Falling Away

by Jasinda Wilder

  "Where'd you go?"

  I shrug. "Everywhere. I spent a good year just...drifting. I would stop in a little town somewhere and find work and stay there for a few weeks or a month. Spent time in...oh, man...Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, down the Pacific coast. I learned to surf in California, that was fun. I just drifted and worked and...honestly, tried not to think about you." I can't look at her as I explain this. "It was months and months of not thinking about you at all. Because that was easier than...missing you, and hurting over it."

  She lets out a little noise that's part sigh, part sob. "God, Ben. That sounds like it was..."

  "Exactly what I needed. It was lonely, yeah. But it was better than hanging around here and seeing you and being bitter. I never would have gotten over you if I hadn't left. I couldn't be sitting here talking to you if I hadn't left." I hesitate, drink some coffee, and watch the black liquid swirl in the mug. "It would have destroyed me, staying here."

  "And now?"

  I shrug again. "And now...hopefully we can be friends. You look great." I rush to cover that. "Happy, I mean. You look...happy."

  She smiles. "I am. I really am. Oz and I...it's incredible. I'm studying music management at Belmont, and we're gigging here in the city during the semesters and going on tour with Mom and Dad during breaks and the summer. Oz and Dad finally opened their classic car restoration business, and...yeah. Things are great." She leans toward me. "The only thing missing has been you, Benji."

  I wince at that. "Kylie, I--please don't call me that."

  "Benji? Why not?"

  I shrug miserably. "I'm over the pain and the bitterness, but that...still hurts, I guess."

  But Kylie is far too perceptive to fall for that. "There's someone else, isn't there?"

  "Sort of," I admit.

  She doesn't respond right away. "You know, the thing I was the most upset with you about was the hypocrisy of being mad at me for being with Oz when you were with all those other girls."

  "I never slept with any of them." I'm not sure why that comes out, why I tell her that.

  "You--but you--what?"

  "I let you think I had on purpose. The whole...the only reason I ever went out with any of them was to make you jealous." I duck my head. "But I could never...go all the way with them."

  "God, Ben, that's--"

  "Fucked up, I know." I sigh and tilt my head to look up at the ceiling rather than at her. "That's not true, though. Making you jealous was the primary reason. It was also a half-assed attempt to try to move on. To force myself to get over you."

  "Get over me by getting under someone else, huh?"

  I shrug. "That was the idea, but I couldn't do it. I'd get close and end up thinking about you, and--I'd have to stop."

  "But you let me think the worst anyway."

  "At that point, when I told you that...I don't think I cared, honestly. Nothing mattered but how I felt like you'd been stolen from me."

  "That's kind of a dick move," Kylie says. "Letting me think you'd fucked all these other girls and then getting pissed at me for falling in love with someone and wanting to be with him."

  "I know," I admit. "I know. And I'm sorry for that, too."

  She just blinks at me, and I still know her well enough to see the anger in her expression. "That pisses me off all over again. Like, that's so many layers of deception, Ben."

  "I know."

  "Any other lies you need to clean up?"

  "I was a virgin. When I left Nashville, I mean. You want the whole truth, there it is."

  She looks stunned. "No shit. Really?"

  "Really."

  Her eyes narrow. "But you're not anymore."

  "No." I carefully keep my gaze away from hers.

  "So, who is she?"

  I'm really, really not sure that's something I can talk about with her. "I...don't know if we're there yet, Ky."

  She nods. "Fair enough." But she can't let it go, though. "Is it serious? Did you just come back to talk to me, or..."

  "No, I'm back for good."

  "You didn't answer my--"

  "Kylie," I cut in, my voice firm. "I can't talk about it with you. I want to fix things with you. I want us to be friends. I loved you as a best friend for seventeen years, above and beyond anything else. I'm here talking to you because I want that back. I know I fucked up in a lot of ways, and I've apologized for it. But...I just...I cannot talk about Echo right now."

  Immediately, Kylie's expression goes far too carefully neutral. "Echo. Echo Leveaux?"

  I lean back in the chair and cover my face with both hands. "Of course you know her."

