Love Will (53 page)

“You drink honey for your throat?” my replacement asks.

We all chuckle under our breaths.

“Sometimes,” Damon says with a straight face. “Depends on how good my tongue’s working that night.”

“Oh, shit, you mean…”

“Yeah, we mean…” Tavo informs him.

“How often does that happen?”

“Every night, if we want.”

“Really?
Everyone?
” He looks around at the four of us, waiting for a response. Damon and Tavo nod their heads.

“Whenever I want, yeah,” Peron says.

He stares at me. “Do I need to get my brother to come get me?”

“I already texted him,” Damon says. “I know when you’re too miserable to be good company. I was just giving you a chance to change your mood.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Do you want to take your Martin with you?” Alex asks.

“Yeah.”

“There’s no workers comp shit if you hurt yourself writing sad love songs tonight,” my best friend jokes with me. “Got it?”

“Understood. Thanks for your concern, but I’m going to be passed out in an hour.”

“Not coming to the show?” Peron asks.

“I can’t tonight. I’ll be at the rest of them. I promise.”

“Okay.”

Jon has a bottle of water and a dose of Percocet ready for me in the car. “You’re my favorite brother. I really thought it was Max, but… just don’t tell him. It’ll kill him.”

“You’re the middle child. I think some of the middle child traits are that they’re fickle and two-faced.”

“What?” I ask him, laughing and grasping my side as I do it. “I’ve never heard that.”

“The oldest and youngest children like to keep those sorts of things from the ‘middlings.’”

“Well, tonight you’re my favorite.
This hour
, at the very least. Thank you for this.” I swallow the pill quickly and hope a placebo effect kicks in before the drug has time to. I need this pain to end
now
.

“How’d it go?”

“Fine. They’ll be fine. You’re welcome to go to the show.”

“I’ll hang back with you.”

“I’m gonna be sleeping, so don’t count on me for entertainment.”

“I can get plenty of kicks with a sleeping brother and a Sharpie. It’s happened before…”

I sigh, remembering how pissed I was when he’d done that to me when we were younger. I feel annoyed
now
. “You’d regret it today. I’d get mad
and
even.”

“Says the guy who couldn’t even make it to the car unassisted.”

“Dude, cut me some slack! I’m in a shit-ton of pain and I had to teach a guy how to play my fucking music for eight hours today.”

“Sorry… I was just kidding around.”

“I’m not really in the mood.”

“Okay. What do you want to eat?”

“I don’t care.”

“Thai? There’s a place a few blocks from the hotel. I can run in.”

“That’s fine.”

Jon parks the car but leaves the engine running while he goes inside to order and waits for our food. I recline the seat carefully and try to sleep, but the aching in my body still overrides any desire to rest my eyes.

After what seems like an eternity, but is likely only ten minutes or so, my phone rings, and while the interruption unnerves and bothers me, I know it could be Shea, so I fight through the stiffness and get the device out of my pocket. It’s my mother, her name on the display delivering massive disappointment.

I press the button for the speakerphone.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Did Jon tell you to call me? I told him you were supposed to call me as soon as you were done with the band.”

“No, he didn’t. He sucks as a human being.” I say this just as he comes out of the restaurant with two bags of food. He climbs in the car, pulling out of the lot and merging into rush hour traffic.

“That’s not what I was saying. I just have a parent/teacher meeting tonight and I wanted to check on you before I went.”

Jon smiles at me apologetically. I nod at him, giving him a stern look.

“I’m fine. Go to your meeting.”

“Now, wait. I’m not finished. I want to know what happened…”

“Shit happened, Mom. That’s all. Ben’s a fucking asshole. I ended up in the ER with eight stitches over my eye and a huge fucking bruise on my ribs, and Shea ended up fuck knows where because she walked out on me and won’t take my calls!”

“Will,” Jon chides me, “stop it!”

I try to compose myself, realizing I shouldn’t have gone off on my mother like that. “Sorry, Mom. I’m in a lot of pain, but I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

“It’s okay, Will.”

“That one slip-up I mentioned to you came back to haunt me. It was with Ben’s girlfriend, but it was before he had met her, and before I had met Shea… but neither she nor I told Ben about our little hook-up, and when it came to light, he was pissed.”

“Oh,” my mother whispers.

“I still maintain that neither of us did anything wrong…”

“Why did Shea leave?”

“Because the girl’s number was in my phone, and I guess she thought something was still going on. It wasn’t… but she won’t give me the chance to clear anything up.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“No shit.”

Before I can apologize for the profanity, Mom agrees. “No shit.”

I wake up in the middle of the night with a crick in my neck. My back’s against the headboard, and I’m still wearing the clothes I’d had on all day. I vaguely remember Jon prying a half-eaten plate of noodles out of my hands. I guess the meds finally kicked in while I was having dinner.

