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In the backseat of a black Mercedes, I slipped my earbuds in place, leaned my head against the window, and closed my eyes. The drive home would take at least an hour. That was plenty of time to get some sleep before my parents showered me with affection and ran me ragged.
But who was I kidding?
I let five minutes pass. Five whole minutes. But as Dave Grohl sang, my eyelids pinched, and my breathing quickened until I couldn't take it anymore. With a gasp, I straightened my back and opened my eyes. Looking out the windows, I watched the cars whiz by on either side as my heart raced quickly toward panic.
“You okay, man?” the driver asked, peeking in the rearview mirror.
I swallowed against the lead ball in my throat and jittered through a half-assed nod. “Y-yeah,” I replied quickly before dropping my gaze to the fumbling hands in my lap.
I should've taken the train.
It wasn't that I hadn't thought about it. But Mitch had thought it would be better—safer—for me to get a driver to take me home. But Mitch's experience with car accidents began and ended with a fender bender in Cincinnati, and Mitch didn't understand how it felt to pass the utility pole that had nearly become your tomb.
I would've had the damn thing taken down if I’d had the power to make the decision. But instead, I was forced to look at it, still standing at the side of the road, somewhere between Exits 49 and 51. To any other passersby, it was just another steel pole. An eyesore to nearby residents, a mundane blur in the peripherals to motorists. But to me, I saw a night I wished I could wipe from my memory, and I thanked Christ it wasn't raining.
I wouldn't even think of getting in a car when it was raining.
Not anymore.
We pulled off at my parents' exit, and I let out a lung-squeezing breath of relief.
I had survived another trip down the LIE.
I could live another day.
It struck me as funny that side streets or even other highways didn't raise my anxiety quite like that one road. My therapist—back when I had seen one—had once said something about association and it being “the scene of the crime,” and I had brushed it off as bullshit. A street was a street, and car accidents could happen anywhere. But the more I experienced that blinding panic on that particular fucking road, the more I wondered if there was actually something to his crap.
The driver pulled up to the curb at 22 Burwood Street and put the car in park.
“All right, my man,” he said, turning in his seat as I stuffed my phone and earbuds into a jacket pocket. “Need me to grab the bags from the trunk?”
“Nah,” I replied, shaking my head. “I got it. Thanks though.”
After slipping him a fifty, I pushed the door open and took my time climbing out before glancing at the house I had grown up in. The lawn was freshly mowed, and this year’s chrysanthemums were in their planters on the stoop. The familiar sight greeted me like a warm hug, and as much as my mother drove me crazy on the regular, it took everything in my power not to run into her arms as she hurried down the front stoop.
“There's my baby,” she greeted me, holding up her hands to grasp my cheeks.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, bending into her embrace.
She kissed my cheek three times—always three times—before asking, “How was the drive here?” She brushed the hair off my forehead. “And when are you gonna cut this hair?”
“Uneventful,” I answered before smirking and adding, “And never.”
Dad wasn't far behind, hurrying as quickly as his arthritic knees would allow. “Hey, kiddo. Your bags are back here?” he asked, pointing to the trunk.
“Yeah, but I can get them, Dad. Don't worry about it,” I insisted, pulling from Mom's grasp to beat him to the back of the car.
“No, no, no,” he said, waving me away. “I got it. I don't want you to trip or something.”
But I was already hoisting the two bags over my shoulder, and even though they immediately set me off-balance, I wouldn't tell him that. “If it's between you or me hitting the ground, I'd rather it be me,” I told him, clapping my hand against his arm.
“Yeah, well, that makes one of us,” he murmured, glancing at my leg as he closed the car’s trunk. The prosthetic was covered by my jeans, but I knew it was all he could see as his brow crumpled. “I saw you didn't use the cane at that award show.”
“We watched you on TV,” Mom chimed in, beaming with pride.
It didn't matter how many appearances I made; she always had that same look. It was predictable at this point, but it was nice.
At least one of us still saw me as a star and not a washed-up cripple who could barely write a song.
