by Anthology
Well, that had been short lived…but he was behaving like her normal father, even tousling her hair before watching her toddle back down the hallway toward the family room.
He couldn’t understand one thing—why he couldn’t stop feeling sorry for himself. It seemed so selfish, and yet he couldn’t find a way past it. He wasn’t the first guy in history to lose a mom; in fact, in the grand scheme of things, he could be grateful that her illness hadn’t been prolonged.
It gnawed at him when he realized he couldn’t just hop in the car and drive over the mountains to see her, and the more he thought about it, the more he knew that part of his mourning was exacerbated by the regret he felt at not having made the effort to visit more often. His anger at her passing was fueled by the ridiculous mantra running in the background of his mind, the one that said he should have known she’d pass at some point and he shouldn’t have wasted all that precious time.
That was stupid, though, and he knew even his mom would have taken issue with his current way of thinking. He’d left his old hometown with his friends and they’d moved to the Denver area to help with their careers, making the eastern slope of Colorado their home. His mother had her own home and career over a hundred miles away—so visiting often was more difficult. It wasn’t like they hadn’t kept in touch by phone.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
He’d wandered into the family room mired in the torture that had become his mind without registering the scene in front of him. Chris was engaged in a videogame and Hayley was standing beside him, watching the animated characters on the screen battle, guided by her big brother. Val sat on the couch nursing the baby in her lap—but she’d managed to see on Brad’s face much of what he’d been trying to hide over the past couple of months.
But no way was he going to tell her his thoughts. She didn’t need that burden on top of a fussy baby. This new little one—she said he’d been her easiest delivery, but he seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to life on the outside. Why did the worst of it have to happen between the hours of one AM and four, though?
So he lied. It was easy enough to talk about something he’d already pondered a little, glossing over the big thing in his head. “You good with the guys coming over tonight?”
“Oh, honey. You guys haven’t done anything over here in two months. You’ve hardly done anything together.” Her beaming face returned to the baby in her lap, and she stroked his head. “Of course, I’m okay with it. It’ll be good for you.”
Maybe she was right. “You want me to order a pizza for you and the kids, too?”
“You don’t want me to make something?”
As much as he’d loved chowing on the appetizers and party food Val would throw at them every time they had a guy’s night at their house, he knew the baby demanded a lot of his wife’s attention—and last night had been particularly tiring. “No. You just rest. Half pepperoni, half cheese sound good?”
“That’s fine. I’ll make a salad to go with it.”
“Do you want me to order one?”
Chris paused the game and turned, saying, “Aw, mom, why do you always make us eat salad with pizza?”
“Because salad’s good for you.”
The little boy scrunched up his face. “Why can’t just pizza be good for me?”
“I’m letting you eat it, aren’t I?” Chris couldn’t come up with a good counter argument, so he turned back to the game and his sister’s attention followed him. Val looked up at her husband. “Anything else you want me to do?”
“No, nothing—and I’ll order a salad, too, so you can just take it easy.”
Val’s eyes returned to his and she smiled—a reminder of her love, one that Brad needed. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. “Guess I better go get the cave ready—clean it up a bit.”
“You think the guys would even notice if you didn’t?”
Brad grinned, and it actually made him forget the shit in his head for a moment. “Probably not—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need it.”
Indeed. He hadn’t stepped foot in there since last fall, and he couldn’t remember exactly when that had been—before the holidays, before his mom’s sudden illness and death, before the baby. When he thought back over the past year, he realized he’d lost a lot of time and then he wondered—does time really heal all wounds or are they always with you?
Would he ever feel normal again?
* * *
“How the hell you holding up, man?” Brad never would have expected his best friend, the guy who felt like his brother, to arrive before the other guys—but Brad also tended to forget that Ethan had been a changed man the last few years. He had a good woman in his life—the right woman for him—and they had a daughter together. Ethan’s outlook on life was completely different nowadays.
Most importantly, Ethan had given up all the toxic shit he’d relied on for so long—the drugs that had kept him alive had, at the very end, almost been his demise.
But here he was now, a shadow of his former self—in a positive way. All the good things about Ethan, the things his friends had always loved him for, had remained. The guy was still a little too cocky, but Brad had always seen past that. The two of them had been through the best and worst of times together, had seen the best and worst in each other, and had survived. So for Ethan to somehow sense Brad’s internal struggle—and he knew that from the way Ethan had framed his question—meant more than he could ever express.
His best friend pulled him into a manly hug, slapping him on the back, letting Brad know he was there to support him. But no way was Brad going to talk about it. He’d already shut that part off; he just had to find a way to live life again. “Doing all right. Trying to get back to normal, you know?”
Ethan’s smile reached his green eyes. “And what the hell is that exactly?”
