by L. V. Lewis
Brody nods, and quickly changes the subject again. “Go easy on Dylan when you talk to him, Alyssa. I’m sure he has valid reasons for doing what he did to us. I’m not one who can judge since my band had not seen me in the flesh for five years before they showed up in Minnesota last year.”
Despite Brody advocating for his friend, I am still reserving my right to go HAM on Dylan’s ass depending on what his reasoning is. “Barring a deathly illness or death itself, I can’t promise I’ll give him a total pass. And who knows, we both might have moved on by June with someone else and totally friend-zoned one another.”
Brody looks conflicted. “Just promise me you’ll give him a chance to explain, okay? I don’t think Dylan ever had a second or third date with anyone other than you.”
My brow crinkles up. “So, I’m supposed to feel special because I got past his no second date rule?”
“No. No, that’s not what I mean. What I’m saying is, you were special to him. I’ve known him a long time and if he admitted that much to me, I know for a fact he was serious until some unforeseen crisis or something derailed that.”
“Do you know what that might be?” Sky asked. “Because we’ve been wondering.”
“I’m just saying generally,” Brody swallows. Hard. I have a feeling he’s hiding something, but Sky seems clueless. Hopefully he’s not making trouble for himself to save Dylan’s ass.
“Oh well,” I say. “Then I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Dylan has to say for himself. Won’t we?”
Brody shakes his head in the affirmative, and I’m content to let it go for now, but when I get an opportunity, I’m going to grill him like I’m a detective interrogating him about a crime.
Eight
Downers Grove, IL
DYLAN
Damn I fucked up. Calling Brody in the middle of the day LA time was a bad idea. Alyssa and Skylar are BFFs forever, more like sisters. I should’ve known she could be there in the middle of the day because Brody had already told me they all use Sky’s recording studio when they’re working on new music.
Now I need to figure out if I should call Alyssa and risk her hanging up on me tonight, or just let things ride until we meet up in the Maldives. I would call her now, but my personal trainer just left a half hour ago and Mom’s already said dinner would be ready after he left. I just barely had time to call Brody after my shower, so I should go down before my mother comes looking for me.
I love Mom to death, but she watches me like I’m an infant who might spit up all over my onesie or some shit, and she’s afraid she’ll miss the opportunity to clean me up.
On my way down the stairs I pass the family pictures hanging in the stairwell. Photos cataloging my brothers and my childhood all the way up to adulthood line the walls on both sides. I stop briefly at a picture of myself wailing away on the drums when I wore my hair spiked. The Savages were so hot we were treated like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; always being hounded by screaming groupies and hungry paparazzi. That Dylan Castle was such a fucking douche. Meeting a woman you can see a future with and getting cancer grows you the fuck up in a hurry. Now to convince her that she’s my future without mentioning the cancer. Yet.
Although my appetite isn’t fully there, I eat to feed the muscle I’m trying to rebuild. My goal is not to look like I’ve been sick when I get to the Maldives and have to endure the sympathy of my friends. Not sure I’ll get to my pre-chemotherapy weight, but if I look like I’ve just slimmed down slightly, it won’t matter so much. Nothing I can do about the hair. It’ll grow however much it grows in the next eight weeks, and I’ll get a barber to make whatever is there look intentional. Maybe I’ll rock a faux hawk again and call it a day.
“Were you able to wiggle out of the tux fitting?” Mom asks as she passes me her infamous kale and cabbage slaw. Lillian Castle could give Martha Stewart a serious run for her money minus the stint in Federal Prison.
“Uh, yeah,” I take the bowl and ladle a generous portion of slaw onto my plate. “Brody says I can do the fitting at the end of May. That way the measurements will be closer to my true size and weight just prior to the wedding.”
“You’re filling out great, son,” My dad says with a smile. “You look so much better than you did a couple of months ago. Before you know it, you’ll be back to your old self again.” Edward Castle is the embodiment of encouragement. The perfect foil for my mother’s do-everything attitude.
“That’s the plan,” I say. Although both my parents and I know NHL is as sneaky as fuck and could come back at some point in my life, I’ll be prepared this time to fight it should it rear its ugly head again.
After dinner, I go down to the basement family room where my parents still have my old drum kit set up. I put on one of The Savages soundtracks minus drums and play along like I used to do for practice back in the day. Brody was the brilliant one who came up with that idea. It helped us have some semblance of a life outside of huddling in a practice space every damn day. Of course when we were ready to go on tour, or playing live in a club or for an entertainment show, we did the in-person practices and honed our performance as we normally would.
I feel myself growing tired after only three songs, but I persist until the soundtrack ends. My beats are just a bit sub-par than normal, but only a practiced musician would know just how much I’m lagging behind the soundtrack. I have all of April and May to re-build my stamina, so I don’t push it and move on to another.
I turn on the television and watch a couple of sit-coms, but I finally admit to myself I’m killing time until Alyssa makes it back to her crib. I visited her place a couple of times while we’ were kicking it. Her condo was in a sleek gated community at the foot of the Hollywood Hills. The space was decorated in her signature style which leaned toward bling. She was unapologetically a believer in black girl magic because there was an Afrocentric flair about her place that was whimsical and visually stunning but was also warm and welcoming.
