Over You

by Cole, Stevie J.

  I sat in our garage with the car engine still running. Midnite Kills’s hit song played on the radio. When the guitars faded, the deep vibrato of the DJ’s voice replaced the music, rumbling through the speakers. “That song’s blowing up the charts right now. And, hey, all you Hailstorm fans out there, good news. Midnite Kills’s highly anticipated, international tour that was postponed due to lead man, Spencer Hailstorm’s stint in rehab, kicks off next week! I’ll tell you, Ryan, I can’t wait to see these guys in concert. They’re—”

  I cut the engine.

  The inflection in the announcer’s voice when he mentioned rehab made it sound like a holiday in the Galapagos when it was nothing short of a wooden rollercoaster ride through hell.

  I gripped the steering wheel. Jag had once told Spencer rehab was a rocker’s badge of honor. That asshole had enough badges to fill a boy scout’s sash. Spencer, so far, had one. And now, he’d have at least two. At least. . .like my subconscious knew addiction was a song that played on a loop and never ended.

  Numb from thought, I sucked it up, and I climbed out of the car. “Losing My Religion” blared from my phone. “Hey, babe. I’m walking through the garage, did you—”

  “It’s Nash.” In the half-second pause, I froze. Fear shredded me like rusted barbed wire. “He’s okay. He’s just. . .” Nash exhaled, and a dizzying wave of adrenaline fired through me.

  “Did he come to the shoot?”

  “No. But that’s not the problem. Spencer called me acting all crazy and shouting about you and me. Like we’d been messing around. He was slurring, so I figured he’d— Anyway, he’s coming down, but I just wanted you to know before you got home and. . .”

  Eddie Vedder’s voice floated through Bluetooth speakers. Something crunched beneath my Converse when I stepped inside the kitchen. Nash’s words were nothing but background noise.

  Every cabinet was open and empty. Plates and bowls, cups and crystal lay in bits on the granite countertop. The wire shelving in the pantry had been ripped out and thrown to the middle of the floor next to crumpled boxes of spaghetti noodles and shredded bits of snack cakes.

  The Grammy was missing from the cabinet by the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the patio. The sheer, white curtains billowed from the breeze gusting through the busted glass. And my best guess was the golden award was now at the bottom of the pool.

  I stumbled past the books tossed from the shelves in the study, my pulse thrumming in my temples while Nash went on and on about Spencer being under a lot of stress—like stress was an excuse. A cause maybe. But not an excuse to get high as a kite, leaving me to deal with the fallout from everything. What had happened hurt me just as much as it hurt him, but I didn’t have the luxury of being blissfully unaware.

  I was trying to make sure he survived while he was slowly killing me. He was either too messed up to see that, or he just didn’t care.

  “Georgia? You there?”

  I moved into the foyer. “Yeah.”

  “He knows he has a problem. . .”

  “Okay. . .” I touched the wall. “I’ve got to go.” And I hung up.

  An addict looking for their stash of drugs is like an F-5 tornado. They will tear up any and everything in search of a fix, and that destruction continued into our bedroom.

  Windows smashed, mirrors shattered. The dresser had been dumped over. Spencer’s countless black Versace and Gucci shirts laid scattered across the oriental rug.

  I moved into the master bath, but much to my surprise, nothing was damaged.

  Then, there it was, the answer to his prayers and the damnation to mine. White residue blanketed the black, granite vanity. Pills sprinkled the floor. I must have missed one of his hiding spots.

  Panic shook through me like a tremor before a massive quake. This was never going to stop. I couldn’t help him when he didn’t want to help himself. Grabbing the edge of the sink, I took breath after breath. What had happened to that boy that climbed my roof to save me, telling me I looked like Rapunzel trapped in a tower? The boy who noticed the bruise on my jaw from where my mother had hit me, and without a word, led me down the magnolia tree and through his backyard? Where had the boy who took me into his kitchen and wrapped a frozen bag of pizza rolls in a ratty dishtowel, then held it to my swollen face gone? Better yet, where had that strong girl who had survived years of abuse at the hands of her mother and strangers disappeared to?

