Two Different Sides

by L A Tavares

  “No,” Cooper says, the words cutting me down a few more inches. The world spins and my mouth falls open, but the word no echoes so loudly in my head that no other thought can overpower it. “You’re not ready, Mathews.”

  “I’m making strides.” My voice comes out a quieter version of its usual self.

  Cooper stands and walks around the desk, sits on the front of it and crosses his arms.

  “Have you thought about attending meetings?” He looks at me for the first time since I walked into the room.

  “Not particularly.” I shrug and scratch the back of my neck.

  “Sit down.” Cooper turns a chair and leans over his desk, retrieving his laptop and handing it to me as I sit. Loaded on the screen is a twenty-question survey. ‘Has gambling introduced problems at home?’ ‘Has gambling gotten in the way of work?’ ‘Have you gambled until the money is gone?’

  I don’t have to take the survey to know what the outcome will be, but I answer each question as honestly as I can and hand the computer back to Cooper. He glances over the screen and shuts it before returning it to its spot on the desk.

  “Find a meeting, Mathews. Then we’ll talk.” He pushes himself from the desk and starts to walk away. His back is still toward me when I scrape up what’s left of my courage and toss it his direction.

  “You really think that’s a good idea? That a meeting or group will solve more problems than it will create?” I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees. He doesn’t turn around and I don’t take my eyes off the floor. Neither of us wants to see the other’s eyes in these strained moments. “It only takes one person to open their mouth that I’m in that group and the media will blast it anywhere they can.”

  “It’s supposed to be anonymous, Blake.” His voice projects away from me. He takes another step forward and continues his echoing steps down the hallway.

  “Supposed to be.” My voice is a whisper, talking to no one else but myself.

  * * * *

  Performing has never bothered me. Stage fright wasn’t an issue I had ever faced.

  Until now.

  Every eye is on me. My heart pounds in my ears.

  “Just introduce yourself and tell us why you’re here. We’re all in this together,” the leader of the group says in a calm, hypnotic voice.

  “I’m Blake.” That seems like a wasted effort. They all knew that already. I heard the whispers when I walked in the door. I saw the shock leave their lips. Everyone else in this room has a safety net of knowing that even if they didn’t remain anonymous, for the most part, it wouldn’t matter if their name was uttered in public instances. Unfortunately, that same net won’t catch my name if it falls. “I have a gambling problem.” The words grate over my dried throat. I look into the group and find Julian’s eyes. “Just keep your eyes on me, bud. You and me. Pretend it’s a conversation with just me and you. We’re the only ones here.” That’s what he’d said and he’s right. It’s easier to talk to one person than a crowd. But it’s the person directly behind him that breaks my concentration. Just past his head, my mother sits, and for just one brief moment, our eyes meet. She dips her chin and lifts it again in an encouraging nod.

  The remaining attendees take turns detailing devastating stories of their own tragedies and triumphs, both in battling this addiction and overcoming it. I do my best to learn from and listen to each person, until it’s my mother’s turn. She is the last person to speak, and as she does, I can feel her eyes on me, but I distract myself with anything within reason—the clasp on my watch, the threads from the frays in my jeans, my loose shoelace. I close my eyes and replay my own story. Had I said too much? Had I said enough? I came here to fix myself, and though I know the time will come when I have to confront the issues between my mother and me, listening to her side of the story is not a luxury I feel she deserves at this point. I’m not there yet. Like the brochure says, one day at a time. Today is not that day.

  “Does it get easier?” I ask Julian at the end of the meeting. My shirt sticks to my chest, slick with nervous sweat.

  “Every time.” He hands me a bottle of water. “You have to allow it to work for you, though. You can’t show up here just because Cooper is holding your spot in the band over your head. You have to want to be here.”

  “Cooper’s an ass.” I wipe the moisture from my hands on my jeans.

