Lovely Madness: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 4)

by Jaine Diamond

  “‘This is my favorite day that I’ve ever been alive,’” Courteney repeated. “I didn’t know he said that. But I love that he said that about such an uneventful day.”

  “Yeah. That was Gabe. But he ended up repeating those words a lot, years later.”

  “Tell me about Alive. You know, a lot of people wanted more from that band.”

  “We would’ve liked to give it to them.”

  “What was it like, being in the band with Gabe, Xander and Dean?”

  “It was incredible, for the most part. We were really cohesive and everyone not only fit into their slot but we all seemed to bloom together. That’s what happens when you’ve got the right fit. Me and Gabe wrote a bunch of songs, excited about the new lineup. We just wanted to get out on tour again, have another chance. We cut a demo and played in the local scene as much as we could. We had a booking agent at that point who kept us busy. And before the end of the year, we’d been picked up by a major label again. We recorded our album, Stand and Fall, and then we were touring again. We opened for a few other bands, including Dirty for a short stretch in Europe. But along the way, we started headlining our own shows, too. We’d had three hit singles off the album and we were getting really big, especially in the US. So, we were headlining a tour down the east coast…” I thought about that time, lost in the memory for a moment. “We were twenty-eight, Gabe and me. I guess Xander would’ve been twenty-six. Dean was twenty-seven. Fuck, we were young.”

  “That was only five years ago,” Courteney pointed out.

  “I feel much older now.”

  “How was touring for you at that time?” she asked me gently, because we both knew what was coming.

  “It was better, because it was more comfortable. Better hotels, better tour buses. But better drugs, too. I was on several different prescription drugs just to get through the day. My anxiety just seemed to increase with the size of the tour, the crowds, the daily demands, but I was in a bit of a fog. I actually had my first hardcore panic attack on the Alive tour when I tried going off my meds. It was triggered by stage fright, right before a show. And that was how it rolled out. I started having panic attacks sporadically, always in response to bad anxiety before a show. We were late going onstage sometimes because of it. And I just leaned harder on my crutches to get through it. Substances. Obsession with my work. But Gabe was my rock. And him and me and Xander had gotten really tight. So it wasn’t all bad. I was having fun, offstage, and onstage, too. It was the getting out on the stage part that was always hardest. The anxiety that proceeded a performance.”

  “What about Dean?”

  “Dean was more out in left field, doing his own thing. We were close, but he had an ego that was hard to get near sometimes. I once read that Eddie Van Halen called that lead singer’s disease, and unfortunately Dean Slater was afflicted with it. But we didn’t have any major problems, just minor conflicts, the kind that you might have on tour with any group of people who were constantly together. We all had each other’s backs, in the end…”

  I faded off with those words. In the end.

  “Then Gabe died and the tour ended,” Courteney said gently.

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there ever any discussion between you and Xander and Dean about carrying on with a new bassist?”

  “No. No one even suggested it. At least, no one suggested it to me. Not that I recall. They encouraged me to keep working, I remember that. Xander asked me to form a new band with him. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready. I could barely even function in those first few months. I was so deep in grief. I think I was in shock, really. So him and Dean formed Steel Trap and they cut an album and went on tour, like musicians do. They went on with their lives. And that was good.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I just couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to tell you. I was traumatized. I’ve never felt anything like that before or since. It wasn’t just pain. It was shock and anger and shame and guilt and so many things at once, I drowned in it. I had a very bad, very public panic attack the day Gabe died. I was hospitalized overnight. And I guess I went into a kind of stupor. I can’t even remember the next few days or so. It’s just gone. Xander and Liam brought me home. I don’t even remember that. I guess I basically had a nervous breakdown, so to speak. I’ve been told that’s not really a medical term, but I don’t know how else to describe it. I didn’t leave the house. I basically ceased to function. I remember, at one point, waking up in the hospital again.” I studied my sister’s face. She was listening closely, without judgment. “Xander told me that you found me on the floor of the studio, passed out. They said I probably fainted from another panic attack.”

  “Yeah. That was my worst day, I think,” she said quietly. “Worse than when Gabe died. Because I actually thought you might die.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say

  It was kind of unforgivable, that I’d done that to her.

  “It was a really sleepless night,” she went on. “I remember the people at the hospital said you were fine. They just wanted to keep you to monitor you. And I couldn’t believe they used those words. He’s fine. Like if you weren’t bleeding out or having a heart attack or something you were okay.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

  “I remember talking to Mom and Dad. I was only fourteen, you know? I begged them to get you some help. I heard Mom telling the doctors you were just exhausted from touring, and sad because your friend died. They didn’t want to take it seriously. They were never willing to accept that you were seriously in need of help. They just told me you were in mourning, like I was too young to understand what that was. They said that it was natural, that you just ‘needed time’ and you’d be fine.”

  “I’m sorry, Courteney.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. But I knew it was. “Tell me about what happened after that. How did you cope with everything?”