  “You know,” he said, sweeping a tendril of hair behind my ear while pressing the makeshift icepack to my cheek. “Rapunzel ended up getting out of that tower.”

  “Fairy tales are a load of crap.”

  “I thought girls loved fairy tales and happily ever afters?” He smirked, and my heart hiccupped when his finger grazed the other side of my face. And I had already halfway fallen in love because he was the first person to give a damn about me in my seventeen years of life.

  “Well, I know better.”

  He cupped my cheek with a look that bordered between amazement and pity before his gaze strayed once more to my lips. “Every fairy tale starts as a tragedy,” he said. “So, it stands to reason, that you and I have more hope for a happily ever after than anyone else, Rapunzel.”

  That night, I had kissed him. I gave away my virginity, and the next day, I went home long enough to pack a bag of clothes. For the last five years that had been it, and I had started to believe in that fairy tale. It had been us against the world, and now it felt like it was the world against us.

  “Losing My Religion” played again, and I glanced up.

  A gum wrapper had been taped to the middle of the mirror with Spencer’s messy handwriting scrawled across it. I silenced the phone before I leaned over the vanity and grabbed the foil paper.

  I promise. I’ll be sober tomorrow.

  I exhaled. At one time, Spencer scribbled love notes to me on these gum wrappers, and now he wrote empty promises. He was lying, justifying, and then rationalizing his problem, but really, so was I.

  I kept believing tomorrow. Tomorrow. . . A hundred tomorrows had come and gone. He’d grown to depend on my forgiveness. He knew I’d never walk away, and I was drowning right along with him. How much more could I realistically lose before we both sank to the bottom, gasping for air that would never come?

  While I loved Spencer in ways that not even Browning or Dickenson or Shakespeare could pen, I loved him enough that I knew the only hope there was for him to get clean was to take away the one thing he swore meant more to him than life itself. If I kept staying, I was enabling him, and I refused to watch him die.

  Fighting the choking sensation working up my throat, I took the tube of red, Louboutin lipstick, uncapped it, and placed it to the mirror beneath the gum wrapper. Tomorrow came and went.

  The sound of an accordion came over the speakers, followed by the pitter-patter of hand drums. “Better Days” from Eat. Pray. Love. went into full swing, and while I listened to the lull of Eddie Vedder’s voice, everything suddenly clicked into place.

  I had to get the hell out of California if there was any hope for either of us.

  4

  Spencer

  It was two a.m. when the headlights of Nash’s Cuda shined over the wrought iron fence that surrounded my property. The driver’s side window lowered, and a beep sounded with each number he punched into the access pad. The motor whirred to life, and the gate cranked open before he pulled through.

  The massive white house came into view. Not one light was on. Slouching in the leather seat, I wondered how angry she was with me. I hated letting Georgia down more than anything in this world, but every time I told her I’d get clean, I meant it. I meant it with every fiber of my being, but the thing was my body and heart didn’t seem to agree.

  I used to scoff when an addict called their penchant for coke or heroine a disease. I’d roll my eyes into next week when they’d say it was something that controlled them. It’s too easy to call bullshit on things you don’t understand. Case in point, if a box
er gets knocked out by a guy who’s smaller than him, one could say he’s a pussy. . . But the thing is, it’s easy to call someone weak when you don’t comprehend the strength of their opponent. And until addiction gave me a right hook to the jaw, I had no idea how powerful its punch could be.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Nash glanced at me when the car rolled to a stop at the top of my drive.

  “Yeah, man. I’m good.” I nodded, my gaze focused on the house while I opened the car door.

  “Cool. Don’t forget we have the pre-tour meeting with Ricky tomorrow.” Nash made a jerking motion over his crotch. “He’s such a dick.”

  “Okay.” I set foot onto the pavement, begrudgingly trudging up the walkway.

