The Secret That Intervened

by Lisa Marie Stum

  Not talking about us, our feelings when it came to each other, and all that shit had always been almost an unwritten rule between us. This time, I had to do something since she was leaving.

  Her decision to leave was irrational. For once, I’d thought I could make her wake up and see things for how they really were.

  Jason had been nothing but a sperm donor. I was more of a father to Chloe than he had ever been.

  I didn’t know much about love, but I did know that what they had wasn’t it. If I was with Hailey there was no way I would have gone a single day without seeing her. Every day, every single day, I would have found a way to get her near me.

  Cigarette smoke began to fill the room as more people arrived. It didn’t bother me though, since I was contributing to the cloud of it above me. Peyton came over and took a seat next to me. He ordered another beer for me and one for himself.

  “Dude, she gone?” he asked as he grabbed his beer from the bar.

  I shook my head as I put my cigarette out in the ashtray. Peyton knew not to take the conversation any further. He had been my other best friend since my freshman year of high school. He was a sophomore the year we met. Now, he was my roommate. He’d moved in last year after he finished his college degree.

  I went to school for a semester but decided it wasn’t my thing. Besides, the band had begun to pick up a decent following and I knew I wanted a career in music. You either had it or you didn’t when it came to stuff like that. It wasn’t something any school could have taught me.

  Mom wanted me to get a college degree so I had a backup plan. I went for one semester, but decided you’re either all in or all out when it comes to anything you’re passionate about. Going to school took time away from building the band, plus I didn’t think a person could ever achieve a goal if they were too busy preparing themselves for failure.

  “JT is going to sing the last two sets,” Peyton said.

  “All right with me,” I responded lazily, as I knew I was going to be too wasted by then to finish the show, and Peyton was smart enough to realize it. The guy had graduated with a computer science degree at the top of his class.

  Peyton was a few inches shorter than me and worked as a computer technician during the day. People often said we looked alike, but I didn’t see the resemblance. He had light brown hair, mine was dark. My eyes were blue, his were hazel. Hailey said our face shapes and physiques were similar, but I was definitely more muscular. Working in construction will do that to you.

  Suddenly, Peyton’s face twisted into a scowl, and I turned to see what he was looking at. Taylor Hatfield stood at the entrance with a guy’s arm around her.

  A tight black dress clung to her body, but it wasn’t trashy looking. Taylor did sexy well. She always revealed just the right amount, never overdone or cheap looking. She had long blonde hair that was a couple of inches shy of her ass. Peyton had dated her off and on for several years. I couldn’t remember exactly when it had started, but I think it was the year after he and I met.

  Peyton hated that she brought guys to our shows, he thought it was disrespectful.

  I looked over at Peyton after hearing his beer bottle slam against the bar counter. Beer shot up from the bottle, forming tiny pools in front of him. That the damn bottle didn’t shatter surprised me. He narrowed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath.

  Here I am with a broken heart and my best friend had let someone he still loved go. How’s that for stupidity? He would break up with Taylor when he met someone else he wanted to bang. Never understood it; if I had Hailey I couldn’t even fathom doing that to her.

  Taylor flaunted her new relationship, standing proudly with her arm around her date. She made sure she was in Peyton’s view; she kept repositioning herself so the crowd didn’t block her. I knew there was at least one argument coming tonight. The girl did it just to get a rise out of him – revenge for him breaking up with her, again.

  Taylor was Hailey’s other best friend. We had all grown up together, but they didn’t become close friends until freshman year of high school. Erin Maddox was the one who had brought them together, which was ironic.

  I looked around the room and spotted Erin over near the stage, handing JT some wiring. Erin never missed a show and often got drunk and threw herself at Peyton. Every once in a while she made a pass at me, but I always avoided her as much as I could.

  Hailey didn’t like her, and Hailey liked everybody, for the most part. She always went out of her way to make other people feel welcomed and comfortable. It was one of the many things that I loved about her.