  “I didn’t, really,” I admitted, because she knew that was the sad truth. “Some of my friends, especially Xander and Dean, kept coming around for a while. Checking in on me. They kept trying to get me to come back to work. I wasn’t ready for that. But I started trying to act ‘normal’ when they came around, so they’d think I was okay. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad seemed totally confused that I hadn’t reemerged into life again. They started trying to ‘fix’ me by dropping in with bad advice and expectations I couldn’t meet, and just making things worse. So I had to make normal for them, too. I did it for you, because I didn’t want you to worry. I did it for everyone. I hired Rose to clean my house and I even did it for her. I guess because of the breakdown, all the public scrutiny and the negative attention, and my self-imposed isolation, I’d let myself become ruled by this intense fear of having another panic attack in public, or in front of anyone. I self-managed by keeping myself shut away in my house. That was how I developed agoraphobia. I just didn’t know what it was.”

  “What did you think it was?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I tried not to think about it. I just had this intense fear of leaving my home, my safe place, because I was so afraid of losing control and having a panic attack in public. That’s like, textbook agoraphobia, I guess. I had no idea, though. At that point, I wasn’t diagnosed because I wasn’t talking to anyone. I wasn’t seeking any help. So it went untreated for a long time.”

  “When did that change?”

  “I had another panic attack, while I was at home, alone, and it was fucking terrifying. And I just knew I couldn’t go on like that anymore, so ruled by my fears. So I sought therapy for the first time.”

  “Do you want to talk about your diagnosis?” my sister asked.

  “I was diagnosed with agoraphobia, which is an anxiety disorder. Also performance anxiety, a type of social anxiety disorder that was specific to my performance. And I had panic attacks associated with my p
erformance anxiety. With a smattering of depressive tendencies, a drop of PTSD and a dash of codependency… all kinds of interwoven shit. The doctors I saw, there were several over the years… they said my agoraphobia was likely caused by a bunch of factors. Anxiety disorders can run in families, and Mom has diagnosed social anxiety. The buildup of stress as my career built was also a factor, and already having performance anxiety. And the trigger of excessive anxiety when Gabe died. Responding to the panic attacks with fear and avoidance just made it worse. Avoidance was a big problem for me. I started lying to myself. Or maybe I’d done that all along. And I lied to other people, too. People I cared about.” I squeezed Taylor’s hand, hoping she knew that I was trying to apologize for the time she asked me about my agoraphobia, and I told her that I wasn’t agoraphobic. “It was one of the ways I tried to cope.”

  “It’s understandable,” Courteney said. “You were afraid of being judged. You were judged when Gabe died.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kinds of things were you afraid of besides leaving the house?”

  “Crowds. Enclosed spaces, when they’re crowded. I got overwhelmed so easily. Just the thought of walking into a concert venue again made me feel sick. Sometimes, when I was about to go onstage and a panic attack hit, I was sure something terrible was going to happen. There was no other way I could justify how bad I felt. I thought I was going to die. And then when Gabe died… Every time I started to panic, I was overwhelmed with this fear that something would happen to someone I loved. Because that did happen.”

  “I’m sorry, Cary,” my sister said. “I don’t think even I understood how bad it was for you. I tried.”

  “I know you did. But maybe another person would’ve coped with everything better than I did. I couldn’t really cope, because I hadn’t dealt with the anxiety. There were times when I even wondered if I let the anxiety go unchecked so it would take over, and I wouldn’t have to face what happened to Gabe. Maybe I wanted to drown in it.”

  Courteney said nothing. I could see the tears in her eyes now. I was barely hanging on myself.

  But I was determined not to cry today. I just wanted to get the words out.

  It was an unburdening, maybe. I was trying to release the anchor. And maybe I hoped that after this conversation, I could finally stop drowning.

  “The thing with an anxiety disorder like this,” I said, “is that the fear is way out of proportion to the actual danger in the situation, which often doesn’t even exist. But the physical cues in your body, the terror you feel, is so real to you in the moment, it overrides rationality. To cope, you either avoid those situations where you think you might be triggered, or you need someone to go with you, someone you can trust, to lean on, like I did with Gabe. And your world gets smaller and smaller the more you avoid. The thing about treatment is that you pretty much have to face your fears. And that’s been hard for me to do.”

  “Because it’s so tied to Gabe?”

  “Yeah. That whole situation.” I took a breath, because I knew we were getting close. Would I really be able to talk about it? “It’s hard for me to revisit it,” I admitted, though I knew both Courteney and Taylor knew that by now. “Therapy and healing, for me, has been kind of an on-and-off thing. One step forward, two steps back. An uphill battle, I guess.”

  “But you eventually kept working,” my sister said. “Professionally, you did well for yourself. You started producing other bands.”

  “Yeah. Eventually. I started working in my home studio, just tinkering around, and then it grew from there. I think that saved me. Music saved me.”

  “And the rest is history,” Courteney said with a small smile, “paved in platinum albums.”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Do you want to talk about his death at all?” she asked me gently. “How it happened? You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t know, Courteney.”

