by HB Heinzer
"Colton, we can't rush back into what we had," she sighed, lying back on the bed, sleep winning the fight.
"Relax; I'm rewinding all the way back to the beginning, before we were a couple. You wouldn't have freaked then if I helped your half passed out ass get ready for bed, would you?"
"No, I guess not," she conceded. She made a sweeping motion with her hand. "As you were." By the time I pulled off her shorts and unclasped her bra, Rain was sound asleep on the bed. I pulled her up to the pillows and gently covered her.
While I had only been trying to calm Rain so she wouldn't knee me in the balls, when I told her I was going back to how we were before we were a couple, that's exactly where we found ourselves through the rest of the tour. Okay, so maybe a bit closer since we were inseparable. We made up for the lack of sex with lots of kissing and caressing, but nowhere near the hot and heavy weeks that we had spent as a couple. When the time was right, I knew we would get back there.
The last week of the tour, I spent more time than usual on my laptop, trying to plan the perfect weekend getaway for us to reconnect as a couple. Yes, I felt my penis slowly being sucked back into my body as it turned into a vagina, but I didn't care.
I wanted Rain to know I wasn't going anywhere, and I hoped she'd agree to move in with me. If we were still toeing the line between friends and lovers, there wasn't much of a chance she would agree. I didn't feel comfortable with her going back to her dingy apartment building without security locks, especially given the amount of attention we had garnered over the summer.
As the days ticked closer to us getting on a plane to head home, Rain grew more agitated, withdrawing from everyone. She spent almost every spare minute sequestering herself from the world. I wanted her to trust me enough to talk to me but didn't know how to draw out of her what was going on. It was a helpless feeling, even more so than when her mom died. At least then, I knew what was going on.
When our plane landed, I tried to load Rain's luggage into the rental car I was using until our gear and my bike made it back to the west coast. She insisted she would be fine and told Jared and me to head back to my place. Not wanting to cause a scene, I kissed her and told her I would call later.
Jared and I stopped by the hardware store to make him a set of keys to my condo since he would be staying there until he could find a place of his own. After seeing how the fans reacted to his innocent, pretty boy looks and magic fingers, we had asked him to join us fulltime. This meant he was going to have to find a place to live because we couldn't have one member in Illinois while the rest of us were in Oregon.
I was within a block of my favorite leather recliner when my cellphone started playing I Miss the Misery, the ringtone I had set for Rain.
Rain: Can you come over?
I was mildly irritated by the request, seeing as she had told me to go home without her less than forty minutes earlier.
Me: Miss me already?
Rain: Yes, but that's not the point. Please, get over here.
Something was very, very wrong. I don't know how I knew that, but I knew from those ten words that she was in some sort of trouble.
Me: You're freaking me out. Everything okay?
Rain: Not by a long shot. You'll see soon enough.
I whipped the car around at the intersection, speeding down the road to Rain's apartment. It took us less than five minutes from her last text until we were racing up the stairs to her top floor apartment. Finding the door cracked open, I pushed my way inside.
Seeing everything in disarray, I cracked my neck to either side trying to relieve the building anger. "Rain, what in the hell happened in here?" She didn't answer right away. With every step I took inside, the panic built. Had someone been waiting for her when she got home? Why wasn't she answering? "Rain, where are you?" I called down the hall.
"Bedroom," she shouted back. I ran to the last door on the right, finding her curled in a ball in the middle of her bed.
"It's okay, baby." I pulled her onto my lap, gently caressing her hair. "What happened?"
With her face buried deep into my chest, her response was nearly unintelligible. "I have no clue. This is what I came home to."
"You're not staying here anymore, Rain. I told you before that I didn't think this was a good place for you and this proves it." I pulled back on Rain's shoulders when she shook her head against my body. Before I could tell her it wasn't open for debate, she rendered me speechless.
"No. Whoever did this wasn't trying to rob me," she sobbed. I didn't understand how she could think it was anything else. Why else would someone break in while she was gone and tear the place apart? With every passing minute, I had more questions than answers.
"What do you mean?" She started sobbing again, and I pulled her close, gently rocking her, trying to get her to settle down.
Her hands trembled as she pointed to the top of her dresser. "Look, my grandma's jewelry is still up there. The computer and TV are still out there. This wasn't someone looking to make a buck, at least not from selling my stuff."
Fuck. I didn't know how she would have done it, but I couldn't help but think we both knew who did this. "You don't think..."
"Who else? Seriously, I may not have made many friends in my life, but there's only one person I can think of who knows where I live and has a reason to do something like this."
There was nothing else to say to that. I needed to let Jon know what was going on, this was just that fucked up. I told Jared to keep an eye on Rain and not let her touch anything until the police arrived. They came in while I was on the phone, relaying what little I knew to Jon and Travis, who were both hanging out in Jon's basement.
I heard one of the officers call Rain back to her bedroom as I sat on the couch talking to Jon about what we could do to get Rain into a different place immediately if she wouldn't stay with one of us. I stood to follow, but she motioned for me to wait in the living room. I had a bad feeling, but did as she asked.
