by Carian Cole
“You need to get some rest. It’s late.”
He rolls onto his side and curls his body around mine. “Sleep with me and we’ll get you home in the morning. I won’t be able to sleep if you leave.”
Shit. I should have gone home hours ago, or at least called Josh, who must be worried out of his mind right now. I feel like the worst mother in the world. I’ve never let Lyric go to bed without telling her I love her. Ever.
“I need to call my roommate.”
He nods, already drifting off to sleep, too tired to ask questions. “Okay, then come sleep with me,” he mumbles into his pillow.
I use the phone on the desk across the room rather than the one closer to the bed, and Josh answers on the second ring.
“Jesus Christ, Piper, where the hell are you? It’s two a.m.”
I cringe from the receiver. “Calm down, please? I’m with Blue.”
He scoffs down the line. “What a surprise. I saw this coming a mile away.”
“Josh, please,” I whisper loudly. “Is Lyric okay? Is she awake?”
“She’s fine, and no, she’s not awake. I put her to bed hours ago. I’ve been sitting here watching Project Runway for hours worrying about you.”
“I didn’t get to say goodnight to her. Was she upset?”
“No, she just kept asking when you were coming home and if she could have more ice cream.”
“Shit. I feel terrible.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Tomorrow.”
He lets out a frustrated sigh. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Nope. Not at all.
“So I guess he took the news well?” he prods.
“I didn’t tell him yet.”
“Are you going to?”
“Yes. In the morning. This is really hard, Josh. He’s so happy to see me. You don’t know him, not much makes him happy and excited like this. I just wanted us to enjoy some time together.”
“I have a bad feeling about this. Don’t make me regret getting you those tickets, Piper.”
“Ugh. Really? Why are you being like this? I’m an adult.”
“Yeah and the first night you go out to see your ex you don’t come home and completely blow off your kid. This guy just fucks you all up.”
“He doesn’t fuck me up. And I didn’t blow off Lyric. How dare you say that to me? This is the first time I’ve gone out at night in months! I just lost track of the time.”
“I’m not going to argue with you—I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. “And don’t worry about Lyric, I’ll make her breakfast and keep her busy until you get home.”
“I do appreciate you taking care of her for me. I’m sorry I made you worry. I just need a little more time with him.”
“Just be careful.” He ends the call and I slowly put the phone down, feeling my happy bubble slowly deflating.
Sighing, I crawl under the covers with Blue and cuddle up against his warm body. He presses his lips to the top of my head. “Don’t go,” he says sleepily.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise,” I whisper, rubbing my hand back and forth across his warm back.
Tomorrow morning I’ll tell him about Lyric. After we’ve both gotten some sleep and have absorbed our decision to be together again. To try again. I don’t let my mind wander too far into the future. I won’t let myself worry about being in a relationship with a rock star. Blue is the same person he used to be. He’s humble, unfazed by his new life. I can see it so clearly—our future—as I envisioned and hoped for. We can be a family. We can be happy. We can put the past behind us, leave his demons in the dust.
We are the myth, of love and lore
Of visions and gem-painted bugs, forever and evermore
We are faith and hope and dreams come true
We are one and two and there is no one but you.
No one but you....
The lyrics of Ladybug drift through my exhausted mind. Blue is a poet, a dreamer. Loyal to love and forgiving of its madness. We’ll be fine, the two of us, and our whimsical little girl.
Mend my shredded wings, lend me your heart
Fly with me, there’s nothing to tear us apart....
Chapter Twenty-Three
8:06 a.m.
I yawn at the digital clock on the nightstand. It seems like just a blink ago it was three a.m. Last night’s activities cycle through my memory like a slow, out-of-focus slideshow.
Blue on stage, with his band, surrounded by fans.
The way his voice and his lyrics slammed through my chest and into my soul.
Cheeseburgers.
Love.
His hand in my hair, his body buried in mine.
The hope.
Waking to slow, sweet kisses with the rise of the sun.
Him in my mouth, his moans and lusty eyes.
The promises.
A sensation creeps over me, similar to that feeling I get when I forget to put my watch on, and then for the rest of the day my wrist feels strange and oddly amputated.
Blue isn’t in bed with me. I’m a wrist without a watch.
My back and neck ache in protest when I sit up and stretch my arms high up over my head. I’m not used to sleeping all tangled up with another person. Or being stretched and bent and bit and sucked.
On my way to the balcony, I pick his T-shirt up off the floor and slip it over my head, then slowly slide the glass door open to step out into the warmth of the sun, which doesn’t wake me as much I hoped it would.
I desperately need a latte to fight off the lingering brain fog from lack of sleep. In fact, I could probably use a gallon to help me get through the interrogation I’m sure I’ll be enduring from Josh and Lyric when I get home. But first, I need to use the bathroom and take a long hot shower. Then we can have breakfast in the café in the lobby and figure out how I’m getting home and where we go from there.
And somewhere in there, we need to have a serious talk.