  “Cooper wants what’s best for you.” Julian shoves his hands into his pockets. “I was given the same option. Narcotics Anonymous or leave the band. I left the band and still ended up in a program. In the end, it was the best thing for me.” He nods, weighing his word choice. “I just wish I’d seen it sooner.”

  “Thank you for being here. The last couple of weeks? Well, you made all this much more tolerable.” I clap my hand at his shoulder. “You don’t owe me anything. I haven’t been a great friend to you, and you put all that aside to help me when I needed it. I think we’ve all come a long way, but your willingness to help when I didn’t deserve it says a lot about where you are now verses where you have been.”

  It’s the best I’ve got. My allegiance has always and will always lie with Xander. Julian broke all the unwritten band rules when he went behind Xander’s back the way he did, but I suspect the sober version of Julian—the Julian we met and knew—wouldn’t have done such a thing. The vices change who we are and make us unrecognizable to everyone else but mostly to ourselves.

  The Julian standing in front of me is a portal to the version of him we knew pre-fame.

  “You were there for me plenty, Blake. You took care of me too. You ended up in a position you didn’t ask to be in time and time again. It’s about time I return the favor, I think.”

  We stand together for a while in silence, unsure what to say. What would be too much? What wouldn’t be enough? My mother approaches us at the table at the back of the room.

  “Blake,” she says, an oddity to her tone that indicates acquaintances but not friends—and definitely not family. We haven’t worked out who we’re going to be in all this or what it means for me and Stasia. At the end of the day, Debbie is my mother, and the reemergence of my birth mother isn’t going to change that, but perhaps we can work toward something considered civil. “Hi, I’m Sharon.” She holds a hand out to Julian and he takes it, introducing himself.

  “Sharon is my mother.” His eyes widen and hers light up. Amazing how six syllables can warrant so many different responses.

  After some small talk, we exit the building and my mother and I stand outside. She lights a cigarette and offers me one. I take it and she lights both.

  “So Stasia is meeting with MLA’s lawyers today.” Smoke exits her mouth and nostrils as she speaks.

  “Is that so?” I hadn’t thought about what would happen to MLA next. Those artists still have a home there and those employees still need work. Just because the owner is going away for a long time doesn’t mean the label dissolves. “What even happened? I never really asked how we got to this point.”

  “Stasia was hesitant from the beginning about MLA’s ability to stay afloat with the availability of technology and other options to record and market songs without the need for a major label. She felt stuck with MLA after she signed the contract. I felt stuck with Victor because I feared him. I made poor decisions—I’m not a stranger to those—but it was easier to live on his arm with money at my disposal than to owe him money and be scared of what he would do to get it.”

  Her voice changes from pride while talking about Stasia’s intelligence to genuine hesitancy talking about Victor. A shiver runs down my spine when I think about the kind of life they had together and the things she’d endured while living under his thumb.

  “Anyway, Stasia knew the money wasn’t coming in as fast as it was going out—the purchases, the penthouse, the gambling. Then, you told her that money had to be coming from somewhere, and she and I put our heads together to see what we could do to find out where the cash was coming from.”

  The ci
garette I hold burns away between my fingers, never finding its way to my lips.

  “He was taking that money from the MLA artists, Blake. For years and years, he was finding ways to distribute their earnings while pocketing extra percentages, here and there—extra expenditures, moving money that didn’t belong to him long enough that it started being profitable. The money that he gambled away, the money he initially lost to you wasn’t his to gamble with. He was stealing it from people who trusted him to grow their careers, not ruin them.”

  I remember the day we sat at a restaurant and heard a young, determined female promise us the world and we believed her. Her pitch was so consuming, so promising. If someone hadn’t stepped in and changed our direction in that moment, we would have been personally funding Victor’s lavish lifestyle as well. But someone did step in. Someone had put us back on track.

  Cooper.

