For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2)

by Selena Laurence

  Walsh

  TAMMY AND I stand in Leanne’s kitchen staring at each other, and while I know somewhere in the back of my mind that we should speak, move, get the hell out the way—something—all I can do is drink her in with my eyes. As fucking terrifying as it is to hear her voice, see her face, acknowledge that she’s real and not just a figment of my overactive imagination, it’s also thrilling. Something inside me surges in a way that it hasn’t in six long months. It’s nearly debilitating, the power of my emotions and my physical responses when I’m confronted with her like this.

  Leanne is the one who finally speaks. "Well, I’m sure y’all have a lot of catching up to do. All the boys will be here for lunch soon. Why don’t you go on in my parlor where it’s cool and comfortable?" She gently puts one hand on Tammy’s shoulder and gestures with the other toward a door on the far side of the room.

  Mike turns and steps in front of me so I’m screened from the two women. "You going to be okay?" he asks, concern oozing from his very pores.

  A chill runs through me from head to toe, and I shake it off. God, I’d kill for a drink right now. Just a small one to take the edge off. I know I’d be able to face her without losing my shit if I could just have a drink. I feel my hand shake and I clench it into a fist to try to stop the telltale sign of my weakness.

  "I’ll be fine, man," I lie to Mike.

  "I’ll be nearby. Just text if you need me. All right?" he offers.

  "Yeah," I answer before I turn to walk to the parlor, where Leanne has taken Tammy.

  When I get there, Leanne is offering Tammy something to drink or eat. Tammy declines, and Leanne leaves the room, whispering to me as she passes, "I don’t know what’s going on, Walsh, but go easy on each other." I nod.

  Once Leanne’s gone, closing the door behind her, I’m left in the little old-fashioned room, nothing but a few antiques between me and the wrecker of my heart.

  Tammy’s sitting on a small loveseat kind of thing, and she looks nervous as hell but incredible other than that. The last time I saw her, she was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to IVs, too thin, too tired, and in the midst of a guilt-induced emotional breakdown. With his usual proclivity for wrongheaded actions, Mike picked that moment to let loose with the story of Tammy and Joss sleeping together while I’d been in rehab. It was like something out of a damn telenovela. I punched Joss, Tammy screamed and burst into tears, and her sister, Mel, who was dating Joss, nearly fainted.

  Through the whole thing, all I could think was that, if I didn’t get some alcohol in me, I was going to explode. Literally explode. This pressure started in my chest and worked its way up to my head, and it got worse and worse as I listened to Tammy scream and Joss try to make excuses. Since there was no drink to reach for, I reached for Joss—with my fist. The impact sent a wave of pain up my arm, and the pressure inside me waned just enough that I didn’t blow up in little pieces all over the bunch of them.

  I shake off the memory in all its horror and refocus on Tammy. God, she’s beautiful. It’s like looking at a piece of art. Everything about her calls to me—her golden skin; her long, shiny, dark hair; her legs that go on for miles; her lips that look like they were made to wrap around my dick. And with that thought, I’m hard—again.

  "So," I finally say as I stand there feeling like a horny jackass. "Do I want to know how you found me?"

  I see the hurt cross her face, and I instantly feel guilty for my insensitive tone. But wait a minute, I remind myself—I’m the one who was wronged. I didn’t ask her to come here, and I sure as hell didn’t ask her to cheat on me. I’m just so conditioned to thinking I have to please Tammy that I automatically worry about her first. I’m also conditioned to bury my anger. Walsh never gets angry. Well fuck that. I am angry, so I’m not going to bury it anymore. I don’t need to keep her happy, and if she doesn’t like my tone or my conversation, she can leave.

  And I can die inside—again.

  "Can you at least sit down?" she asks quietly. "It’s hard to do this when you’re looming like that."

  I snort as I sit in an antique armchair across from her and slouch. I dig my filthy boots into Leanne’s fancy oval area rug. "Yeah, ‘cause I’m always looming like the big bad wolf that I am."

  She looks down at her hands twisting in her lap, and I can hear her take a very shaky breath in the near silence of the room.

  "Dave told me where to find you," she says as she looks up at me.

