Defining Us: The Calvin & Eric Story (69 Bottles)

by Derrick, Zoey

  “Well, you have two choices, deny who you are or keep working at it.”

  “What about that place, the one you told me about?”

  Doctor V raises an eyebrow at me. “You’ve reached that point?”

  I stand up off of the couch and start pacing. “I can only imagine what Eric saw last night, but whatever it was scared him half to death. I’m tired of letting my past consume me, and overcome me at the most inconvenient times and I am so sick and tired of denying myself what it is that I want most.”

  “What’s that?” Doctor V asks me.

  “Eric,” I breathe.

  “What if I told you there might be another way?”

  “You got acid around here to wash it out of my head?” I look at him, serious.

  He snorts. “Sure, acid will cure you and kill you at the same time. But no, I’m serious, I have another idea that may be the solution you need. Though I can’t promise a total cure, I think it could be something you need to consider. What I am actually thinking is similar to the other facility but the time it would take would be hours, not months or years.”

  “And why have you not brought this up before?” I ask him, stoic.

  He sits back in his chair, setting his pen down on his tablet. “Because up until Eric came along and changed everything for you by coming out, you never acted like you are now. You’ve decided that in order for you to find peace and happiness, you need to get rid of this side of you because the one person you want to be with is Eric. So, if you’re honest to god serious that this is the path you want to go down, then I have a suggestion.”

  “Hit me.”

  “Hypnosis.”

  I scowl at him. “Hypnosis? Like that shit where people make you do crazy things?”

  He rolls his eyes. “That’s for entertainment value, not for life value. People have been getting hypnotized for years to do things like quit smoking and drinking. It’s not always a cure all, but if your mind is as pliable as it was to get you to this point, I would imagine that hypnosis will have a similar effect, allowing us to reverse course. But like any other addiction, you have a chance to relapse. There is not a one hundred percent guarantee that it will work. I also can’t guarantee that it will curb the physical things, like the vomiting and things like that. But it’s worth a shot.”

  “Let’s do it,” I tell him. “I will do anything to right this ship with Eric and if that is possible with hypnosis then what do I do?”

  He smiles. “Good. But I can’t do it.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I could, but there is no guarantee that it will work, I’m not trained in it.”

  “Sooooo, who is and how do I get in touch with them?” I ask, hope and eagerness spread through me.

  “I know a couple of colleagues. Let me get in touch with them. We can set up an initial meeting.”

  I sigh. “I’m not spilling my guts again,” I tell him.

  “No, you won’t have to. I’ve gone before, with patients of mine. When it comes time for the discussion aspect, talking to you, things like that, they will usually let the one who knows the most do the talking. They just put you under. But I can’t promise that one session will be enough, there is a lot inside your head that we need to unlock and re-lock back up, so to speak.”

  “Whatever it takes,” I tell him with conviction and he smiles.

  “Hey Jess.” I hug her as she comes into my dressing room backstage.

  “Hey you. How are you?”

  I sigh. “A fucking mess.”

  “Oh no, what happened?” she asks as she sits down on the couch. I sit down next to her, leaning back against the back of the sofa, throwing my arm over the back.

  “We don’t have enough time for that,” I sigh. “But let’s just say that it’s over.”

  She reaches over and smacks me. “Bullshit.” She stands up and starts berating me. “You keep fucking telling yourself bullshit like that and you’re the only one who believes it. Eric, what in the hell happened?”

  “Jess, please, don’t push it.”

  All of a sudden my door opens and Calvin steps inside, closing the door before turning around. “Tell her, Eric,” Calvin says, his voice is laced with fear, and he looks positively strung out.

  “It’s not my place,” I tell Calvin as concern and heartbreak tear through me from looking at him again.

  “Jess, I assume?” Cal asks her and she nods, dumbstruck by Cal bursting in here. “It’s nice to meet you, though I wish it was on better circumstances.” He extends his hand and she takes it.

  “Likewise,” she says in her typical Jess fashion of quiet reservation.

  “I do hope that you and I will have some more time to talk after this, but the bottom line about what happened last night has to do with some bullshit in my past. Some things that I’m not proud of and that I cannot always control. Your friend over there knew all of this before we started anything and when the shit hit the fan, he fled.” Calvin gives me a very pointed look.

  Jess turns around, glaring at me. “Eric Richardson, what in the fuck?” she scolds.

  Calvin has a satisfied smirk on his face as he turns to leave my dressing room. “Oh no, you don’t, Calvin Caldwell. You don’t get to come in here and spew bullshit at my friend and turn around and walk out the door,” I say after him.

  “You, Eric, do not get to tell me you’ll be there, be here for me, help me through everything, be there to hold my hand when shit gets real and then bolt when the proverbial shit hits the fucking fan. Face it, Eric, you got scared, you ran away from it because that was the easiest way for you to deal with it and now, rather than running away from you, I’m telling the one person on the planet I know that can get through to you that you’re acting like an idiot.” He grabs the knob on the door and swings it wide before stepping through the portal and slamming it shut.

  Jess turns on me faster than I can even say what the fuck. “What in the fuck, Eric? I may not know the details about what his past entails, but why on God’s green earth would you run away from the one thing that means anything to you?”

