“Yeah, thanks,” she said. “Not sure how I feel about that.”
“You’re like a drug and a song all mixed together,” I said. “I can’t get you out of my head. And I can’t put you down. I need you in my arms. You’re the first thing I need in the morning and the last thing I need at night. Without you, I bounce off these four fucking walls. And I…”
Josie had an eyebrow raised high in the air.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m not sure if you’re talking to me, or singing to me, or what’s happening right now.”
I put her down and backed away.
You’re like a drug and a song all mixed together.
It was like an idea had exploded my heart open.
“Are you ready to leave?” I asked.
“More than ready.”
I saw the smile and knew it was fake.
See, when Josie really smiled, she would do so big enough that dimples would show. But her fake smile was enough to confuse you but not enough to show the dimples.
“Are you okay?” I asked her as I touched her arms. “Sorry about Jonny and me jumping at you like that. If something’s wrong…”
“I’m ready to go,” Josie said. “I need a night away. I need this, Cros. I need you.”
“And here I am,” I said. “Why don’t you go get in the truck? Leave your bags. I’ll get them. I’m going to turn everything off in here and we’re gone.”
“Deal.”
“Did you eat anything yet?”
“Define eat,” she said.
I laughed. “So, you had some kind of pulled pork made from kale and garbanzo beans…”
“Close,” she said.
“I know a great little burger place on the way there,” I said. “I say we stock up for the night.”
“I say I agree with that.”
I reached for her hand. I squeezed it. “Love you, Josie.”
“Love you, Cros,” she said and squeezed my hand back.
I waited until Josie was out of sight.
I walked to my dining-room-slash-recording-studio and grabbed my bag and my guitar. My eyes looked to the bottom drawer.
I nodded.
I opened the drawer.
“Shit,” I whispered.
I shut my eyes and took out the notebook that I swore I’d never touch again.
The fire let out a pop and sparks danced into the night.
I sat with a guitar and a bottle of beer, staring at Josie through the wiggling flames. She was wrapped up in an old blanket of mine and looked like nothing I had ever seen in my life.
Where were you a few years ago, love?
“What was that last thing you were playing?” she asked me.
“This?” I asked and strummed the chords.
“Yeah.”
“Something I was tinkering with,” I said. “Probably too slow for what we’re working on now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t record it and store it away for later.”
“Do you do that a lot?” Josie asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have a ton of songs, love.”
“Play something for me then,” she said. “Something that nobody else knows about. Pick a song just for us.”
I looked around.
We were hidden in the woods, away from the world. A small tent, big enough for us and nothing else. Something about Josie seemed a little off though. She seemed tired or distracted. Her eyes distant. Something burning in the back of that beautiful mind of hers.
An idea came to me.
I stood up and went to get my bag. I got a notebook and a pen.
“This is for you,” I said to Josie.
“Me? I’m not a songwriter.”
“I didn’t say you were,” I said as I stood tall over her. “I want you to draw.”
“Draw?”
“I’ll play you a song. Something deep. Just for you and me. Right here. Right now. And I want you to draw something. I won’t show it to anyone. You can take it home with you. Or better yet, you can burn it after I see it.”
“Does this mean you’re going to burn your guitar when you’re done playing?” Josie asked with a vixen grin.
She made things happen inside my body that were instant and that were dangerous.
“When you look at me like that, Josie, I would throw my guitar in the fire for you. Hell, I would throw myself into the fire for you.”
“Easy there,” she said. “If I lose you, then I’d have nobody to love me.”
I crouched in front of her and placed the notebook in her lap. I touched her jaw with my pointer and middle fingers.
“No, love, that’s the thing… somebody will always love you. I sort of lied to you earlier.”
“Lied to me?” she asked.
“I was jealous. Maybe being around you makes me jealous. I don’t want to imagine losing you. Not having you. You’re driving me to the edge of a cliff, love. And the thing is… I can’t stop. I can’t hit the brakes. I don’t want to hit the brakes. You make me want it all.”
“All?” she asked.
My fingers were under her chin. I inched forward and stole a gentle kiss from her sweet lips.
I walked back to my spot and took out the notebook I thought I would never look at again.
I found a song I hadn’t played in years. The last time I played the song, it was live. Me on a stage. People watching. People clapping when I was done. Me thinking of bigger stages and bigger crowds.
Nicholas was still alive the last time I played this song.
My heart ached as I started to pluck the strings.
It all came rushing back to me.
The song. The lyrics. The notes. My life at that time.
Knowing that currently I was the one who needed to reach out to my sister and see what was there. She begged me to stay away and I did. It wasn’t her fault for wanting or needing that. Me showing up to her house over and over, drunk like her husband was, chasing a scene, desperate to fix my grief… all I did was make things worse. I thought I was going to keep Nicholas’s memory alive, but all I did was keep his death alive.
Until I walked away. And I stayed away.
