by Riley Scott
This was a reality she had helped to create. These were her choices, but she would stand by them bravely. She would apologize where necessary and not back down. She had taken a risk in getting close to Raven. And it had backfired. She was defeated.
For a moment, she looked around, wondering about her fellow passengers. They all looked so at peace, so calm. She wondered if any of them had a war raging within them, if any of them had experienced anything life changing in the past day. Regardless of the damage, there was no way she would ever be able to look back on the past two months and pretend that it hadn’t shaken her to the core, that it hadn’t changed her.
Steeling herself against heartache, she closed her eyes, knowing that she didn’t have to have it all figured out just yet. She vowed that she wouldn’t become hardened and jaded. No matter what, no matter if it hurt like hell, she was going to feel it, to let it take her to rock bottom if necessary, all so that she didn’t become like Raven. She would do everything it took to keep herself from being so jagged and cold, so stubborn and determined to push others away. And so alone.
She was still the same soft-hearted, hard-working woman she had always been. Next time, she would be a little wiser. With growing confidence, she threw her trash in the bag as it passed by and readied her tray for landing.
Chris could feel the alcohol swirl in her brain, making it difficult to want to get up from the comfort of her seat. At the baggage claim, she felt her nerves tingle with their rediscovered passion for nicotine. Grabbing her bag, she headed for the curb. She lit up a cigarette, relishing one last moment. Breathing in deeply, she spotted Brittany’s car parked in the loading zone. Reluctantly, she crushed the cigarette and threw it in the ashtray.
She waved, thankful that her friend was so dependable. With no trace of condemnation or curiosity, Brittany helped Chris with her bags, placing them in the trunk and gave Chris a long, welcoming hug. The warmth of the embrace almost shattered what little strength she had left and Chris felt the hot tears streak down her cheeks.
“I missed you,” Brittany said, before pulling away from the hug and getting into the driver’s seat. Chris followed suit, trying to regain her composure.
“I missed you too, by the way,” she said, breaking the silence in the car.
Brittany smiled at her, reaching over to pat her leg. The movement was so simple but felt intimate. She thought about leaning over to kiss her. But she refrained. Half drunk and clearly a hot mess, Chris was not in any state to make a move on her best friend.
“You look a little worn down,” Brittany noted, glancing out of the corner of her eye. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” Chris said, before shaking her head. “Actually, I know I’m not, but I also know that I will be—in time.”
Brittany nodded, silently giving her support. She turned slightly in her seat. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Chris shrugged, knowing there were things she needed to say and knowing that this was a safe space. She didn’t have to have her words exactly right. Aside from that, even though it would be difficult, it would be good practice for the meeting with Susan tomorrow. She needed to explain without tears. She let out a deep breath, preparing herself to try to distill what she had been mulling over on the plane.
“It was incredible,” she said, looking off into the distance, remembering every moment. “It truly was like a work of art to watch play out. It was like fireworks. It all built with suspense and a slight hint of danger, weaving a pattern of fiery beauty across a night sky. But all too soon, it exploded, leaving behind wreckage and despair. That was really the only course it could have taken. It was beautiful. It was something that I’ll never forget, but it had no way of lasting.”
“Are you talking about her or this experience?”
The question was simple, but it made Chris’s stomach somersault. “Both,” she said, letting out a deep breath. “The gig itself was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It was like the championship of my career, something people dream about. It was my biggest challenge and I have to say I did a damn good job. Mostly… But just like going to war, I suppose there are bound to be some casualties at the end of a hard-fought battle.”
“What’s the damage in this battle?”
“My heart,” she answered, letting Brittany in on the secret she had tried so hard to conceal. To her credit, Brittany didn’t flinch. “My heart and my pride. I got too wrapped up in it all I guess. I thought she cared the way I did and deep in the back of my mind, I realize now I was holding on to this stupid misconception that, whatever came, we would tackle it together. We had made such a good team and professionally, I made great strides. She’s never had positive publicity like this before. In that arena, it was a win. But time will tell if it lasts, or if it was for nothing. My pride has that to hold onto. I can rest assured that I did everything in my power, even when my judgment was clouded by my feelings. My heart, though, will be battered and bruised for a while. But it will heal. It will just take some time.”
Brittany nodded, but the pained look in her eyes was clear. “I want to kick her ass,” she said. “She has no right to ever make you cry. I don’t care how big and bad and untouchable she thinks she is.”
“I had a hand in this too,” Chris said, shaking her head. “I appreciate you always having my back. You’re the best friend I could ever ask for, but this was partially my doing. I let her get away with it, by letting her slide on not having to commit to changing. As far as she was concerned, she was untouchable and I didn’t challenge that. I should have known better than to let my heart get in the way of everything, but I went for it. I dared to feel. It sucks, because she’s out there probably partying it up and I’m reduced to a pile of tears. But I’ll recover just fine.”
