by L. V. Lewis
“You’re not listening, Mother. Brody stood up for you because he was estranged from his grandparents who wouldn’t even entertain the thought of supporting him. He thinks I should cut you some slack because even with all of your shortcomings, you tirelessly championed my singing career.”
She huffs. “You’d still be on that teeny-bopper show and singing at county fairs if it weren’t for me.”
She still doesn’t get it, so I simply nod. “Yeah, that may be true, but I’ll be much better off in the future without you running my career and sabotaging my personal life at every turn. Goodbye, Mother.”
TWELVE
BRODY
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN
When I hear the door opening to her suite, I know Sky’s back from canning her mother.
I wait.
She doesn’t come.
She shouldn’t have to, though.
She’s made so many concessions for me; the least I can do is to go to her now.
My heart hammers in my chest as I push the door open and enter her suite. I shut the door behind me, and rest my forehead against the cool, wood surface as I gather the necessary courage to face her. This isn’t hard for me because I’m ashamed to share all the details of my addiction. It’s hard for me because I’m afraid I’ll lose her, and I’m not prepared to do that. It’s funny. Somehow in the five and a half weeks we’ve been touring together, she has come to mean more to me than any woman.
I move toward her.
She’s at the wet bar pouring herself a drink, and I stare from the middle of the room. She’s magnificent—so much more beautiful now that she has truly come into her own musically, business-wise, and personally.
She smiles tightly and then stares back at me, locking me in with the intensity of her green gaze.
I’m okay with her looking at me in this way, it’s almost like she’s mentally peeling back the remaining layers of my past, and has decided to get to the bottom of the secrets I’ve withheld from her.
Mama Samuelson has been true to form in that she’s disclosed things about me to her daughter in a final attempt to malign my character and thwart my ability to manage Sky’s musical affairs. But that’s not what I’m most concerned about now—what I’m most concerned about is losing Sky.
I would leave the tour in a heartbeat if I could do it without losing Sky—my lover, my best friend, and future confidante. I mucked things up when I neglected to trust her to unload all of my many demons.
The space between us feels like a humongous chasm—wider than it actually is. I still don’t know if my confession tonight is going to fully bridge the gap I created with my secrecy and baggage, or make it even wider. But, first things first. Right now I need to hear how she feels about what just transpired with her mother.
My throat is dry, and my heart pounds with anxiety. “How did it go?” I ask.
She cocks her head to one side. “As well as could be expected, I suppose. Mother was caustic and bitter to the very end.”
She salutes me with her glass and then swallows the amber liquid.
I frown and try to offer her a ray of hope. “She’ll come around.” I’m not sure that’s true, but I hope it is for Sky’s sake.
Sky has never known the heartbreak of parental loss, and I don’t want her to experience that type of agonizing pain. Yes, her mother betrayed her, but I know without a doubt that Sky will miss her if they sever ties. I also know, from experience, that parental rejection can destroy you, if you let it.
She takes another sip of the liquid. “Only time will tell.” She then sets the glass on the bar. “I’m going to clean my face and take a shower.” I stare at her and notice just how tired she looks. Her eyes are red, either from the tears she’s already shed, or the ones she’s holding back.
I don’t ask if she wants company in the shower, rather, I figure I’ll just let her choose if we will be together tonight, later, or never.
She answers my unspoken question when she enters the bathroom without another backward glance. After she disappears into the sanctum of her bathroom, I saunter back to my own room. A shower does sound good, so I take a quick one too. Afterward, I slip on a t-shirt and pajama bottoms and head back to Sky’s suite. I then wait for her to come out of the bathroom.
It doesn’t take long before Sky emerges in the hotel’s thick terry cloth robe. She’s fluffing her hair with a towel when she sees me sitting on her bed. A delicate hand goes to her throat.
Stripped bare of the armor that makes her “Skylar,” she’s Sky, the girl I met at the I.Y.M. office six weeks ago. I hate talking about the worst time in my life, because I fear that it will most assuredly taint her perception of me. I know, deep down, that my confession will forever alter her opinion of me. But it must be done. She deserves that.
I pat the bed bedside me. “Are you ready to talk?” I say, my voice low and uneasy. My fear has always been that she’ll reject me if I tell her all the sordid details of my shameful fall from grace and the tragedy that ensued.
Sky joins me on the bed and looks deeply into my eyes. “Yes,” she says. “I want to know everything that’s happened to you—everything that made you who you are.”
“Who am I to you?” I plead to her the same way I did at her interview with D.J., but this time I do it with all of my heart, rather than just with my eyes. I so desperately need to know where I stand with her before I spill my guts.
“You’re my boyfriend,” she says. “The one who stupidly withheld a major part of his past from me.”
Her declaration guts me, but in a good way. She can’t hate me enough to kick me to the curb if she calls me her boyfriend. Right?
“That being said, I want to understand why you turned away from the thing you love most—music. I want to know more about you than what you like in bed. I want to know everything about you—your past and present thoughts, your heart, all of what makes you tick, and possibly a bit of your soul too. Like I told you once before, I won’t judge.”
