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Riggins, move on. I’m done.
They plagued me when I was detoxing, when I was getting sober. Those first few days at rehab, that’s all I heard, those words swirling around me, reminding me of what I lost.
I get it now. Or at least, most days, I do.
Most days, I get it.
But some days, the quiet of the line, the way the lights played off the wet street as I sat on the curb, those five words... they ricochet through me, haunting me.
“But you weren’t there when I needed you,” I whisper. “Sometimes, that wins. I know I wasn’t there for you, that I fucked up first, but sometimes… I needed you, Stella.”
It’s selfish, I know, to bring this up, all things considered. I lied. I was a drunk. A user. I hid it, and I broke her even after she begged me. She told me what she needed from me, and I promised I could be that for her.
But I wasn’t.
“I couldn’t be what you needed,” she whispers. “Not then. I was too hurt, too angry. I couldn’t do it, Riggins.”
“I know. I know that Stell.” Silence hovers over us again as we watch Gracie run further ahead, chasing a squirrel, oblivious and content in a way I wish I could be. I once was, but then the world and reality came in, and it all came crashing down.
We reach the clearing, a place that used to be ours and still is in its own way, but also, part of me fears nothing will be ours again.
I can spend every waking moment trying to convince Stella to talk to me, to give me a chance, but there’s always the real chance she’ll never let me in again. A small chance, but it’s still there.
I look around the space, memories flooding in before I turn to her and finally speak.
“Why’d you leave?” I ask, whispering quietly. I don’t know what I expect, but it probably wasn’t a response and definitely wasn’t the response I get.
“I couldn’t come in last anymore,” she whispers, sitting with her back against a tree. I stay standing a few feet away, but her eyes don’t come to me, don’t look at me at all.
“You always came in first, Stella,” I argue, slightly confused.
My entire world revolved around Stella. There was never a time when I doubted that we’d be endgame, that she was mine.
“No, I didn’t, Riggs. And that’s okay.”
“Stella, no. I was… you were always first. No one came before you.” She shakes her head in a sad move before finally looking up at me and I see it there. The resignation, the sadness and sorrow. The hurt.
“Not someone. Something. Music always came first for both of us. I was okay with that—I got it. It… it’s in your bones, in your blood. The music, the band, it’s what made youyou. I was willing to be second to your music. I got what it meant to you, and considering you let me in on that, considering we did it together, I was more than okay with it. But I couldn’t come after the lifestyle you chose back then.”
“You didn’t—” I start, but my words trail off because that’s not fair. Lying to Stella now, when it doesn’t even matter that much, when the lies won’t save anything if there’s even anything to save.
It definitely won’t repair what’s broken.
And that’s what I need to focus on now: repairing and rebuilding rather than saving.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper. “I didn’t know how bad I was.”
“I know, Riggs,” she says in a consoling tone. I sit too now, my back to a different tree, three or four feet separating us that feels like an ocean, but somehow I know getting any closer will ruin this tentative peace, this fragile willingness to talk to me about all of this.
“I thought I had it under control.” I look down at my hands in my lap, taking in the small scars on my fingers from playing for years and years, a scab on my thumb from the time I tried to climb a tree in these very woods and found a jagged edge but didn’t want to tell my parents since we weren’t supposed to be there at all. Stella snuck out a first aid kit, patching me like she always did.
“I thought… I thought I was invincible. Saw my dad fall into that deep hole and knew there was the possibility of that addiction running in my veins, but I thought I would be stronger. “ I sigh, letting my head fall back on the tree and stare up at the fast-moving clouds. “I thought I was better than it than him. That I could… No, I thought Ihadto take part in all the road had to offer to prove he was just weak, that my mom died and he spiraled because he was weak.”
Shaking my head, a heavy sigh leaves my chest.
“I was a victim of my own ego. But history has a funny way of repeating itself, you know? You left, and in my gut, I think I knew why. I think I knew you knew I was using in secret, and it made me… righteous. Then I became angry and dug myself so deep when you left. I was fueled by heartbreak and loss and everything my father probably felt but worse because in my heart of hearts, I knew I could have avoided it.” I pick a piece of grass and start tearing at it, feeling Stella’s eyes burning on me, but for once, I’d do anything to avoid her all-knowing gaze.
“My dad… he wasn’t in control of my mom dying. Her cancer, we saw it happen, slowly and painfully, and we watched her leave, but nothing he did could’ve changed that outcome.” Finally, I look at her, meeting her eyes as I tell her my deepest truth, hoping she understands. “I watched you crumble on tour, watched you watch me fall deep, watched you beg me to stop. I watched you lose yourself while trying to quietly save me without scaring me off, and I let it happen. I could have stopped it all, but I chose not to. And that?” I throw the crumbled bit of leaf to the ground. “That kills me every day.”
