by Riley Scott
“Hey,” Raven said, nodding in her direction and giving her a lazy sideways smile. “What’s up?”
Chris bit her tongue, willing herself to be strong against this cavalier behavior. She shook her head and walked to the kitchen to get water, so she had the chance to pass by her room. One glance at the space told her she still wouldn’t want to shine a black light in there any time soon.
Ignoring the awkwardness, the guys continued their conversation and passed cards around the small table, ignoring Chris’s presence. Feeling completely alone in the world, she made her way back to her room. Standing in the middle of it all, she didn’t know where to begin. The bed was the last place she wanted to be.
“Hey Chris,” Raven called from the doorway. Chris looked at the mess again, before briefly turning her attention to Raven. She couldn’t meet her eye, so she turned away again. “Did I leave my phone in here?” Raven asked benignly.
Chris’s anger mounted and she turned to face Raven directly. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s in the same place where you discarded your clothes, and your dignity,” she spat the words in Raven’s direction.
“Why are you so touchy?” Raven asked unflinchingly.
“Of all the places, you chose my room,” she said, careful to keep her words quiet but pointed. She didn’t want to yell. “What the fuck was that about?”
“It’s my bus,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “And I honestly didn’t really look around too much. I was led back here and I followed.”
“And what about the camera?” she said, narrowing her eyes. “How stupid can you be?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Raven said, shaking her head.
“There was a fucking camera going,” Chris said, throwing her arms up in the air. “You have to be more careful than that.”
“Stop acting like my mother,” Raven said, putting a hand defiantly on her hip. “And while you’re at it, stop acting like a jealous girlfriend. You know the score between us. We don’t have rules. That’s what this whole thing was built on, remember? Living in the moment. Apparently you can’t handle that.”
“What I can’t handle is you being an awful client,” Chris said, determined to keep her anger in the right place. “You’re right. We don’t have rules. We never did and that’s fine. I’m not a jealous lover. Do I wish you had respected me enough not to do it in here? Absolutely. I feel like you should have a shred of decency and be able to decide what’s wrong and what’s right. Do I wish you weren’t strung out on something tonight so we could have a real conversation? Without a doubt. But it is what it is. There is no longer any video, because I destroyed it while looking out for you. And there is no more situation here. Don’t worry. I won’t threaten you by acting like a jealous girlfriend anymore. In fact, I am walking away from this. I’m done. I’ll hand you off to someone else at the firm, or I’ll suggest another firm.”
“You can’t handle it,” Raven said again, taking a step closer. “You can’t handle not being my one and only, can you?”
“You’re messed up tonight,” Chris said, shaking her head. “I’m not going to try to talk to you about logic or anything else. You probably won’t even remember this conversation, so I’m wasting my breath.”
She walked around Raven, grabbing the items still strewn about the room, and dumped them on Raven’s bedroom floor. She grabbed her own baseball tee from the corner of Raven’s dresser, so she could pack her things.
Raven still stood in Chris’s room, watching her every move closely.
“Fine,” Raven said, her defiance seeping through every word. “Go ahead and leave. Go ahead and run. Run back to safety where things aren’t messy and people aren’t fucked-up.”
“Stop,” Chris said, her voice a stern whisper as she felt it packed more of a punch. “Stop being a victim. Stop running. Stop hiding behind lies and false bravado. Right now,” she paused letting her words hit their mark for the biggest impact, “you’re nothing but a cliché. You’re nothing of your own. You claim to be so different and you could be.
“You sang tonight about being bold. That’s what you want to portray to your fans but it’s a lie. You act like you’re the world’s only victim. You sit on your high horse and you hurt everyone in your path. We’ve all been hurt, screwed over, abused, cheated. We’ve all been victims. And instead of being the force you could be, you wallow in your victimization. You represent a litany of bad choices. You’re determined to ride this cycle of screwed-up behavior and be nothing greater, nothing deeper, nothing more.”
Raven opened her mouth to speak, but Chris shook her head. She was done listening to anything Raven had to say. She stripped the sheets, threw the pillows onto the floor and ushered Raven out the door.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Raven yelled, standing in the hallway.
“Of course I do,” Chris said. “You’re a cliché. Be more.”
With that, she shut the door, leaving Raven on the other side. She slid the lock into place and let herself slide down the door into a defeated heap.
The wretchedness of the situation took over, a clear reminder that she had failed. She had taken this job as a challenge, something she knew she was capable of. She had set out with no expectations other than that she would turn Raven’s image around, that she would somehow help her to be more of who she really was.
Instead, all she had succeeded in doing was standing helplessly by while Raven destroyed herself, yet again. All their work was for nothing. It didn’t matter how many rescue dogs she hugged, how many positive stories or how involved Raven was in things other than the music scene. None of it mattered, if she persisted in running around like a wild child.
Even though she had only been a part of the dynamic for a couple of months, Chris had been told that these outbursts and rebellious behaviors were not isolated incidents. Once the switch had been flipped, they could all expect more of the same in the coming days and weeks. There was little anyone could do to stop the train once it had started rolling down the tracks.