They sat down in the main room of the basement where they did their guy things. If Brad hadn’t built a studio in the backyard, they would have done a lot of practicing down here, too. As it was, they tended to do a little music in the basement anyway, just not the bulk of it. More than that, though, they bonded over all the other things they’d always loved—movies, an occasional football game, food, beer, and conversation. In the past year, Brad had also added a pool table and dart board, even though they hardly ever used them.
“You still okay with beer, man? Or do I need to get you something else?”
“Nah, I can have one or two—especially if it’s that fake shit you always serve.”
“You caught me.” While Brad had never experienced dependency, Ethan wasn’t his only friend who’d struggled. So even though Brad had real beer upstairs tucked in the back of the fridge in the kitchen, the only thing downstairs where he and his friends congregated was of the non-alcoholic variety.
He opened the mini fridge in the corner of the room and took out two unassuming brown bottles in the room that was more a tribute to music than manliness. When Brad had finally taken Val’s advice to settle into the room, he’d bought posters first and had them framed—not just of some of his favorite bands, old and new, but even one of This is Spinal Tap and other favorite movies. Eventually, he’d purchased so damn many posters that he’d hired a designer to help him out—and she’d wound up running with the idea. But she went further. The room wound up having the feel of a cabin with rustic raw wood accents throughout the room, brown carpet, and furniture with accents of hunter green. The walls were divided by wainscoting, and the top half was decorated with a sort of wallpaper—but instead of wallpaper, the decorator had taken the posters (and purchased more with Brad’s blessings) and made a collage throughout the room, with his original favorites in frames, hanging over the collage. She’d even shellacked posters behind the area where the TV screen hung and the area where the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf hulked, because she told him he might want to rearrange the room now and then.
But this space that had been a comfort to Brad, full of things that brought
him joy, now felt hollow, much like the way he did inside. He looked around, knowing he should have been enjoying himself…but it was all just an act. To deflect anything else Ethan might sense, he handed him the beer and said, “What about you? What’s up?”
Ethan’s lips turned up on one side as he brought the bottle to his mouth. Then he said, “Actually, I needed to ask you a favor.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
His friend paused, looking down at the lip of the bottle before meeting Brad’s eyes again. “Would you be my best man?”
It took a few seconds for Ethan’s words to sink in. “What? You’re getting married?”
“Yeah. ‘Bout time, don’t you think?”
Brad led Ethan to the chairs closer to the television. “I thought you said you’d never get married again.”
“Yeah, but it’s been in my mind for a while. I know Jenna says she doesn’t care, but it really hit home with me a few weeks ago. She takes Scarlet to some fancy daycare place when I’m on the road or have something going on. Anyway, they had some Mother’s Day thing going on and parents were invited. I don’t know—some tea or something. And we went.” The way Ethan rolled his eyes told Brad exactly what he’d thought about it—but that he’d gone in spite of his distaste spoke volumes. “Anyway, Jenna had a hell of a time introducing me. It was so damn awkward. I think she went through every description in the book. Boyfriend was fine before the baby was born and I think she’s finally settled on calling me her partner, but…”
“So you’re just doing it for her?”
“I’m doing it for her, for Scarlet—and for me. Shit, Brad, you know as well as I do I got lucky twice. No way I’m letting Jenna go—and if putting a ring on her finger makes her happy, I’m doing it.”
“Congratulations, man. Of course, I’d be proud to be your best man. You set a date?”
“Nah. I just bought the ring yesterday. Mom’s visiting tomorrow and staying for a few days. She already knows, and she’s going to watch Scarlet while I take Jenna out on a date and formally propose.”
Brad heard footsteps on the stairs and, within seconds, both Nick and Zane, the other two members of their band, appeared. “Val let us in,” Zane said as his feet hit the floor.
“All these years and she’s still not afraid of us,” Nick quipped.
“Our women came along, so the upstairs is full of kids and shit.”
“I guess we’re the ones who should be afraid.”
In spite of his inner turmoil, Brad grinned. It was good to have his friends around. “Got that right. Why do you think we’re in the demilitarized zone down here?”
It was good—no, great—to have the guys there, to banter like they used to, to know that they were all doing well and were happy with their lives. And there was no denying what they had in common as he looked at his friends in the room—varying hair lengths, all longer than the guys in suits working in downtown Denver, tattoos on most of their exposed skin. Brad felt some modicum of comfort from being around his friends, knowing their lives were going well, but—as they settled into playing games—he felt himself once more retreat into that shell of numbness where he’d been living for so long.
At a pause in the proceedings, though, Nick finally asked, “You doing okay, man?”
Brad hadn’t expected the question; he’d thought he’d done a good enough job of pretending. So, unprepared, he felt his face squint and his lips purse as he tried to figure out how to address his friend’s question.
