you were there? And why were you spending time with him at all?" I tipped my head to look at her, only to see her looking away from me.

  "He was a friend of mine when we were younger. Mike invited him to the bar, and we danced," she said, showing me the first picture. "Then we went to dinner to talk about some shit that happened when I left town, and the morning before I left, we met for coffee. It's something friends do when they don't see each other often."

  "But why didn't you tell me?"

  As I sat there listening to her explain how she and Garrett had been friends since they were little, I felt like the world's biggest ass. She had plenty of friends back in Portland that I didn't know, and none of them was an issue. My mind fixated on little details, like the fact that they had briefly dated, and he had kissed her the morning of graduation, as a way to justify my jealousy.

  "So, there's really nothing there?" I asked, needing her reassurance. Hell, I didn't know if there was anything between us after everything I had done, but I needed to know it wasn't a competition for her heart.

  "There's friendship. We've been friends since kindergarten, and I'd be lying if I said it doesn't feel good to have him back in my life. But as a friend. That's all he'll ever be."

  I walked over to where she had started to make a pot of coffee and tried to give her a hug. She pulled away from me, still guarding herself. "I'm sorry I was an ass. I should have waited." I needed water and something to silence the marching band pounding in my head. "Fuck, maybe I should have talked to you sooner. I feel like I went a few rounds with Rocky last night."

  "No, just Jon, but I'm sure he'll like the comparison." She laughed when I looked at her, confused.

  "What in the hell are you talking about?" Another piece of the puzzle dropped, me saying something to Jon about sleeping with Rain and him hitting me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  "Seriously?" She shook her head.

  "Yeah, I'm serious. Look, apparently I had more than I thought last night. I remember heading over while you and Jon were wherever you disappeared to, and I remember waking up and seeing a note from Travis that you guys were at the hotel. The rest is fuzzy."

  She poured two cups of coffee and sat me down at the table to recount every hideous detail of my tirade. I really was lucky she was willing to talk to me. Not only had I gotten into it with Jon, apparently I had also made a fool of myself in front of every single person hanging out in the band area. People I admired. People I respected. Fuck.

  "Wow, I fucked up." I buried my head in my hands, rubbing hard, trying to figure out if there was a way I could ever make up for the pain I had caused her. "Damn, baby. I'm sorry. Tanya told me someone sent her—"

  She spun around to look at me. "Wait a minute... Did Tanya send you those pictures?"

  "She said someone emailed them to her, and she thought I should know. And when I had no clue when she tried talking to me about it, yeah, she emailed the pics to me." Because I'm a fucking idiot. I know better than to trust Tanya. She's already pulled shit once, why would this time be any different?

  "And you believed her? Seriously? That's fucked up." She started for the front of the bus, and I followed her, grabbing her arm to stop her as she turned to the stairs.

  "What was I supposed to think?"

  "Maybe you should have thought to talk to me about it. About the fact that you were the one who told me she's waiting for me to fuck up." She put on her sunglasses to hide the tears I had already seen pooling in her eyes. "Now, it looks like she won."

  I watched her walk away, unable to follow her since I was standing there in nothing but my boxer shorts. I thought about getting dressed and going to find her, but I knew that was the wrong thing to do. She would calm down and come back. She always came back. Instead, I sat down with my journal and started pouring everything I was feeling onto the paper.

  After a few hours, I started to worry. I sent her a text message asking her at least to let me know she was okay. It sat there, unread. A while later, I tried calling her and it went straight to voicemail. I thought about heading to the hotel, but I needed to wait for her. I couldn't let her think I had left without working things out if there was a chance of that happening.

  When another hour passed, I worried even more. I picked up my phone to call Jon, hoping like hell she had gone back to the hotel. "Hey, asshat," Jon answered, his tone letting me know I was still in the shit house with him too.

  "Hey. Is Rain there?" I asked, avoiding the long talk I knew Jon and I were going to have to have sooner or later.

  "No, last I knew she was with you."

  "She's not. She left over four hours ago to cool down, and I haven't seen her since." Yeah, I was a fucking pussy for worrying about her, but she usually calmed down enough to deal with the issues after an hour, maybe two.

  The last words she said to me were on a loop in my head. Now it looks like she's won. Had Rain left? "Jon, you guys need to come back. I think I fucked up bad this time." I would take whatever they had to dish out, but we needed to figure out where Rain was first.

  "What'd you fucking do?" Jon asked, his voice saturated in disgust towards me.

  "I'll explain when you get here. Try calling her. It's going to voicemail for me."