  I’ve only told two other people besides Mike where I am, and I told them because it involved band business that I couldn’t just ignore—Joss, and Dave, our former manager.

  "Well, at least Joss didn’t screw me over," I tell her. "Oh but wait. That’s right. It’s you he screwed—not me."

  Immediately, I know I’ve gone too far in expressing the mad. And really, there’s no excuse for it. It’s been six months. I’m a little shocked myself at how bitter I am in this moment. I guess it didn’t dissipate with the AA meetings and the bitch sessions with Mike.

  She bites her bottom lip, which is quivering, and I see the tears well up in her eyes. No matter how pissed I am at what she’s done, it feels like utter crap to hurt her. This is why I left. I didn’t want this, but I can’t stop myself if she’s near me.

  "Please, Walsh," she whispers. "Fourteen years is a really long time. Can we at least talk? Tell each other what we’re feeling? Figure out why it happened?"

  I sigh, suddenly so exhausted I don’t think I can go on another moment in this life. I just want to crawl into a bed—forever. This is what it feels like when I don’t drink. This is what I worked so hard to avoid all those years. This knowledge that the things I feel are more than I can handle and that, eventually, they’re going to break me. I don’t want to be broken. I just want to be.

  "I’m sorry, Tammy," I answer as I stand. "There is nothing to talk about. When I was at my absolute lowest, completely helpless, and fucking locked up in that place"—my voice rises—"you took those fourteen years and shit all over them. What the hell else is there to say?" I take a deep breath and try not to hear the quiet sobs that rack her body.

  "Look," I tell her softly, "I know you were hurting too. I know my drinking was a fucking nightmare for you. Let’s just accept that we hurt each other more than we ever should have and that being around one another only makes it worse. We have to go on and find a way to be happy now, Tammy. Separately. ‘Cause this is just too damn painful for everyone."

  I head to the door, knowing that it’s going to take me a whole afternoon of affirmations and heavy manual labor to keep from hitting the nearest bar after this debacle.

  "Walsh," she calls out, her voice stronger than it was moments ago.

  I stop, hand on the doorknob, refusing to turn and look at her again. "Yeah," I answer.

  "Just tell me—do you still love me? Even a little?"

  "Why, Tammy? Why does it even matter?"

  "Tell me, Walsh. I have to know. Please."

  I take a deep breath, looking down at my hand, white-knuckled as it wraps around the doorknob. "As much as I hate it, Tammy… As much as I hate what you did, what I did, what I feel when I’m near you—I’ll always love you." I open the door and walk away.

  Tammy

  I SIT in the little formal room of a Texas ranch house, miles from anything I’ve ever known, and listen to Walsh’s receding footsteps. My heart aches, and my insides are still stinging from his words, but I don’t focus on that. No, I know better than to think about the stuff that can defeat you. I won’t be defeated. I’m Tammy DiLorenzo, and being Walsh Clark’s woman is part of me.

  I know I’m not supposed to say stuff like that in this day and age. I’m supposed to be my own person and come to a relationship as some model of modern feminism, completely self-defined, ready to walk beside my partner, never behind my man. Well, that’s not how my life went. I met this boy at fourteen, and he and I melded into one entity. I’m not me without him and I don’t think he can be him without me
either. He still loves me—he said it—and that’s all I’m going to think about now. Walsh loves me and I love him. We can fix this. I won’t stop until it’s right.

  I stand up and brush myself off. Then I take a compact out of my purse, fix my makeup, and set off to find Leanne.

  It looks like the lunch shift is almost done. A table full of about ten guys, all real honest-to-God cowboys with the hats and Texas accents and everything, are standing up and bussing their plates to a rolling rack with a dish tub in it like at a restaurant. They’re all in the big dining room, so I sneak along the hallway past the door and on into the kitchen before any of them can see me. I note that Walsh and Mike aren’t there with the other guys.

  Leanne is in the kitchen putting leftover chili and cornbread away. I knock lightly on the doorframe to get her attention.

  "Oh! There you are honey. Why don’t you come sit down and have a cup of coffee with me? The guys are heading back out to work, and those dishes can wait for a few minutes while I rest my poor feet."