When I step back inside he still hasn’t come out of the bathroom. My bare feet pad silently over the plush carpet as I cross the room to the marble tile hallway that leads to the bathroom. Pausing, I turn my ear toward the heavy door. There’s no sound from the other side.
“You okay?” I call out awkwardly.
No answer.
“Blue?”
A cough. “Gimme a sec, babe….”
While I wait, I tidy up the room, which other than our clothes all over the floor, is surprisingly neat. Two large suitcases are on the floor with their lids open, exposing his wardrobe of jeans and T-shirts. And cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarette packs.
Five empty water bottles and two empty liters of lemon soda line the top of the dresser.
Even though I know a maid will be coming shortly, I make the bed and smooth the wrinkles from the comforter, then sit on the edge with my feet dangling, waiting for him to come out. I’ll be upset if he decided to soak in that huge tub without me.
A cold chill suddenly courses through me. What if he changed his mind about us and now he’s hiding from me, devising an escape plan like he did five years ago, but now he’s got himself cornered in the bathroom with no way out?
No. That’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t do that.
I exhale a steadying breath, growing more impatient and worried, and search for the television remote, hoping to distract myself. Instead, a book on his nightstand catches my eye, and I realize it’s one of his notebooks, with the pen I gave him for Christmas years ago sitting on top of it. The pen brings a smile to my lips. He kept it, and he’s using it. Which means it must remind him of me. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I pick up the notebook and flip through the pages.
The pages are filled with nothing but harsh jagged scribbles.
My mind races back to the shed, to the first time I noticed the pages of scribblings. But I saw him on the floor, with one of these books, writing and tearing the pages out, throwing them around the room, then starting all
over again. I distinctly remember him telling me he was trying to get the words right. He was distraught, literally agonizing over the words and the notes.
What words? Where are the actual words?
And why were there stacks of these exact books piled in the shed of the old house?
I finger the notebook, trying to make sense of it, but I’m clueless.
What is he doing?
Taking the book with me, I walk back to the hallway and knock softly on the door.
“Blue? Are you okay? I need to use the bathroom.” I wait. I hear a faint rustle. “Can you come out? We really need to talk before I leave.”
Nothing.
I debate opening the door. We’re definitely nowhere near sharing bathroom activity status, but worry soon takes over any fears of humiliation. Turning the knob, I push the door open a few inches.
I wish I never had.
In fact, I wish I had never come here to begin with.
The sound of the notebook falling from my grasp to the floor startles him, and our eyes meet for a quick second before I turn and run back to the bedroom with my hand over my mouth, suppressing the screams threatening to rip from my body.
Hot tears well up in my eyes and slide down my cheeks as I frantically pull on my clothes, and he stumbles out of the bathroom, still holding the needle that was inserted in his vein just a few seconds ago.
“Piper, wait....”
“Get away from me,” I cry, pushing past him to get to the door. I have to get out of here, away from him and his horribly bloodshot eyes and swollen vein. I’m spun around when he grabs my arm, and I can’t avoid his eyes, those beautiful blue eyes I love so much, now wild, spacey and unfocused. Nausea bubbles up in my gut like acid. Sobbing, I wrench my arm free from his grip. “Don’t touch me.”
“Please.” He sways toward the wall, drops the syringe onto the floor, and almost falls on his face trying to pick it up.
Devastated at the sight of him this way, I shake my head in horrified disbelief. “I thought you were clean. You told me you were better. What the hell are you doing to yourself?”
Like a zombie he stumbles forward, arms outstretched, and tries to pull me into his arms. “Baby, I’m better. I’m much better. I just need a little sometimes. To get through all the shit.” He holds his arm toward me. “Look, there’s not even a lot of marks. See? It’s only when I’m tired and I can’t sleep and I can’t think...” He rakes his fingers through his tangled hair. “I just need to get it all to stop sometimes. That’s all. I’m fine.” A demented smile slashes across his face.
I back away from him. “You’re not fine, Blue. And you’re scaring me. I-I can’t see you like this.”
And I can never, ever, let my daughter be around someone like this.
Gasping for breath through the sobs wracking through me, I run from him, down the ugly hall to the elevator, where I stab the down arrow on the panel repeatedly. The chrome doors slide open just as Blue appears at the end of the hall, yelling my name. Tearing my eyes away from him, I step into the elevator before he catches up to me and back myself into the corner just as the doors close me in like a vault. An older woman already occupying the elevator eyes me with an expression of great concern while I hunt through my bag for a tissue.
“Excuse me, miss, are you all right?” she asks when the elevator starts to descend.
I nod and wipe at my eyes with a ragged tissue I found at the bottom of my purse. “Yes. I-I just had a fight with my boyfriend.”
She tsks and shakes her head. “Men are bastards,” she mutters. “And not worth your tears.”
Words of defense sit at the tip of my tongue, but I can’t let them out. She could very well be right. Maybe all men really are bastards, completely lacking the ability to get their shit together and forever destroying all the good things in their lives and breaking every heart they claim to love into a million pieces.
I’m done. I gave him my heart and my body and my trust and he threw it all away in a matter of hours. Hours.