Her words register slowly, and I’m thankful for them. I nod, exhale, and wipe my clammy hands on my pajama bottoms. “First, Sky, you have to know that I’ve never talked to anyone about this other than my therapist and my surviving bandmates. So, just know that I’m telling you everything now, because I should’ve trusted you with all of it before we became lovers. That was a dick move on my part, and I’m truly sorry for the way you found out. Can you forgive me?”
“Yes I can, and yes, I do forgive you,” she whispers.
I take another deep breath, relieved that we can put it all behind us. “Okay. Well, you know about my parents dying, and how my grandparents didn’t approve of me being a rocker. I had already lost so much, but after my grandparents rejected me, I just felt so unworthy of all the good things that happened afterward.”
Sky blinks, focused on what I am saying. I continue, “Kimberly’s brother, Stephen, was one of my high school band mates who let me couch surf at his home after my grandparents threw me out. Kim stole my cellphone number from Stephen and began texting and e-mailing me while I was in California. She had aspirations of singing and I had a band. Kim and I hit it off fairly quickly even though she was a couple of years younger than the rest of the band. After she graduated, at 17, I convinced her to come to LA.”
I swallow hard and continue, “Everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood uses recreational drugs, from pot to smack to prescription drugs. As my popularity as an up-and-coming guitarist and lead singer grew, everyone wanted a piece of me. Many of them turned out to be the wrong people to hang out with. At first I just drank a lot, but alcohol consumption has side-effects which affected my ability to do what I love most, play and sing. Then there were the groupies who made themselves readily available. After a while, I could score a chick right along with drugs. It blows my mind how Kim stood by me during the early days, because God knows, she caught me cheating so many times. Yet, she never gave up on me.”
I glance at Sky, and she’s listening with rapt at
tention mixed with appalled horror and genuine concern.
She reaches for my hand and laces her fingers through mine.
My throat is as dry as the Sahara right now, but I have to go on. “Eventually I moved on to the “harder” stuff – heroin, but in the beginning, my drugs of choice were pot and coke. Money was no object, and coke was the ultimate party drug. The band’s notoriety grew, and, as we got bigger and bigger, Kim’s and my drug habit grew with it.
“I still remember the day I first let Kim try coke. Initially, I limited her to just alcohol and pot because I didn’t want her to be like me. I loved her, and she loved me, but I also used her. I used Kim as a way to escape the pain of being alone in the world. But at some point, Kim stopped being enough, so I started using more drugs to escape the pain. Kim began doing drugs so she could enter my world. I messed her up. She came from a great home with two loving and supportive parents, but she loved me so she started doing drugs… to be close to me. It wasn’t long before, I did drugs to hurt her, and she did drugs to hurt me—it was a never-ending cycle. But, Sky, I hated myself for what I did to her. I still do.”
Partly purged, I’m breathless.
She scoots over to me, and gently rubs my back. My blood rushes loudly to my head as I try to come to terms with what I’ve just shared with the woman I love more than I ever loved Kim. Admitting this to myself feels fucking amazing, but I can’t share it with Sky now. It would be a disservice to her.
My eyes fill with tears of both sadness and joy, but I keep them cast downward and clear my throat, refusing to cry like a pussy.
“What happened the day Kim died?” Sky asks quietly.
I glance at her briefly to see if she’s disgusted with me or if she’s just curious. But all I see is love, and she encourages me with a nod to continue my tragic tale.
“We’d just ended the first leg of a tour so we celebrated big like always. We threw a lavish party and binged on alcohol, drugs, and more drugs. Kim and I liked to throw big parties, but most of the time you could find us locked in a back room getting high. But, by that time, we both had terrible heroin habits. We didn’t care about eating, sleeping, or even fucking. The drug was all we craved.”
I sighed and continued, “That night, I shot up first and nodded off. Sometime later when I woke up, I found Kim dead. She had shot up, too, and nodded off, only, for her, it was for good. The tourniquet was still wrapped around her thigh, the needle hanging from an overused, collapsed vein. I rushed to her and tried to revive her, but she was gone. I picked up my guitar, turned the amp as loud as it would go, and played one final time for Kim. The neighbors called the cops. They broke the door down, and that’s how they found us.” I stop just short of telling her all of the goriest details.
She gasps. I misconstrue her reaction, thinking that she’s changed her mind about wanting to know all of this—to be with me.
“So, why did they arrest you?” she asks. Her words are not harsh, and she doesn’t move away.
I swallow, glad to be wrong about Sky’s intentions. “My fingerprints were all over the paraphernalia and shit. Plus the cops found me playing my guitar like a fucking maniac. I would’ve arrested me too. But my prints were there because we shared needles and shit all the time. I’d made a half-assed attempt to revive her. The cops also found more drugs in the house, which apparently was the smoking gun.”
Her eyes soften and I see tears crystalizing in the corners of her eyes. “I hate that you had to go through that,” she says.
“Believe me, I wish I could take it all back. I wish Kim were still alive and with someone who truly deserved her. She was a beautiful, wonderful girl, and I ruined her life.”
She rubs my back in small soothing circles. “And your own. So is it guilt from her death that keeps you from playing again?”