I catch this rain,
in my hand,
I catch your stare,
as I land,
To the ground,
where you are,
Where you live,
where I stand.
We’ve been through hell,
the flames are cold,
our fingers touch,
time gets old.
I can’t say sorry,
for what I’ve done,
I can’t say I love you,
you losing, yet you won.
It was still so fresh in my mind.
I didn’t even need the notebook as I sang to Josie.
The fire seemed to slowly die down, just enough so I could see her over the tips of the flames.
Josie was face down in the notebook, drawing. I watched the way the pen moved across the paper. The same way it moved when I wrote lyrics, but for her, her voice was in drawing and not words. The pen moved across the paper as my fingers moved along the neck of the guitar.
She bit at the tip of her tongue as she drew. She tilted her head just a little to keep her hair from falling in front of her face. She had it all to the right side of her head. Every little thing she did and every little feature of her…
I’ve never loved like I love right now. My heart is in a collapse, a free fall. Like the stars are crashing, the night sky will never end. Your eyes are the sunrise to remind me again…
I stopped playing and singing my current song.
Josie lifted her head. “Cros?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was staring at you. You get the gist of this song though.”
“I want to hear the ending.”
“Don’t worry about the ending,” I said.
I put the guitar down into its case and walked across the fire to sit next to Josie. She had her ha
nd over the notebook page. I gently touched her wrist and peeled her hand away.
She had drawn a picture of me. An amazing scribbly picture of me. Sitting there. Playing guitar. It was messy, but it was perfect.
Just like we were.
Just like how I would run to her. How I would plan my day around getting to see Josie. To see her standing outside her car, waiting for me. A reminder that my heart was capable of beating, racing, and feeling love again.
I put my forehead to hers. “That looks amazing.”
“No,” she whispered.
In a quick move, she ripped the page out of the notebook and threw it into the fire.
I didn’t flinch.
“You’re something amazing, love.”
Josie touched my chest. “When you say those things…”
“I mean them.”
“I know you do. We weren’t supposed to do this, Cros. Fall for each other. Actually fall in love like this.”
“Is that why you seem distant tonight?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, Cros. Maybe this was a mistake.”
I backed away. “No. This is what we both needed. There’s nothing but us up here.”
“I know that,” she said. “But then reality comes. It always does.”
“And what is reality, Josie?”
She was hesitating. Pulling away even more.
She stood up and pulled the blanket tighter.
“We should just call it a night, Cros. Go to sleep. Let the fire burn out.” She stared into the flames. “Just let it all go for now.”
She walked away and went into the tent.
I stood and saw the ashes of the drawing Josie had done of me.
I nodded.
I meant what I said to her.
I would fall into the fire for her.
Because she was perfect.
And she was worth whatever was bothering her.
30
INTO THE NIGHT…
NOW
Josie
I ruined the night.
I fucked up the trip with Crosby.
He didn’t say a word about it either.
He came into the tent after me, crawled into the giant sleeping bag, wrapped an arm around me and held me. I had my eyes shut but I was far from sleeping. All I wanted to do was get over the past. Get over everything and move forward. But it was never that easy.
I loved Crosby. I really did.
Seeing him sitting there, playing guitar, listening to that song…
I rolled over and saw he was sleeping.
That’s when I made my silent move to get out of the sleeping bag, take the same blanket as I had before, sneak a cigarette, and exit the tent.
I was surprised to see the fire still gently burning. The flames weren’t much. The embers glowed red, orange, and yellow, almost looking like evil eyes blinking at me.
It was so cool and clear outside too.
The moon in the sky, stars surrounding it.
Like I was in some cliché painting that I had done.
I walked away from the fire and tent, and stood there, hugging myself in the blanket as I smoked a cigarette.
There was one thing on my mind.
The engagement ring from Denny.
That was not closure to me or for me. Even if Paula meant well by showing up, it didn’t do a fucking thing for me. It only made things worse. Because all I wanted to know was why… why if he was going to propose to me would he be out drinking, sleeping with other women, and then driving? He knew what he was doing. And yet he had the nerve to buy a ring for me? I wasn’t sure if it was true love or just the assumption that I was going to be a pushover like his mother.
Even still, I would have said yes.
I would have said yes to that life…
I took a deep drag and felt the tears trickle down my cheeks.
It still fucking hurt. There was no escaping it. There was nowhere to go with it either. It just sat inside me and waited. What did it wait for? That was the hard part. I didn’t know.
As I cried, I didn’t feel better. At all.
In the back of my mind, I feared I was going to end up hurting Crosby because of this. But I was the one who was minding my own business. I was in my car, smoking, hiding, relaxing. And Crosby crashed into my life. It was him. It was… him…
“It’s okay, love,” a voice whispered behind me.
I jumped but didn’t turn around.
My bottom lip quivered as hands touched my shoulders.
“It’s okay.”
It was him.
Crosby… crashing into my life again.
