by L A Tavares
Chapter Twenty-Four
Blake
An overwhelming feeling of regret washes over me as soon as I knock on the olive door. For a moment, I hope no one answers. Just when I’m about to change my mind, to turn on my heel and walk away with no plan of where to go next, the door swings open and a familiar face stands at the other side.
She’s as beautiful as she has ever been, exactly the way I remember her from when we were all close before everything fell apart.
“This is a surprise,” she says in a voice that’s a mix of shock and sarcasm. “Whatever you’ve done, it must be really bad.”
“How do you figure?” I’m annoyed but she’s not wrong.
“You wouldn’t have come here if you had any other option. It’s good to see you, though, Blake. I wish it was on better terms.”
“You too, Mariah. Is Julian here?”
Julian leans over a toy chest, tossing scattered blocks and stuffed animals into the box as I step into the living room. “Who was at the door, babe?” he yells to Mariah, not realizing I’m standing there too. Being a father looks good on him—not the way I would’ve preferred he’d earned the role but I’ll admit he does it well.
“Oh, Blake.” His face turns from calm to confused to curious all in a matter of seconds. “What is it? Everyone okay? Are the guys okay?”
His question is genuine. It’s a real worry regarding Xander, Theo or Dom causing him to put his feelings aside as his concern for the band he helped build surfaces and takes priority.
“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s fine.” I run my hand through the tips of my hair and take a deep breath. “I just wanted to talk, if that’s okay.”
He walks toward me, tossing the remaining plastic toy in his hands to the couch and wraps his arms around me, patting hard between my shoulder blades. “Yeah, of course. It’s good to see you man. It’s been a long time. Come on downstairs.”
We sit on a large sectional in a basement decorated with some of the coolest music memorabilia I’ve ever seen. One wall at the back corner is dedicated entirely to Consistently Inconsistent. Awards and vinyl albums cover the area. Most of the pieces are from the time when he was with us but, to my surprise, there are a few selections from after his departure.
“How’s Xander?” He walks over to a refrigerator at the corner of the room. “I know it’s been a while since his accident, but everything with that went well? And he’s married now, yeah?”
He walks back across the room and hands me a can of diet soda. At first, I’m surprised. I haven’t seen Julian drink anything except hard liquor since high school but then I put it all together.
He’s sober.
“Yeah, Xander is doing great. He and Natalie are happy. His injuries were scary but he’s healing fine.” My face freezes in a confused twist that I tried to hide but failed.
“What?” He cracks the tab on his can.
“I’m surprised you care, honestly. I thought you and Xander hated each other.”
“He hates me, and I don’t blame him.” He shrugs and investigates the soda can—anything to not have to look at me. “He’s earned that right, I think. What I did to him…man, I’d hate me too. I did, for a long time. Hated what I had become. I can’t hate Xander, though, even if I wanted to. This was my fault.”
“You seem to be doing well, though.” I tap my fingers against the can. “You never tried to get back into music?”
“I still play—mostly for fun or for my son but never anything professional. Sobriety is something I have to work at every single day and I just don’t know that I’m ready to put myself back into that lifestyle. Too much room to make mistakes and not enough people holding me accountable.”
“I feel you there.” I nod as I say the words.
“Jeez, Blake.” Julian connects some dots, just the wrong ones. “Tell me you’re not fucking using—”
“No, no.” I rush the words, but then think twice on it. “I got caught up in gambling issues that spun out of control, and I can’t seem to find my way out of this hole I’m digging. You don’t owe me a damn thing, but here I find myself with everything crashing down around me, not in the band and I didn’t know where else to go.”
“What the hell do you mean ‘not in the band’?”
“I quit.” There’s this spot in my stomach that hurts every time I think of my exit, a sharp pain where I figuratively twist the handle of the knife I stabbed myself in the gut with.
“All right then, Mathews.” He tosses his empty can into a nearby bin, “Take it from the top. I want to know everything.”
* * * *
Then
Looking back on it, our days of touring as an opener went by in a blink. Or, more accurately, a blur of excellent performances and drunken post show parties. Before long, we were the headliner and had openers of our own.
It’s true what they say. Time flies when you’re having fun.
“What’s with the candle?” Xander is kicked back in a hotel lobby chair with his feet on the table and his sunglasses over his eyes. A cake sits in front of us, a large number eight aglow at its center.
“That’s the number eight,” Cooper says in a voice that gives me Sesame Street flashbacks. Xander rolls his eyes.
“I know what it is. Why is it there?”
“You guys are the least fun people I’ve ever worked with.” Cooper doesn’t hide his annoyance that he’s not getting the enthusiastic response he’d hoped for.
“We’re the only people you’ve ever worked with,” Xander says. Cooper pushes Xander’s boots off the table.
“It’s been eight years to the night since Kelly got us on stage with Regrets Only.” My heart clenches at the thought of her. How long has it been since I had seen her? And then I realize, the candle on the cake says it all.
Eight years. Eight years since I left town—and apart from shows there, I never looked back. I left it all in the rearview…including her.