  Cooper had stepped in and changed the course of our life for the better before we had the ability to make the wrong choice. And in this second, I get it. Cooper isn’t giving me a hard time to ruin my life. He’s saving it…again. He’s taking away my ability to make the wrong decision by making the decision for me but allowing it to seem like I’m making it for myself. Go to a program or leave the band. He knew there was only ever one option. And once again my life is headed toward the better of two options because Cooper stepped in at the right place at the right time.

  “So, what happens now? Why the lawyers?” I lean my shoulder into the building and drag the lit portion of the cigarette down the bricks.

  “Most of the executive people jumped shipped. No one wants to be associated with the name while it’s under fire, and the rebuilding process will be strenuous. So the decisions right now lie with the family of the owner—and Stasia is all he has. He always intended for her to take it over and everyone who would have taken it over has relinquished their rights to her, whether she wants to run the company or not. She’s going to take it over or it’s going to sell or dissolve.”

  My mind tries to wrap itself around all the possible options and outcomes. Stasia is a musician. She doesn’t want anything to do with the business side or logistics. She wants to make her own music, not control someone else’s.

  “So, we will see what she decides, I guess.” My mother shrugs and flicks her dead cigarette into the bushes.

  * * * *

  I’ll never get tired of seeing Kelly’s SUV parked in the driveway when I come home. After so many weeks without it, it’s a welcome sight. I open the door and kick off my boots. I’m about to call out to her but I hear voices in the dining room. I shuffle toward the sound and turn the corner to see Xander and Natalie holding hands at one side of the table, Stasia sitting at the head of the table with mountains of papers in front of her and Kelly sitting beside her, leaning in over the documents. Cooper stands behind both of them.

  “What’s going on?” I think back to the last time a similar group of people crowded my house as part of a disastrous intervention.

  “We’re figuring out the best way to keep MLA going, despite the negative spotlight it’s currently in,” Stasia says.

  “Those artists still need someone running their production and marketing,” Cooper says, pushing his glasses up to his hairline.

  “You’re going to run MLA?” I ask Stasia with my voice stuck somewhere between confused and impressed. But at the back of my mind, I wonder if this means she won’t be recording with us after all.

  “Hell no.” She shakes her head so drastically that her hair shifts wildly out of place. “I was never meant to be a CEO,” she adds, “but I know someone who is.”

  I look over at Kelly and she shrugs. “This was the dream, Blake. You were going to be the famous musician. I was going to be the CEO.”

  “Of a huge company,” I add, thinking back to our high school days where these words were just a hollow dream written on paper to help us pass a class. She pushes her chair back and walks toward me, placing her hands in mine.

  “What do you think?” she asks, but her eyes say she wants this. Her heart is in it, regardless of what I say. “Cooper, Stasia and I have been going through a lot of this. We think we have the knowledge and experience to get MLA back on track—maybe even better than before.”

  “I know, I know.” I squeeze her hands tight in mine. “But what about The Rock Room?” Kelly’s home is The Rock Room. It’s what she knows, and it’s where she grew up. I can’t imagine her letting The Rock Room fall into someone else’s hands just because MLA fell into hers.

  Her head falls over her shoulder to look at Xander and Natalie.

  “We figured we’d keep it in the family.” Xander signs as he speaks, then wraps his arm around Natalie’s shoulder.

  Kelly looks at me with a playful grin, her eyebrow arched, her lips curled to a proud ‘we have it all figured out’ expression.

  “There’s still a problem with your plan.” I turn Kelly so I’m hugging her from behind. “I can’t be a rock star if I’m not in the band.”

  My words are pointed at Cooper—but with a dull blade. He laughs as we all stare at him. Kelly presents her signature pouting lip.

  “You better uphold your end of what we talked about, Mathews.” Cooper shakes a finger at me. I nod and Kelly spins in my arms. She lets out a shriek before pressing her lips hard into mine. She pulls away but leaves her forehead pressed against mine, her lashes tickling the bridge of my nose.

  “This was the dream.” A happy tear streams down her cheek.

