Chapter 25
Voicemail ~ Gray
During the journey back to New York I had a lot to think about. The little I could remember about my mother made sense in some ways. She wasn’t tactile with my dad at all when I was a small boy. There was always a strained atmosphere in the house when my dad came home from work. Most of the time I’d felt like she didn’t like him.
I used to think she just hadn’t loved me enough to stay, but from what my dad said, I wondered if my mother was actually capable of love. My thoughts were still playing heavily on my mind by the time I slid my key in the lock and dumped my carry-on in the hallway of my apartment.
My apartment in New York was vastly different to my London one. Polished, rosewood flooring in contrast to the dull, unvarnished oak in my pad at home. Floor to ceiling windows that looked out across the Hudson River was a much more appealing view than my apartment in Docklands in London.
I hit the answerphone and took two paces toward the kitchen. “Message received. Friday June 28th at 6:42 pm,” the machine began and my heart stalled, reacting immediately in shock at the voice in the first message.
“H...hi…umm, Gray. I hope this is your number I’m speaking to. When it rang, it changed tones so I don’t know if I’ve gone to an answering service or your phone diverted. Umm…it’s me, Hettie. I…umm know it’s been a long time but I want to apologize for the way I behaved when we were last together. It was…weird, right? I think it was the aftermath of Harris that made me behave like that. That, and you suddenly being here again after so many years. I know it’s probably too late because it’s been a long time since we met up, but I just wanted to…okay…well, I umm…I just wanted to say sorry.” I heard a long sigh and a click ended the call.
Fuck. The message was almost six weeks old and it had been well over a year since I’d met up with her again. My heart raced at the sound of her voice, but squeezed painfully to think that she’d think I had snubbed her when she had reached out. I wondered if she’d seen pictures of me and Phoebe, they’d been everywhere on the internet. I pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, snapped the cap, and swallowed three quarters of the clear liquid while I listened to the other nine messages that were on there. Placing the plastic bottle on the side, I went back and listened to hers again.
On impulse, I picked up the handset with the intention of calling her back, but the stuff Brody said was at the back of my mind; where it had been ever since our conversation at his place. If I called her what would that mean to her?
Instead of calling her back, I thumbed through the cards in my wallet and pulled out the one I thought I was done with, but had kept there just the same. Flicking it between my fingers, I debated whether or not I really needed to make that contact. The fact I still had it and was thinking about it, I knew there was nothing to lose…apart from the doctor’s fee.
“Can’t say I’m surprised to hear from you again, Gray,” Doctor Fleur said when I called her private number. She’d given me her ‘safe’ number to protect our privacy because I was famous. Her integrity was important to her, and I could see how smart she was to think about keeping our sessions totally confidential. As soon as I confirmed the appointment I deleted all messages on my machine, apart from one—Hettie’s.
****
Following extensive psychotherapy sessions my counselor believed there was indeed a problem, and after the emotional journey I had taken she decided the root of my issues with women was born from a mistrust of others…more specifically females. In her view, I was scared to get close; drawing an imaginary line in the sand, for fear they’d abandon me.
To prove her theory and to support my recovery, she suggested working together with her and a cognitive behavioral therapist. The idea being, both shrinks would set out strategies and give me notes to refer to as I went about my daily living. At first I felt stupid, but once I had cut through my own bullshit excuses for how I behaved, I was eager to change my ways. After a while, I decided there may be some truth in some of the things they told me and I knew I had nothing to lose except the dollars I paid them. The last thing I expected was the lasting impact their treatment would have.
Slowly over time, a gradual change affected the way I felt inside. There were times it had felt unfamiliar and disturbing, while at others I felt euphoric. As time passed, I developed more understanding of how to ‘heal’ myself from their guidance. The support I received from them both was incredible. Fleur and I talked by phone every evening and my cognitive therapist, Mike, and I spoke once a week. I think the fact he was a guy like me helped me accept some of the stuff he told me.