When I tire of what’s on TV, I put our first album on low to gather my thoughts. Hardcore Love is a song I never identified with when Brody wrote it, but he was head over hills for Kimberly then and art was imitating his life. I could sing it to Alyssa and mean every single word of it now, but not back when it was our biggest hit. The lyrics slay me today:
Baby your love fills me up all night long
Like the thrumming beat of a rock song
It’s a thinning line living on the edge
And I never want to come off that ledge
There’s nothing like hardcore love
To keep my world spinning right
I need all of your hardcore love
To make my darkness turn to light
When the pain gets too strong
And angels stop singing up above
Don’t you ever stop giving me
Every bit of your hardcore love.
I pick up my cell and look at the time. Alyssa should be home by now unless she stopped somewhere after leaving Sky’s place. I turn the music off and find her name in my contacts. I touch the little phone icon on my cell and listen as her phone rings. It rings and rings until her voicemail comes on, “Hey, this is Alyssa. I’m not available to pick up my phone right now. Hit me back later.”
That voice! I haven’t heard it in eight fucking months, but she sounds just as beautiful as ever. Maybe, I need to give her a little while longer before I try again. She might have had plans after leaving the studio today. I lost the right to be concerned about her whereabouts when I disappeared with no see you later, no goodbye. Zero closure. What the fuck was I thinking?
The problem is I wasn’t thinking. Cancer has a way of doing that to a person. I was not trying to be selfish. I thought removing myself from her life was doing her a kindness. Such a beautiful, talented, and sexy woman didn’t need to be saddled with a man who could die before they shared any significant life events together.
However, I was selfish enough not to want her to see me wasting
away—without control of my own bodily functions sometimes. Her having to see me like that? I just couldn’t do it. I can provide encouragement to others, but I am also a prideful man, much like my father. I don’t do weak. Not if I can help it.
The cancer was gone for now, and I want her in my life again if she’ll have me. However, knowing Alyssa like I think I do, this is going to be a tall order. Her home life had been shitty after her mom died, and trusting people wasn’t something she did very easily. My disappearance from her life didn’t lend to her trusting me again, but I had to try and rebuild that trust. As hard as I know it’s going to be, I’m up for the challenge because she’s worth it.
Just in case she’s seeing my name and number and is deciding not to answer. I go upstairs and borrow my mom’s phone. When I get back down to the basement, I dial her again and she picks right up.
“I hope you’re not about to tell me you’re going to be late delivering my order again. I get the same thing every damn time, Dim Sum, Teriyaki Chicken, Egg Fu Yung, and an egg roll. Why is it so hard to get my order here on time?”
I do what I think is going to keep her on the phone the longest. I affect a crappy Asian accent. “Sowwy, Ms. Law-lance. Had two order before your order. On my way—right now!”
“Okay, give that to me in minutes, because I just spent my afternoon doing wedding shit with three giggling excited-ass women, so I’m in no mood to have to wait for you tonight.”
“I be there—ten minutes. Real close. Real close.”
“Don’t make me have to call your boss again. I’ve got a date with Netflix. You feel me?”
It’s time for me to stop the charade. “Alyssa. It’s me—Please, please, please don’t hang up,” I beg.
“Dylan?” she scoffs. “You’ve got a lot of damn nerve…” She makes some other noises on the line that I can’t quite make out. This means she’s pissed as fuck and her vocabulary is either abandoning her at the moment, or she is cussing me out so quickly and thoroughly in her mind, her speech is barely audible.
“Can we talk after you’ve had your dinner? I really just need a chance to explain—”
“Explain what? Why you’ve suddenly decided to try to zombie me since you’ve been a fucking ghost for eight months? You’ve got some jumbo-assed donkey balls calling me right now.”
I expel a breath. “That among other things. And I totally own up to the jumbo-assed donkey balls.”
“You don’t deserve for me to give you the time of day, Dylan. What you did was beyond foul, it was fucked up as hell. All you had to do is man up and say, this isn’t working for me, Alyssa.”
“But that wouldn’t have been true,” I say. “It was working for me. I was into you and all I wanted to do was follow you for the rest of the tour and then camp my ass at your place in LA until you put me out, or some shit. I swear to you that’s the truth. So, will you give me an opportunity to explain?” I can hear her doorbell ringing so I know her takeout has arrived. “I’ll let you eat your food while it’s hot and I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Dylan, you don’t have to do this because we’ll be seeing each other at Brody and Sky’s wedding, you know. I’m bringing a date anyway, so zero awkwardness on my part.”
“A date? Brody didn’t mention us bringing anyone.” Really? That’s the only lame ass reply I can come up with.
“I helped Sky send out the invitations. It clearly says RSVP for yourself and your plus one.”
I can hear her open the door and thank the delivery guy for her food, but I’m stuck on her bringing a fucking date to the Maldives. This certainly puts a huge chink in my plan.
“Okay, listen. I’ll call you back in thirty minutes. Please pick up when you see it’s me this time.”