  "She's...incredible." Her voice takes on a note of awe. "I've heard her sing at school and with her band, and...Ben, she's--legit, she's the most amazing vocalist I've ever heard."

  I rear back in shock. "What?" I knew she had to be good to study at Belmont, but coming from Kylie, this kind of raving is like the Pope calling you holy. Kylie knows music and she knows talent, so I respect her opinion on this topic more than just about anyone else's.

  "How could you not know?"

  "I didn't meet her in Nashville. I met her in San Antonio. I've never heard her sing."

  Kylie considers her response carefully. "Let's go back a bit. The cane, the limp. What happened? The last thing your parents told me was that you were playing semi-pro football in Texas."

  "Not semi-pro, actually. It was an experimental minor league. A way to keep an eye on upcoming talent other than the NCAA. A lot of the experts are saying college ball is increasingly broken as a path to the pros." I wave my hand. "Whatever. Not important. Yeah, that's what I was doing. I was on the verge of getting drafted. Another season or two in San Antonio and I'd have been picked up, no contest. But I got hurt. Took a nasty hit to my knee and it just...shattered."

  "Will you be okay?"

  I tilt my head from side to side. "Okay? Yeah. I'll lose the cane in few months, hopefully. But I'll never play ball again."

  "Oh...Ben." She knows exactly how much football meant to me. "I'm so sorry."

  "Me, too. But...it is what it is, and I just have to deal with it."

  "It is what it is," Kylie repeats. "I hate that phrase. It's a cop-out excuse to explain away what you can't accept."

  "What am I supposed to do, Kylie? It's a medical fact that I will never play competitive football ever again. The surgeon in San Antonio told me that, and Doc Petersen told me that not even two hours ago. I'm done. My football career is over. It's a fact."

  "You're more than a football player, Ben," Kylie says.

  I lean my head back and sigh. "God, I fucking know that. I've been told that a hundred times already. Cheyenne told me that. Echo told me that. Dad told me that. Dr. Petersen told me that. I fucking know there's more to life than fucking football!"

  "Cheyenne?" she says, by way of avoiding my outburst.

  "My physical therapist in San Antonio. And Echo's mom, incidentally."

  "Ah. I see."

  I laugh bitterly. "No, you know what? You really couldn't even begin to see."

  "So, tell me, Ben." She leans forward and touches my knee. "We're friends, right? Best friends? Best friends tell each other things. And I sense you need to talk about this."

  I shake my head. "It's too long a story, too fucked up, too difficult. And yeah, we're friends, but I'm not sure we're there yet. I'm not sure I'm there yet, at least."

  "All right, then."

  "It's not that I don't trust you, or--that I don't want to talk about it." I groan and sit forward. "But I don't. I do, but I don't. I don't know. I'm just so mixed up about everything right now. You, this, us? It's still not easy. Part of me sees you and everything comes back all over again. But then there's all the shit with Echo, and losing football, and--everything. So it's not you, it's just...everything is too much."

  "Sounds like you have a lot of thinking to do."

  I laugh. "Yeah, but where do I start?"

  She doesn't answer right away. She just sit
s and stares into the dregs of her coffee for a long time, thinking. "Start here, with you and me. I'm glad you're back. And...for what it's worth to you, I forgive you. I'm sorry things worked out the way they did...or, at least, I'm sorry you got hurt. I can't be sorry for finding Oz, but I'm sorry you got hurt in the process. I never wanted to hurt you, I just didn't know. If you'd said something years before, maybe--but there's no sense rehashing the past. You're my oldest friend. I've known you literally my entire life, and the past...what, almost two years? It's been hard without you. I've missed you. We all have. So...you don't have to confide your secrets in me, but just know that I'm here. I'll listen. I'm your friend, and I love you. Like a--not like a sister, but--like a friend, I guess. Like family, I love you. I want you to be happy. I want us to put the past behind us, okay?"

  I nod. "Thank you." I meet her eyes, and she's not the only one with emotion rife in her eyes. "And Kylie? I'm glad you're happy. I really am. Maybe someday I can meet with Oz and he and I can sort out our shit."

  Her eyes shine. "I know he'd like that a lot. He doesn't have a lot of family, and he doesn't make friends easily, so if you and he could--patch things, I guess, it'd be wonderful to see him have his cousin in his life."