  There were two girls that I knew were off limits, and that was Erin and Taylor. But, I was feeling reckless and dangerous, not that I’d ever think of Taylor like that, but Erin was another story. Killing any remaining hope seemed like it was my only option. I certainly couldn’t go on feeling broken forever. My drunken mind rationalized everything in a sloppy way.

  Erin was thin like Hailey and they were roughly the same height. Her straight black hair fell just below her shoulders. She often laid the eye makeup on thick, way too thick. The potential to be a really cute girl was there if she made herself look more natural.

  Erin headed over to where Peyton and I sat. I watched her walk toward us, her hips swinging slightly with each step. I was sure it was intentional, and I didn’t mind it. The girl was stacked; she had on a white V-neck T-shirt, and her cleavage poked through the top of it. Her tight dark blue jeans showed off the curves of her hips.

  Erin said hello to us before she leaned over the bar to place her order. Her chest pressed against her folded arms, pushing her cleavage up further, and I couldn’t help but stare.

  Taylor shot a look at Erin from the opposite side of the bar. She whispered into the ear of her date. I’m sure she made some smart-ass remark about Erin to the guy she was with. Taylor hated Erin and had no issue with showing it. Both of them were outgoing and assertive, and they both rarely hesitated in speaking their minds. It was almost the perfect setup for a battleground, except the one person that intimidated Erin happened to be Taylor.

  Erin picked up the beers she’d ordered and walked away. I watched her as she left. She had a nice round ass, not that I hadn’t noticed that before. She handed the other beer to JT when she got to the stage.

  Peyton and I watched the game until the first set started. I wasn’t entirely interested in it and my mind kept slipping back to Hailey. When we were on my mom’s porch, she’d kept tucking her golden-brown hair behind her ear as she spoke. She did that when she was uncomfortable.

  “Dude, come on,” Peyton said, patting my back. We stood up and made our way to the stage.

  I climbed the three steps across from the bathroom and reached the entrance of the stage. It was oblong and about thirteen feet wide, a decent-sized stage for a bar in Milbourny. The techno music went off and the first beat on the drum by Matt sounded.

  I looked out into the crowd. The room was dark except for the lights pulsing from the stage. They moved in every direction, illuminating people along their path. As they hit the cloud of smoke hovering above the crowd, the light fractured in many different directions, like light filtering through a crystal.

  This was one of the few times I had started a show while being half lit. Alcohol and I usually didn’t get along, and I definitely didn’t need it to feel comfortable onstage. In fact, being onstage was when I felt the most alive.

  I could feel the beat of the music pounding within me as I began to move my body along with it. I sang out to the crowd as they danced. It was one of the best feelings in the world. Thoughts of Hailey faded into the back of my mind. I leaned down to the crowd in front of me, my voice blasting through the microphone.

  Three college-aged girls I hadn’t seen before danced at the front of the stage. Holding out the microphone to them, they sang along with JT. They were jumping, dancing, and happy they were the center of attention.

  As soon as the song ended, thoughts of Hailey flooded to the
forefront of my mind again. When the bass hit me from the next song, they began to drown out again.

  Erin reached from the side of the stage next to me and handed me a shot as I was singing. I nodded in her direction to thank her. She smiled back at me. I poured it into my mouth when the bridge that JT sang came up. I was drunk, not fall-on-your-ass drunk, but drunker than I normally got.

  My alcohol-soaked mind had convinced me that Hailey was gone forever. She would marry Jason, they would have a family. She would never come back to Milbourny. I needed to move on with my life and just fully accept that she was gone from my life forever.

  When the set ended and the DJ came on, I headed to the bar to get a drink. The place had become packed and I had to snake around people, elbows jabbing into me as I broke through the crowd. The smell of smoke combined with sweat was in the air, and the floor was sticky from people spilling their drinks.

