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“It’s always been there, but I think something broke in me when I left,” I confess. “You called me your sun, but when I left, it was so dark. I couldn’t… I couldn’t see a way out.”
“That’s why you changed,” he muses, not an accusation but an explanation like it makes a bit more sense to him now.
I don’t know why I do it.
It must be the meds or him taking care of me, or maybe I’m just in some kind of delusional state that has me telling him everything that happened after I came home, but I do all the same.
“I came home, and my mother... well, you know what she said before we left. It was a lot of I told you so’s, and I wasted my life. She wasn’t wrong—she told me I’d get hurt.” I feel more than see the look he gives me, it fills the room with regret, but I ignore it. “I didn’t know who I was without you and the band and writing, so I became whatever she thought I should be because it didn’t matter to me anymore. Might as well make someone happy. You know?”
He doesn’t respond, but really, how do you respond to that?
“So I started working at the diner and lived the way she wanted me to. But I didn’t get better. It didn't help me find… me.” There’s a long beat while he runs his fingers through my now dry hair, the feeling soothing and calming. We might lay like that for hours or just minutes, I’m not sure. I’m coming out of my episode, but I’m still lost to time, especially when I’m in Riggs’ arms like this. It’s in this daze that I confess to him.
“I’m sick,” I whisper, the words my mother has told me a million times before.I’m not depressed, I’m just sick.As I got older and got help from professionals, I realized it wasn’t a lie, not really. Just an illness of the mind rather than the body.
His hand around my back continues its circuit, up and down and back again, before he finally responds.
“What does that mean to you?” he asks. I shrug but don’t answer. “Is that you speaking or your mother?”
He was always able to read my words like a manuscript he would pick apart to see what I was really trying to say.
“I have recurrent brief depression.” Silence sits between us, but not uncomfortably, no judgment in the air, so I continue explaining.
“It comes every so often. I can usually feel it on it’s way, and it usually lasts less then a week before I can pull myself to remember who I am without the clouds. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones because it doesn’t last indefinitely.” More silence, his hand swiping up and down, up and down. A metronome to my confessions.
“I’m on meds, which helps. They come less now. But sometimes things happen, trigger things. It’s...” I sigh, the words catching in my throat before I push them out. It’s part of the menagerie of reasons I’m scared to try again with Riggins, the fear that this will be too much for him. “It’s who I am now. You want me to give you a chance, but for what? This is who you’ll get now.” He shakes his head almost instantly, the hand on my back moving to my jaw and tipping up from where my face was buried in his chest and forcing me to look at him.
“I’ll take you any way you’ll give you to me, Stell. That’s what you’re not getting. Sad, happy, scared, I’ll take it so long as you’re also mine.”
I roll my lips into my mouth, tears welling.
“Some days, I can’t get out of bed,” I whisper. “I can’t make myself do it. My house turns into a disaster, and I don’t shower or brush my teeth.” I’m telling him both as a warning and a challenge because who the fuck wants that? Who wants to live with that, to spend their days knowing one day, I’ll wake up like this.
“Is it okay if I lay there with you?” he asks. My brow furrows, and I shake my head gently, not in a no, but because it makes no sense.
“What?”
“The days you can’t leave bed. Can I lay in it with you?”
I think that’s the moment I let a small part of myself go back to Riggins, knowing this time, I’ll never truly get it back. The moment I give into the need in my bones to be his again, to let him take care of me, to battle the fear and the uncertainty, even if I’m not ready to say it out loud.
When I wake up the next morning, I’m transported to being 19 and going on tour with Atlas Oaks.
It was just a few days in, and my phone had been ringing off the hook, calls and texts from my mother flooding in, all of them spewing hatred and anger, telling me I was throwing my life away, each one somehow getting worse and worse, meaner and meaner. Eventually, Riggins had to confiscate my phone, only handing it to me if Evie called or texted, giving me his when they were on stage in case something happened and we got separated.
I remember it then. Feeling the dark waters creep up on me, feeling like I might shatter at any moment, but I also remember feeling like it was endurable, doable,survivableso long as Riggins was holding me.
It was always like that, like his strong arms, even when they were gangly and unmuscled, were holding me in place, keeping me together.
The first time I felt the waters creep up and he wasn’t there to hold me when I realized I might drown without that life preserver holding me just barely afloat was the first time I made an appointment with a psychiatrist.
But now, with his vice grip around me, I feel like he’s holding the pieces together. Not saving me, not curing me, but holding it together while I heal, keeping me above water while I rest and catch my breath so I can do the final work to pull myself to the surface.
“Morning, little star,” he whispers into my hair, always able to know when I was awake and when I was asleep.
I mumble an incoherent sound, and he laughs against my back, the sound rumbling through me.
“Still not a morning person?”