With Fleur and Mike’s patience and their understanding for my needs, I began to shift my views on some aspects of relationships. They both advised no relationships for a while, which wasn’t hard considering I didn’t have anyone to have a relationship with, and for a while I didn’t get to satisfy my physical needs, so I could concentrate on the emotional ones.
When Dad heard I’d gone down the therapy route instead of hanging myself in angst, he bit the bullet and did the same. Choked with emotion, I told him how happy I was he’d sought help. Hearing that he was finally facing his demons head-on made my chest feel lighter because he was still a relatively young man at fifty-one, and I didn’t want him to be alone in his twilight years. It was an odd feeling to think that way, because before Fleur and Mike’s input I had never really considered his future.
Brody commented that I was reacting more to positive things that happened, when they happened. I couldn’t figure out what he meant until Fleur told me that spontaneity was a better reaction than an impulsive one, and from the examples she gave me about things I had told her, I could see what she meant.
Even though I found it a bit embarrassing to talk to Brody about my feelings, he was there for me. Most guys wouldn’t have recognized there was anything wrong. In fact, I’d go as far as to say if he hadn’t challenged me about Phoebe, I’d have gone through life making the same mistakes, completely oblivious to my faults.
Previously, I usually acted the second an idea came into my head. Mike said that was because I couldn’t contain the emotion the idea had sparked. He suggested I’d taken risks without calculating them. A spontaneous reaction was one I considered and decided to act on because I felt emotionally confident to do it. I had to admit, I’d made some bad decisions in the past and I readily accepted most were due to my lack of self-control.
I had also recognized early on in my days with the band, that I had an addictive nature. I believe I owe the warnings around them not to have dabbled in drugs. Alcohol aside, I had tried to maintain a healthy body, and after talking extensively to Fleur, I felt determined to do as they asked. I was well on my way to accepting that not all people were going to leave me the way my mother had.
Slowly but surely, with the help from my health team and bandmates I began to take the bubble wrap off my feelings and found myself reacting with positive, as well as my usual negative feelings. Feeling upset and feeling hurt were different. Feeling happy was different to feeling like I was having fun. It was only then that I understood I had suppressed most positive emotional feelings and focused on the physical ones apart from most of the unpleasant ones.
Luckily, we’d been in the studio cutting our new album, and only did a few one-off gigs that weren’t that stringent to our routines. It all helped me concentrate on my mental attitude to life and how I related to others.
Skype calls with B were a godsend. I viewed her like some kind of guardian angel the way she’d come on the scene that night I went out with Caleb. I reached out to her after our initial meeting to let her know I appreciated her keeping my confidence. My initial two-minute call that I had thought I was making lasted for almost four hours. I’d never met anyone who was as easy to talk to, who asked the right questions, and knew when to listen. When our call ended, I had an idea she would be in my life for a long time to come.
During my therapy appointments, I mentioned Hettie with increasing frequency during my conversations. Fleur listened and jotted things down but never commented on my thoughts about her.
At first, I had thought the behavioral exercises the cognitive therapist gave me appeared pretty pointless. I felt quite insulted at the basic childish level he set the exercises to help me connect how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors connected and interacted with each other. He gave me paper exercise sheets that asked me to identify what thought led to a particular feeling, and what my reaction was to it. I also kept a diary pouring out how certain situations I had found myself in made me feel.
Through constant repetition of these he helped me to develop useful strategies and through our frequent discussions I began to realize I had closed my mind off to certain feelings because they had made me feel either hurt or vulnerable.
For months, I felt in chaos as I worked on challenging my feelings until I could instinctively recognize how I felt during interactions with others, and how those feelings shaped the decisions I made in situations. After another nine months of working intensively with my counselors there was definite progress. But replacing over twenty years of ignoring my feelings after my mum left, the impact of opening up to a whole range of feelings I’d closed off was pretty intense.