  A group of frat boys were in the corner bumping their chests into one another. Morons.

  The girls that I had held the microphone out for were standing at the bar. The one with light brown hair tapped on my shoulder. “Let us buy you a drink. That was so much fun!” she said to me.

  I forced a fake smiled and agreed. The normal questions that come from people new to our shows followed. It always felt like an interview to me, not a conversation. People always asked the same stupid questions. How long have you been singing? Do you love it? How did you guys meet? And so on.

  The girl with the red hair was obviously more intoxicated than me, shifting her weight from foot to foot until she fell back against the wall. She wobbled around and I thought her head might go crashing into the floor. “I’m going to meet up with my bandmate.” I pointed to JT across the room. “It was nice chatting with you ladies. Might want to take care of her,” I said, looking at the redhead.

  It wasn’t nice chatting with them. To be honest, it bored me to death. I’m not huge into talking about myself, but it comes with the job. Normally, I’m accommodating and talk to people at the shows. Tonight I didn’t feel like it. I just wanted people to leave me alone.

  Taylor looked at me from across the room again but I avoided her stare. She knew what had happened earlier that day and she didn’t possess the restraint necessary to prevent herself from asking how I was doing. There was no way I could possibly respond to that. I didn’t understand it myself. She would probably say something stupid to me like “I’m so sorry!” in a high-pitched voice that would have made me want to strangle her. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear right then and I didn’t want to think about Hailey anymore tonight. She was gone, nothing left to think about other than that fact. The drunkenness didn’t allow me to give a shit about much of anything. All I cared about was getting laid, killing hope, and figuring life out later.

  I looked around the room for Erin. It wasn’t difficult to spot her. She was dancing next to the stage, right up in the front of it. She was here by herself tonight. Usually Samantha was with her at the shows. Every once in a while she would come out by herself. That tonight was one of those nights only made me more certain about what I was going to do.

  Another group of girls stopped me as I made my way over to JT. Same questions, same stupid answers. I rudely excused myself this time and plowed through the crowd, bumping into people along the way, until I made it to the seat next to JT.

  “Hey, man, have a good time tonight. Don’t mind doing the second half,” JT said. “You can pay me back some other time.” I didn’t tell JT what was going on, and I was certain Peyton wouldn’t either. This was too personal to tell to someone I had recently met. I ordered JT a beer to thank him.

  I supposed every guy had been here at one point. Only thing is, I’d never been through this. I’d never been in love with anyone but Hailey. I thought about how she’d kept wiping away the tears as they hit her cheeks. The green in her eyes became brighter against the redness in them.

  JT sat at the bar with me for the fifteen minutes we had for a break. Peyton stood near the entrance in a heated argument with Taylor. I knew that was going to happen. Her date had walked out five minutes before. Peyton looked like he was trying to convince her to stay since he was pointing at the bar.

  They walked to the bar and took a seat next to us. She said something to me that I didn’t hear over the noise of the crowd. Thank God JT interrupted.

  “Almost time to go back up,” JT said as he stood from his seat. I would have followed him if Taylor hadn’t turned her attention back to Peyton. Her voice would have grated on my nerves.

  I watched girls stopping JT on his way back to the stage. It made me want to stay seated.

  The smoke in the room had gotten so thick that it surprised me that I could still see people’s faces. I lit a cigarette, knowing that I’d hold things up with the show, but I’d gotten too drunk to care if we started our sets on time. Seth, the bartender, came over and I ordered two shots. I took several drags from my cigarette while waiting for him to return.

  Two groups of guys were now on either side of me and no one was bothering me. Seth handed me the shots and I made my way to the entrance of the stage.

  Erin was dancing when I interrupted her. I leaned down from the stage and handed her the second shot I’d bought. She looked at me with a shocked expression on her face, and smiled as she took the drink from my hand. We tossed them back together and she reached up to take the empty glass from my hand.