“Thank you, Mathews. You get the first piece,” Cooper says, but Xander reaches forward and intercepts the plate before I can get it. The guys laugh and Cooper continues to cut. “Anyone seen Julian? He should be here.” He counts out pieces and plates.
Everyone knows the phrase ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’. For us, it’s not comprehensive—not one size fits all. Xander, Julian and I quickly fell into one category or another, personifying each one of the words. Xander is the rock and roll. He’s all performance, all the time, even off stage—especially off stage. He’s edgy from the outside in and confidence drips from his pores. Anyone or anything could be his at any time and he knows it, but it’s mostly alcohol he chooses to keep for company.
For me? It’s sex. I know the kind of reputation I’ve developed, and I understand the risk. But something about going from the boy who couldn’t even get the attention of one girl to the man who can have any number of them is alluring in a way that leaves me calling numbers I swore I’d never call and falling into hotel beds I had no intention of sleeping in.
And there’s Julian. He’s the ‘drugs’ of the equation. It wasn’t always this way and I’m not sure what changed. But somewhere down the line he took a ride and enjoyed the destination too much.
I go off looking for Julian so he can be a part of Cooper’s celebration, more for Cooper’s benefit than Julian’s. A loud laugh echoes from behind the backstage doors, exactly where we left him hours ago.
He looks at me as I enter and gives me a hard nod to acknowledge my presence among the strangers he sits between, but my walking in isn’t enough to deter him from leaning forward and snorting a line off the filthy backroom table.
“Julian.” I instinctively wipe my nose. Just watching him do that makes my nostrils itch. “Let’s go.”
“Why don’t you come join us, Blake? Come on. It’s all in good fun.” Julian leans back into the couch.
“I’m good, thanks. We need to go,” I say, my best Cooper impression in full effect.
“I’ll meet you at the
hotel.” His voice is an eternity away, saying anything he can to get rid of me.
And I leave. My stomach flips relentlessly the entire walk back to the hotel. I tear myself apart for leaving him there, for not fighting harder—but what was I supposed to do?
I cover for him, though my conscience suggests otherwise. Even though I head back to the celebration and am in the hotel lobby with Cooper and the guys, my head is still backstage and I’m kicking myself for letting Julian stay behind. Even once I’m in the room, I pace back and forth, waiting for him to make a safe return.
“Where have you been?” I snap at him when he finally makes it back to our room in the early morning hours. I’m exhausted, having waited for him to come back or for Cooper to come looking for him. He, on the other hand, looks ready to go, like he could run a marathon if I challenged him to it.
“You need to relax.” He’s as chipper as he ever has been. “I’m here. I’m ready to go.”
“I’m not coming to look for you next time. If you stay out all night and the bus leaves without you, you’re on your own.” I do want to help him, but I can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
I shove my few belongings into a duffel bag and throw it over my shoulder.
“Mathews,” he says, “look at me.” I turn toward him and he puts his hands on my shoulders and positions his face only a few inches from my own. “I’m good, okay? It’s called recreational for a reason. If it makes you feel any better, tonight after the show we will hang out. Sober. Don’t make this a bigger thing than it needs to be.”
There was a long while—years, even—since that night backstage with the cocaine where he mastered living two different lives. He showed up to rehearsals and media stints. He was never late and never missed a show. But I knew that behind closed doors he was giving in to an addiction he thought he was hiding from us. ‘Recreational’ became every night, every night became twice a day, twice a day became every few hours and so on and so forth until his habit grew too big for the cage he was keeping it in. The eight on the candle turned to a ten, but one of us celebrated that milestone harder than the rest of us did.
I couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked at the venue, backstage, the bus and the hotel room. He wasn’t answering his phone and he didn’t show up to the post-show meeting, dinner or Cooper’s ten-year toast. He didn’t even come on stage for the encore with us. His need for a hit of whatever narcotic was pumping through his system had taken over his ability to play even one more song.
I check a local bar, scanning the area and looking down the row of bar stools to see if he’s on one but he’s not. At the end of the bar, a hat rests on the bar top over an empty stool. The hat belongs to Julian and I gather the stool does too.
Jogging toward the men’s room, I push past a few groups of people and make my way there then throw the door open, but the area is vacant. I turn around, leaning against the jamb, and run a hand through my hair. That’s when I notice a group of girls leaning into the women’s room, giggling at each other and taking pictures with a small digital camera.
As casually as I can muster, I walk by and say, “Everything okay?”
The girl closest to me turns around and laughs. “Just some guy passed out in the women’s room,” she says. They can only see his legs sticking out from the stall. They didn’t get close enough to recognize him.
“Why don’t you go get a drink and I’ll take care of him.” The girls agree and step aside.
“Some guys just can’t hold their liquor,” one of the girls adds as the door swings shut.
Fortunately for them, they missed the tourniquet at his biceps and the needle sticking out of his arm.
Over the years that made up my lifetime I had seen some harrowing things, but none that slapped me in the face quite like that event did. In those seconds where time stood still, having to make decisions on how best to help him and who to call next, I realized that life is short and this career is shorter. If we didn’t start making better decisions, we wouldn’t have either. They were words we should all live by, but especially Julian. He learned and he understood. He stopped doing drugs.
