by Daisy Allen
Then he comes back and sits in the seat next to me, reaching over to squeeze my knee as the flight attendant prepares the plane for take-off.
"Ready?"
I nod, pulling down my sunglasses even though it's pitch-black out.
And not another word is uttered until we land in L.A.
***
The limo takes us to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I'm a little surprised; I wasn't sure if Dennis was going to make me go back to the hospital or not, considering I was never really checked out properly. But when I open my eyes after falling asleep in the car, we are parked outside the hotel.
"Come on," Dennis says, and I follow him up to a hotel suite. It's filled with our equipment and instruments and pictures of loved ones on the piano and mantle. It only just occurs to me that this is where the band has been staying while I was in the hospital. I never really thought about where they were living. I just... I was too preoccupied with myself, I guess.
While I was feeling sorry for myself, for not being able to play, they were here, choosing not to... in a show of solidarity for me. And I never gave them a second thought about it.
I drop onto the couch in the middle of the huge suite and watch as they all join me, saying nothing.
It's so quiet I can almost hear the sound of traffic on the roads all the way down on the ground level. After a while, the silence becomes deafening and I spring up to my feet and swing around, looking at them one by one.
"What the fuck happened?"
They all look at each other and then turn to Sebastian. He rolls his eyes, but accepts the job of spokesperson. "What do you mean?"
"A few hours ago... I was about to get married."
"And now... you're not," Seb says, like he’s trying to make sure I’m aware of the circumstances.
"No, I’m bloody, fucking not married.”
"And how does that make you feel?"
I don't know what to say, so I just shrug. "Guess it just wasn't meant to happen."
Marius sighs and says, "Jez, it's okay to f-..."
"If you fucking dare say 'feel' or anything that alludes to emotions, I swear to God I'm going to shove your bow down your fucking throat and pull it out your ass." He squirms, as if imagining it and closes his mouth.
"But..."
"That goes for all of you, I'm fucking serious," I growl.
I walk over to the drink's tray and pour a Scotch.
I lift it to my mouth and the scent makes me instantly dry retch, thinking of her that night standing at the bar nursing her drink and now knowing that she willingly climbed behind the steering wheel almost killing us both in the process. Not to mention her best friend and, on an unluckier day, who knows how many other people.
"Goddamn fuck it to hell!!!" I yell and fling the glass across the room and it smashing against the wall and into a thousand pieces, scattering across the floor. "Why?!!" I shout out against the cold glass of the window.
There's no answer from anyone.
"Jez. Come on, come get some rest, you've had a really long day," Dennis says softly, tapping me gently on the arm.
"No." I say, pulling away. "I don't need rest. Fuck rest! I've done nothing BUT rest for three months, I'm sick of bloody resting."
"Well, what DO you want to do then?" Brad asks, looking at the other guys, hopeless as to how to help me.
I walk over to the row of instruments lined up against bar. I put my hand on my favorite cello, the one I bought with our very first check from the sales of our first album. I haven't seen her for three months.
It's time I return to the one thing that's never let me down.
The guys see me pulling on the latch of the case and get up from the couch, joining me, reaching for their own instruments.
"You sure?” Sebastian questions me.
"What have I got to lose?" I reply.
And in his eyes, I can see he knows I'm thinking, “Nothing. There’s nothing left but this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Noémie
Time is ruthless.
It doesn't give a damn about anything, just the relentless pursuit of moving forward.
Never slower, never speeding. Just forward. And it doesn't give a fuck what you want. What you need.
I needed time.
No, I needed time to stop. To give me a chance to process what had happened. One minute I was happier than I ever thought I could be. Next moment it was all ripped away from me. Over something I don't even remember doing. Something I can't even imagine myself doing.
But it didn't stop. So I ask time to move backward.
To a moment when it didn't hurt. When it didn't sting to breathe. To think, to feel. To remember.
And it ignored me and kept ticking away, leaving me to mend my wounds with empty cold comfort and empty platitudes.
I stayed at the Bellagio for a day after Jez left. I kept thinking, he would come back. That this was something we could work through together.
It wasn't until Paige walked through the door that I realized he wasn't coming back. He'd gotten Dennis to get a message to her, to come and get me. To make sure I was alright because he wasn't going to do it himself.
I wanted to hate him for leaving. But I couldn't.
I didn't have room for any hate toward him. I was too busy hating myself.
I've been back in L.A. for a month. And I've barely left our apartment.
Paige has a nurse come visit every few days just to make sure my recovery is coming along as it should. She tries to fill my days with distraction, but there's no changing what has happened.
I almost died. And Jez brought me back to life.
And now he's gone.
Because I was the one who almost killed him.
Karma is one caustic bitch.
"Hey, watcha wanna do today?" Paige asks, coming into my room, pulling the curtains open. "How 'bout we do some shopping? A new pair of shoes might cheer you right up. My treat! Well... Daddy's. He says hello, by the way."
"Ugh," I pull the blanket over my head, trying to cut out the light. "Just... can you just leave me alone!"