“I have all the faith in the world in you,” Brittany said, letting out a long sigh. “If anyone is resilient, it’s you. I’ll still hate her though. And I’ll still be here by your side every step of the way.” She paused at an intersection. “What do you want to do? Do you want to go out? Do you want to find someone to take home and take your mind off things? Do you want ice cream and movies?”
Chris shook her head. “I’m a little partied out, I’m afraid. And I don’t want to find someone else to distract. She meant more than that to me. It may have been nothing more than a good time to her, but it meant something to me. And I refuse to cheapen that memory by jumping into bed with someone else just to feel better. Let’s just go home.”
She almost broke down again realizing that, this time, there would be no pitter-patter of dog feet dancing with joy at seeing her, no one jumping into her arms to greet her and lick her face. She had lost her father. She had lost her way. She had lost another chunk of her heart. And she had lost the little dog she loved more than anything in the world. But this was her new normal and like the champion she knew she was at heart, she would overcome even this.
“Last time I heard from you, things seemed to be going well,” Brittany said. The statement wasn’t a question, and it held no judgment. “You seemed happy. Both of you did. I mean, I couldn’t see your smiles in the picture, but you could tell that there was a sweetness in the embrace.”
Chris nodded, feeling it all come back.
Chris shook her head. “We were happy,” she said. “Nothing was established, of course, but it was blissful. It was easy and we seemed to just go through every day with a gentleness and bringing out the best in each other. Then, out of the blue, in a matter of moments, it changed irrevocably. Like something flipped a crazy switch in her head, she lost it.”
“What did she do?” Brittany asked, her mama bear voice coming out again. “Did she hurt you? Did she get violent?”
“No,” Chris answered quickly. “Not at all. It wasn’t like that.”
“What did she do?” Brittany repeated, articulating each word plainly. “I need to know.”
Chris hardened her lips, forcing a deep breath out. She was going to have to get this off her chest—a
t least with Brittany. “We had been spending every night together. Every day too. We were so caught up in each other. She had been opening up to me, letting me see the parts of her that she keeps hidden. She made me think it was something important, and then when you called about Paco, she’d had a bad night as well.”
She paused, looking out the window and wishing that some of what she had to reveal didn’t hurt as badly as it did. “I knew we were in for a rough night, even before your call. Raven had opened up to me. She had shared some of her past with me—something that seemed so out of character.”
She watched, waiting for Brittany’s jealousy to flare. All she saw was genuine concern, so she continued. “We had this passionate connection. She shared details with me, including her real name. From what I gathered—and from online speculation—that’s a guarded secret. Someone called her name out in the crowd that night. I’m not sure if it was an ex-lover, a family member who found her after all these years or someone else. Whoever it was, I know it had to have scared her and made her feel exposed. She’s far more vulnerable than she lets on. She uses bitterness and fakes aloofness to push aside her fears and weaknesses.
I knew she would be volatile after the show. There’s no way she would react any differently, given her history with blowups and incidents. I’d heard she lashes out. But I was prepared to be by her side, to make it better for her. Because of Paco, I was too late. By the time I sorted myself out and went to check on her, I saw things that I just can’t forget. It was all a blur, but the memories are so vivid.”
Brittany stopped at a red light and turned to face her, her forehead wrinkling questioningly.
“I rounded the corner to go to my room,” Chris spoke but the words sounded foreign, as if she was recounting something in a court of law. Her voice was dry, cold, hollow and devoid of any emotion. “Instead of being in her room with her friends doing God knows what, she had chosen mine—for reasons I still can’t figure out. She was in my bed. I mean, I guess technically it’s hers. Everything is hers. She was in my bed, high as a fucking kite, having a threesome with a pair of blond whores. God knows where they came from. Her dealer I guess. I saw so many awful things that night, but worst of all, I saw that one of them had been filming the entire escapade.”
“What the hell?” Brittany’s voice was quiet, but it seemed to echo throughout the entire car, reverberating off the windows and replaying the sentiment that Chris had been expressing for the last twenty-four hours.
“I think she needed someone anonymous to make it hurt less,” Chris said, explaining it away, her tone still hollow. “She had already called in reinforcements long before I disappeared. She didn’t want me. That’s all I can figure, unless it was just that being in my presence, in light of the pain she was feeling, was too real. It made it too personal, so she needed to just get lost in someone who knew nothing about her.”
“That’s unacceptable,” Brittany said, shaking her head vehemently. “You are so much more than that and I know it sounds trite, but you deserve better than that. You’re not some little plaything that she can throw around. She doesn’t own the world. She doesn’t own you. And unspoken or unlabeled or whatever, that’s uncalled for. In fact, it’s cruel. She doesn’t get to rule the world as if nothing matters. Life isn’t her big playground.”
“She just got carried away, I think,” Chris said, shaking her head. She didn’t want to make excuses for Raven’s behavior, but she had to see the situation clearly. She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “The thing is that I don’t even think it’s intentional anymore. I don’t even think some of these things she does are even consciously thought out. She lives on a whim, always. Whatever feels right or sounds right in the moment is what she chooses. It’s like an animalistic approach to life, truly primitive. Where the rest of us understand what’s socially acceptable, she’s decided that it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not healthy,” Brittany said, shaking her head again as disapproval flashed in her eyes.