  "I don’t want to impose," I say, giving her the best smile I can muster right now. I can tell by the way she looks at me softly for a minute that she’s not fooled. My face must show the rejection.

  "It’s not an imposition, honey. It’s a requirement. You’re in the country now, and when you visit in the country, it’s not a five-minute event. You stay, you have some food and a cup of coffee, and you relax. We’re not in a hurry for much out here. Sit down and I’ll take care of everything."

  Leanne is a small woman, full-figured, with lots of curly dark hair that she’s piled up on top of her head. She’s wearing a sleeveless cotton blouse in a trendy chartreuse color and a pair of skinny jeans with ballet flats—relatively fashionable for being out in the middle of nowhere. She’s probably only five years older than I am, but something about the tone in Leanne’s voice—her calm demeanor—feels motherly, and some soothing maternal energy is a welcome thing right now.

  "Thanks very much," I say as I take a seat at the kitchen table.

  "Have you eaten lunch?" she asks as she heads to the big commercial-grade stove across the room.

  "No. I had a flight that came into Dallas at eight thirty this morning, and then I’ve been in the car since. But I’m really not hungry…" I trail off as she turns to face me, her brows knit together.

  "You know what, hon? No matter what they do, don’t ever let them ruin your appetite. Men are not worth risking your health. You might be the perfect size for a model, but you’re too thin to be skipping meals."

  She fusses with a plate and the various pots and pans on the stove then comes to the table where I’m sitting and puts down a bowl with a moderate amount of steaming Texas chili in it as well as a plate with two fluffy pieces of buttered corn bread and a big serving of some type of steamed greens.

  "Here we go," she says as she serves me.

  I have to admit that it all looks delicious, and I discover I’m hungrier than I thought I was.

  As I dig in to the piping-hot food, Leanne sits across from me, coffee cup in hand, scrutinizing me while I chew. "You two married?" she asks abruptly.

  I struggle to swallow then clear my throat. "Engaged. We were engaged."

  She nods, taking another sip of her black coffee. "And you haven’t seen him since he came here?"

  I shake my head. "It’s, um, complicated."

  "Oh, honey, it always is." She gives me a sympathetic look. "You want to tell me what happened? I realize you don’t know me, but we both love alcoholics. That makes us sisters."

  I smile, feeling that stupid stinging behind my eyes again. I’ve talked about what happened with Walsh a lot in the last several months. With my therapist, with my sister, Mel—even with my mom and dad, who I didn’t tell when it was all going on. But there’s also a whole bunch of people I’ve never talked to about it. Walsh was a very public figure. When he went to rehab, and later when the band broke up, we couldn’t tell anyone, even people we’d known most of our lives. The potential for people to sell the information to the tabloids was too great, and I was far too protective of Walsh to let others think there was something wrong with him—or with us.

  But the fact that Leanne’s husband Ronny is an alcoholic and has sheltered Walsh here all these months without letting anyone know says to me that she can be trusted. I stop eating and toy with the dark blue woven placemat on the table as I speak.

  "When he was drinking, it was really awful. I mean, he wasn’t awful," I’m quick to declare. "Walsh was never mean or angry. He’s the gentlest, sweetest guy I’ve ever known." I take a deep, shuddering breath. "But he drank all day every day. It was like he didn’t care if he lived or died. I didn’t know what to do. At first, I told myself I was overreacting, that he had it under control, but eventually, I could see he didn’t. He couldn’t stop—not for his friends, not for his music, not even for me."

  I see the look of sympathy on Leanne’s face, but there’s also something else I rarely see from people who haven’t lived with alcoholics—understanding. She gets it. I can see that she knows what I’m talking about when most people only think they do.

  "What was his rock bottom?" she asks, indicating that she knows he only would have gone into recovery if it couldn’t have gotten any worse.

  "The band—Lush?" She nods. "I was their PA. I managed the day-to-day things for them, coordinated between them and their manager, made sure they got where they were supposed to be at the right time—that kind of stuff." I take a sip of the coffee Leanne poured for me. It’s black and strong, nothing like the sugared-up Starbucks stuff I drink in Portland.