  “When I interviewed Gabe’s parents,” she said, “they wanted to talk about it. They told me afterward that they were glad they did. That it was helpful. A lot of people lost him that day, Cary. And when you put your experience into words, it can help.”

  Damn. She was wise for a little sister.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked her. It was just her. I focused on her, and Taylor. They were the only ones listening to this right now.

  “What happened that day, from your point of view?” Courteney asked me.

  “It’s not something I like to think about.”

  “Do you ever think about him?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Every day.” My fingers started tapping involuntarily on the arm of the couch. I tried to breathe slow and deep.

  “Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not going to ask you about the pills, Cary,” she assured me. “You’ve been asked about it enough. It’s public knowledge that the sleeping pills were prescribed to you and you admitted that you gave them to him. I have all the facts in the book. But what I don’t have is your point of view.”

  I was silent for a moment, gathering my thoughts. Trying to remember that day, as objectively as I could.

  “The tour was bigger than we expected,” I started. “Everything was bigger than we expected, including the pressure we were under and the intensity of the schedule. We were overworked. Overstressed. I don’t think we had good enough management, people watching our backs, making the right decisions for us, and we were probably afraid of complaining and rocking the boat too much, losing everything. We’d already had so many band breakups. We’d already been dropped from a label. We didn’t know how many chances we were gonna get, and here we’d hit the big time, so fast. We were afraid of capsizing. We were just trying to stay afloat. We were coping in all the ways we knew how to cope, and we didn’t have many. Alcohol. Drugs.” I went silent for a moment, and Courteney waited for me to go on. “I just wanted him to get some sleep that day. That was all I wanted.”

  “You went to do an interview for him so he could sleep,” she supplied.

  “Yeah. Me and Dean. And partway through the interview, we got interrupted. Our tour manager was with us and he got the call. Someone had called in a bomb threat at the hotel. We didn’t even know if we could take it seriously. We cut the interview short and headed back to see what was going on, and Dean even slept in the car. But I had a bad feeling. I was so used to feeling anxiety back then, though, and I was medicated. I couldn’t distinguish one bad feeling from another. I figured I was just anxious because I knew Gabe was at the hotel, plus a lot of our team was there. But we were in contact with some of them, and everyone seemed to be accounted for. The bomb threat turned out to be bullshit, as you know. We’d had a bomb threat at the hotel we stayed at a few days prior, in the next city over. We didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out we had this crazy fan, this guy named Joseph Fetterman.”

  “It’s in the book,” Courteney said. “You don’t have to say much about him.”

  “I don’t know much about him,” I said. “He’d called in both bomb threats. At the trial, he said he did it because he wanted to meet us. Me, actually. He said he wanted to meet me.” Fuck, that still stuck in my throat. I tried to swallow past it, but it was hard to do. “He tried to get the hotel evacuated. I guess he thought we’d come running outside, and that would be his chance to get an autograph?” I laughed darkly, because it still made me fucking angry. “When that didn’t work, he set a fire.”

  All trace of humor left me, and I went silent.

  “Do you want to keep going?” my sister asked me after a moment.

  “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  I wasn’t okay. Some psycho killed my best friend, and it was my fault. Even though the court held Fetterman legally responsible for Gabe’s death, and he died in prison a year ago, I knew Gabe’s death was on me.

  How would I ever be okay?

  I cleared my throat a little. “It wasn’t until we got ba
ck to the hotel and connected with our crew that we realized Gabe was missing. Some people thought he was with us. Other people thought he was somewhere else. They’d checked his room and he wasn’t there. The police and hotel management went door to door clearing people out, but they didn’t make it to my room before they had to evacuate because of the fire. Or so they said.” I met Courteney’s eyes. “I guess whatever they said is all in the court documents.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not worried about that right now. Just tell me your truth.”

  “The truth is someone fucked up. Or maybe a whole lot of people fucked up, including Gabe.” But mostly me. “And he died because of it.”

  “At his memorial service, you said you were broken.”

  “I was.”

  “I know it was hard for you, afterwards. To put yourself back together. Some people wouldn’t have even been able to do that, Cary.”

  I looked away from the sympathy in my sister’s eyes. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. There were times when I felt like I’d died. But there was no relief. No peace.”

  “What’s it like now?” she asked.

  “I have dreams of water all the time.”

  That was all I said. Then I went silent again.

  Courteney waited for me to go on.

  Next to me, Taylor stirred. She squeezed my hand, gently. I wanted to look at her, but I couldn’t.

  I looked at my sister instead. “Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No. You didn’t tell me.”

  “I dream about Gabe drowning in that bathtub. I don’t know why. He didn’t drown. There was no water. They said he didn’t wake up because of the sleeping pills.”

  “I know, Cary,” she said softly.

  “The smoke from the fire killed him. He didn’t even run water in the bath. They said he was still in his clothes, lying in the empty bathtub, like he’d laid down to go to sleep. Why would he do that?”

  Courteney just shook her head a little, her eyes shining with tears. Clearly, she had no answers. Neither of us did.

  “The fire never touched him,” I said. “It was the smoke that killed him. And all I dream about is water. I dream about him drowning.”