by Frankie Rose
The next day, I head over to Columbia. Miraculously I’m caught up with all of my work, and I’m meeting with my student advisor to get signed off for enrollment to classes next year. It feels amazing, like I’m finally free in a way. No more scrambling to catch up. No more uncertainty hanging over me. I receive all of my necessary paperwork and the meeting goes off without a hitch. The hitch comes later, when I’m off campus, walking home.
A text message from Noah Richardson. I’d forgotten that he even has my number.
Noah: Hey, Patterson. Did I just see you in Columbia?
I just stare at my phone screen, wondering what the hell I should do next. Slowly, I type out a response.
Me: Yeah. I just got signed off for fall classes.
Noah: Awesome. Congrats. You’re a smart girl. Was there ever any doubt?
Me: Thanks. Maybe a little.
It feels very, very strange to be having such an ordinary text conversation with Noah. A part of me wants to put my phone back into my pocket and to ignore any further messages he sends. It’s intensely confusing.
Noah: You like chilli con carne?
Me: No.
Noah: Good. Me either.
Me: Then why did you ask?
Noah: Curiosity.
Me: I see.
Noah: You know who does like Chili Con Carne?
Me: Noah…
Noah: My daughter. She wants me to cook it for her, and I don’t have the faintest clue how. Care to help a guy out?
His last message is a low blow. Neve was adorable the other night. If he’s trying to use her to get me to hang out with him again, I think I’m going to castrate him. I don’t write a response.
Instead, I try to figure out if hanging out with him again would be such a bad thing. Probably. But hanging out is very different to being involved. That would never happen. Friends, though… Would he be able to keep his distance? Would he be able to respect the fact that I don’t want anything from him romantically? That’s what worries me.
For twenty minutes, I walk and I think. Lucas Reid’s face appears in my mind every time I think about spending time with Noah and Neve. At first, I feel sick, like I’m somehow betraying Luke’s trust. By the time I reach home, I’m over feeling sick and I’ve moved onto angry.
Fuck Luke. Fuck Luke for leaving me and hurting me and taking my happiness away. I take out my phone and type out a message to Noah.
Me: I’m sure we could find a recipe…
FOURTEEN
LUKE
“I'm very sorry, Mr. Reid. I don't know what you want me to say. Your hand’s fractured.” The guy in the white lab coat doesn’t look all that sorry, though. He looks like he thinks I’m a moron for smashing my fist into a wall while completely intoxicated. “You won't be playing guitar for the next six weeks in the very least,” he continues. “You need a plaster cast, and you need to rest the break.”
“I can’t rest it.”
“Then it’ll be even longer than six weeks, and you’ll probably never play guitar again. Your call.”
I feel like smashing my good fist into his smug fucking face. How the hell did I let this happen? I pull a face at the doctor, who doesn’t seem to care. He leaves the exam room, humming under his breath. As soon as he’s gone, Cole rounds on me like a wild dog.
“The fuck were you thinking? My god, Luke. Just tell me you want out. Shit. You're my best friend. You didn’t need to break yourself in order to opt out of the band!” Someone beyond the curtain tells him to pipe down, but I know him better than that. He’s likely to start setting fires in the corridors any second now.
“Dude, I wasn’t trying to opt out of the band. I was fucking wasted and angry. And half of that is on you.” I glance down at my hand, which is swollen to three times its normal size. I can't feel anything through the morphine and the cold from the ice bath the nurses insist I keep it in, but I know that eventually it’s going to be agonizing.
Cole crouches down so that his face fills my vision. “That's the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard. You are a grown man, Luke. You can stop drinking whenever you like. And you don’t have to take women home with you if you don’t want to, you asshole.”
A nurse with huge bags under her eyes sticks her head through the curtain, glaring at the both of us. “If you can’t use indoor voices and refrain from cursing, gentlemen, you can find somewhere else to obtain treatment. You feel me?”
Cole sits back on his haunches and salutes her. “Yes, ma’am. I doubt he’s gonna make much noise while I choke him to death, anyway.”
“Wonderful news,” she says. “If your friend hasn’t succeeded in murdering you and you’re still alive in an hour, Mr. Reid, I’ll take you down to get your cast set.”
“Great. Thank you.” My head feels like it’s full of sand paper. Given the amount of drugs they’ve shot me up with, combined with the fact that I’m probably still roaring drunk from last night, my fuzzy head shouldn’t be a surprise.
The nurse leaves and Cole takes a seat in the plastic chair beside the bed. “This is not my fault. You are a fucking idiot. Single men our age get drunk and fuck women. Rock stars do it every single night of the damn week,” he hisses. I laugh, which seems to piss him off even further. The shit that comes out of his mouth these days is hilarious.
“Jesus, Luke.” Cole sighs, running his hands through his hair. “Of all the things you could have done, why the hell did you fucking punch a wall? You’re not a cop anymore, man. You’re a front man and a guitarist. You know your livelihood depends on your hands.”
“So my voice is no good to you now?”