  "The band was on tour, so I was with them of course. It was a small tour where we—they—were headlining, playing bigger clubs and bars, some small theatres. Walsh drank all day every day. He tried to keep from actually being drunk, but he drank the entire time. He’d been having a lot of problems with his stomach, been diagnosed with ulcers, and he could hardly eat anything by that point, but no matter how sick he got, he wouldn’t stop drinking."

  Leanne shakes her head, sighing deeply. "Ronny was a binge drinker, so he’d go days without a drop, but once he started into the whole thing, he’d go until he hurt himself or someone’s property. Thank God he never really harmed another person, but honestly, it was only a matter of time until he did."

  "Yeah, I used to think Walsh just damaged Walsh. Looking back, I’m not so sure. We were a week into the tour when he vanished after the guys had played at this club. We were all hanging around afterwards in a private party room. Walsh went out to get another drink from the main bar and disappeared. It took us a couple of hours to find him, and when we finally did, it was in the alley out back." I swallow, remembering what he looked like lying there unconscious, his shirt torn off, his face swollen and cut.

  Leanne reaches across the table and pats my hand.

  "He’d been in a fight. His wallet was gone, he was all beat up, but it got worse. We got him loaded on the bus and tried to clean him up. He started sobering up, and he was really sick to his stomach and sore all over. But when we left him alone in the bedroom to rest, he dug out a bottle of bourbon and drank more. Can you imagine?"

  "Unfortunately, yes," Leanne answers. "I’ve been around alcoholics a long time, hon. I’ve seen it all."

  "A few hours later we stopped in a gas station to grab some painkillers and food. He and Joss, the singer—his best friend—had gone into the bathroom at the gas station when I heard Joss yelling for me to help. I ran right into the men’s room, because Joss isn’t the kind of guy to ask for help, you know?"

  Leanne smiles and rolls her eyes. She’s a woman. She knows the type.

  "Joss was holding Walsh around the waist and Walsh was vomiting blood all over the floor of the bathroom—streams of it. It kept coming and coming. Joss was yelling at me to call 911, and Walsh was crumpled up, just retching. We thought he was going to die right there in front of us. Eventually, he stopped and passed out, Joss held him on the floo
r of the bathroom so he wouldn’t vomit more and choke while I went to flag down the ambulance. We checked him into rehab as soon as he was released from the hospital."

  I sit back in my chair, exhausted, as I always am, from retelling the horror of that night. It seems that, no matter how many times I talk about it, no matter how far in the past it gets, I’ll never be able to think of it without feeling that surge in adrenaline, that fear that Walsh will be taken from me permanently. I’ve got the image of him in that bathroom etched in my brain forever, and when I look at it, I feel panicked, irrational, so scared I want to scream from it.

  "And what are you hoping will happen while you’re here to see him?" Leanne asks as she stands and picks up my plate of half-eaten food and empty coffee cup. It’s like she knows I’ll never be able to eat more after describing Walsh’s rock bottom.

  I stand too and look her in the eye, noticing that she hasn’t asked why Walsh and I aren’t still together. I guess she assumes it was because of his alcoholism, and she’s right, but not for the reasons she might think.

  "I want him back," I say simply. "We’ve been together since we were fourteen years old. I love him, and I want him back, alcoholism and all."

  She nods as she places the dishes in the sink. Then she turns to face me, leaning back against the counter. "What does he want?"

  "He wants me to go away."

  "Of course he does. Alcoholics always want the hard stuff to go away. That’s why they drink. They can’t help it. It’s how they’re wired."

  "He still loves me," I say defensively.

  She gives me a small smile. "Anyone who’s been in a room with the two of you can see that."

  I relax a little, trying to soften my expression. I’ve been told that I’m sort of bitch a lot of the time. I’m trying to work on it.

  "So, what are you going to do about it?" Leanne asks.

  I pick up my purse from the floor where I set it down when I sat to eat. I sling it over my shoulder and try to hold my head high. "I’m going to stick around. I’m going to see him. I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to tell him how I feel until he agrees to give me another chance."