Each of my bandmates had made several comments about how much I’d changed. And I noticed several things myself; the main ones being that I didn’t find Caleb as irritating as I had before, and through keeping notes in my diary, I recognized I did love Phoebe, just like I loved my dad and Brody. It was the same warm feeling of being close, being accepted, I had with her, but I wasn’t in love. Fleur agreed if my love for Phoebe felt the same as it was for Brody then I’d done the right thing leaving her behind. I felt relieved when she confirmed this, because all I’d had to go on at the time was gut instinct.
Keeping a record of my feelings began to have meaning and I found myself connecting my jottings to the lyrics of some of the songs I’d written. Before my therapy, my songs were clever, but the words sounded mechanical. My newer ones weren’t observational verses; the words were packed with emotion, which had a far greater impact when they were set to music than anything I had written previously.
So often when I’d heard a great song in the past I used to think, damn, I wish I could have written that, and gradually the more I wrote the nearer mine began to sound like they were of a similar quality; mainly because my heart was involved and every raw feeling I’d blocked since my mother had left me flowed onto the pages.
During the time I was working things out, Hettie’s message had stayed idle on my phone. I couldn’t bring myself to delete it, and yet I had never returned her call. The day I felt ready to deal with her was the day I heard we were to fly down to Miami, first for a meeting and some up-to-date photoshoots, followed by a four-day layover in South Beach. After that it was on to the Midwest for a week and a half of gigs.
Deciding to call Hettie was a big gamble. But it had been one of my careful decisions where I weighed up the pros and cons of the call. It certainly wasn’t impulsive after the amount of time that had passed. For many months her name had dropped into conversation and I had made constant references to Hettie’s voice message during my appointments, but every time Fleur had asked if I wanted to call her back I had told her no. I knew by then Hettie had made me feel vulnerable since day one, and I was afraid of being hurt. That changed the second I heard the word Miami fall out of Brody’s mouth.
Even though it had been almost two years, I wanted to see her again and became obsessed by the thought. Initially, I fought the urge, worried I’d be turning over old soil, but after I had slept on my urge to get in touch with her, my longing had only grown stronger. By the following evening the burning desire to hear her voice was so distracting that I simply had to do it.
I figured she would be angry I had left it so long, but with Hettie there had always been unfinished business to take care of. We had been due to leave the following day and by the evening I’d be back treading the familiar boardwalk at South Beach. My breathing quickened and I reached for my home phone.
Picking up the handset I took a deep breath and listened to the message on the answerphone again after it had sat quiet for almost a year. There were things about it I hadn’t heard before; vulnerability, anxiety, and her sad, remorseful tone. The other thing I noticed was the effect hearing her voice had had on me, my heart galloped at the sound of her sweet American accent.
Through the rapid heartbeat thumping in my ear I heard the line connect. My mouth went dry, and even though I never got nervous going on stage, the thought of her answering made my body tremor in anticipation. After the first ring, I held my breath, and after it had rung so many times I was sure the call was going to cut to voicemail, she finally answered.
“Hello?”
“Hettie?”
When she didn’t answer immediately, I felt less confident than I had before I made the call. A few seconds of silence later, she replied.
“What?” She sounded breathless, like she’d been running.
“Why are you out of breath, baby?”
“I’m out running,” she snapped like she was annoyed I’d interrupted her.
“I got your message.” I smirked at my reply. It was totally lame.
Hettie scoffed, “And you’re calling back now?” she asked, her voice airing her disbelief, through short heavy pants of breath. It made my dick twitch.
“I know…I had stuff going on. It wasn’t the right time to speak to you.”
“Meaning it is now?”
“That depends…on you of course.”
“I only called to say sorry for behaving all weird toward you…I was in an uncomfortable place in my life when we last met. When you turned up like a genie from a lamp—”
“I get it. And I fucked up epically by asking a girl I had brought with me to book a hotel room for you and me. Trust me, Hettie, I wasn’t thinking about fucking you that day. Well, after I held you in the diner I wanted to of course, but that’s not what I thought was going to happen when I took you there.”