“That’s—” He exhales sharply down his nose. “That’s not what I mean. I’m just saying. It was a pretty fucking stupid thing to do, you know?”
“I am slowly beginning to realize this, yes.” It’s weird—I thought the drugs had kicked in but I seem to be getting higher and higher. The morphine’s so strong; I’m actually starting to feel a little nauseous.
“You have the best voice out there right now, Luke,” Cole says softly. “This is fixable because I can learn the lead lines on the guitar stuff and we can hire a ring-in to do support for the time being. But that…that shouldn’t make this okay. Do you hear me, man? Are you listening?”
I feel very, very sorry for myself. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. I’m get it, okay. I messed up.”
“Where the fuck is he?”
“Sir? Sir! You can’t go back there.”
The curtain is yanked back and Butler, in all his suited, five-foot-six glory, storms into the exam area.
“Oh, god, please no,” I moan.
“Praying might not be a bad idea right now, dipshit.” Butler’s face is a shocking shade of purple. “What the fuck is all this?” He lifts his hands skywards like he’s never been inside a hospital before.
“My hand’s broken.”
“So I hear. I thought you guys were fucking with me, though.”
“Nope.”
“Holy fucking shit. I’m gonna have a heart attack.” Butler pats down his blazer, as if he’s looking for something. “You realize this means we’re fucked, don’t you?”
“No, we’re not. Calm down,” Cole sighs. “I got the lead guitar stuff covered. We’ll get a session guy to come in and cover the rest ‘til Luke’s back playing. As he just so eloquently pointed out, he can still sing just fine.”
Butler stops pacing, hands stilled against his ribcage. “Oh. Right. Of course. And you can teach a session musician everything they need to know that quickly? Your song has charted. I know this might be a strange concept to you boys but people are gonna want you to be able to perform that song now. Live sessions for the radio. Live performances for bigger crowds. This stuff matters.”
“We’ll be fine,” Cole growls.
Butler gives us a curt nod. “Okay. And no melodramatic bullshit, either. You have to agree to play with whoever I can find with absolutely zero notice. No rejecting my choice or pulling a hissy fit be
cause you don’t like the guy.”
Cole and I both shrug, giving our consent. I don’t know about Cole right now, but I couldn’t give a shit who he finds so long as the guy can hold his guitar the right way. Cole’s one hell of a musician. He can carry all of our tracks on his own if he has to.
Butler pulls out his phone, already frowning. “I’d better get on it, then. Cole, call me if there’s anymore disastrous news.” He fires me a dirty look before swiping at the curtain and charging off down the hospital corridor.
Cole sighs heavily, shaking his head. “This is still all because of Avery, right?”
“No.” I hate him for even mentioning her name. It makes my chest feel so painfully tight, like I can’t goddamn breathe.
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met,” Cole informs me. “Seriously, you shouldn’t even bother. You get this tic at the corner of your mouth when you’re bullshitting me—I can see it a mile off. And besides, I’m your friend. You should be able to tell me when something’s troubling you.”
“So you can tell me to man the fuck up, or convince me the only way to get over her is to go out and fuck random strangers? Yeah. I don’t think so.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“That’s all you’ve done since this happened, Cole.”
“Yeah, well now you’ve hurt yourself. Now, I’m legitimately worried about you. Would it help if I just kept telling you she wasn’t worth it over and over again?”
“Not if you didn’t wanna lose your balls.”
“Okay. Duly noted. So what’s gonna help, man? I’m kinda stuck here. I haven’t been in your position before. I’m never been stupid enough to screw a girl more than twice. Negates the whole, oh no, I appear to have foolishly fallen in love with you, bit.”
I let my head fall back against the pillows, trying to fill my lungs up in an attempt to stop the waves of nausea from washing over me. “It’s okay, man,” I whisper. My eyes are fixed at the stained tiles on the ceiling—safer than looking at him right now. I don’t trust myself not to cry, and that’s the last thing I need. “I’ll be fine. I guess it’s just gonna take a little time.”
We’re silent for a beat, and then Cole says, “This time next year, you won’t be hurting this bad, okay? You’ll have found someone else. You’ll be trying to remember why you were even this upset in the first place. Avery will be nothing more than a girl you had a thing with once upon a time.”
It’s nice that he’s trying to comfort me, but it’s plain as day that he was telling the truth just now—he really never has been in my position. If he had, he’d know that a year isn’t going to fix this. Someone new won’t fix it, either. No matter how much time passes, or how many people I eventually end up being with after Avery, nothing will heal the hole in my heart. Not fully. I’ll always be damaged goods.
I pick up my cell phone from the desk beside the bed using my left hand. Guess I’d better get used to using it more often now that my right hand is out of commission. Just like always, I automatically open up the security screen on the phone and immediately head to the text messages…specifically to Avery’s messages. No matter how many times I read them, I don’t hurt any less. I don’t feel any less shitty. My finger hovers over the green call button at the top of the screen.
“You gonna call her?” Cole asks quietly.
I hit the home button instead, clearing away the messages. “No. It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“We’re guys. We act on terrible ideas all the time, man.”