  Every time I heard anyone near the buses, I bolted out of my seat to see if it was Rain. It never was. Call it melodramatic, but I couldn't tamp the feeling that this time when she had walked off the bus, she had walked out of my life for good. I had finally screwed up to the point that I wouldn't be able to get her back.

  I sat on the bus for hours in nothing but a pair of unbuttoned Levi's, guitar in my lap mindlessly strumming chords. When the bus door finally swung
open, I made the mistake of allowing hope back into my heart. That glimmer extinguished quickly when I saw the guys barreling up the stairs.

  "I find it really hard to believe you could have made things worse than they were last night when she left," Jon growled before he had even hit the top step.

  This was not the type of thing guys were supposed to do. We were the sex that kept everything bottled up inside and refused to talk about relationships with buddies. Unfortunately, I couldn't avoid that since there was a chance that I had not only screwed things up for myself, but also for the guys and the fate of Blessed Tragedy.

  "You'd be amazed at what I can do with the help of alcohol," I mumbled, unable to look at them.

  Travis flopped down on the couch across from me, running his hands through his light brown hair that looked more boy band than hard rock. "How bad is it?" He glanced up at me, obviously holding back what he really wanted to say to me.

  "Bad," I admitted. "I thought we were making progress for a bit. She actually sat down and talked to me. We weren't all good by any means, but we were talking without screaming..."

  "Okay, so then what?" Jon prodded. He pulled three beers from the fridge handing one to Travis and one to Jared before taking a draw off his own. It was a subtle message, but I got it loud and clear. He didn't think I needed to be drinking since that's what started this entire mess to begin with.

  "I told her who sent the pictures." I looked up to see Jon staring at me as if I had just grown a third eye in the middle of my head.

  "You really are fucking stupid, you know that?" Jon's jaw clenched almost as tightly as the fists balled at his sides. For a moment, I worried I was going to get a rematch of last night's fight, this time with me lucid enough that I'd remember every blow I had coming to me. Part of me hoped he would hit me, not so I could fight him back but because I had fucked up that bad this time.

  "Yeah, not my best move..." My chest tightened as I thought about the last moments of this morning's fight. What was I supposed to think? Yeah, that probably wasn't the right thing to ask her. I was supposed to think that Tanya is a bitter woman who considers it her mission to drive a wedge between me and the woman I love, so I will go running back into her gangly arms. I'm supposed to think that my girlfriend grew up in a small town, and therefore knew just about everyone, including the band director that I had met when we were there. I was supposed to think back and realize there hadn't been a spark between them when we were all standing together, but no. The green-eyed monster took over, and I jumped to her sleeping with him.

  Jon snapped his fingers in front of my face to get my attention. "Hey, Earth to Colton."

  "Sorry, just thinking."

  Jared cocked his head as if he was trying to take in everything that was being said. As the new kid in the group, and only a part-time member of the band, he rarely had anything to say. "So, she got all pissed that Tanya sent you pictures? That seems pretty extreme for Rain."

  My shoulders slumped forward on a long sigh. If he realized that, there was no way I would be able to leave this subject at that. "No, I totally fucked up after that."

  Travis, who had been going to find something to eat stopped in his tracks and whipped around to look at me. "Dude, I thought you'd already hit that point. I can't wait to hear this one." He leaned against the small divider wall. My eyes darted from him to Jon, whose posture was much the same.

  My throat felt thick as I tried to push out the words that were running through my head. The words I couldn't take back. "I asked her what I was supposed to think when I saw the pictures."

  Without warning, Jon took one step towards me and slapped the back of my head. "You're a fucking idiot." Okay, so I deserved that, but fuck it hurt. Between the stress and a lingering hangover, my head felt like a jackhammer was pounding at my brain. "We need to figure out where she's hiding. She didn't go far; the truck is still out back."

  The door opened again, and a sunburned Rain slowly walked up the stairs. Jon let out a long, slow breath. "Where the hell did you go?"

  "I was trying to enjoy the day, not that it worked. What's going on?" She asked sharply. Somehow, I knew then that I was going to catch hell for worrying about her. Rain didn't deal well with knowing people were concerned about her welfare; she saw it as people hovering over her and trying to dictate what she should do.

  "Colt called us, freaking out that he couldn't get a hold of you." Jared didn't look up from his journal as he spoke. In a strange way, I was glad he was the one talking. Rain had a soft spot for Jared and might not go ballistic on him. It wasn't the type of soft spot I worried about; it was more like a big sister/little brother vibe. "Said you stormed out. None of us could reach you; your phone was going straight to voicemail."