  I fall back onto the couch and put my head in my hands. She’s right, of course she’s right. “I’m scared.”

  “So what? Isn’t that what relationships are all about? Being there for each other, being there to comfort them when they need you, pick them up when they fall? God Eric, you’ve talked about Calvin and being in love with that man for years since the first night I met you. You get a little taste of what he has to offer and you fucking run away from it.” She folds her arms over her chest. If I didn’t know better I’d think she was tapping her toes on the floor like my mother does when she’s pissed off. “I thought you were better than that.” Her voice is soft and concerned now. Not condescending like I would expect it to be.

  “I thought I was too,” I breathe out.

  IT’S been two weeks since that first Los Angeles show, and the tour has ended. After the second show, the four of us went out, alone. Leaving the girls to fend for themselves. Raine and Addison had no problem letting the four of us loose on the town. We deserved it, after all, we’d just rounded out a twelve week monster tour that saw more changes than I could have ever imagined happening. Talon and Kyle getting together, with Addison, of course. Dex, the resident manwhore, was tamed by Raine, and I wish I could say that things between Calvin and I had mended, but they hadn’t then and they still haven’t now.

  You would think that after two weeks, it would hurt a lot less than it does, but the truth is, it hurts even more.

  Each day passes and every night when I lay down, alone, I feel like I’ve been shredded apart again and again. I’ve nearly caved so many times and I know that’s what he’s waiting for. I was the one that walked out. I’m the one that needs to make amends and make this right, but I’m not even sure where to start anymore.

  Jessica has practically quit talking to me, except for her daily texts asking me if today is the day. Though she hasn’t don
e that in the last two days so I’m guessing her patience with me has worn thin.

  I dragged myself out of the house the other night and all I ended up doing was getting stupid drunk in some random bar and I had to take a cab home. Lucky for me, they called one of those places that drives your car home too because I would not have known where to even start looking for it.

  I even tried to make it to Malcolm’s but I got about a hundred yards away from it and memories of the two of us having dinner and drinks flooded me too hard, and rather than trying to walk them off on the beach, I turned around and went home.

  It’s pathetic, really. It is.

  My phone rings, bringing me out of my stupor of ‘poor-pitiful-Eric’. It’s a number I don’t recognize, but it is local. I raise an eyebrow before I answer it. “Yeah?” I snap into the phone.

  “Eric?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “This is Doctor V.” I sit straight up.

  ‘What can I do for you, Doc?”

  “I’m wondering if you’re free to meet with me at eleven this morning?” I look at the clock, it’s nine-forty.

  “I…uh sure.” I say skeptically.

  “Good, I’m going to text you an address. If you’d meet me there, that would be great.”

  “So not your office?” I ask.

  “No, not today. I’m working out of a colleague’s office. Mine is well, never mind, I’ll text you the address and I’ll see you there?”

  I sigh. I don’t want to deal with anything too emotional today, or ever again. “I’ll be there.”

  “Good. See you then.” He disconnects the call and within ten seconds, my phone chimes with an address downtown. I get out of bed and stumble numbly toward the shower.

  I haven’t shaved in, well, I don’t remember, and I certainly haven’t colored my hair since before the last show. In fact, I’m a hot fucking mess. My cheeks are little more pronounced, and my eyes darker, more hollow. I look scary almost.

  I pick up the razor with the intention of shaving. “Fuck it,” I grumble, putting it back down in favor of the sheers, and I trim myself up. I don’t think I look half bad all grown out.

  When I was done trimming, I cleaned up the edges and climbed into the shower. By the time I’m dressed, it’s nearly ten-thirty and if I’m going to make it downtown in time, I need to leave now. I pull a Mountain Dew bottle from the fridge and grab my car keys and the pack of smokes I bought yesterday. Don’t judge me, yes, I started smoking again. Can you blame me?

  Yeah, you can, but whatever.

  I leave my apartment, locking it up and heading down to my car.

  With ten minutes to spare, I pull into a parking garage below the building I’m to go into. For being a weekday, it’s surprisingly empty in here and I head for the elevator, hitting the “12” button and the doors close. For some reason, I am ridiculously nervous about meeting with Doctor V. Other than that one time, after Cal and I talked…I close my eyes, trying to shake the memory, but it doesn’t leave me. Doctor V and I talked a lot that day about Calvin and his affliction and the issues he had, but I walked out of there feeling confident and reassured that this would be a good thing, that I would be able to handle it, but apparently I was wrong.

  The elevator chimes and the doors slide open. There are a number of suites listed on the directory across from me and I find the suite and direction I want. There are a few people on the floor, going from here to there. There appears to be mostly doctors’ offices on this floor, but most of them are of the mental health variety.

  I get to the right door and the placard reads, “Dr. A.P. Morris - Hypnotist”. I raise an eyebrow and shrug, knocking on the door. “Come in.” A voice from the other side says, it sounds familiar but I can’t make it out through the muffle of the door.

  When I step inside and close the door behind me, I freeze.

  “Jesus, you look like shit.”