For about two and a half months.
* * * *
Now
Julian walks down the stairs to the basement and knocks lightly on the wall. I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes as he takes the seat next to me, moving the large comforter aside. He hands me a steaming cup of coffee.
“Thanks again for letting me crash here,” I say through a yawn.
“You don’t have to keep thanking me. I told you that yesterday and the day before and the day before that…” he says, but I do. I stopped corresponding with Julian the moment I figured out Mariah had been cheating on Xander with him, then rolled in here like I owned the place. That was not exactly fair to Julian or Mariah.
“But, Blake, man, you have to find a way back to the music. Honestly, fuck Victor—and fuck you too for putting the guys through this. C’mon… You’re supposed to be the good one.”
“I think that’s a title reserved for Dom and Theo. They’ve never made waves, not even once.”
“You know what I mean. You were the closest person to my addiction other than me. You were there every step of the way—the first person to know about it, the first person to try to get me help. Now this? I don’t have a chance at getting back to where I was because of decisions I made when I let the problem take a hold of me instead of taking a hold of it. But you do. Take it from me, Blake. You don’t want to spend your life in a basement looking at pictures of what might have been. You want to be in the pictures.”
Mariah walks down the stairs as he talks to me with their son, Gabriel, on her hip.
“How did you finally stop? What was it that finally turned you around and set you back on track?”
“Hitting rock bottom, believe it or not, wasn’t enough for me.” Mariah sits next to him and he takes Gabriel from her then smiles as he looks at him. “Then I found out I was going to be a dad. Losing everything wasn’t what made me realize I needed to change but gaining everything? That was a game changer. Instead of fixating on everything I had lost, I realized what I could have. These two weren’t worth losing.”
There’s a loud knock on the door upstairs, reminding me there is still a world outside of this one.
“Come in,” Mariah yells and I sip my coffee. Footsteps hit the top step then the next one, all the way until the owner of the heavy, uneven steps comes into view and Xander stands at the bottom of the stairs.
“You called him?” I look at Julian, feeling somewhat betrayed but mostly grateful. Julian shakes his head.
“I did,” Mariah says. “It’s time for you to go home, Blake. You are always welcome to visit, but you can’t hide here. Time to face the music.”
I stand and toss the corner of the blanket aside, leaving my coffee cup on the table and make the walk toward Xander. He opens his arms and I wrap mine around him. He slaps me hard on the back then grabs a fistful of my shirt in his hand. “I could kill you for what you’ve put us through these last few days, you know that?”
“I know.” I slap him on the back twice as hard.
Julian and Mariah join us at the center of the room.
“Thank you both,” Xander says as we part, and to my surprise—everyone’s surprise—sticks out a hand and Julian takes it in a hard shake. Whatever troubled waters used to flow between them, it seems their current happiness has bridged it.
In the end, regardless of how we all got here, they both got everything they ever wanted—and that’s all that really matters.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Xander and I take the sidewalks from Julian’s house to nowhere in particular. We walk in silence. He doesn’t ask how I am, what my plan is or what I’m thinking. He doesn’t ask about Julian or Mariah. He doesn’t lecture or berate me. Truthfully, I think he just doesn’t want to leave me alone long enough for me to take off again.
I’m grateful that he’
s not making me talk, but in a distant mind, I have to wonder what he thinks of me right now—what they all think of me right now.
“How’s Kelly?” I finally say, chipping away at the ice between Xander and me.
“Worried sick about you.” Smoke leaves his mouth and nostrils as he speaks through a draw of a cigarette. “Literally sick. Natalie’s been staying with her at your place because Kelly’s in rough shape. She doesn’t know what to make of all this.”
Neither do I. “I should get back, go see her.” I’m mostly thinking out loud.
“Have you thought about what your next step is, Blake? I mean, there are programs for this kind of stuff. You can take a break from the band, take some time off and come back when you’ve got your shit together.”
“I’m not part of the band anymore, Xander. Remember?”
“Yeah, but you—”
“No, I can’t,” I cut him off. My thoughts come spraying out like a broken hydrant, finally able to burst out some of the thoughts I’ve had capped off. “I didn’t leave because of what Cooper said. I was thinking on it anyway. I screwed up. I gambled away a dollar amount I’m not proud of, but I can get it back if I walk away from Consistently Inconsistent. That’s my penalty. I have to do that to make everything else right and to restore what I’ve lost to get Kelly The Rock Room…” I’m spiraling. Despite the abundance of fresh air, I find it hard to breathe.
His gaze finds mine and he scratches his jaw. “Blake.” He closes his eyes for a second, deciding how he’s going to deliver whatever blow rests in his hands. “Victor told Stasia if she signed with MLA records that all your losses would be restored. Your spot in the band would still be yours, if you want it.”
“Wh-why did he do that?” I stutter through the words. None of this made sense before, and it certainly doesn’t now. “Why would Victor agree to that?”
“Victor owns MLA records.” His words hit me like I’m standing in the middle of a road and a semi crashes into me.