Chris wasn’t going to stick around and take the abuse. She was the one who had reached inside, who had been let behind the fortress walls and that now made her the enemy. It wouldn’t be long until Raven spiraled completely out of control. From what Paul and Frank had told her, this could last anywhere from a few days to a month or even longer. She wouldn’t, couldn’t stick around to watch it. It hurt too much to be in the middle of it, and given that her professional boundaries had already been crossed, it was best if she walked away now.
She glanced at the time, wishing she could call her boss now, but it was far too late. She thought through possible outcomes. Yes, she was walking away from a job, but she was doing so before it became an outright failure. There were times when clients and account managers just didn’t mesh. They had all walked away in the past and this would be no different. She would explain the situation to Susan as best she could, but she felt confident she was making the right choice. After all, her boss had left it in her hands to decide when her work on the road was completed. Up until now, she had no idea when she was going home, simply because she had let herself get caught up in it all.
Now, it was different. The atmosphere had changed into something dark and cloudy that wouldn’t ease for a long time. And it was no longer something Chris wished to be part of. She would leave here with her head held high and she would hand Raven’s contract over to another manager. It would be as simple as that and if they chose to break the contract, that was their choice. She had done all she could do here.
Bracing herself on the dresser, she took extra care not to touch the lines of cocaine or black g-string. She emptied her belongings from the drawers, the closet and finally the bathroom. Once she had everything secured, she crawled into a ball on the floor, bidding the hours to pass quickly as the bus roared through the night.
She couldn’t sleep. She tried to remember where they were headed next. Wherever, she was taking the firs
t plane out of there. More than anything, she needed go home.
Still awake, she felt the bus come to a stop. It was daylight and she was ready. She typed up a quick email to Frank, letting him know that she would touch base with him once she was back in Houston and that they could discuss options for moving forward at that point. Making only one last attempt before exiting, she scrawled the words “be more” on a Post-it note, sticking it to Raven’s door.
Whatever happened, she was heading home, back to where she belonged.
They had stopped at a gas station in Dallas. Her final stop. She breathed a sigh of relief that she was at least near a major airport. Not looking back, she walked until she came to a hotel and hailed a cab, her chariot back to normalcy.
* * *
The banging on her bedroom door drew Raven straight up to a sitting position. She yawned and rubbed her eyes, her head pounding with every movement.
“Just a second,” she called, scanning the room for her clothing. When she opened the door, she was taken aback by Frank’s expression. His jaw jutted out, his eyes angry and the lines in his brow deeper than normal.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral, even though everything about his demeanor screamed rage.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, walking out into the hallway, her eyes adjusting to the light. “I just woke up.”
“I can see that,” he said, looking her up and down. “I’m talking about what transpired here last night.” His voice was low and fatherly. She could imagine him saying the things fathers say on television. “I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.”
“Last night is kind of a blur, to be honest, Frank,” she said, wishing he would get to the point. “What are you referring to?”
“I’m asking why we now have no one to do PR,” he said sternly, pointing to Chris’s room. “You might not have noticed yet but she’s gone. I want to know why. I warned you this would happen if you weren’t careful, but you were so insistent on breaking the rules that we’re back in the same boat. We’re back at square one, without the one who had been helping you so much.”
His words ran together for Raven as she tried to recall all the night before. Looking into Chris’s room, she felt her heart plummet. He was right. She was gone.
“I don’t know,” she answered when nothing came to mind. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out as the day goes on,” she said, stepping past him to go get some water. Her throat was parched and she felt as though if she tried to say anymore, her sadness might manifest as tears.
“I’ll call her later, then,” he said, turning on his heel and walking for the door. “I’ll ask her what happened and maybe you can let me know when you figure it out. Then, we can decide where we go from here.”
Disappointment and anger dripped from his words and she was thankful when he finally left. She couldn’t shake the profound disappointment in herself. This had been something she had wanted to make work and in her typical fashion, she had driven it right into the ground—even if she had no idea how or why.
Leaning back on the couch, she let the pieces come back. Someone had called out her name at the concert. Someone from her past had surfaced and found her. Or Chris had broken the trust Raven had placed in her. Her mind played tricks on her as she tried to figure out which to believe. Either she was right and it was a voice she recognized—a voice she had heard time and again throughout her childhood. Or it was a scorned past lover. Or Chris had told someone.
As she sipped her water, fresh fear and pain cascaded over her. She was no longer able to hide in her anonymity. She closed her eyes. No matter how she tried to fight it, she heard the voice again from years ago. She knew exactly who it had been out there last night.
It was the voice that had occasionally been nurturing, with bedtime stories and limited guidance. But it was also the voice that had, all too often, been the voice of rebuke, verbal assault and betrayal. It was the voice from which she had never heard so much as an apology or an explanation, the voice that took no note of shortcomings, the voice that had brought far more hurt than good into the world.