Zane didn’t ask; instead, he said, “It’s your mom.”
Brad let out the breath of air he didn’t realize he’d been holding in. “Yeah.”
He felt Ethan’s hand patting him on the back. “It’s tough.”
“Yeah—I just…didn’t know it would be this hard.”
“It’s your mom. She gave birth to you, man, raised you, was the biggest part of your life for so long. It’s not like you can just shut that off.”
It was a relief to hear his friend say that.
Nick asked, “What can we do?”
“Keep things normal—that helps.”
“What about practicing, recording? Are you ready for that yet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it for now. The music will be there when you’re ready. Take all the time you need.” Brad felt Ethan’s hand squeeze his shoulder in support.
“Thanks.” He took a drink of the beer in his hand, wishing it was the real thing—but he knew that drowning in alcohol wasn’t the way to get over how he was feeling. He didn’t even know how to explain it to his friends, so he decided to say as much as he could. He looked at the bottle, though, because that would be the only way he could let it all out. “My brother and I need to clean out her house, you know? Go through things, get rid of stuff, decide what we want to keep—and I told him I would, and I keep thinking I’m going to wake up one morning and know it’s time, you know? But I’m not ready, and I have that shit looming overhead. And what an asshole I am. I have a wonderful wife and kids and I just can’t find a way to be happy.”
“God, man, don’t beat yourself up like that.” Nick shook his head. “Maybe you need a break from everything. And I don’t mean going on tour. Maybe Gracie and I could take the kids for a night and you and Val could spend some time alone together.”
Brad gave that some thought. Her OB/GYN had given her the no sex for four to six weeks guideline for her recovery from childbirth. They hadn’t made it the full six weeks after the last baby, but they were closing in on it this time because Brad hadn’t thought about it.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“Jenna and I could take Chris. Just tell us when.”
Brad felt dubious that even connecting with his wife physically could help the empty feeling inside him, but he appreciated that his friends were thinking about him. And the very next day the women were all over it, arranging a date night for Brad and Val.
* * *
It should have been simple enough, but it wasn’t. Val had arranged to have each child with different people, so Brad spent over an hour driving his children all over the Denver Metro area to their respective “babysitters.” First, he took the baby to Nick and Gracie’s house. Gracie was still a part-time nanny for the family, so watching the baby was a cinch. Then he delivered Hayley to Zane and Jennifer’s house so that their two daughters could play together and continue developing a friendship that Brad hoped would last a lifetime. Finally, he delivered Chris to Jenna and Ethan so the little man could spend time with their daughter, his half-sister, and then he headed home down the highway to his wife.
And how lame would it be if he just asked to go to bed early?
No. This was for Val just as much as it was for him. He knew he’d been an emotionless, cold statue for months now. His mother had passed in March, but he’d been pretty distant since first learning her news—and here it was June, and he was no better. Val no doubt needed her husband back, so he had to once more don the actor’s mask and be the man she needed him to be. It was just for one night. He could do this.
He could retreat back into the shell of numbness afterward.
After parking his car in the garage, Brad made his way into the house through the kitchen. He smelled something in the oven, something Italian, but there was no grumble from his stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an appetite. Val appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, looking sweet and sexy, one of the things he liked best about her. She was one of few women who could look innocent and seductive at the same time. How she pulled it off, he’d never know, but—up until the past few months—he’d willingly fallen prey to her charms.
He felt like such as asshole. His cock should have been fully engorged at the sight. She was wearing a black lace teddy, one he didn’t think he’d ever seen on her before, and it showed off the fact that she’d lost all the baby weight—not that it mattered. He already knew that he looked at Val through rose-colored gla
sses, and she would always appear perfect to him.
But he should be finding her irresistible. What the hell was wrong with him?
Val walked over to him, and he noticed her toenails painted red. His eyes drank her in, taking in every little detail as they roamed up her legs, her torso, her beautiful breasts, her long brown hair, until he landed on her eyes.
But nothing.
He wasn’t impotent, was he?
Val gave him a small smile and slid her hand inside his, leading him out of the kitchen. “The lasagna won’t be ready for another hour, so we have a little time on our hands. The kids doing okay?”
“Yeah.” And, even if there had been a few complications, he wouldn’t have mentioned it to Val. No sense putting a damper on the party for both of them.
In less than a minute, they were inside their bedroom. “So it might seem a little cliché, but I don’t care. I have a hot bubble bath and two flutes of champagne waiting for us.” She started backing away from her husband, letting her hand drop from his. “I need your company…” When she got to the bathroom door, she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder and then pulled one strap of her teddy down her shoulder so that it dangled against her slender arm.