“It’s not,” Chris said, letting out a sigh. “Nothing about her life is healthy. But I don’t think she’s ever really been too grounded. I don’t think she had the chance early on and later on in life, she adopted her own set of rules. When you’re on your own at an early age, the rules are yours to make. And let’s face it. When life is a party, where do you draw the line?”
Brittany pulled the car into their driveway and Chris breathed a sigh of relief. She was home. She paused, stepping from the car and letting herself drink in the fresh air as though it was her first taste of water in days. “When life is a full-time party, it’s hard to know when to stop. When there are no rules, who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? She has been surrounded by people all of her life who haven’t told her when to stop.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Brittany said, helping her unload her bags. “There are some lines in life that you shouldn’t have to be told not to cross.”
“I completely agree,” Chris said, “but someone has to teach you that.” She glanced at the house, unsure how she would take walking through the front door without Paco. Pushing through the sadness, she continued the point she was making. “The thing is that she is so far gone that I don’t even know if she thinks in those terms. She’s on a pedestal to everyone and at the same time, she is the hot mess that everyone sees. She teeters somewhere between the two modes. She’s the diva who holds the world in the palm of her hand, the one who can do no wrong. And she’s also the one everyone expects to fuck up. It comes as no shock to anyone anymore when she does something crazy. There’s nothing she can do to get a rise out of them. She dances the line between being everyone’s goddess and everyone’s screwed-up little sister. The dangerous part is that she doesn’t give a damn and she has given up on caring what anyone else feels, needs, wants or expects. She has given up on being vulnerable. That night, it was like she transformed into some kind of party-hard zombie and I don’t even know if she gave so much as a thought about me when she went off the deep end.”
“You sound like you’ve given this some thought,” Brittany said, opening the door.
The gesture warmed Chris’s heart. If nothing else, she was home with someone who cared enough to take care of the little needs—picking her up at the airport, helping her with bags, caring about her problems…and opening the door. It was simplistic, she knew, but it still meant that she mattered. That was something she had been missing. She had been missing Brittany and maybe she had been missing her all along—on a deeper level.
“I had to so I didn’t go crazy,” Chris said as they made their way inside. Without Paco, the entire house had changed. It was still home, but it wasn’t the home she had known. A single tear slipped from her eye as she carried her bags into her bedroom.
Brittany followed, still intent on hearing all that she had to say. “I have to understand why she could do something like that,” Chris continued, needing to crystallize her thoughts. “I have to understand how someone with such potential to be an amazing person could be so cold, so removed from anything else. When we spent time together, it was as if she transformed into someone so alive, so raw and pure, so genuine. But she was able to just forget that and turn it off, as though she had never made love to me when in a vulnerable state, as though she had never laid not only her body—but her soul—bare in front of me, as though none of our connection ever existed. I have to understand her motivation or lack thereof, or I’ll lose my mind. I’ll start thinking that maybe I imagined it all. I don’t want to do that.”
“You don’t want to forget?” Brittany asked, taking a seat on the edge of Chris’s bed. “Don’t you think it would be easier if we could just forget those things?”
Chris thought about that for a minute, as she sorted through her clothes, placing them in the laundry pile. “No, I don’t,” she said, shrugging. “You know as well as anyone that I’ve always gone back and forth between hating and loving this soft heart of mine, but I also know that
I would be lying if I said I wanted to forget it all. I don’t want to forget and I don’t want to be bitter about it. That’s why I want to try to see it from her perspective. If I just look at my side of it, I’ll become cynical and angry and I’ll hate her. I’ll despise her for dragging me into this—even though I went willingly. I have to look at it from her perspective, so that I can hold on to what it meant to me—what I know it meant to her too, even if she’s too fucked up to realize it or express it.”
Brittany smiled at her with a knowing look in her eyes. “Come here,” she said, opening up her arms for a big hug.
Chris complied, knowing that right now—probably more than ever—she would need this support. She fell into a warm, friendly embrace and feelings of warmth and of hope filled her soul.
“You’re going to be just fine,” Brittany said, stroking Chris’s back. “You have this whole thing figured out, just like you always do. You’re going to come out on the other side stronger and we all know that you’re already ten times stronger than I am. I was a crying mess last night because I dropped my favorite bottle of perfume and you’re standing here in front of me, staring at one of the most heartbreaking situations I’ve ever heard, telling me the ways that you’ll take the pain head-on in order to grow and to learn from this. You’re already taking preventative measures against becoming hardened by the jackass actions of others.” She pulled back from the embrace and looked deep into Chris’s eyes. The tenderness tingled Chris’s heart strings. “You never cease to blow me away,” she said quietly, the sincerity ringing through every word. “I truly hope you know that and hold onto it.”
“Thank you,” Chris said, nodding in agreement and letting the words resonate. Brittany was right and she was going to hold on to the fact that she was strong. While her wisdom was lacking these days, she knew she was strong.