“Erin!” She heard it over and over in her mind, trying to recall the last time she had seen her mother. She remembered distinctly the way her bloodshot eyes had showed no remorse, as Erin was whisked away in a child protective services car. With her hands cuffed behind her back, her mother smiled, seemingly grateful that her only child was being taken from her. Even as a teenager, Erin knew what that meant.
It meant it was over. It meant that she was never going to see her again. Already toughened by life, the ten-year-old sat in the back of the car, willingly going wherever they had in mind for her. She had been sure it had to be better than life in this hellhole.
It hadn’t all been roses, but it certainly had been better. And with each passing day, she had worked to make sure she never had to hear that voice, to see those eyes, to feel that heartache ever again. She hadn’t had to, until yesterday. That must have been who it was. Luckily, it hadn’t been a full-on encounter and she hadn’t had to face her mother. Even so, it had been unnerving. And she knew the proclamation of love was a lie. It had always been a lie. “Erin” had been nothing more than a meal ticket and if her mother had resurfaced, it was surely money she was after.
She tried to recall what had happened after she got back to the bus. She knew she didn’t go out. And as far as she could remember, Chris hadn’t been around. Confused and desperately wanting to remember, she walked to Chris’s room. She saw the heap of sheets and pillows on the floor, the evidence of drug use on the dresser. It all flooded back. The blondes. She tried to assure herself that she hadn’t been in the wrong.
Chris could be hurt over it, but she had given no indication that they were in a relationship. She felt her defiance build as it had done so many times before, but she couldn’t hold onto it. She wanted to be stubborn and stand by her choices, but she knew she had been at fault.
Then the rest flashed back, what Chris had said, the fact that Chris had seen her in action. Forcing herself to breathe, she made her way to her room, only to see a bright Post-it note hung on her door. She pulled it off, remembering having heard Chris say those exact words only hours before. “Be more.” It rolled around in her brain like a ball in a pinball machine, flying through the air and hitting each stubborn wall.
She wished she could feel numb. But she felt a wave of guilt and heartache crash down on her, threatening to pull her under. She fell down on her bed, unsure of whether she should call and try to apologize or if that would only make matters worse.
Chris had been right to be angry. She had been right to be hurt. Raven was out of control and she knew it. For the first time, she let herself feel the weight of the sadness she had caused to not only Chris, but to all the other women before her.
She thought back to Chris’s face, distorted in pain, mascara streaked. She had been crying and Raven had done nothing. Just like always. This time it hurt more, knowing that she had driven away the best person she had ever met.
Chris was special. Like a breath of fresh air. She was a good influence, and had seamlessly fit into Raven’s life. She’d come in and tenderly opened the doors of Raven’s heart, without prying and without force. That sweet, sincere smile never asking much or expecting anything. She was everything Raven had ever wanted and all of those things she didn’t know she had needed. She was everything and Raven had fucked it all up.
She needed help. This time, she promised herself, she would get it. She would do what it took to be more.
She toyed with the idea of calling Chris, letting her know about her epiphany. But she tossed the idea aside. Chris deserved more. She didn’t need an empty apology, words that meant nothing. She deserved to see that changes had been made. Raven wouldn’t contact her until she had become worthy of Chris’s attention.
She walked back into Chris’s room, wiped up the lines, grabbed the drug paraphernalia and threw it in
the trash. Sitting on her bedroom floor, the scent of Chris’s perfume still lingered hauntingly in the air. If this is what rock bottom looked like, she had finally arrived.
Chapter Sixteen
Music streamed through her headphones, blocking out the surrounding aircraft noise and cocooning Chris into her own little world. She took another sip of her vodka. If she was honest, she wasn’t sure which she faulted herself more for—believing Raven actually cared about her, or jeopardizing her career in such reckless fashion. It was an all-around failure. She knew as much. It had been inappropriate and had wrecked her professionalism—and all had been done with such poor judgment. She gritted her teeth, regret seething through her body. She shuddered, replaying her stupidity and her complete lack of regard for anything other than feeling good.
“It’ll all be fine,” she remembered telling her boss, assuring her that, whatever happened between her and Raven, it would all work out in the end.
She had been dead wrong and now she was going to have to pay the price, whether that meant finding a new job, swallowing her pride and working on Raven’s account from afar, or being formally reprimanded once she was back at the office. Either way, none of it was going to be pleasant and it was all a direct result of her sheer stupidity, her denial and her willingness to go blindly into what was obviously a bad situation. And she criticized Raven for making poor life choices! Talk about hypocritical. This was her doing and she was going to have to bite the bullet with whatever came next.
She hit her call button on her console and waited for the flight attendant. She nodded silently when the well-meaning woman asked her if she was okay. There was no doubt she looked dreadful, with her puffy eyes and her disheveled clothing making it clear that she hadn’t slept last night. She quickly drank her second strong drink, knowing they were close to landing. The music took her away again, this time not to another world—but to her reality.
Pink’s “Crystal Ball” about missed chances echoed her thoughts. She moved her head to the soulful words, feeling them resonate within her and knowing that at least someone understood.