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So, add to my depression and jealousy and obsession the realization of how fucked up I was. That I could love an emotionally abusive jerk like Derek, but I couldn’t let go of him and love someone else. Not completely.
The next week was a bad one. Ryan and I drifted apart even more. If the only conversations to be had were excruciating ones or vapid ones, then I guess we chose not to have any at all.
Derek’s life degenerated, as well. As chronicled by TMZ, he looked worse and worse, like he wasn’t sleeping or eating. Just boozing and fucking, apparently.
A club he was at got busted in a drug raid. Five kilos of coke in the owner’s safe. Derek was reported as being there when it happened – in fact, there was a picture of him clowning around with the owner, a former NBA star who had retired and become a full-time partier – but there was no mention of Derek going to jail, no celebrity mug shot. Believe you me, TMZ would have
looooved
to put
that
on the site.
And then came the car wreck.
My morning ritual was to get my cup of coffee and sit down to torture myself by opening up my iPhone browser, bookmarked to TMZ.com.
When I saw the powder-blue Mercedes smashed into a telephone pole, I cried out and dropped the phone.
No lie, my heart actually stopped in my chest.
But the headline was as good as defibrillator pads:
ROCK STAR KANE AVOIDS THE REAPER
Derek Kane, heartthrob singer of the multiplatinum band Bigger, miraculously walked away unscathed when he totaled his car on Sunset Boulevard Saturday morning around 3AM… luckily he was alone and not with one of his trademark beauties he’s been spotted with over the last two weeks, or he might be on the block for manslaughter. Cops showed up and arrested Kane for DUI. Sources say he blew a 0.17 on the breathalyzer and that there was evidence of drugs in his car…
Sure enough, there they were: the mug shots. Derek looked like death warmed over – but
sexy
death warmed over. Like those old photos of ‘heroin chic’ ads in the 90’s. He managed to give the camera a ‘come here and fuck me’ look that probably had all his female fans swooning despite the gauntness in his cheeks and the circles under his eyes.
Kane was released Saturday afternoon on $5,000 bail – peanuts for the millionaire rock star – paid by the band’s manager, Miles Sumner. Sumner’s only statement to the press was, “F*ck off and leave him be,” before he piled Kane into a car and took off.
Funnily enough, it was good to see Miles again. He was dapper and furious as always, sticking his hand in the photographers’ lenses as he pushed Derek into the back of a black SUV.
I returned to the top photo of the blue Mercedes. It was an apt metaphor for our relationship now:
Wrecked.
Totaled.
I went to look for Ryan, and found him outside with the horses.
I had a bad moment recalling our last conversation in the barn… but then I steeled myself and walked up to him. “You need to look at this,” I said as I handed him the phone.
He took a long look at the article and muttered “Jesus.” Then he said, “I need to call Miles, and I left mine in the house. Can I?”
“Um… sure…”
He tapped out a number from memory, then held the phone to his ear.
