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My stomach knotted with an instant dose of anxiety. “Yeah?”
“Are you coming to the show?”
We hadn’t spoken about it before. But the fifth anniversary of his accident was going to be spent at The Hillstone, the same venue of that last concert. The one I had gone to. The one he had unknowingly remembered me from.
“No,” I replied with only a hint of regret. “I didn’t get tickets before they sold out.”
In truth, I hadn't even tried.
Dylan snorted as I listened to the sound of his bandmates' chatter in the background. “Baby, as long as you have connections, you don't ever have to buy tickets again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Dylan
Five years was a long time.
One thousand eight hundred twenty-five days.
Forty-three thousand eight hundred hours.
Hell, I couldn't even come close to figuring out the number of minutes, let alone seconds. But no matter how I calculated it, no matter how it was written out, it was a long fucking time.
Some marriages didn’t last that long, and for some tragic souls, their lives didn’t either.
At the start of the band’s career, we had gone from zero to selling out Madison Square Garden three nights in a row in less time than that. It had taken less than that for our fame to fizzle out and even less for it to kick-start again.
Yet the events of that night five years ago felt so close that I could still touch it and relive those memories as if they were happening in this moment.
I could still smell the gasoline as it leaked from the car, staining the pavement.
I could still hear the sirens in the distance coming closer and closer while I wondered who had called them in the first place because it sure as hell hadn’t been me.
The sound of the EMT's voice as he asked for my name. The horrified look in his eyes when he realized who I was.
The scent of bleach, the whir of the oxygen machine, the beeping of my heart, ticking my life away until I heard, smelled, saw nothing …
I wasn't handling this anniversary well.
The first had been the worst. The second and third hadn’t hit nearly as hard as I’d anticipated, and I had been too busy staring at Lennon Jacobs on the fourth to pay much attention. Those last three anniversaries had lured me into a false sense of gentle security in regard to the fifth. I’d thought it'd come around as any other day, and I'd carry on as if it were. It was the only reason why I'd agreed when Mitch asked if I'd be okay to play that night. He was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle it, and I had scoffed like he was nuts and told him not to worry about me and my ability to handle shit.
But as I got ready for our one and only show on Long Island, at the same venue I had played that night five years ago, the violent flashbacks pummeled my brain—brutal and swift, holding nothing back—as I fastened the prosthetic to the stump where my left knee had been.
At this time five years ago, that knee had still been mine as I pulled on a pair of perfectly tattered, tailored jeans, ready to blow the roof off The Hillstone in Huntington. Ready to go home and see my parents for the first time in months. Ready to attend Simon's annual Halloween party later that month and celebrate my birthday by picking up some random chick for no other reason than to satisfy an insatiable craving for sex and fill a fathomless void.
By law, I had been a man then. I'd been one for nearly half my life. And somehow, it had taken a brush with death and one thousand eight hundred twenty-five days to realize I'd never acted like one. I’d never had a reason to.
And it had taken forty-three thousand eight hundred hours to realize no amount of meaningless sex was ever going to fill that void. Not when it was perfectly sized for a girl I’d once seen in the front row at the last show we played before my world changed forever.
Fuck, I hoped I’d see her tonight.
With a rueful sigh, I patted the prosthetic with a dose of gratitude before grabbing my jeans and pulling them on, one leg at a time. They were followed by my boots, and after tying the laces, I stood.
It was all so much easier now than it had been years ago.
I'd even go so far as to say, it'd become normal.
Knock, knock.