She doesn’t say anything, just sighs. I've heard that sigh a hundred times since I've been back. And I know the look that comes with it. I pull the blanket back over my head and she's sitting on the corner of my bed, picking at a loose thread. She lifts her head to look at me, her eyes filled with hurt.
"I'm sorry. I'm not really ready to go out yet."
"But you're not going to get any better just sitting here."
"I won't, I'll have to get a job soon."
"No. You're not ready for that yet. Absolutely not."
"Paige, if I'm well enough to do Rodeo Drive, I'm well enough to find some mindless job. I've got to start paying you back, lord knows how though."
"I've told you before, you don't have to pay me a dime. I'm only glad we could help."
"Thank you. I know I owe you everything."
"Like, owe me a lunch date to Grimaldi’s. Puhleeaasssse! I'm having such a craving for their Cobb salad. I'll eat super fast! I won't even chew, promise!"
I sigh and slide my legs off the bed. "Fine. But then we're coming straight home."
"Yay!"
I smile at her excitement and reach for the dress on the floor. She can make me go, but she can't make me dress up.
"Hey, Noémie? I'm sorry that you're in pain, but I think it's better this way. The way it turned out."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean... with the guy. He wasn't the guy for you. It wasn't ever going to work out, you weren’t right for each other. I knew he'd hurt you in the end. I'm sorry I was right." She shrugs and leaves to get ready.
I don't have the energy to tell her that she was wrong.
That I was the one doing the hurting all along.
And that in fact, we were perfect for each other.
I pull the flowery dress over my head, and try not to remember the last time I wore it.
"Paige?" I call out, and
she appears in my doorway almost instantly. "I think... I think I'm going to go away for a few days."
She nods and smiles "I think that might be a good idea. Just give me five minutes."
She disappears and I can't even begin to guess what she's up to, always surprising me, never predictable.
She comes back with two sheets of people in her hand, grinning as she waves them at me.
"Forget lunch, we're going to the airport."
I knew it. "What? Where?"
"Duh, where do you think?”
I look at the tickets in her hand and the tears well up in my eyes.
"Home!" I gasp and she beams and nods.
"Yup, home."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jez
The recovery is slow and painful.
Some days my progress feels like an impossibly uphill battle. Struggling to take three, four steps up, only to stumble and roll back down the mountain.
And then there are days I wake up, and I reach for a cup of coffee, and it's empty before I realize my fingers are gripping the handle without shaking, without pain.
But there are no nights that I fall asleep without hearing the sound of her voice in my head, feel her fingers through my hair, imagining her warm body wriggling against mine as she murmurs in her sleep.
But the nightmares tell a different story.
I know the ending now, the aftermath of the flashing headlights and the screeching tires on the road before I'm flung into the air.
It's her.
Her own bloodied body against the steering wheel, her blood mixed in with Scotch.
Almost killing me.
And worse, almost killing herself.
The urge to see her, to kiss her, to talk to her, to hear her play is trumped by the overwhelming urge to shake her, shake her until she gives up her secrets, to tell me why. How she could be this kind of person? To make her show me how she could hide this, even from herself.
It's been a month since we've come back to L.A.
As part of my rehabilitation, we practice every day. My playing isn't perfect, but there's real hope for a full recovery.
Physically.
Mentally, emotionally, I'm as wrecked as I ever was.
And the only person who can fix me is the only person who ever broke me.
There's a knock on the door and I ignore it. Preferring to sit in my dark room and stare out the window into the night.
Night is good.
Quiet.
Safe.
Alone.
The knock comes again, louder this time.
I sigh and call out, "It's open."
There's a pause and the door cracks open, and light streams in through the gap, drawing a bright line clear across the floor of my bedroom.
I squint and can barely make out the shape of the person at the door. It’s Anca.
"Hey, Jezzy," she says, quietly, as she steps into the room and closes the door behind her.
"Hey. Want a drink?" I hold up the Cognac decanter I'm swilling from.
"Um, no, thanks. Maybe you've had enough for tonight?"
"Hmmm," I say, as if I'm really thinking about it. "No. No, I don't think so. I think I'm going to drink this one and then another one and then we'll see."
"Jez." The way she says my name sometimes makes me question who's the older sibling of us two. She's grown up a lot in the last few months. First coming into her own after her own drama and then dealing with my accident. It can't have been easy for her seeing me, in a hundred broken pieces in that hospital bed, asleep for weeks.
But she handled it with more grace than I could've had the tables been turned. I would've torn up L.A. on a rampage.
And what good would it have done?
Nothing but assuaged my own guilt, my own ego, that I hadn't been able to take care of my own baby sister. I guess it's a good thing that she's wiser than me. And as it turns out, much kinder.
"Give me the bottle," she says, holding out her hand, and I take one last sip, before handing it to her.
She lifts it to her mouth and takes a drink, her eyes crinkling as the liquid burn down her throat.
"Now we're both drunk. Happy?"
"You had one drink,” I roll my eyes.