“No, Sky, it’s not only about guilt. My addiction is always going to be an issue. Addiction is a chronic illness, there is no cure. I can only manage it, like…diabetes or some other chronic disease. Performing feeds the darkness in me. It’s like having a cigarette after sex. I’m so keyed up after a concert that only drugs can bring me down. Then I need another drug to bring me up or to balance my wacked out hormones. And then there’s always the possibility that I could relapse. Sky, you have to know that I will try my best not to, but if I do, I’m going to hurt you the same way I hurt Kim. I don’t mean to scare you, but you have to know that there’s a chance that I could go off the rails again.”
I watch her closely for a reaction.
Again, she doesn’t shrink away. In fact she juts out her chin in defiance. “I’m not a fragile little woman. I’m tougher than you think, Brody, and I’m going to always be here to support you, and—”
“And you love me?”
“How did you know?” she asks in surprise.
“You told me in the limo the night we met Pit Viper at the restaurant.”
“That was a slip-up, but it’s true. I do love you Brody. With all my heart.”
My heart is beating like one of Snare’s drum solos. I don’t want to say it in the same conversation, but how do you not say those words back to the woman you love? “I love you too, Sky. I tried very hard not to love again. Working for I.Y.M. was supposed to be a way for me to keep my distance from entanglements, but you melted the ice that surrounded my heart after Kim died.”
Her eyes light up as a fleeting thought seems to come to her. “Your tattoo is in Kim’s honor, isn’t it?”
“Yes, her parents had her cremated and took the urn back to Illinois with them. I got the tattoo in her memory just before I went into rehab.”
“It’s beautiful. Such a sweet and loving gesture.” She kisses my cheek.
I wait a few beats for the other shoe to drop. “And?”
She looks confused. “And, what…?”
I shrug. “Don’t you want to ask me if I’m going to get inked for you?”
She blushes. “Umm… I hadn’t thought of that.”
Maybe she hadn’t, but I have. Someday I’ll get a tat right on my heart, specifically for her.
“Actually I was wondering when you’re going to finish that song you’re supposedly writing for me?”
I smile and tease her, “Hmm…I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be done before the domestic leg of your world tour. Let’s just say I’m working on it.”
“Okay,” she says, and winds her arms around my neck. “I think it’s about time I started working on you. It’ll be time to leave for our flight before we know it.”
She kisses me and we don’t stop. We don’t stop making love until it’s time to pack our bags and race to the airport.
THIRTEEN
BRODY
DAY FORTY-EIGHT
It’s the day before Sky’s final concert in Athens. I just received an email from my agent, David, at I.Y.M. He has forwarded me the link to an article from the LA Times.
“Sky, check this out,” I call to her in the bathroom. We stopped giving a fuck about appearances and decided to save the tour some money by booking one room instead of two.
She rushes into the bedroom with some type of cream on her face.
“What?” she asks breathlessly.
“There’s an article about us in the Times. It doesn’t look like one of the news releases we approved, either.”
She looks over my shoulder at the MacBook screen and reads silently along with me:
Skylar’s European Tour is set to end with a bang due to the addition of legendary rocker, Pit Viper to her band. The popular pop princess sold out her final two shows and should return to the states to gear up for her domestic tour.
During the Madrid concert, a video malfunction caused the name of contemporary rock legend Savage Saban to be broadcast while Pit Viper performed the hit song “Masquerade.”
The engineer believes it was the result of a backstage prank despite music aficionados and rock historians claiming the solo played by Pit Viper was distinctly “Sabanesque” in nature.
In news of a more personal nature, Skylar’s love life also seems to be heating up. Sources tell us that she has been dating Brody Kent, her personal assistant, who looks uncannily like the rock guitarist and front man of the now defunct The Savages rock band. Skylar’s publicist could not be reached for comment.
She eyes me with a sympathetic frown. “Mother did this after I sent her packing from Madrid. I’m so sorry, baby. I know you wanted to keep your identity under wraps.”
I take her hand and pull her into my lap. “I paid a lawyer a small fortune to create that name for me. It served me well when I was hiding my identity from my grandfather, and then again when I was running away from the reality of Kim’s death. I don’t know if it matters much now anyway, because I’m no longer performing.”
She purses her lips in anger. “My mother is still going to get a cease-and-desist letter from my lawyer on your behalf. She really needs to chill.”
I scoop a bit of the face cream off her cheek and plop it onto her nose.
“Remind me not to ever piss you off,” I say with a smirk.
DAY FORTY NINE
I watch from backstage as Sky, Alyssa, and Pit Viper perform a finale rivaling the one which kicked off this European tour. If fans or critics were doubtful, this one is surely going to go down in history as an all-time favorite, especially when I do what I’m about to do. I have big plans to execute.
As Pit Viper finishes up his set, he transitions into the song I’ve written for Sky. Two of the male dancers return to the stage and seat a befuddled Sky on a stool. I walk out onto the stage folding my rich melody into the harmony the other instruments are playing. I begin singing my newly penned lyrics for Sky, letting my Gibson perfectly complement Pit Viper’s Stratocaster:
It’s time I said goodbye to you,
Like so many living lovers do,
Holding on to your memory still,
Without the courage in my heart to kill,