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All my love,
Riggs.
Stella—
We’re in London today and after the show, everyone went to a party because I told them I’d start drinking in the bus if they didn’t. I wasn’t, of course, but it worked. Once they left I laid outside in the grass outside the bus under the stars.
I miss you.
All my love,
Riggs
He wasn’t lying. There was a letter for every stop on every tour. Some of them are filled with silly anecdotes, things that happened, news about one of the guys, deals they made, or new songs being released.
A few mention his mom and how he was missing her. More mention his dad, filled with mixed emotions he’d been wrestling through over the years. Anger and grief and understanding. They all feel like a glimpse into his mind and into his recovery.
If I ever worried for a moment that a future would be hounded by the fear of Riggins drinking again, of falling into old patterns and behaviors, these letters tell me the entire story I needed to hear.
There are even a few dozen cards and letters he wrote when he wasn’t even on the road, a bunch from when he went to rehab, and some while he was trying to write albums.
Each one, I fall more and more in love with him again, in a different way than before.
Each one eases the ache, pain, and panic I was feeling over falling for him again. It doesn’t ease the nerves of what’s next or the grief and anger I feel for what my mother did, but those are all things that I can grapple with later.
Right now, it’s all about Riggins and I.
And I’m finally ready to figure out what that will look like, once and for all.
46 MAINE
NOW
RIGGINS
It’s a long drive—maybe six, or eight hours, I don’t know—but it feels like an eternity before Riggs’ truck bumps along dirt roads and finally, we stop. I blink, trying to clear my vision and understand where we are.
“We’re here,” he says, but doesn’t move to leave the truck. We’re parked facing a small cabin surrounded by woods.
“Where is here?” I ask. I fell in and out of sleep between reading postcards as we drove, the exhaustion of the emotional turmoil taking its toll.
“Maine,” he says simply.
Maine. My head tips up to look at the sky through the windshield, light blue and bright, the sun high in the sky as Riggs drove through the night.
He knows what I’m thinking without even saying it.
“Tonight, we’ll come outside. You’ll see the stars.”
“What is this place?” I ask, not wanting to think about watching the stars with Riggins in Maine, a daydream we had long before everything blew apart.
“My house. Our house. I, uh,” he puts a hand to the back of his neck, suddenly somehow shy and nervous. “I built it for you.”
“You built it?” I ask, shocked. He shrugs like it’s no big deal.
“I didn’t know it was for you at the time. I just needed something to do with my hands, with my mind. Clear it out.”
I keep staring at him, but he refuses to meet my eyes, staring at the building in front of us. It could be a few seconds or an hour before he speaks again, but I wait patiently, no longer willing to push past things to keep one of us comfortable.