“Sure, Dylan. Why not? What you’ve got to say is probably going to be more entertaining than Netflix anyway.” Then she hangs up without saying another word.
“You’ve gotta tell me, Brody. What did you say to Alyssa when I hung up with you today?”
I thought it prudent to align my story with his so Alyssa wouldn’t think I was bullshitting her, which I totally would be, but only with the best of intentions. Telling her I had cancer would likely make her forgive me out of pity, because her mother died of cancer, although it was a different type.
I had to know for sure she had strong enough feelings for me that she wasn’t giving me another chance because of the cancer. Or that she possibly didn’t want to be with someone who could essentially leave her just as her mother had. Either way I’d be fucked, but I’d rather be fucked with her than fucked without her, if that made any goddamn sense.
“Um, I think I told her something about a personal family crisis you were dealing with,” Brody says.
“Well, I’m gonna have to make that shit work,” I say shaking my head. “So I have been going to a shrink since I was diagnosed because this cancer depressed the hell out of me, okay. I’m going to tell her about my depression and the shrink, but not about the cancer right now. I’ll tell her that later when we work something out or we don’t. Either way, I want her to know, just not until we sort out our feelings for one another.”
“I think it’s safe to say her feelings right now are—she hates your fucking guts.”
“I know that. man, she didn’t even pick up the phone when I called her the first two times.”
“How’d you get through to her?”
“I borrowed my mom’s phone and called her. She thought I was the Chinese delivery man.” I chuckle. Alyssa always loved that I could do impersonations. I never thought I’d use one to get her to talk to me.
“What?”
“She’d called for takeout and thought the unknown number was the guy calling her about her delivery. I had to fake being him for a minute to keep her on the phone until I could beg her to talk to me.”
“That’s weird as fuck. You know that? You broke this girl’s heart and you call her pretending to be a Chinese delivery man. That is lame, Castle. Your game is fuucked!”
“It was only a means to an end, my friend. I’m calling her back in…” I move the phone away from my ear and check the time. “Fifteen minutes. When I describe how deeply depressed I was, and how I didn’t want to burden her with my mood swings and what not, she’s going to at least agree that we can be friends. I’m going to insist. Then when we’re on regular speaking terms again, I’ll either be in like Flynn or she’s going to ghost my ass this time because she doesn’t want to be with someone who could leave her again. Permanently.”
“I thought you were in remission.”
“I am. But NHL could come back and one never knows if it’s going to be mild or aggressive.”
“You know, one thing I learned at Naveah is the power of positive affirmations,” Brody says. “Don’t even allow yourself to have thoughts that the NHL will come back. Speak it out of existence.”
“That sounds like something my therapist would say. Although he calls it the power of a positive attitude, or something similar.”
“Try it. It worked to help me finally feel as if I was worthy of Sky. Our situations aren’t that different. I could fall off the wagon and be chasing the dragon like a mofo again, but Sky is the only high I need.”
“Then Alyssa will be my remission from cancer and promiscuity,” I say.
Nine
Hollywood, CA
ALYSSA
For the second time today, Dylan has stolen my appetite, but I have wine I was aerating to drink with my dinner, so I force myself to eat. I eat all that I can stomach in ten minutes, then call Sky.
“Girl, guess who just called me?” I ask.
“Dylan?”
“Yes!” I take a sip of wine, then run through our non-conversation with her, including my lie about having a wedding date. “You know I’ma have to call Brody’s former employer, because I don’t even have an ex I’m still on good terms and in touch with who can come to the wedding with me. How fucking sad is that?”
“Wel
l, we came right off tour and began preparing to record new albums. You haven’t had a lot of time to meet anyone new.”
“That’s not entirely true. You and Brody make time for one another, and I come home and order takeout, unless we have an appearance to make in town, or something. Let’s face it, I’m a twenty- three-year-old old maid.”
“Stop. It’s okay to take a break after a shitty romance. I didn’t go out for months after Connor’s ‘water aerobic sex’ with those groupies.”
I laugh. “Oh my God Sky, you’ve got jokes about that now. You have so grown up. When you and Brody get married you’re going to be even more mature than me at this rate.”
As child actors, Sky and I have seen a lot in our short lifetimes. While her mother took parenting to the extreme and shielded her from just about everything, my father became an alcoholic and gambler. Sky had just wrested the reigns of her career away from her mother during our last tour, but I’ve been free of Jacob for seven years. By the time I was sixteen he’d run through most of the money I’d made up until then. Legally emancipating myself from him was both career-wise and financially the best move I’ve ever made.
“We’re just trying not to make the same mistakes our parents made. You know? Neither Brody nor I have very good examples of lasting marriages.”
“Who does these days?” I commiserate with Sky on that despite believing that my parents would still be together and wildly in love if ovarian cancer hadn’t taken my mother’s life. At least that’s what I’d like to think.
Camille Lawrence’s death sent Jacob into his downward spiral, at least that’s the scenario I witnessed as a child on the outside looking in. His drinking and gambling didn’t manifest itself to me until after she was gone, but I have no idea if those very things wouldn’t have driven them apart had my mother lived.
“Speaking of parents, have you decided whether Elaine’s coming to the wedding?”