  She would always buy me shots but I never returned the favor. Call me an ass, but I would be dead broke if I did that for everyone that bought me shots. Most of the time I just took it out of the person’s hand and placed it on top of one of the speakers. People rarely noticed that I didn’t drink them. Their attention would focus back on their friends or they would continue dancing. If they did notice, I would take the shot with them after the set. I guess that was the politeness that my mom had instilled in me. I felt guilty that they spent their money on me just for it to be wasted. But it was too difficult to refuse from the stage. Plus refusing would have made me an ungrateful asshole.

  We were two songs away from ending the second set, then I would be done singing for the night. Looking out into the crowd I saw a drunken girl who kept falling as she was dancing. I’d witnessed a lot of crazy behavior in the four years I’d performed at the Dark Horse. A drunken girl was nothing in comparison to other things that people did at shows. That sort of thing happened almost every night. I’d seen a couple having sex against the wall, girls flashing me, guys making out with two girls at once, fights, and people doing drugs. You name it. It was a big part of the reason Hailey rarely attended the shows.

  Erin was in her normal spot, singing along with me, and looking me dead in the eye. I reached my hand out toward her and she took it. She placed a foot on the edge of the stage and I pulled her forward, jerking her up onto the stage. She held my stare and we both jumped in unison to the beat of the song.

  It was in that one moment that I had become certain I was going to do it. Kill all hope, end any possible suffering I might continue to go through, and get back in control of my feelings and thoughts. I certainly couldn’t continue to let them affect me the way they were.

  Taylor saw us but I didn’t care. I hoped that she would. Not because I wanted to hurt Hailey. Shit, Hailey wouldn’t have cared in a way that would change things. However, I was certain that Hailey would have hated me for it. Taylor shook her head at me. I guess I should have cared but I just didn’t. I was too hurt, too drunk, and too fucked up in the head at the moment to care. I just wanted to kill the pain and the small amount of hope that remained.

  I told Erin to stay up onstage until the set finished; we only had one more song left. I’ve never seen her so happy in her life. She had tried for years to get my attention, and now she had it.

  After the set finished and the god-awful techno music came on, Erin and I stood on the stage chatting. It was almost midnight and I was ready to head out.

  I looked down at her cle
avage and then back to her face. “I’m ready to roll out for the night,” I said. “You want to stay here or come with me?”

  I already knew the answer and how easy it would be.

  A smile slid across her face.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Chapter 4 - Hailey

  Three months had gone by since I’d moved to New York City. Cody and I hadn’t spoken since the day I left. Not a single day had gone by that I hadn’t considered calling him, but I thought it would be more awkward and uncomfortable than the day I’d left. Besides, I didn’t know what I would have said.

  There was nothing that I could say that would erase the fact that I’d hurt him, or he’d hurt me. The conversation we had on the day I left had frequently crossed my mind. It often left me with guilty feelings for leaving the way I did, but other times I was curious what life would have been like had I stayed in Milbourny. It wasn’t until recently that I’d realized he was trying to save me from myself.

  The first two months with Jason were better than I could have imagined. My relationship with him had felt different and new, not at all like it had been while he was in college. He was attentive, and more loving than he had ever been.

  Jason had begun to behave more like the father I wanted him to be in some regards, and I had the family I wanted. I thought everything would continue on that path and one day he would become more natural around her. It was never perfect. I would be the first to admit that. But sometimes he would play with her and laugh with her. Moments like that fueled my hope.

  The choices I’d made since I was seventeen and pregnant were always made with my daughter in the forefront of my mind. Not that I’m complaining; I wouldn’t have given her up for anything in the world. But that was my reality. Oftentimes what felt like a choice was really the only option that was available to me. At least that’s what it looked like to me. I supposed people could argue that there was always another alternative, another option. And really there could have been, but to me, my daughter came before me, always, and the only option I’d even consider was what I felt was in her best interest. It was no different when I made the decision to move to New York.