  "Yeah, I needed some space, sorry. Not like I'd gone far. If he'd bothered to check, he would have seen that the Silverado is still parked." Her eyes narrowed on me and I actually worried she was preparing to hit me. "I can't believe you called them." She pushed her way past Travis, knocking him slightly off balance before slamming the bedroom door shut behind her. This. Was. Bad.

  "Idiot," Jon mumbled as he forced his way to the front of the bus. "You need to figure out how to fix this shit. It's gonna be a long summer if she stays pissed at you." He smacked his hand on the side of the bus as he walked away.

  Before I could plan how to make things right with Rain, Jon returned to the bus, his eyes narrowed as he stalked toward me. This was a side of Jon I very rarely saw; one I had never seen aimed at me. I didn't like this side of him. It was usually followed by someone winding up bloody.

  "You need to get your shit straight, Colt." The muscles in his neck corded as he swallowed hard. "I get that she means a fuck of a lot to you, I do. Now, you're going so far overboard that we'll be lucky if she doesn't get on the first plane back to Portland. She's beyond hot." Somewhere in the middle of Jon's hovering tirade, I noticed Travis slink off into the late afternoon heat. Poor Jared stayed in his seat trying to ignore the world around him since he would have to ask Jon to move in order to go anywhere.

  "I know—" My heartbeat raced as I listened to him fighting the urge to scream. While my mind had jumped to the thought of her leaving the band, I was mortified by my actions when I heard he was also worried that was a possibility.

  "No, you fucking don't," he interrupted. "If you had any fucking clue, you wouldn't pull this shit. I can't fucking believe that you told her yesterday that you thought Tanya was waiting for her to screw up, which was probably a good assumption, and then last night, you got so shit-faced drunk that you believed Tanya." Jon finally backed away from me, slumping into the bench across the table from me.

  "Fuck, you really screwed everything this time. Tanya's done a lot for us..." Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't afford to have those two going at it." I sat there listening to Jon as he tried to work through how to handle the situation I had created. My only hope was that Rain was sleeping back in the bedroom and not able to hear what was being said as he railed on me for being stupid enough to sleep with Tanya.

  Jared's head snapped to attention at this revelation. "That's fucked up, man." With that, his head was once again down and he was writing away. The way my day was going, he was going to be some sort of savant when it came to poetry as well, and I would no longer be needed for my lyrical talents either. His pen hovered just above the paper, and he appeared deep in thought. "Look out, I'm going back to talk to her."

  Jon let out a bark of laughter as he moved to the side. "Could be your funeral, but more power to ya, buddy." He patted Jared on the back, and he sheepishly got up from his seat.

  "Can't do any worse than him, can I? At least I can make sure she's good to go on stage tomorrow." Jon and Jared shared a laugh over the remark, and I hung my head a bit lower.

  "You'd better hope she listens to him," Jon said, sucking air in through his teeth. "If she leaves, I swear, no one's getting to your ass before me."

  The good news for all of u
s was that Rain did listen to Jared. To hear him tell it, she had been debating whether or not she could hang around with everything that had happened between us. Not surprisingly, that meant nothing to me, other than the knowledge Jon wasn't going to be forced to kill me and we still had one of the best female singers out there leading us on stage.

  Day after day, I had to put on my game face when it was time to play. I didn't realize until things went sour just how many of our lyrics stemmed from situations involving my feelings for Rain. To say it sucked to hear her singing my words, my emotions, in front of packed festivals grounds every day would be an understatement.

  Once Rain finally calmed down enough that she was able to be on the same bus with me, I thought we had crossed a hurdle in finding our way back to friendship, if nothing else. Instead, we sat across the table from one another drinking our coffee without saying a word. I wasn't sleeping much anyway, so it wasn't a huge issue for me to get out of my bunk when I heard the bedroom door open in the morning. After a while, I felt like a desperate fool, hoping that each morning was the day she decided to talk to me.

  The day we were set to roll into Comstock, I couldn't take the silence any longer. Not only that, but I knew she was planning to take a few days off and hoped to weasel my way in to starting to break down the walls she'd so carefully crafted to keep me from hurting her again.

  My foot shook under the table as I tried to figure out how to start a dialogue between us that she wouldn't shoot down before I could finish a sentence. I bit my lip before saying anything, more unsure of myself than I had ever been before. If it wasn't for how much I loved her, I would have easily hated the person I had become in the wake of this latest series of events.

  "How's your dad doing?" I glanced up from my mug of coffee to gauge the expression on her face. Her eyes seemed to soften a bit and I leaned back, waiting for her answer.

  "He's okay." Her face tightened, showing me she wasn't so sure that was the truth. "They put him on some blood thinners, and he isn't great, but he's better."