Caleb

I was in a dark, deep well, and no one would ever find me. The sun rose and set and rose again, and I hung on by my fingernails, telling myself that the next day—the next—that’s when it would be better. Bearable. But I was drowning and I knew it.

I called Rhys to come and take my truck away, and when he was leaving with the keys, I stopped him, and gave him all my shoes to take away, too, so I couldn’t leave the house unless I wanted to walk somewhere barefoot.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered as I passed him the bag of shoes. I couldn’t even meet his eyes. He dropped the shoes and pulled me into one of his epic hugs, the kind that made you feel warm and buoyed, like you could let go and lift your feet and you’d still be held.

“Don’t ever apologize for doing what you need to be okay,” he said.

But still the shame trickled through me like ice water.

The next day, he showed up with groceries. One bag was just the basics—eggs, bread, peanut butter, cheese, turkey, and some veggies and potatoes (“Heaven forfend you can’t make your hash,” he explained). But the other bag was full of candy, cake mix, cans of frosting, chips, spray cheese, and ice cream.

When I raised an eyebrow at him, he held up his hands and said, “That’s from Matty. He said when you’re trying not to do one thing you’ve got to distract yourself with another. I told him you’d never had much of a sweet tooth, but he insisted.”

“Yeah, well, someone should tell him they’ve done experiments on mice and determined sugar’s more addictive than crack,” I said. Even as I spoke, I ripped open the bag of Sour Patch Kids and shoved some in my mouth. “But thank him for me, anyway. Jesus! These things’ll burn your damn mouth out.” The sour scrape of the sugar gave way to a soft sweetness underneath and I chewed the candy and swallowed. “Fuck my life,” I said, because I immediately wanted another handful. “This shit should be illegal.”

Rhys ate some. Then ate some more.

“That how it is now, then?”

“What?”

He opened the bag of potato chips and crammed some in his mouth.

“You,” he said, mouth full. “Afraid that everything you like means you’re addicted instead of just…I dunno. Appreciative.”

I snatched the chips away from him.

“Fuck off,” I said, but there was no heat behind it. I’d already said the same thing often enough myself.

“You killed it with Theo because…?” he prompted.

“I didn’t…Jesus, I didn’t kill it. I got overwhelmed. I…”

I ran away. And then I didn’t call. And then I kept not calling. And then I didn’t answer the phone.

“That’s for damn sure.” Rhys’s mildness irritated me and I started throwing the groceries into the fridge and cabinets.

“Oy, you’re gonna break the eggs, ya fuckwaffle,” he said, elbowing me out of the way.

I snorted at fuckwaffle, but Rhys’s expression was serious.

“Explain it to me, then,” he said. “You’re not afraid of commitment, you’re not interested in anyone else, you obviously love the shit outta Theo. So, if it’s not you having a panic attack at the idea that maybe you’re…dependent on him, and you think that’s bad because it’s addiction, then what?”

“He loves me.”

“Duh.”

“No, I mean, he said it. For the first time.”

“And what did you say when he said I love you?”

“Uh. Nothing.”

“Wow, son.”

“I—no, I mean, he didn’t really pause after that. It was kind of part of his whole…rant about wanting to quit the band.”

“Lord have mercy, you absolute horse’s ass. So, he said I love you and you dismissed it because of other stuff, so not only did you not say it back, but then you got into a huge fight, you freaked, and then you ran away.”

Fuck my life.

“Um. I suppose it could be summarized like that.”

“Caleb.” Rhys’s voice was the one he used when someone’s behavior pained him so much he couldn’t express it, so I cut him off before he could call me a horse’s ass again.

“Look, Rhys, this is always what was gonna happen, you know? It was—”

Rhys snorted. “This? This, meaning a rock star falling in love with you and then confessing to you that as a result of hating being a rock star, he wants to quit one of the best rock bands to come out in the last five years? That was always gonna happen. Man, I forgot that you’re totally psychic. Sorry, what’s the spread on tomorrow’s game gonna be, ’cause Matty wants to go on vacation to Croatia.”