  Every day I told myself I would get sober for her, and the first few times the cravings would kick in, I’d tell them to fuck off. Then the shakes would start. I’d get antsy, and I thought: just a little something to take the edge off. Instead of having a gram, I’d have half a gram. Baby steps. . . But that never seemed to work out to plan.

  The Cuda’s vintage engine snarled when Nash gunned it down the driveway, while I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, trying to decide how to apologize to Georgia while I typed the code into the keypad. The lock clicked, and the door opened into the dark foyer.

  “Babe?” My voice echoed around the vaulted ceilings. Glass crunched under my Vans. Shame washed over me when I flipped the switch on the wall.

  I’d torn up everything, looking for a stash she’d missed. With each hiding spot I had found emptied, my rage grew. How the hell could I make her believe I was sincere when I did crap like this? Shaking my head, I made my way down the hallway. The light to our bedroom was on, but when I stepped inside, she wasn’t there. “Hey, babe?”

  When I flipped the light to the bathroom, I saw her note in lipstick. Tomorrow came and went.

  I fished my phone from my pocket and dialed her number. When it went to voicemail, I swiped an anxious hand down my face. She wouldn’t have left me. She wasn’t like everyone else. She loved me. I loved her. . .

  I dialed her number again and again. With each rejected call, anxiety tightened my chest.

  I paced through the house with the phone pressed to my ear. I checked with friends. Hotels. Hospitals. No one knew where she was.

  Worst-case scenarios churned through my imagination. She’d left in tears and had a wreck. She’d gone down to the beach and waded out in the waters until the ocean sucked her away from shore. Something had happened to her because the one thing Georgia would never do was leave.

  I felt completely helpless. Utterly powerless. At three a.m., I snagged a bottle of liquor from the bar and went to the patio. The cork came out with a pop. The stout aroma of oak-aged mash swirled into the air, and my mouth salivated. Just when I went to bring the bottle to my lips, I stopped. How pathetic was I? I hurled the bottle across the deck, the glass shattering over the stone pavers and the whiskey settling in the grooves. “I don’t need it,” I said, but the hard rhythm of my heart and the knowing in my gut begged to differ.

  Eventually, the night sky lightened, and a dark blue crept up from behind the hills followed by a line of pink and lilac. And then my phone vibrated over the end of the lounge. I nearly dropped it when I swiped to answer.

  “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” There was a distant edge to her tone.

  A calming buzz of adrenaline crashed over me as my heartrate attempted to slow. “Holy shit. Babe, I thought you were dead.” The background noise coming through the receiver was a low roar with intermittent dings. “Where are you?”

  There was a pause. “Austria.”

  “What? Austria? As in Europe?”

  “I just needed to think.”

  “In fucking Austria?” I stumbled off the lounge and paced beside the edge of the pool. I laughed; she couldn’t be serious. “Alright, Georgia. Haha.”

  But she didn’t laugh back. I mean, I’d heard of people needing to take a break, going for a walk on a beach to contemplate life, but just up and jetting off halfway around the world?

  “Spence, I can’t. . . I can’t keep doing this.” She was serious. She was fucking serious.

  I swatted a shaking hand through my hair and swallowed around the massive lump that sat like a load of concrete in my throat.

  “You keep saying you’ll get sober and then you—”

  “I know. And I’m sorry but just. . . Jesus. Come home. This is ridiculous.” Silence. “Georgia Anne. I love you more than anything else. You know that, right?” Why did she keep going with these long pauses? “Right?”

  “I need you to love me more than the drugs.”

  That was a knife through the chest. I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me. “I do.” And that wasn’t a lie. I didn’t love the drugs; I hated them.

  “Then prove it.”

  “Just come home, and I’ll—”

  “No. No more tomorrows. There are no more tomorrows until you show me you’re clean, Spencer.”

  Holy shit. She wasn’t going to come back. Desperation crawled through me like an army of ants, and I collapsed on the lounge, my elbow on my knee and my head in my hand. Like a castle in the sand when the tide came in, everything around me was crumbling. “Don’t do this, babe,” I whispered. “Come on.” If I could just bargain with her one more time.

