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“After your parents died?”
She nodded but didn’t look up from her playing.
“That’s understandable. You loved them.”
“I did. Very much. And I never got to say good-bye. I was in and out of consciousness for almost a week, and by then they were both gone.”
Old lyrics he wouldn’t have guessed lurked in his memory floated to the front of his mind, a line about good girls who love their mothers.
“I didn’t realize you’d been in the car, too.” An image of her bruised and alone in a hospital bed hit him hard. Hard enough to crush whatever barricades still protected his heart.
“I was the lucky one. That’s what the doctors said. You probably know things like this too well, but in a head-on between a minivan and an eighteen-wheeler, anybody in the minivan who comes out with a pulse is considered a miracle.” Her voice quavered on the word, but her hands moved over the guitar without faltering.
“I didn’t feel lucky. I definitely didn’t feel like a miracle. I felt abandoned. And heartsick. My body was broken, twisted prison of pain. This arm”—she nodded to her left arm—“was busted up. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to play again, and part of me didn’t much care. I was in a world of hurt, and I just wanted to escape.”
“You
needed time to heal.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t focus on healing as much as killing the pain. A morphine drip really helped, and for about a week that button was my best friend. Then they took away the morphine and introduced me to a new best friend called hydrocodone. We got really thick, really fast. When my docs suspected the relationship had gotten too serious, they tried to take my friend away, so I got new doctors and started a little something on the side with oxycodone. When the new doctors tried to take my friends away, I found different doctors. By the time I ran out of doctors, I was in a free fall. It happened so fast—a matter of months.”
Her fingertips finessed the strings, lifting the song to its hook again, throwing him into his own, personal free fall. He wanted to scoop her into his arms. Comfort her. Reassure them both that she was fine now—healthy, strong, and whole—but he was afraid if he broke the connection between woman and guitar, the moment would shatter, so he kept his hands to himself. “What did you do?”
“I found different providers. Not doctors this time. I guess you could call them pharmacists.”
His mind called up more lyrics, this time about vampires in valleys.
“These pharmacists didn’t require prescriptions. Just cash. Lots and lots of cash. After a while I didn’t have enough anymore. I’d consumed my parents’ life insurance proceeds in tiny pill-sized swallows, but I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to my friends, which explains why I found myself standing at the used gear counter of a Guitar Center in Ohio, asking a man named Chris how much he’d give me for my rare, vintage guitar, and praying it was enough for me to spend quality time with my new best friend, fentanyl. I couldn’t describe Chris to you if my life depended on it, but I remember his name because my dad’s name was Chris. This Chris had a phoenix tattoo on his forearm, and after he looked my guitar over, he handed it to me and told me to play for him.”
A tear trickled down her cheek. “I told him I couldn’t. I hadn’t played a note since the accident, and frankly, I was in bad shape—nausea, jitters—I was holding on by a thread. He said he wouldn’t buy the guitar unless I played it, because something so special deserved another chance. Afterward, if I still wanted to sell, he’d make me an offer. So…” She blew out a breath. “I slipped the strap over my shoulder, put my shaking, out-of-practice hands in position, and next thing I knew I was playing the first song I’d ever learned. My mom’s favorite song.”
After a pause for a watery sniffle, she glanced over at him. “This song.”
A song about a good girl with a broken heart. “You didn’t sell the guitar to Chris.”
She shook her head. “No. I decided he was right. Gib deserved another chance, and maybe I did, too. I went straight to an actual pharmacy with the idea of using what little money I had to buy as much Pedialyte, Dramamine, Immodium, and Motrin as I could afford.”
A recipe known in certain circles as drugstore detox, and pretty much the equivalent of quitting cold turkey. “Jesus, Roxy.”
“It was the best I could do. I didn’t have the wherewithal for a treatment program. The cashier sized me up right away. I didn’t look her in the eye, but I felt her judging me, you know?”
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t seem to expect him to. “I was sort of stinging from that when I noticed her nametag read ‘Brianna,’ so to try and pretend I wasn’t the strung-out junkie she’d pegged me as, I mentioned that was my mom’s name. She asked me my name, and I told her. Then she bagged my stuff, handed it over, and said, “Okay, Roxy. This is on me. I’m doing it for your momma. Make her proud.”
“Shame on you both. You could have died.”
Her laugh rang hollow. “It was not pretty, but it wasn’t quite that dire, either. I held onto Gib the entire time. When I couldn’t sleep, I reached for him. When I couldn’t eat, I reached for him. When I wanted to trade my soul for an easier way out of the hell I’d made for myself, I reached for him. Gib never let me down. I played near constantly for ten days straight. Anything. Everything. It didn’t matter. As long as I was playing, I was okay. And then, eventually, I was okay. I could sleep—kind of. I could eat. I could live inside my own skin without searching for an eject button. I could give myself a second chance and try to make my momma proud.” She ended the song with a flourish of chords. “And that, you poor man, is more than you ever wanted to know about how Gibson saved my life.”
Because he didn’t trust himself to touch her yet, he took the guitar and carefully propped it in the corner where he’d found it. When he returned to the bed, he sat at what he considered a fair distance but hooked his hand at the back of her neck and slowly drew her toward him. She came willingly. The robe slid open, revealing the resilient body she’d once polluted in an attempt to escape pain. He leaned in and kissed the swell of her breast directly over her heart before saying, “So you don’t get high.”
Her breath hitched. “Nope.”
He kissed the pulse fluttering at the hollow of her throat. “And you don’t drink.”
She tipped her head to give him the long column of her neck. “I don’t.”
He kissed the warm, soft skin below her ear. “And you don’t smoke.”
“I’m trying to quit.” She eased back just enough for rays of light from the lamp to filter between them. “I’m trying hard.”