“You always wanted to. What was different about that day, Gray?”
“How you looked at me in the diner…you looked sad, like you had a heavy load on your mind. Please believe me; I took you there to talk. Anyhow, the next time we met I didn’t expect the night to end the way it did. It was incredible, Hettie, and I wanted to tell you that when I called…what happened between us meant a lot, it’s been on my mind…often—”
“It was a stupid decision. A moment of weakness but what’s done is done.” From the sound of her voice she didn’t mean that.
“That’s a pity. It didn’t feel stupid to me at the time, but it’s how we go forward that matters now.”
“It is? We’re going forward?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. If you feel you can forgive me…again. I rang because I want to ask if you want to hang out with me sometime. Maybe a lunch date…or a picnic on the beach. Nothing involved, just two friends hanging out. Will you give me time to the clear the air between us? I’m gonna be in Miami from tomorrow for four days. I’d love to see you again.”
“Just to hang out?”
“Yes, friends, right? Can’t have too many of those.”
“You said that before to me once…then you left.”
“0uch, are we going back or forward, Hettie?” I knew it was a long shot that she’d let it go but at least I would have tried.
“Forward. I can forgive, but I can’t forget. It was hard after being with you again. I felt bereaved losing that again, but my heart was already bruised from my break up with Harris, so I can’t contribute it solely to you. After I called and you didn’t reply I had to move on—”
“I can’t explain about that,”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m in a much happier place now. Yes, Gray, I can come to the beach,” she agreed. My heart flipped over with excitement that she still wanted to see me, but I was under no illusion our meeting would be smooth sailing.
“Fantastic. Shall we say outside JoeJoe’s at what? 11:00 am the day after tomorrow?”
“Sure, I’ll be there,” she confirmed quickly, and her voice sounded like she was looking forward to it. When I concluded the call, I couldn’t wait to get to Miami. Afterward, I packed my carry-on and dumped all the rest of my shit into three large, expanding suitcases. I called the car service to take the luggage to the airport ahead of me then spent my night catching up bingeing on a TV series.
****
The following day was a long one; we were up early and spent an hour sitting around at JFK. The two-hour flight down to Miami International Airport was followed by a short transfer to South Beach. After a quick shower, and a change of clothes to adjust to the humidity, we had a meeting with our manager, David, who ran through the schedule with our band’s PA and promoters. Later when we’d caught up on all the news, I was starved and in need of a good drink.
Surge patted my back as we were filing out the door; his large hand slapped me firmly between the shoulder blades. “I’m heading to a sports bar to watch the football game, wanna tag along with me?”
“Yeah, sounds good, give me a few to speak to Brody. I doubt he’ll surface again until we’re on the bus on Tuesday,” I said with a smirk, nodding my head at the way he had almost every limb wrapped around Dana’s body.
When Brody gave information about his suite number and his plans for his days off, I was more than ready for a relaxing night with Surge. People knew who we were by that stage in the US. Most did anyway, but sports bars were the perfect hang out because it was predominantly men on football game night.
The one Surge had chosen only had three females in the whole place, and that suited me just fine because my mind wasn’t on getting laid, it was on seeing Hettie again. I had no idea what I was going to say to her and I found myself rehearsing conversations in my head. I was more nervous about seeing her this time than I had ever been before. I think the anticipation of seeing Hettie again was the point where I began to learn that being in touch with your feelings didn’t always make you feel great.
It was almost 2:00 am when we left the bar after a great steak dinner, and four double whiskeys. My earlier anxiety had subsided and I felt mellow and relaxed. Surge had been great company, and we’d laughed with a couple of fans who began to talk to us right after the game. It was purely a night of escapism from everything else that we had going on.
Swapping funny gig stories with the fans reminded me how amazing our experiences had been up until I hooked up with Phoebe and pulled Hettie back into the mix. As I slid between the sheets that night, it had been Hettie’s face I’d visualized since I’d left London, not Phoebe’s.