  "I'll do my best."

  Kylie digs her phone out of her purse and glances at the time. "I've got studio time in a few minutes, so I've got to go. But let's do this again, okay? Soon?"

  I stand up and we hover awkwardly, and then we both laugh and give in to hugging. And it's good to hug her. "Yeah, soon."

  She doesn't let go right away, though. "And Ben? All I'll say is this: if I don't get to call you Benji anymore, you'd damn well better make sure she deserves to use the nickname I gave you."

  I rub her arms and then I have to let go. "Yeah, well...I guess I'll just have to see how shit shakes loose, right?"

  "Right." She moves past me, waving. But then she stops once more and turns back. "And Ben, do yourself a favor: go on YouTube and look up a band called Echo the Stars. A girl's music...it says a lot about her." And then she's gone in a flutter of khaki skirts and clicking boot heels.

  I go home, up to my old bedroom, and I flip open my laptop. I type "Echo the Stars" into the YouTube search bar, click on the first video that pops up, a song called "Only the Moon." It's clearly a handheld video camera on a tripod set up in the back of a bar somewhere on Lower Broadway.

  Echo, her blond hair down and curled into loose spirals, stands at a microphone center stage. A guy stands to her right with a mandolin, lank brown hair in his blue eyes. Another guy stands to her left with a banjo in his hands and an acoustic guitar on a stand behind him. There's another guy with a fiddle behind them standing beside the drummer, an electric guitar on a stand next to him, and a female upright bassist with her own microphone on the other side of the drummer. Then there's the drummer himself, who has an elaborate setup, a huge multi-tiered drum kit in front of him with an array of hand drums to his left, and a didgeridoo leaning against the wall on his right.

  Judging by the variety of instruments, I have no clue what kind of music they're going to play, but I'm already fascinated.

  I hit play, and there's the sound of applause dying out as Echo thanks the crowd. The mandolin player picks at the strings, adjusts a tuner, and then he and Echo glance at each other and exchange nods.

  "Okay, this is 'Only the Moon.' It's one of our originals," she says.

  The drummer swivels away from the drums and takes the didgeridoo, inhales deeply, purses his lips, and blows into the instrument. A deep, buzzing sound rises, the kind of sound you can feel in your chest even through the computer speakers, and it continues for a long moment, unbroken. And then the guy playing the didg takes a breath, pauses, and starts again, this time somehow making the instrument produce a high-pitched, buzzier sound, and the mandolin joins in, picking a high, circular counterpoint. The banjo player has traded that instrument for his guitar, and he starts in with a drum-like chord: thummmm--thummmm--thummmm. Next is the electric guitar and the upright bass, finishing the melody.

  Echo is last, sucking in a deep breath, and then she lets out a long, high, wordless wail that carries and carries until she lets the note trail off. And then she sings, in a voice of starlight and angelfire and aching purity:

  "It's a long, long road to walk alone,

  A dark and winding path that I must roam,

  And I've only the moon to keep me company,

  Only the moon to watch me on my way.

  A broken heart chose this path,

  A heart cracked by grief sent me this way.

  And I've only the moon to sing me down the road,

  Only the moon to warm me in this cold.

  My feet falter, my tears drip,

  Fall like rain, so much salt on my lip.

  And I've only the moon to watch me weep,

  Only the moon my secrets to keep.

  I left you there,

  I knew your heart,

  And I left you there,

  With only the moon to light your way,

  With only the moon to hear you say,

  Come back, come back, come back.

  Oh, oh, oh, oh,

  I've only the moon to sing me down the road,

  Only the moon to warm me in the cold,

  Only the moon to watch me weep,

  Only the moon my secrets to keep,

  Only the moon to hear me say,

  Come back, come back, come back..."

  And then she repeats the refrain, "only the moon" in the same grief-wrought wail, the instruments all playing in a crashing clash of colliding sounds, the didgeridoo puffing and buzzing like the breath of a predator, the mandolin circling and circling high rolling circuitous notes, the acoustic guitar providing a fast chugging base-rhythm, the electric guitar mirroring Echo's sung melody, the bass thrumming beneath it all louder and louder like the rumble of distant thunder, until all the instruments fade away and all that remains is Echo's haunting wail and the reverberating bass.

