Chapter Text
She was staring at the screen of her laptop when he walked into their bedroom. He smiled at the sight in front of him. She was wearing a sweatpants and one of his t-shirts and yet she looked beautiful.
His smile disappeared the moment she looked up to meet his eyes. He noticed the concern in her eyes, probably coming from whatever she was looking at on her laptop.
“I think you should read this,” she simply said as she pushed her laptop in his direction over the bed.
He sat down on the bed and pulled the laptop closer. His movements were cautious, worried for what he would find on the screen. His beautiful features settled into a frown when he saw what she had been reading.
-XxX-
November 15, 2009
It’s the end of the world as we now it
Keltie Colleen once wrote: “I wonder if there will ever be a night where I do not dream about you. I guess my subconscious still wished things were different.”
I wish I could say I didn’t feel the same way. But I can’t. Deep down I still miss him. And it hurts.
I wrote this three months after I left him. That was six months ago. After nine months, I hoped I would feel better. Or feel free, feel alive… I don’t know really. I do know that I feel none of those things. If anything, I can say I felt hopeful for a moment or two. And now even that feeling is gone. And I feel nothing at all anymore.
Sam was excited to see her daddy again. Her mommy wasn’t so sure. But we went to see him anyway. Almost nine months after I last saw him, we hopped on a plane to LA. When we got to LAX he was waiting for us. He sure had missed Sam. While he was practically hugging her to death, I took a good look at him. He looked even better than I remembered. My heart skipped a beat when he released Sam and smiled at me.
He took me for coffee in a small cafe not far from the airport. Things felt awkward at first. We both struggled over our words in our haste to fill up the uncomfortable silences. It took me a while to find the courage to ask what I really wanted to know. I carefully mentioned that I had read about Chad’s overdose in the newspapers. He smiled when he realized what I was heading at. And my heart skipped another beat.
He told me how William had been banging on his apartment door as soon as he heard the news. How Michael, John and Zack had been stupid enough to fly across country to check on him, instead of just calling to see if he was one of the John Does found at Chad’s. And how he hadn’t spoken to or seen Chad in over a month when it happened. That the last time he wanted to go to one of those parties, shé had asked him to stay with her and so he had turned down the invitation. My heart broke in two when he explained that he didn’t need the drugs anymore because he had her now.
It shattered further when I listened to him talk about hér. He rambled about how they met. (He had wanted to buy some record and had seen her walk away with the last copy. He had asked if he could have it and she had simply said no. He had thrown a tantrum and even played the ‘don’t you know I’m famous’ card. In the end, she had still walked out of the store with the CD.) He explained she had put him with both feet on the ground again. He told me how she made him give up on wrong friends and cocaine. The sparkle in his eyes while he talked about her made me want to cry.
I hated her. Until I met her. We stopped at UCLA to pick her up on our way to my hotel. She was ecstatic to finally meet Sam. She too almost crushed her in a hug. Then she started talking to me. About how much she admired me. She had read all of my blogs, commented on them every now and then but always found she wasn’t eloquent enough. She told me some things about herself, about her studies and what not. She never bragged about saving him nor mentioned my past relationship with him.
I couldn’t hate her, even though I tried. I tried as hard as I could, but she just isn’t hateable. She keeps him leveled. She got him to focus on music again. She made him realize that he had alienated all of his friends and helped him to glue the broken pieces back together. She does everything for him that I never could.
I remember the smug look that was always on his face in the last months of our relationship. How he always walked around with his nose stuck up in the air, ignoring the few people that still gave a damn about him. Now he is happy, constantly laughing with his friends. The smug look is replaced by a loving expression and his eyes twinkle every time he steals a glance at her.
I like to believe that he once loved me, but I also know that she’s the one for him. Forever and always, I could tell from every little gesture. From the moment he started talking about her in that small cafe the day I arrived up until the moment where he told her Journey was singing just for her when ‘Faithfully’ played on the radio as they dropped me off at the airport two days ago.
When I hugged Sam for the last time, she quietly howled and tried to lick my face. It was as if she felt that this was ‘farewell’ instead of ‘goodbye, see you soon’. After I put Sam back down on the ground I quickly said my goodbyes to them. I walked into the airport without looking back.
I left the pieces of my broken heart behind on the sidewalk.
-XxX-
His gaze left the screen and went back to her. She was still sitting on the other side of the bed, waiting patiently for him to finish reading. She wasn’t looking at him. Instead she was staring at the picture of the both of them, taken some day at his last tour, standing on the dresser. Her hands were tightly around his phone; ready to hand it to him as soon as he had finished reading. Sometimes he really wondered why he deserved someone like her. She seemed to good to be true.
Her eyes met his as she looked up from the phone.
“She sounds depressed,” he said. He tried to sound casual, but failed.
She smiled at his attempt to make it seem like he didn’t really care. Of course he did. Without a word she handed him the phone.
He took the phone from her hand and dialed the number. His breath got caught in his throat when he heard it ring. He slightly panicked when she didn’t pick up immediately.
-XxX-
Somewhere on the other side of the country a phone rang in the living room of a small apartment. Once, twice, three times before the answering machine picked up.
“Hey, it’s me. Are you home? Please pick up the phone if you are there!” Hís voice. It sounded worried, panicked. “Will you please call me as soon as you hear this? Reading your blog has gotten me worried… has gotten us worried. So please, call back when you hear this?!”
In the silence that followed her eyes kept staring at the phone from across the room. She slowly repeated the words in her head. Has gotten ús worried…
A single tear escaped her eyes and rolled down her cheek. It hit the ground at the same time as the bottle of sleeping pills that had fallen out of her hand. The remaining pills were scattered across the floor.
Her eyes never left the phone as she reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels standing besides her. She felt tired, drowsy, and it took some effort to bring the bottle to her lips. The smell of the brown liquid made her cringe in disgust and yet she gulped down everything what was left.
Even when the bottle fell from her hand and shattered to pieces she could not avert her gaze from the phone. It was as if the flickering red light from the answering machine was hypnotizing her.
“I really hope you are happy with her. I wish you well,” she whispered before finally closing her eyes.
His face was the last image that flashed through her mind before she slid into unconsciousness. She never realized her lips were tugged into a small smile as the slowing of her heartbeat finally made the pain disappear.