His hands rubbed my shoulders. Down to my arms. Back up to my shoulders.
I stood there, letting my cigarette burn as I cried. I didn’t sob loudly or anything like that. But I cried.
Crosby reached forward with his left hand and he gently took the cigarette from me and he dropped it to the ground and stepped on it.
Yet he still didn’t turn me around. And he didn’t ask me what was wrong.
He was just there.
Understanding that something was wrong.
I leaned back into his hard chest and his arms wrapped tightly around me. I put my head back and shut my eyes. I squeezed out the last few tears and took a shaky breath.
“I’m so sorry, Cros,” I whispered.
“Never be sorry,” he said. “This is why we’re here, love. For our hearts. For everything we feel.”
“Does it still hurt you?” I asked. “About your nephew?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Every fucking day of my life. I think about him all the time. And I will never be able to fix it.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. “Cros, you know those paintings you saw?”
“Of that guy?”
“Yes.” My lips quivered. “That guy… I loved him. A lot. I think… he died, Cros. He died. His name was Denny. And he died.”
That’s when Crosby turned me around. His hands cupped my face. “Oh, shit, Josie. You lost someone you loved?”
I nodded.
I wasn’t sure what I would have done if he kissed me right then. My mind thinking about Denny…
Crosby just hugged me.
“Fuck, love, I’m so sorry,” he said.
I cried again.
How could this man be so strong and understanding like this?
“Tell me about him,” Crosby said.
“What?”
“Tell me everything,” he said.
He took me by the hand and walked me back to the fire. It looked dead, but all he had to do was put some fresh logs into the embers and stir it up a little for the flames to kick back up.
Then he sat next to me.
“I ruined our trip,” I said.
“No, you didn’t. You needed this trip.”
“This isn’t what you think, Cros. This isn’t some love story, okay? This is… bad.”
“Bad?”
“Denny died in a car accident because he was drunk.”
“Shit.”
I nodded. “That’s all he ever did. He would drink. He would get angry. He would… he would sleep around.”
Crosby placed his hand into my hand. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I was in this world… I had gotten close to his mother. She lived the life I was going to live. His father was a bad alcoholic too. He used to hit his wife. But Denny never hit me. I wouldn’t stand for that. But I stood for other abuse, Cros. He would get so mad over nothing. And he would throw things. Break things. Then leave. I don’t know if that was his excuse to drink or what… but I would clean up these messes and then go find him. I knew all the bartenders in town, okay? They knew me. They knew what I was doing. I was fucking pathetic. I still am.”
“You’re not pathetic, Josie,” Crosby said. “You loved him. You wanted to help him.”
“No. That’s the thing… his mother had connections to an art gallery. So, I think I stayed with the hopes of becoming a famous artist. And then
… I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you did whatever you had to do in that situation. I don’t think leaving someone like that is easy to do.”
“I was going to, Cros. I was. His mother started talking about marriage and kids.”
“With you?” he asked.
“Yeah. She tried to convince me that marrying Denny and having kids would calm him down. Because apparently it calmed down Denny’s father for a little while. In my heart I knew that was crazy. We had this deal, right? Before that, he got so drunk one night he got beaten up. It was pretty bad. The bartender called me to come get him. Some guy dragged Denny out back to keep him from getting killed. After that, Denny said he was going to clean himself up. I believed him. He wanted me to stop smoking. His grandmother died of cancer and that was a big thing for him. So, I agreed. So then our relationship was built around us keeping these promises to each other. It didn’t take long for Denny to break his promise. And it was always the same thing. One drink. Then two. Then three. Watching that train fall off the tracks. I found out he was with another woman again, and that was it for me. I went to the store and got a pack of cigarettes. And I smoked them so hard.” I let out a weak laugh. “And I was going to break up with him. I wanted the control for once, Cros. That was it. I wanted it.”
Crosby nodded. He squeezed my hand. “You didn’t get to break up with him, did you?”
I shut my eyes and shook my head. “No. The night I was going to do it… he died. He died in some sick and tragic way. Everyone was so sad. I was so sad. Of course we were sad. He wasn’t exactly a bad person. He just did bad things. And those bad things took him. But I wanted to say it to him. I wanted to look him in the eyes and tell him I was done. I wanted him to feel the way I felt. I never got to do that, Cros. I was left stranded. Just standing there, stuck between anger and grief. Nobody really knowing how I felt.”
“That’s a lot to carry with you, Josie,” Crosby said.
“I know. When I moved in with Corey and Kait, I just painted pictures of him. Over and over. Trying to figure it out. What to do. How to do it. And I was just… there. Until I met you.”
“We were meant to run into each other, love,” he said. “Run…”
I laughed. “Now you sound like Kait.”
“Do you want me to light some leaves on fire and sacrifice them to the moon?” he asked.
“Shut up,” I said.
I playfully punched his stomach and blinked away a tear.
Getting Over You Page 22