I’m shuddering with emotional overload. All I want to do is get far away from here, home to my little girl and the safety of my gay fake boyfriend. I can’t get the vision of that needle in Blue’s vein out of my head. Or the way he was leaning back against the tile wall, eyes closed, lost to me, lured into an affair with heroin.
As soon as the doors open, I bolt out of the elevator and head straight for the concierge’s desk in the hopes of getting a cab, but out of the corner of my eye Blue appears from the stairwell doors looking like a savage with his jeans unbuttoned, barefoot and shirtless, all abs and ink and lipstick kiss smudges on full display.
It’s a miracle he managed to run down four flights of stairs while high as a kite without falling on his ass. Spotting me, he quickly closes the space between us and grabs my hand. “Don’t go,” he begs, trying to catch his breath. “Please.”
“Look, you need to go back upstairs.” I glance around the lobby to make sure no one has recognized him. “You’re a mess.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m not losing you again. Come back up with me.” His bloodshot eyes plead with me, and I hate myself because I’m close, so close, to giving in.
I squeeze his hand tighter in mine, because I truly don’t want to let go of any part of him. “Blue, I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”
He blinks hard. “I’ll go to rehab. Okay? I’ll get off the shit again.”
“You should do that. Definitely,” I agree.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
I shake my head and choke back more tears. “I don’t want to lose you again either, but I can’t do this. This is too much for me. All of this is just way more than I can deal with right now.”
“I thought you loved me,” he accuses angrily. “You said you loved me.”
I lead him away from the center of the lobby, back down the hall leading to the stairwell. “I do love you,” I say softly. “I always will. But you need to deal with this. Permanently. Before we can ever try to start again.”
“I will. I promise.” He staggers closer to me. “Just don’t go. Don’t do this to me.”
I take a deep breath and cross my arms, hugging myself. “We have a daughter,” I blurt out. “She’s almost five years old. That’s why I came to see you when I found out your band was playing here.”
His eyes widen like saucers then squint to thin slits. “What? When? How?”
“I found out a few weeks after you went to get bagels.”
His face contorts with severe confusion. “A baby?”
Not once did I ever expect to be having this conversation with him while he’s stoned out of his skull, and it’s making me want to smack him, because this should be the most important news of his life. “Yes. A baby,” I repeat.
“You never told me.”
“How could I? I had no way of finding you. I didn’t even know your real name!”
He leans against the wall and runs his hands over his face. “I don’t believe this,” he mumbles. “I’m way too high for this heavy shit.”
“Well, obviously.”
“I’m so fucked. So fucked.”
My heart breaks watching him slide down the wall until he’s sitting on his heels, rocking. “I tried to find you after you left. I looked for you for months. Every weekend I went to every damn park in the tri-state area looking for you.”
I can see on his face he’s a million miles away, not even hearing me. Finally, he looks up at me. “A girl?”
“Yes. She’s adorable. She has dark brown hair, and eyes the same color as yours. She’s smart, and inquisitive, and caring. You’d love her, Blue. Everyone does. Her name is Lyric.”
“Lyric,” he repeats. “That’s such a cool fucking name.”
I kneel down on the floor next to him. “I didn’t want to tell you like this. I should have told you last night but... I don’t know. I was scared, I guess. But that’s why I came here to see you. I wanted you to know you have a daughter. A
nd someday—when you’re really better—you can see her. If you want to, you can be part of her life. But not like this.”
“No. I can’t.”
I nod in agreement.
“Ever,” he adds.
“What?”
“I can’t do that...be somebody’s father. I couldn’t even take care of my dog.”
“Blue—”
He rises to his feet, and I do too, but he hangs his head, hiding behind the hair hanging over his face. “I’m sorry, Ladybug, you know I can’t do that. Look at me. I’ll never be good for that little girl. I’m just a worthless piece of shit.” He reaches into his pocket and comes out with a wad of cash, thrusting it at me.
I push his hand away. “I’m not a hooker, Blue.”
“It’s for her. To take care of her.”
Despair settles into me. “We’re fine.” I blink back tears, resigning myself to the end that’s now our unexpected reality. “You should go back upstairs before someone sees you like this. Drink some coffee or go to sleep or do whatever it is you do when you get like this. I need to go home.”
Still not looking at me, he nods and shoves the cash back into his pocket. That’s when I notice the tiny ladybug tattoo on the side of his wrist, and it nearly cracks my heart wide open. Tentatively, I reach out and gently touch his arm.
“Please take care of yourself,” I tell him, and that’s all I really want. Is to see him better. Truly better, in every sense of the word.
He closes in on me and pulls me into a desperate embrace, and we cling to each other for a long time, and God, how I wish things were different. I would have done anything to try again, to finally start over with this man I love so much. We were so close to getting there.
He cups my face in his hands, gently wipes his thumbs across my cheeks and kisses me so soft and so deep, I swear he’s trying to crawl right into my heart. What he doesn’t realize, is that he’s already there.
And that postcard I sent you
With the pretty little picture on the front
And all those words I wrote on the back
Sincerely yours, see you soon, and all my fuckin’ love