"...exactly what I'm telling you! Why can't you people understand that someone's trying to screw with my life? They obviously left that where you'd find it. Do you think I'm stupid enough that I wouldn't have gotten rid of something like that if it was mine?" Rain's voice grew louder until she was in a full-blown freak out. I hung up on Jon and ran down the hall.
"What's going on in here?"
"Sir, can you please wait in the other room?" The older of the two officers crossed his arms over his chest in a show of authority. I took one step towards Rain, and he pressed his thick hand against my chest, holding me back from her. "Sir, we need to talk to Miss Neumann alone."
"Maddie, are you going to be okay?" I didn't want to leave her alone, but I didn't need an obstructing justice, or whatever the hell else Barney Fife could come up with, charge. That wouldn't help either of us.
"Call Jon, tell him to get in touch with Cal. I think this is going to get much worse before it gets better." Her entire body shook as she sobbed. She wouldn't turn to look at me, which only served to raise my suspicions.
"What the fuck? Your home was broken into and you need a lawyer? Someone better tell me what's going on here." Something on the bed caught my eye, and I moved to look around the officer's rotund body. I really hoped I wasn't seeing what I clearly was seeing. There, on her bed, was a box containing three bags with what I could only assume was cocaine. Her former drug of choice. Was that why she'd been so edgy?
"You've been with me every single day. Do you really think I could have hidden something like this from you?" She was pleading with me, begging me to believe her. I wanted that more than anything, but I just didn't know. Since I couldn't say anything that would help her case, I said nothing. "Colt." I felt like I was in a fog, trying to will myself to wake up because this had to be the world's shittiest dream: walking into your girlfriend's apartment and finding out that not only had she experienced a break-in, but she was also using again after almost six years clean. "Baby, you know that's not mine. Tell them!"
&n
bsp; "Maddie, I want to believe you. Dammit, I hope you're right because that's some serious shit there." I brushed against her as I walked out of the room. "I'll make the call. Don't say anything."
I felt like the biggest sack of shit in the world as I walked out of Rain's apartment. She would be walking out of there in cuffs, under arrest for possession of cocaine. Even after the front door closed, I could hear her screaming for me, begging me to tell the officers the baggies weren't hers.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than tell them exactly that. The problem was, as I stood there staring at the drugs on her bed, I couldn't help but question if she had been using again. Her mood had been more than slightly irritable for a while, she'd withdrawn from everyone, and she'd mentioned a few times how weak she felt, like she needed something to numb the pain she was dealing with from her mom's death.
I threw the keys to the rental car at Jared as we reached the street. My shaking hands made it difficult to scroll through my phone for Jon's number. This was the last thing any of us needed to be dealing with right now. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized how easily I was pushing to the background what was going on for Rain personally, because of how this scandal would impact the band. Maybe she had finally gotten it through to me that the welfare of the band always needed to be first. After all, she had been preaching that to me for five years.
"Talk to me." Jon answered on the first ring. From the slur in his words, he had been passing the time waiting for me with his buddies Jim and Jack.
My mouth went dry, making it hard to form words, still trying to come to terms with the fact I had to make this call. "We have a big, big problem, buddy." No point skirting around the subject.
I heard Jon tell someone he needed privacy before a door slammed shut. "What's going on, man? Is she tweaking or something?"
"No. That, I would be able to take care of. This, I can't," I sighed. My head lolled back on the headrest as I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Rain's getting arrested right about now."
"What. The. Fuck." Jon shouted. I heard glass shattering in the background as he lost control of his temper. Once this was all sorted out, Rain owed me big for dealing with this shit. "You better start talking, and you better do it fast."
I scrubbed my face in my hands, looking over to see Jared trying to pay attention to his driving while listening to what I was saying at the same time. "Someone tossed her apartment while we were on the road."
"You already told me that," Jon interrupted. "But how the fuck does that lead to her getting arrested?"
My mind wandered back to the first months we had known Rain. It hadn't taken long to see that, even though she'd had a problem at one point, she was one of the strongest women I knew. There were times she thought about using again, but she had always come to Travis or me to help her through it, and when she had slipped, she quickly realized her mistake. The cocaine sitting on her bed wasn't a quick slip. What happened to that girl? How did she fall back into the trap?
I blamed myself for being the straw that broke the camel's back. She was dealing with her mom being gone. She was getting used to the fact that her family didn't hate her the way she thought they did for so long. The pressure of life on the road and our songs climbing the charts was heavy, but she was even dealing with that. The first signs that it was all too much didn't come until after I had doubted her.
"Hey, asshole, you still there?" Jon yelled into the phone, pulling me out of my haze.
"Yeah, sorry." I took a deep breath, trying to think of any way to explain what I saw for something other than what it was. "So, the cops came, and they were taking her report, going through the house, and they found some shit in her bedroom."
"What kind of shit are we talking here?" Jon growled.
"Three bags of coke in the bedroom closet. She says it's not hers, but the cops hear that shit every day," I said, trying to convince myself that she was telling the truth. Even though my mind jumped to her using again, I couldn't wholly believe that. I would have seen something if she was using, right?