"You know I'm a cheap drunk. It's partly why Marius loves me. That and I'm very bendy," she wiggles her eyebrows and I make pretend to stick my finger down my throat and retch.
"Please, too much information. I think of you guys sitting up in bed in flannel pajamas and playing scrabble."
"Naked scrabble, maybe."
"Dear God," I say, eyes pointed up to the ceiling. "You've put me through a lot in the last few months, but this, this is easily the worst of it,"
She giggles softly and nudges me with her elbow, making more room for herself on the bed next to me.
"Ugh, when are you going back to Romania already?"
"When I think that you're ready for me to go." She doesn't pull her punches, my sister. And I'm glad for that. She's had a hard time, it's good to see her feel comfortable in her own skin. I just wish she'd do it far away from me.
"Well, now's a good time. I can call you an Uber. I'll even pay."
She pokes her tongue out at me, and suddenly she's six years old again and I'm telling her off for not putting on her shoes. It really was just us for a lot of our childhood once were alone. Our grandparents couldn't have taken better care of us, but our music lessons and private schooling cost a lot, and they had to work more than they should've at their age.
Just another way our parents’ car accident changed the course of everyone's life.
"I heard you're working on a new piece. Marius says it's so good, it's going to be the title of the next album."
"Don’t listen to what that Dung Beetle Breath says," I say.
"Hey, that's my boyfriend you're talking about."
"Hey, that's one of my best friends you're boning," I shoot back at her. "And I've known him longer than you."
"Yeah, but you know he's right. He knows good music when he hears it."
I roll my eyes, but I have to agree with her. And the new song is good.
It's not finished and I'm not sure how it's going to end up, but it's good.
And I'm proud of it.
"What about... other stuff? Non-musical stuff?" she asks, trying to keep her voice light, like I won’t notice she’s prying into my life.
"Mind your own business, Anca." It's the same response I give whenever she tries to make me talk.
"No. Not today. It's time. Tell me what's going on in your head."
"Nothing. There’s nothing going on in my head."
I get a hard elbow poked into my side. "Yes, there is. Tell me about her."
"Ow! Do it again and I’m telling Dennis,” I warn her. “And by the way, I especially don't think about her."
"What a load of absolute bull elephant shit."
"That's a helluva lot of shit."
"Exactly,” she glowers at me.
"What do you want me to say, Anca? That I spend every day not knowing if I want to kiss her or kill her? That I can't believe I finally fell in fucking love and it was with someone like her? That I don't know how or why I wake up every morning, because I know when I do, she's not going to be here? That I'm still so disgusted by her that I can't even say her name? But if I could, if I could turn back time, I would get in that car instead of her, knowing that it would hit someone? Because I would rather it was me than her. Because I can live with my own shame, But I can't live with someone I'm ashamed of. That I miss her more than I missed playing the cello? And that I'd chop off both my arms if it meant things could be different?"
Anca sighs. "Yes. I want you to say all those things. And more, if you have it."
I shrug, "No, I don't have anything, Anca. Just you and the band."
"Only because you chose to walk away."
"Are you kidding me?” I bellow at her. "You, of all people, you're judging ME for walking away from her?
"
"No, I'm not judging you. You are."
"The hell I am."
"You are, I hear it in everything you're saying. The conflict. Make up your fucking mind. Do you love her or do you hate her?"
"Both."
"No. You don't. You just think you should hate her."
"She got in a car drunk, Anca. And she hit me.”
She stands up abruptly and waves her finger in my face. "Oh, I know, I saw. I saw the blood, the tubes, the casts. Heard the doctors frantic, asking each other what to do, all while the fucking paparazzi were blocking the entrance ways for the exclusive scoop that you were dead. It’s a pint of my blood coursing through your veins right now. So, yeah, I bloody hell know, so don't you tell me I don't know what happened to you."
"Mom and Dad…"
"Died in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Yeah, I know that, too. I was four years old and couldn’t understand why my mom, my hero, never came back for me. Tell me something, I don’t know."
She sits down, drawing in a long breath.
"Anca, I can't just forget."
"No one's telling you. But the grudge, that's for you to decide whether you can let it go or not. I've had a good life. Haven't you?"
"The absolute best." I tell her. Meaning every word. "I... I just don't know I could ever forgive her."
"You know the answer, you just said it."
"That's not what love is, Anca."
My little sister looks at me, as if I’m an absolute idiot. "It's exactly what it is. And for what it's worth. I forgive her. I saw how happy she made you, so I forgive her. It’s your choice."
I sit there, listening to my own breath, wondering what I can and cannot change.
Anca sighs and pats me on the hand. "Like I said, your choice. But right now, you're going to get up and drag your ass out here and listen to Brad sing karaoke. And that, my darling brother is NOT a choice. Come on, enough sulking. Time to get back to the land of the barely living."
She gets up and holds out her hand to me. I sigh and let her pull me to my feet.
"When did you get so wise, anyway?"
"I dunno, sometime around when you were pretending that the dog ate the cake I made for Gramps."
