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Huey had told me that there would come a point where I just had to trust myself. But what if that point never came? How could I keep Theo on the hook when even I didn’t know if I’d ever get there?
“I love him too much,” I choked out.
“No such thing as too much love,” Rhys said. “Only question is, would you do good things with it.”
“Good things,” I echoed blankly.
“Yeah. Say you’re together. Would you treat him good, be kind to him, support him, listen to him, all that shit. Well, would you?”
“I—yeah, of course. What is—?”
“Caleb. My oldest friend.” Rhys clasped my forearms like we were in some battle movie about Roman soldiers. “I love you. I really do. But you’re being a jackass and making a huge mistake. You’re fucking up the best thing in your life. And you’re fucking it up because you’re scared. It’s not complicated.”
I started to protest but he didn’t let me.
“No. I know you think I oversimplify. I know shit is always complicated to you. And, yeah, I know just ’cause something’s simple don’t make it easy to do. But that’s all this is. You love him. You’re scared. That’s how love fucking goes, buddy.”
“I wasn’t scared with you,” I said. And I’d never thought about it that way before, but it was true. Rhys’s expression was knowing, gentle.
“I know, babe. Because you weren’t in love with me that way. You loved me—I know that,” he said quickly, as I started to protest. “But it was easy between us. We made a great team, we had a lot of fun. Sex wasn’t too shabby.” He winked. “But you weren’t afraid with me because the idea of losing me didn’t rip you apart. Get it?”
“Maybe.”
I let the silence stretch on. I pictured Theo’s face when he’d launched himself at me that morning. How happy he was to see me, and how I’d felt the same. I played back the sound of his voice when he told me about wanting to quit. About how much he hated his life. About how I’d helped him see that maybe he had other choices. Sweet Theo, who had told me that if he had my love then he didn’t need the adoration of strangers. If.
I just need you to love me. That’s what he had said. And I’d said…nothing.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, god. I really fucked up. Again.” I looked up at Rhys.
“You really fucked up.”
“What the hell do I do?”
“Uh. Well, you know I’m not much for grand gestures, but you should probably apologize for being a massive blockhead. And—I dunno—maybe consider telling him you love him back.”
I just stared at him, my mind a blank. Rhys face-palmed and glared at me. Then he grabbed back the bag of chips we’d been eating.
“You don’t even deserve these, I’m taking them with me.”
He walked out the door and directly to his truck, then he came back, something else in hand, chips nowhere in sight.
“You’re seriously taking my chips?”
“Fuck off.”
He put a pair of my shoes inside the door, shot me a pointed look, and turned around to leave again.
“Rhys,” I called, when he got to the bottom of the stairs. “Were you scared? With me?”
His eyes widened and he shoved his hands in his pockets. Then he did something he’d never done to me before. He didn’t answer.
* * *
—
The next morning when I woke up, I went to sit on the porch and saw that Rhys had returned my truck, but it was still two more days before I could make myself drive it. I kept playing my conversation with Rhys over and over in my head, and I kept thinking about Matty sending the bag of groceries and saying that when you try to avoid one thing, you need something else to distract you.
I didn’t think Theo had been a distraction from drugs and alcohol, though I’d heard enough stories in AA and NA meetings to make me very aware of the risk. I was thinking about it in general, though. The idea that things replaced one another. Living with huge, gaping absences was nearly impossible. Things crept in, making places for themselves in your life, and the less time and energy you spent on one thing, the more you allocated to another.
It was easier to edge out one longing with another longing than it was to sit and stare at things you couldn’t have.
I had fallen into drinking as a kid, curious what the appeal was to my father, and then happy to ease the way with other people, in situations where the music wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
As I toured more, had more opportunities, more fans, the drugs were just there. I’d slipped into heroin as easily and undramatically as that first needle had slipped beneath my skin. It had felt good to feel good, that was all. I didn’t even consider that I might be addicted to feeling good until I realized how terrible it felt to feel bad, and realized I must not have felt it in a while.