"What. The. Fuck." Jon shouted again. "I'll have to call Cal. You believe her?" There was no right answer here. Telling him I had doubts would condemn her in Jon's eyes. Telling him I believed her would be a lie, and Jon had always known when I had lied in the past.
"I don't know," I admitted, my shoulders slumping forward in the seat. "I really, really fucking wanna believe her..."
"But?"
"But she hasn't been herself lately, and after her mom died, she made a comment a couple times about feeling weak and being tempted. And being out there on the road, you know as well as I do that that shit's all over the place." The more I talked to Jon, the more likely it seemed plausible that she had fallen off the wagon.
"If she's jacked up, she goes to rehab, Colt. No two ways about it." Jon's anger seemed to be subsiding, and he was in business mode again. Sometimes I really fucking hated the way we all put our personal lives to the side for the good of the fucking band. Yes, I understood that it was necessary, but that didn't make it right. "No rehab, she's out. I'm not dealing with that shit when we go back out."
"Tell her. She's probably done with me after I left her up there." I debated telling Jared to turn around, but what was the point? She was probably on her way to booking, and there was nothing I could do until the cops finished up. "Look, you call Cal; I'm going to call Mark. She needs family helping her through this."
The next morning, I woke up early, so I could head over to Rain's apartment to clean up a bit. Cal was fairly certain she would get out on a signature bond, and if not, he had authorization to access funds to get her out. When that happened, the last thing she needed was to come home to a huge mess.
"You want some help?" Jared asked as I poured a cup of coffee. By looking at him, I figured he got about as much sleep as I did, only an hour or two when exhaustion finally took over.
"Yeah, if you wanna, but you don't have to," I said, reaching for a cup for him. We sat at the breakfast bar, both of us looking out over the Portland skyline trying to figure out what in the hell happened in the past twenty-four hours.
Before noon, Rain walked through the door of her apartment. She looked tired as hell and in need of a long, hot shower, but she was still beautiful. Looking at her then, I wondered how to approach her. "Hey. I take it today went okay?" I didn't move from the stack of papers I was trying to sort on the living room floor. Every paper had been thrown out of all of her desk drawers.
"Not really, but better than it could have, so I guess I'll take it." She kept eying me skeptically, as if she was trying to figure out whose side I was on. That seemed to be the question of the hour since I was wrestling my head against my heart over and over.
I tried several times to talk to her, the words never coming to me. How do you tell the woman you love that you're worried she's using heavy drugs when the only proof you have is seeing cocaine in her bedroom? It seemed to be both incredibly circumstantial and yet very powerful evidence.
"If you have something to say, just fucking say it." She slammed a stack of papers onto the coffee table and glared at me.
"Babe, I love you and you know that, but this is serious. They're talking about giving you prison time this time around because of how much you had in there." I felt sick to my stomach as soon as I said the words out loud. Seeing the pain on her face before she buried her head in her hands felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly.
"Jesus, Colt! I didn't have anything in there. What will it take for you to believe me? You want me to go pee in a cup? How about if I chop off my hair, and they can test the entire strand to see if there's anything anywhere in my recent past?" Her breath was shallow and fast as she paced around the room. I wanted to calm her down, make her see I was concerned for her, not accusing her, before she went into a full-blown panic attack. "You were there. You've been with me the entire time, except when I was at my dad's house. When did you see anything that would make you think I'm using?"
> "Baby, I really do want to believe you. But I know you've had one hell of a rough patch, and I know this is what happened to you the last time..." I had been over both sides of this argument most of the night. Even if it turned out that the coke wasn't hers, there was no denying she was dangerously close to the edge of an emotional cliff. Maybe going back to treatment would be a good way to make sure that, if she was still clean, she stayed clean.
"You have no clue what happened to me before. Why would I turn to that shit when things in my life are turning around for the better? Do you see how little sense that makes?" Could she really think her life was turning around for the better? It seemed liked she was completely ignoring all the crap that had come tumbling down around her since May? "You know what. Fuck you! Nothing I can say is going to make you change your mind about me. It's easier to believe that I'm using again instead of looking at the facts."
She stormed into the kitchen, throwing the fridge door open with such force that it bounced back off the counter, hitting Rain in the legs. Not finding what she was looking for, Rain slammed the door shut and came back to the living room with fire blazing in her eyes. "You were the one who told me that bitch was looking for a way to get me out of the way. Don't you think it's just a little bit interesting that after she's fired, I come home and my house has been ransacked, and there are three baggies of coke hiding in plain view?"
"Yeah, I get that, but I really don't see her going to that much trouble or spending that much money just to get back at you for whatever fucked up reason." Even with everything I knew about Tanya, I didn't want to believe she would stoop to this level. It was a ton of money for someone without a job to spend, especially when they weren't using. I needed to be next to her, wrap my arms around her and calm her down but she wouldn't let me. She gripped my wrist, removing it from her body as if I had a contagious disease.