  “I come bearing gifts,” Jana’s voice cuts in. She steps toward the table with a round of coffees for all. “What did I miss?” Jana walks around the table and passes out the much-needed caffeine.

  “Nothing, really.” Stasia chews on a pen. “Just working out some business plans. Looks like Kelly’s going to run the label and Natalie’s going to run The Rock Room.”

  “I thought you were going to stay home with the baby,” Jana says and signs simultaneously, looking at Natalie. Every eye in the room darts between Natalie and Xander and Jana. Natalie laughs. Xander wipes his brow but then he laughs too.

  “We hadn’t actually gotten that far yet.” He clears his throat.

  “You’re pregnant?” Kelly signs and squeals and Natalie shakes her head no, signing something back.

  “Adopting.” Xander signs and speaks. “We just got the call a few days ago that we’ve been approved to be potential parents.”

  “Of course you got approved,” Kelly says through tears. “How could they not approve you?” She walks across the room and throws her arms around Natalie.

  “We are still pretty shocked ourselves,” Xander says and there’s not a dry eye in the room. He looks at me, pushes his chair back and walks toward me.

  I open my arms, and he steps into them. I pat between his shoulder blades. He steps back but keeps his hands on my shoulders.

  “Think you can keep your shit together long enough to be a godfather someday?” Eloquently worded as always.

  “One day at a time,” I say, not as a cliché but truly meaning every word. These are all steps in the direction toward the lives we envisioned for ourselves, and now the only things that can get in our way are us—and only if we let ourselves.

  Step by step, taking things one day at a time. The tiny, fractional progress forward to the end goal of not being my own worst enemy.

  Chapter Thirty

  Consistently Inconsistent hasn’t topped the charts this many consecutive weeks since we started touring. Something about adding Stasia to the album brought a new sound, a brilliant dynamic that our fans can’t stop listening to and keep asking for more of. As a band, we haven’t worked this hard or laughed this much in a lot of years. Adding a new voice isn’t necessarily an easy task, as we learn each other’s styles and try to intertwine all our talents, both new and old, into something that sounds fresh, while maintaining the identity we’re known for.

  After months of laying tracks with Stasia, putting together
new songs and rehearsing old ones to get her concert-ready, this tour was much-welcomed and highly needed.

  It’s been months since the last time I gambled in any form. I’m seeing more clearly these days and loving the music the way I used to, if not more so. My time is spent making new music and kicking old habits. Maybe I’ll have to put in a conscious effort every single day, but the fight is worth it.

  The lights stay low and Xander makes his way to the front of the stage.

  “Hello, Nevada,” he sings to a rambunctious crowd. “It is hot in Vegas!” He lifts part of his shirt and wipes his brow, and the crowd continues their wild exchange. “How about you guys start us off? Let’s go, just like this.” He claps an even tempo and the fans match his pace. Dom and Theo jump in, starting off a song from our second album.

  Stasia, just for a moment, jumps into Xander’s microphone at the front and center spot. He steps back, watching as she sings and steals his spotlight. He shakes his head then turns to the front of the stage, jumps off it and high fives the fans closest to the stage barriers. They go crazy thinking Stasia kicked Xander out of his own song. They don’t need to know that it was rehearsed that way.

  It’s fun, the back-and-forth—dare I say it—sibling-style relationship we all share. I tear up the set list, just for kicks, and we allow the crowd to yell out requests, playing what we can and allowing Stasia to put her own twists on old songs we hadn’t yet rehearsed with her. There are times that to us, it’s a bit messy, but the crowd doesn’t notice. They’re too busy having a damn good time. Toward the end of performance, Xander and I do something we haven’t done in ages. We sit at the front of the stage, just us two, singing slower stripped versions of our songs on acoustic guitars. I look out over the crowd and think back to our first tour, and every tour since then, and I know this is what I want to be doing for as long as fate will allow. For as long as the music is still there, I won’t do anything to jeopardize it ever again.