  “Fuck you very much. You don’t look much better yourself.” It was a lie of course. Calvin looks fucking amazing regardless, and the time apart has only made him look that much hotter. “What am I doing here?”

  “I asked you here,” he tells me. “I wanted you to be here when I did this.”

  “Did what? What’s going on, Calvin?” I can’t hide the fear from my voice and Cal has no problem picking it up.

  “I’m here because I need you back. I can’t take this anymore, this distance, this…it’s bullshit and I can’t take it anymore, Eric.”

  My heart stops beating and my head starts to swim. “I’m supposed to be groveling, not you,” I breathe.

  “Well, I’m tired of waiting for you to do it. So, after some extensive conversations with Doctor V, we came up with a solution.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  “Well, my options were limited, give you up or go away for a while until I could right this bullshit in my head.”

  “Calvin, I…”

  “Shh, please Eric, let me finish.” I nod and he continues, “I was willing to go away, willing to check myself in, willing to do the work it took, but the thing about that part that scared me the most was not knowing what I would have with you when I came out and option one, giving you up wasn’t even an option in my book.” He takes a step closer to me. “You see, Eric, I fell in love with you years ago. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it because I didn’t think I was strong enough to face the demons inside me in order to make it right between us. When I finally confessed to you what I am and what’s inside me, you promised to stand by my side no matter what.” He takes another step toward me. “Then, I imagine whatever you saw that night scared you more than anything else I’ve done because whatever it was sent you packing. I realized after you’d left that night that I needed to find a way to make it right between us.”

  “No Calvin, I…I was scared, so scared. But what scared me the most was because I pushed you, I triggered your attack. Then once I managed to get over that aspect of it, I had to practically hold you down because you were…” I shudder, “Then it didn’t matter, it wasn’t until you exploded all over yourself and me that I realized where it was that you were and Jesus Christ, Cal, I, fuck, I didn’t know what to think about it. I can’t wrap my head around the things that happened to you, at least I couldn’t, not until that moment and all I wanted to do was hunt those assholes down and kill them for what they did to you.”

  He takes another step toward me. “I didn’t know that and I am truly sorry that you had to witness that, Eric. I will never be able to apologize enough for that night, but I can do everything in my power to make it right. I cannot erase your memories, or your fear that it will happen again, but I can try and take away some of that possibility. Which is why we’re here.” He opens his arms, gesturing around the small waiting room I’d entered when I came in. “Dr. Morris is an expert hypnotist. We’ve been working together for the last two weeks. It was a process to get to this point but we are finally here. This is it, this is the last day. This is the day where I am hoping to let it all go.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then I keep trying, keep coming back until it does. Dr. Morris is confident that we will break the barrier today, that he will be able to wipe everything that triggers me. Though I will still remember it and there is a chance that we might not be able to wipe out the physical stuff, like vomiting, but, like smoking, my body treats my conditioning as an addiction, so we hypnotize away the addiction and…well, I guess we will need to see. So far, the things he’s done have worked.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this.” He steps closer to me, we’re now face to face, closer than we’ve been in weeks. He wraps his arms around my neck and pulls me down. “Kiss me,” he breathes.

  My eyes go wide for a moment but I can’t resist his request and he knows that. I slant my lips over his. Tears sting the backs of my eyes. Feeling his lips against mine is like finding heaven and home all at once.

  “Well done,” someone say
s, not Doctor V, another man, and I’m the one that stiffens, but Calvin doesn’t. His tongue, catching me off guard, slides in along mine and I shiver, melting back into his kiss.

  Eventually Calvin pulls back, with a smile playing on his lips. “Kissing you, in front of other people, is pretty hot.” He winks at me.

  “Where do I sign up?” I murmur and Calvin, Doc V, and I’m assuming Morris is the third, laugh. I smile.

  After introductions are done, Doctor Morris escorts us into an office. Quite different from Doc V’s but still none the less impressive. There aren’t several couches or chairs strewn across the room, but simply one leather lounge and a rolling stool. There are a couple more chairs that are out of place and likely added for myself and Doc V.

  “Calvin, go ahead and lay down.”

  “Alright.”

  “Eric, why don’t you grab one of those chairs and if Calvin is alright with it, take his hand.”

  I look at Calvin who nods. I grab the chair and move to the other side, sitting near him. He leans up on his elbow closest to me and his hand cups my cheek. “For the record, I like the beard.” I smile at him and he smiles too before laying back down.

  “Alright Doc, do your worst,” he says as he lies down, getting comfortable.

  My heart starts pounding, racing blood flows through my veins. Is this it, could this honestly be the moment that brings Calvin back to me, fully and completely? Is this the moment where we finally get a chance to right the wrongs that have kept us apart for far too long?

  I’ve never been a firm believer in hypnosis, but I watch as Doctor Morris puts Calvin under, his body goes lax, but his hand in mine holds strong. He’s found a grounding point, me. His talisman. Something he’s often called me and I’m beyond honored that he wanted me here.

  Doctor Morris and Doctor V switch places. I find it curious, but when Doc V starts to talk to him, I understand the necessity for him to be here. Doctor V knows the most about Calvin and his history. He’s known Cal a long time.