“Screw you, I— Wait, why Croatia?”

He threw his hands up.

“Speak now or forever hold your fuckin’ peace, Whitman, okay? What the shit is wrong with you?”

Rhys’s eyes were so familiar that looking at him was almost like looking in a mirror. He was here for me, I knew it. Whatever I said, he’d hang.

After Theo and I had performed our song in New Orleans, I’d watched Riven’s set from the wings. Though I’d seen a hundred videos of Theo performing on YouTube, it was the only time I’d ever seen him live. And he blew me away. There were performers with amazing voices, and performers with great stage presence, performers who could wrap a crowd around their finger, and performers who loved to sing even if the crowd wasn’t with them. Theo was all of these and more. His voice rang out clear, rich, resonant, then gravelly in the lower register, high notes as sharp and cutting as glass.

It wasn’t just his voice, it was everything. He connected with the crowd even as he made it clear he was there for himself, he was sexy as fuck but it looked natural, just an excess of desire for the music leaking out into the crowd.

I watched him with awe, and only realized I was holding my breath through every song when I finally let it out. Because what I saw was pure joy. The pure joy of someone doing what he was meant to do. And even though I knew he wasn’t happy with how he had to do it, to take it away from him felt like a crime.

“I can’t let him give up his whole life and then have nothing but me, because…”

“Because,” Rhys prompted.

“Because if all he has is me then he doesn’t have shit!”

“Oh, babe.” Rhys’s eyes went soft, his voice was sadness and sympathy, and his hands on my shoulders heavy.

“Don’t,” I muttered, because Matty didn’t like to hear Rhys call me that.

“Caleb. Fucking look at me. Two things—three things. Number one. Just because he wants to quit the band doesn’t mean he’s just gonna lie around the house all day wanting to express his undying devotion to you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Number two. It’s not your place to let him do anything. You ain’t his manager, and you ain’t his daddy. This isn’t your choice. Accept the things you can’t change, right?”

“Do not quote AA to me, you absolute fucker.”

“Number three. And this is the important one, so I’m saying it last, for emphasis and shit.” He backed me against the counter and looked at me, eyes utterly serious. “Loving and being loved by you is a fucking honor. It isn’t nothing. You aren’t nothing. There isn’t anything you can say to me that would make me change my mind about that. Do you hear me?”

I opened my mouth, and all that came out was a sob. Rhys caught me in a fierce hug and I bawled my fucking eyes out. Couldn’t stop. Finally, I pulled away enough to speak.

“I fucked things up between you and me,” I said. “I fucked up every relationship I ever had.”

Rhys pressed his fingers to my lips.

“You fucked those relationships up because you were on drugs, Caleb. Plain and simple. You were then, and now you’re not. The end.”

And the thing that kind of broke my heart was that, to Rhys, it really was that simple.

I didn’t know how to explain it to him. The feeling of not being able to trust myself. The possibility that I was the quicksand someone else could slowly drown in. The gut-twisting terror that just by loving them, I might be condemning them to being ruined by me.

Huey had told me that there would come a point where I just had to trust myself. But what if that point never came? How could I keep Theo on the hook when even I didn’t know if I’d ever get there?

“I love him too much,” I choked out.

“No such thing as too much love,” Rhys said. “Only question is, would you do good things with it.”

“Good things,” I echoed blankly.

“Yeah. Say you’re together. Would you treat him good, be kind to him, support him, listen to him, all that shit. Well, would you?”

“I—yeah, of course. What is—?”

“Caleb. My oldest friend.” Rhys clasped my forearms like we were in some battle movie about Roman soldiers. “I love you. I really do. But you’re being a jackass and making a huge mistake. You’re fucking up the best thing in your life. And you’re fucking it up because you’re scared. It’s not complicated.”

I started to protest but he didn’t let me.

“No. I know you think I oversimplify. I know shit is always complicated to you. And, yeah, I know just ’cause something’s simple don’t make it easy to do. But that’s all this is. You love him. You’re scared. That’s how love fucking goes, buddy.”