After stripping down to my boxers, I crawl under the covers and accidentally kick my brother’s leg, the hair grossing me out for a millisecond before I realize it’s not a woman in bed with me.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Struggling to get comfortable, I grasp for one of the four pillows I’d been using to prop myself up to eat and hug it into my chest, giving my right arm a place to rest. It seems to take some of the pressure off my ribs. If Shea were here, and I were holding her, it would feel so much better. Even though I have to strain to do so, I check my phone. I knew there’d be no text and no voicemail, so I’m not sure why I made myself endure the physical pain. Now it’s compounded with more heartache.

“Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it time for another pill?”

“If you’re in pain.”

“I am. Would you mind?”

“Not at all.” He brings me a dose and an opened bottle of water. “You didn’t eat much.” He yawns and stretches, checking the time on my phone.

“I don’t want anything.”

“Okay.”

“Where’s my guitar?”

“By the chair.”

“Can you move it over here?”

“What for?”

“Just so I know where it’s at.”

“It’s… It’s still by the chair…”

I start to get up to do it myself.

“I’ll get it. Just stay there.”

“Thank you.”

He climbs back into the bed after making a stop in the bathroom.

“Hey, Jon?”

“Yeah, kid…”

“Could this really be it?” I ask him.

He’s quiet for a few seconds, but answers me before I have to tell him what I’m talking about. “Maybe so, Will. Maybe she never trusted you like we all thought she did.”

“It’s fucked up, right?”

“Yeah, it’s fucked up.”

“Do you think… maybe…” I don’t want it to be awkward, asking them to get involved
again
.

“She’s not taking her calls. You think Livvy’s not still trying? We want this for you as much as you do, man. I see how you’ve changed since she’s been in your life. I know you love her. I don’t want you to suffer another broken heart, Will. You’re too good a person to have this happen the only two times you’ve ever allowed yourself to fall in love. This isn’t fair. I thought for sure she’d talk to Livvy.” He sighs heavily. “I just can’t figure it out.”

“I thought for sure she’d talk to
me
,” I tell him. “She said she loved me.”

“I know, Will,” he says softly. “Let’s not give up yet. Close your eyes. Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day–another day she may come around. Another day to hope for that, okay?”

I thought the Percocet would be a sure thing, but it’s three-forty-five in the morning, and I’ve been trying to prove that ten is a solitary number in my head since I laid it on the firm pillow. That’s what I get for trying to count fucking
sheep
. I never can get past the first ten without getting into this math problem.

And while I haven’t been able to solve this problem yet, some day, I will. I’m sure I’ll be the one to do it.

And the moment after I do, I’ll die of exhaustion and delirium.

And I’ll die alone.

Holy shit, I’m tired. I need to sleep. I need to focus on something else. On Shea. I need to write. Feeling numb from the pain pill, I slowly push myself off the bed and carry my guitar and phone into the bathroom. To hopefully mask the sound and provide some white noise, I flick on the fan before taking my guitar out of the case. Closing the toilet lid, I sit down and start recording chords and lyrics as they pop into my head.

I miss the warmth of her skin; the smoothness of it. The feel of her soft hair between my fingers as I untangled the strands in the mornings I was lucky enough to wake up with her. Her smile. Her brow. Her dimple. I miss the way her body moved in sync with mine, anticipating each move I made because it was instinctual and primal and the only thing I could do at the time that made sense in my world. In
our
world. My
life
made sense with her. Sex had
meaning
with her. A purpose. An exchange of passion and desire and–more than anything else–of love. It was traded between us in kisses and sweat. In tight embraces. In words, whispered and spoken and shrieked at the top of our lungs. In the war and the peace–the beautiful struggle and silence–of sex itself.

Nothing will ever compare to her and what she brought to my life. No one will ever live up to what she was to me.

Before I know it, two hours have gone by and my side, back and ass are aching from sitting on the hard seat. I should have brought a pillow with me.

Jon’s watching TV when I exit the bathroom.

“Shit, did I wake you up?”

“It’s fine,” he says. “You were tossing and turning all night anyway.”

“I couldn’t sleep. It was either play or go out and find a girl.” He looks over at me with his brows raised. I can’t tell if he’s questioning me or pitying me. “I wasn’t gonna kick you out. Don’t worry.”

“You can’t give up on her.”

“I wasn’t really going to go find a girl, Jon. If that’s where my head was, I would have gone. I would have called Damon.”

“Sounds like you were writing?”

“Yeah. Wanna jot it down for me?”

“That’s not embarrassing for you?” he asks me.

“Last I checked, we were both grown-ups, Jon. My pad and pen are in my drawer. I have to lie down or my lung may collapse.”

He brings me another pill after he gets the stationery materials, then sits next to me on the bed. I put one of my earbuds in to listen to the words I’d recorded and recite the lines I’d ended up with:

Most delicate of fruits, intense yet sweet

Her skin–the taste, it lingered on my tongue

The scent of apricot perfumed her hair

A smell so fresh, I gasped, inhaled, I clung

Onto her body, flesh as hot as mine

My fingertips now intimately wise

The push and pull of lovers intertwined

Her curves, her form, there was no higher prize

You were mine to keep

Be someone else’s ideal

My sun would always rise and set 

With the image of your smile

You weren’t meant to be my standard

Sure everyone needs that person

To hold all others up to