I just grunt. Twenty minutes later the nurse comes back for me. She seems surprised when she finds me sitting upright on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor, while Cole snores softly in his chair.
“You ready to get plastered up, then?” she asks.
I nod, grinding my teeth. “Sure. Let’s get this over with.”
M. J. Rafferty MD, PHD,
Suite 8, 2365 Wellbeck
Beachwood Canyons
CA 90068
Patient: Lucas Andrew Reid
D.O.B: 10/06/1989
Past treatment files: XXSEALEDXX
Permissions: Granted
Current Medications: Triazolam
Session Record
Lucas was highly agitated today. He spent most of the night and morning in the hospital having sustained a hairline fracture of his right wrist. When I first questioned him about this, Lucas was reluctant to explain how the injury happened, however later during our session he admitted that he was drunk and punched a wall.
He grew angry, on the verge of engaging in sexual intercourse with a woman he had just met, and lashed out. We discussed whether Lucas thought his spike in anger was due to the alcohol or the potential sexual contact, and Mr. Reid was adamant that it was due to his intoxication.
He repeated many times that he didn’t have sex with the woman he had taken home. When informed that I wouldn’t judge him if he had, Lucas grew distraught. After several minutes, Lucas explained that he was angry with himself because he felt as though he had broken a trust between himself and his ex partner.
Following a brief assessment of his mental state, I chose to move away from discussions of the incident. When our session drew to a close, I advised Lucas to avoid his sleeping pills next few weeks, as they will interact with Codeine prescribed to him for his wrist.
Michael Rafferty.
FIFTEEN
AVERY
I spend my morning pottering around my new apartment, trying to figure out where all of my things belong. Where I belong. My guitar lesson earlier with Sam was pretty much a write off. My fingers are still blistered and sore, so touching the strings was painful to say the least. Applying pressure was almost out of the question. Sam rode me hard, calling me a pussy, trying to tease me into pushing myself harder, which worked wonderfully until my fingers then started bleeding. At that point he conceded that it was probably a bad idea to continue. He told me to let my blisters heal before we start up our lessons again. Said even though he’s been playing a long time, he still remembers how shitty it was to get started.
I was going to leave immediately after we’d called it quits, but he told me stay. His band mates arrived, and I sat quietly in the back of the studio and listened while they ran through a few tracks they’re planning on recording. They were good. Really good. But it’s not Encore’s music that’s running on a loop inside my head as I make my way to meet Noah later on. It’s D.M.F’s. Luke’s voice singing softly in my ear, not Sam’s.
I wanted to call and cancel my coffee with Noah, but I couldn’t sit in that apartment one second longer. And besides, I made a decision when I wrote that text message back to him. I decided to give him a shot…as a friend. Nothing more. He seems much mellower now than he did before Christmas. Maybe that’s because he has his daughter here now. Neve’s presence would surely calm even the angriest of people. I want to give him a chance to prove he was just going through a crazy patch before. That he can be a good friend. The only reason I want to cancel is because I’m slightly worried. What if he thinks this is something more? What if he wants more? I can’t give him that. I can barely hold myself together right now.
I park up, grabbing my jacket from the backseat of the car, and then I head toward the café, a gentle breeze lifting strands of my hair as I jog across the road.
The smell of maple syrup and buttery toast hits me as soon as I enter the building. Hunger stirs in my stomach for the first time in days. I just seem to have no appetite at the moment—being hungry now can only be a good thing.
Pancakes are undoubtedly terrible for me, but it’s what I’m craving as I scan the café, searching out the tall Irish man I’ve come to meet. I find him sitting in the far corner, both hands already firmly wrapped around a coffee cup. His infamous beanie is missing, and his hair is short, cropped close to his head. He must have had it cut. For a second, I barely recognize him.
He gives me a small wave as he sees me making my way across the café toward him. �
��So you came,” he says, smiling.
“I came.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
“Then why did you show up?” I slide into the booth opposite him, doing my best to tamp down the need to get up and walk—no, run—back out again.
“I like to balance out my Catholic pessimism with the odd dose of optimism every once in a while,” he tells me. “Keeps things interesting.” When he smiles this time, it reaches his eyes. He has lovely eyes. I always liked them before. The clear, pale shade of gray-blue was always quite stark and haunting. Made him look eternally sad. Made me want to make him smile like he’s smiling now.
A pair of brown eyes flash through my head, reminding me that no matter how pretty or sad Noah’s eyes might be, they’ll never be the eyes I was staring into when I realized I was in love for the first time.
God damn you, Luke Reid.
“Catholic pessimism, huh?” I laugh under my breath, sliding the salt and pepper shakers toward me, wanting something to do with my hands already. Nerves.
“Yes, ma’am. You know many glass-is-half-full Catholics? Traditionally we’re more the fire and brimstone type.”
“So I hear.”
Noah scratches his fingertips at his clean-shaven jaw, grinning at me and shaking his head, like he can’t really believe I’m sitting across from him. “Let me go grab you a coffee,” he says. “I’m almost out, anyway.”