“I wasn’t scared with you,” I said. And I’d never thought about it that way before, but it was true. Rhys’s expression was knowing, gentle.

“I know, babe. Because you weren’t in love with me that way. You loved me—I know that,” he said quickly, as I started to protest. “But it was easy between us. We made a great team, we had a lot of fun. Sex wasn’t too shabby.” He winked. “But you weren’t afraid with me because the idea of losing me didn’t rip you apart. Get it?”

“Maybe.”

I let the silence stretch on. I pictured Theo’s face when he’d launched himself at me that morning. How happy he was to see me, and how I’d felt the same. I played back the sound of his voice when he told me about wanting to quit. About how much he hated his life. About how I’d helped him see that maybe he had other choices. Sweet Theo, who had told me that if he had my love then he didn’t need the adoration of strangers. If.

I just need you to love me. That’s what he had said. And I’d said…nothing.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, god. I really fucked up. Again.” I looked up at Rhys.

“You really fucked up.”

“What the hell do I do?”

“Uh. Well, you know I’m not much for grand gestures, but you should probably apologize for being a massive blockhead. And—I dunno—maybe consider telling him you love him back.”

I just stared at him, my mind a blank. Rhys face-palmed and glared at me. Then he grabbed back the bag of chips we’d been eating.

“You don’t even deserve these, I’m taking them with me.”

He walked out the door and directly to his truck, then he came back, something else in hand, chips nowhere in sight.

“You’re seriously taking my chips?”

“Fuck off.”

He put a pair of my shoes inside the door, shot me a pointed look, and turned around to leave again.

“Rhys,” I called, when he got to the bottom of the stairs. “Were you scared? With me?”

His eyes widened and he shoved his hands in his pockets. Then he did something he’d never done to me before. He didn’t answer.

---

The next morning when I woke up, I went to sit on the porch and saw that Rhys had returned my truck, but it was still two more days before I could make myself drive it. I kept playing my conversation with Rhys over and over in my head, and I kept thinking about Matty sending the bag of groceries and saying that when you try to avoid one thing, you need something else to distract you.

I didn’t think Theo had been a distraction from drugs and alcohol, though I’d heard enough stories in AA and NA meetings to make me very aware of the risk. I was thinking about it in general, though. The idea that things replaced one another. Living with huge, gaping absences was nearly impossible. Things crept in, making places for themselves in your life, and the less time and energy you spent on one thing, the more you allocated to another.

It was easier to edge out one longing with another longing than it was to sit and stare at things you couldn’t have.

I had fallen into drinking as a kid, curious what the appeal was to my father, and then happy to ease the way with other people, in situations where the music wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out my thoughts.

As I toured more, had more opportunities, more fans, the drugs were just there. I’d slipped into heroin as easily and undramatically as that first needle had slipped beneath my skin. It had felt good to feel good, that was all. I didn’t even consider that I might be addicted to feeling good until I realized how terrible it felt to feel bad, and realized I must not have felt it in a while.

One morning, after I’d shot up for the third or fourth time, I woke up in the back of Rhys’s truck, and saw the gleaming crystal waters of a lake. We were in Montana, us and three other guys, on our way to a gig two days later, with time to spare, so we stopped. The sun glinted off the water and I stood up in the truck bed, feeling a bit mossy, but fine. Nothing like a hangover. Nothing like snorting, or pills. Just a little floaty. Fine.

I stood, and I spun in a slow circle, my arms out to the sun and the wind and the flat of the land. And when I looked, it was like I could see the entire world, stretching away from me in every direction. Standing there, I was at the center. I mattered. The music mattered. Rhys and our friends mattered.

I wanted to be at the center of my own life again. I wanted to matter. For the music to matter. I wanted all of it. And I wanted it with Theo.

I grabbed some of the stuff from Matty’s bag and started making a cake. I needed to think, but I needed something to do with my damn hands that wasn’t smoking. It seemed like almost everyone I knew in recovery had at least a pack-a-day habit. But if I was going to try and do this again, then I needed my voice. Besides, a tiny voice in the back of my mind added, Theo would kick your ass if you got lung cancer.