  Echo's hands lift to hover by her face as she holds the final note for an impossible length of time, fluttering as she runs out of breath, and then she lets the note go and the bass is silenced. Echo slumps forward, clinging to the mic stand as if about to collapse, head hanging, hair falling in a blond curtain around her face, and just before the video cuts to the sound of deafening applause, I could swear I see her shoulders shake with sobs.

  I look for the upload date, my heart thudding, goosebumps shivering on my skin. I find it, and discover that Echo uploaded this song less than a week ago.

  "Holy shit. Holy shit." I stare at the screen, scroll down through several pages of videos by Echo the Stars. "She's fucking incredible."

  That song, though...is it about me? Or her mom? Or...both, maybe?

  All I know is, I have to find her.

  TWELVE: Alone With My Whiskey and My Regret Echo

  "Echo? Echo! Come on, hon. Get up." The voice is male, distant, and pissed. The world shakes horribly. "You need to get up, Echo. Our set starts in twenty minutes and you're not dressed."

  Set?

  Shit. The gig. But I'm so tired, and everything hurts, and I'm drunk. Really drunk. My eyes won't open. The world shakes again, harder.

  "Stop..." I mumble. "Stop the...th' shaking. N'more. No...no more shaking."

  "Then get your ass up, Echo. We can't do the show without you." It's Brayden MacKellan, my band's mandolin player, my best friend and, right now, my own personal conscience/torturer. "You're fucking wasted...again." He manages to pack a hell of a lot of disapproval and disappointment into that one word.

  "Hurts." I blink my eyes, and three of Brayden weave into my field of vision. I try to focus.

  "I know, hon." He kneels down, and even watching him move makes me dizzy. "But you need to get up and get moving. We're getting paid huge for this. We can't back out, and we can't do it without you, so I really need you to figure your shit out, okay? Now come on. I've got a shower going f
or you."

  Ooh. A shower. Yay. I let him help me up, fall against him, smell the coffee on him, and the faint tang of beer and cologne. Mmm.

  "You smell yummy, Bray-bay."

  "I know. That's the smell of sober, Echo."

  "Shu'up, asshole." I blink at him, both of him...no, all three of him.

  He helps me into the bathroom, closes the door behind us, and starts peeling at my clothes. Which are sticky with what might be spilled booze, or possibly my own puke.

  "You're lucky you've got me, Echo," Brayden says. "I don't think anyone else would do this for you."

  Ben would have, but I can't think about Ben; I've got Brayden, and he'll have to do.

  I nod my head sloppily. "I know. You love me."

  "I sure as hell do. But you're also lucky I'm playing for the other team right now, because I'm really not sure you can handle the shower by yourself."

  Brayden plays for both teams, so depending on his mood and the day of the week he might be hooking up with a guy, or a girl, or both. It's complicated, and I stay out of it. Of course, we did have that one night after our first gig together. He was the first friend I made at Belmont my first year, and he was in a straight phase. He's beautiful, Brayden is, with long and artfully messy brown hair and piercing, expressive indigo eyes. He's tall and thin, wiry and lean and sort of delicate-seeming, but he has an inner core of strength and an air of careless insouciance.

  We realized our musical chemistry was off the charts and started writing songs together, and eventually we booked a gig, nailed the set, and then nailed each other. Which was when he decided to admit to being bisexual, and that he didn't think he and I would work out long term as a couple, and he didn't do long term anyway. Which was fine, because neither did I, and he wasn't what I wanted sexually anyway, being a little too effeminate for my tastes. The little tryst didn't affect our friendship or our music, and we added members to our band over the next couple years until we became Echo the Stars. The core is still Brayden and I, and we're hella tight.

  I don't hesitate when he gets me naked and shoves me into the shower.

  Which is ice cold.

  "BRAYDEN!" I shriek and try to climb out, but he keeps me under the spray until I stop struggling. "YOU ASSHOLE!"

  "Chill out, Echo!"

  "Don't tell me to chill out, you dick! This water is like fucking ice!"