  “Prove to me I’m the most important thing, Spence.”

  Panic worked its way through my veins like a bad hit of heroin. She was giving me the ultimatum I never thought she would because she’d always said love was unconditional. The question of what if swirled through my head. It wasn’t as simple as tossing the drugs into the trash. It wasn’t as simple as rehab and therapy. The way that demon had wormed its way into my psyche, hunkering down for the long haul—I felt like an exorcism may be my only hope. And maybe that was a better analogy: Addiction wasn’t a disease; it was a possession of the mind, body, and soul.

  “Three months,” she said like it was the simplest thing in the world. “Get clean for three months, and I’ll come back.”

  “Are you fucking serious?” The phone shook in my hands. The coke had long ago left my system, and I was jonesing. “I have a tour in a week, Georgia.”

  “Three months.”

  In a pathetic attempt at self-preservation, that fear morphed into anger. “You don’t leave someone just because they screw up, Georgia Anne!”

  “This isn’t just screwing up, Spencer.”

  My throat burned. My vision blurred. Out of habit, I shoved a hand in my pocket for a bag that wasn’t there. “I thought you loved me!”

  “Don’t you understand. I do. That’s why I left. To save you.”

  I kicked one of the patio tables, sending it halfway across the deck. “How selfless of you to travel halfway across the world to save me.”

  And then, she hung up. I’d been rejected by my birth-mother. By every foster family who had never adopted me. Kids at school. But I never expected to be rejected by her, and that took what little soul I had and tore it into bite-size morsels for those demons to ingest.

  5

  Georgia Anne

  Six months later

  At seventeen, I had moved in with Spencer. By eighteen we were married, and by twenty-two, I was lost. Without purpose. And heartbroken. God, so heartbroken. . .

  Two months into Midnite Kills’ tour, Spencer overdosed, and while I had accepted that I would forever be in love with an addict, I had also learned that loving someone didn’t mean destroying yourself in the process.

  Somedays, I felt okay with that decision, others the guilt rode my shoulders like the harbinger of the Apocalypse. As much as he meant to me, I had to put myself first. And that was hard to do.

  At first, I’d told Spencer he had three months. After the overdose, I gave him three more because I was desperate for him to get clean, and I was dying to be with him which was why I’d spent the past six months backpacking across Europe. Being
thousands of miles apart was the only way I could ensure that I wouldn’t go back to him until he’d cleaned up.

  I’d spent six months with blistered feet. Six months of shedding myself of material things—with the exception of the tacky, plastic photo keychain that housed a black and white picture of Spencer and me. And over my journey, I had learned that I didn’t need much to survive. Not a house in the hills or a fancy car. When it came down to it, I didn’t even need hot water. But the hardest lesson I had learned was how to sleep in a bed without him. How to manage the nightmares when I woke up and Spencer was still gone, still high. The hardest thing I had to do was learn to live without him and tell myself love wasn’t the answer to everything. Actually, it wasn’t the answer to anything.

  Love was fleeting, and no matter what Hollywood told us, we didn’t need it to live.

  And sometimes, loving someone who couldn’t love themselves could kill.

  The train rumbled over the track, and I stared through the window. Tiny chalets dotted the French countryside. Yellow and purple flowers sprinkled the fields that whizzed past until the landscape eventually turned into graffiti-covered buildings.

  I had just settled against the cloth seat and closed my eyes when the brakes screeched to a halt. The announcer spit something out. Although the French words rolled from his tongue like whiskey, the only words I recognized were: “Paris Gar du Nord.”

  Passengers stood, bumping into each other on their way to the luggage racks. When the doors slid open, people poured out, and then an influx of weary travelers shuffled on, tickets in hand, as they searched for their seat.

  A dark-haired girl stopped at the empty seat beside me. My gaze traveled over her gray flats and olive-green tights to a mustard-yellow skirt. She unwound the scarf with rectangles of Mick Jagger’s face, then slipped out of her black pea coat and flopped into the chair with an “oomph.”