I made the box of vanilla cake with only one minor incident of the cakes sticking to the counter because apparently I needed some kind of rack. I felt calmer, just seeing something I’d made sitting on a plate in front of me. So I made the other box of cake, a chocolate one. And I stacked them all together—chocolate, vanilla, chocolate, vanilla—using both tubs of frosting, until I had a very tall, slightly wobbly cake. I swiped my finger through the frosting and ate it, but the chemical bite of the sugar was too much.

I’d take beignets over boxed cake any day.

I ate some more of the Sour Patch Kids, the roof of my mouth raw from them long before the sweetness came. And I knew what I had to do.

If I wanted to make a life with all the things I loved at the center, then I needed a way to get Theo back.

---

The traffic coming into the city had been terrible and my nerves were frayed by the time I found a place to park about five blocks away from Huey’s, and I sank down at the bar with a huge sigh.

“Whit.” Huey nodded solemnly at me. Too solemnly.

“Did, uh. Did Rhys call you?”

Huey froze. It would’ve been imperceptible if I didn’t know him so well, but I saw it.

“No. Should he have?”

“Oh. No. What’s up?”

He narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms, biceps bulging over his broad chest.

“What’s up with you, kid?”

“Is this like that ‘Who’s on first’ thing you think is funny?”

Huey raised his middle finger at me mildly, and got me a ginger ale, saying nothing. I sighed.

“I didn’t stumble. I just had a bad week, that’s all. I had Rhys come and take my truck. Thought he might call you to try and babysit me or something.”

Relief flashed over Huey’s face and he squeezed my forearm.

“Nah, but he should’ve.”

I shrugged. If Rhys didn’t call Huey, that meant he wasn’t that worried. That he thought I’d be okay. A small flame of satisfaction kindled in my stomach.

“Wait, then why did you look all grim when I walked in?”

“Not grim,” Huey said, frowning deeply, and I smiled. “I just heard the news about your boy and I wasn’t sure if there was some…scandal or whatever you musician types get up to.”

“News? What news? Scandal? What?”

Huey narrowed his eyes. “About him leaving the band.”

At my silence and wide eyes, Huey dug his phone out of his pocket, tapped on something, and slid it over to me. There, in the arts and leisure section, was Theo, his silvery-blue eyes, rimmed in kohl, staring out at me, beautiful and haunting.

“Reluctant Rock Star Rends Riven,” the headline announced. My heart was pounding and I skimmed the article for quotes. “I love my bandmates. I love the music we’ve made together. I loved being a part of Riven. But now it’s time for me to make something on my own,” Theo had said. And, “I’ve been so unimaginably lucky to get to do what I love for a living. I hope fans might still want to listen to my music in the future.” And, in response to the interviewer’s hopeful question, “Is there discord in the band?”: “No, no way. I just have things I need to do alone—or, I don’t know, maybe not alone. I hope not.”

The writer concluded the article by musing that Theo’s last comment was likely a reference to joining a different band, and threw out a few possibilities of which bands it could be. “Or perhaps we’re looking at the next Bone Sifter supergroup. This reporter, for one, would be in the front row.”

But I felt a jolt of hope when I read Theo’s words. Maybe not alone. I hope not. Because I felt just the same.

“Fuck,” I said, sliding the phone back to Huey. “I didn’t know he’d gone through with it.”

“Oh?”

Sometimes I played a game with myself to see how many one-word responses Huey could throw into a single conversation. The record so far was two hundred, but that had been a long night of talking.

“We had a fight. A bad one. My fault, mostly. No. Entirely. My fault entirely. And I came here to ask you a favor. But now…”

I did a scan of what it meant that Theo had gone through with this, and what I came up with, if I were honest, was relief. Because if he’d chosen to do this on his own, then it couldn’t be my fault if he regretted it. He couldn’t hate me for it.

“Now?”

“Okay, I still need your help. And a really big dolly.”

Huey raised his eyebrows at me and grinned.