Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Ethan”
“We’re cool?” Hugh asks, slapping me on the back.
I take a sip of my beer to give me time to decide what the hell I’m feeling. The meeting with the guys went much as expected: Hugh the only one spewing, Linc and Taz watching us both to see how it ends, and me listening, saying nothing, and trying to figure out what the fuck I want to do.
The band for me is just like the worst kind of relationships I’ve known with girls. The kind I can’t make work and the kind I can’t make go away. Yep, like Tara…and Avery.
What I’m unsure of is if that means it’s something I want or something I should let go of. That part of the equation is never clear.
Do I want this?
Fuck, I don’t know.
We met on neutral territory—the shoddy rehearsal space we keep in Studio City—and it’s fucking hot, the ventilation system is piss poor, and all our gear is where we left it the last time we were in this space. All except for my brother’s. Someone packed up his gear—Hugh, probably—and seeing that almost made me walk out of here.
Then came the impossible to ignore absence of Avery. It wasn’t until I stepped through the door that I felt what it would mean not having her here and one of us. It’s different. Strange. Like an Indiana Jones movie without Marion.
I couldn’t stop from playing in my head the memory of her barging in six years ago to ask for a job, nor the hundred other snapshots of her here, there, doing something or doing nothing. When I looked at the couch against the wall, my first thought was “that’s where Avery sits while we jam.”
And like that, my emotions became strangling. My insides raced and my pulse ran with it, and I didn’t want to be here. That I didn’t leave shocked the hell out of me. And staying to hear Hugh out didn’t settle anything for me.
In fact, it shoved front and center in my face the more important changes in my life since the night at the Bowl and brought home that those were the things I wanted to be different, not being in the band with Hugh and the guys again.
My brother’s gone.
Avery’s gone as well.
And this place I’d come to know was nothing to me without either of them. A void on a road I didn’t want to be on.
For an hour, Hugh’s voice droned in apologies and grandiose promises from the label if I stayed, and the only thought turning in my head was what the fuck am I doing here?
I set down my beer and stand, shifting my gaze from the couch back to Hugh. “Yeah, we’re cool. I’m not sure what I want to do about the band yet, but the rest of the bullshit is in the rearview. We’re solid like we’ve always been.”
His fingers close around my shoulder to give me a shake. “You’re not quitting. I know you, E. We’ve worked too hard and you don’t ever quit anything. No matter what, we’re a band and always will be.”
“We’ll talk soon,” I reply, noncommittal, and move toward the door.
At the car, I find Dillon waiting, leaning against the hood, sipping a Coke. “We done?”
Without answering, I point for him to unlock the doors. Fucking security freak. Even standing with the car, he locks the damn doors.
“Where we going now?” he asks, scrunching the empty can and tossing it in a nearby trash can.
I shrug. “Can we just drive around for a while?”
“Sure. We can do anything you want.” He frowns, studying me from across the roof. “You doing OK, E? What happened? Is Black Dawn back together or did you bail?”
Bail? I don’t like how he phrased that. “Neither. I haven’t decided anything yet.”
He nods, his chin bobbing. “Nothing says you’ve gotta figure out things today.”
The problem is I want everything figured out right now.
I need everything absolute like it’d been two months ago. Now everything is up in the air—Eric, the band, Avery, and even Tara—and I can’t seem to get anything back to being good.
The car beeps and I climb in.
We drive for a while, then Dillon stares at me for several long seconds. “Did something happen at Tara’s today?”
I keep my gaze locked out the window. “No, man. Nothing. Why’d you ask me that?”
“You’ve been acting keyed-up since we left her house. You’ve gotta get past letting her fuck with your head. She’s Eric’s wife. Be happy she’s not yours and move on.”
My jaw clenches and I don’t look at him. “She’s not fucking with anything. And don’t talk to me about her that way again. You don’t know shit. Let it go.”
Another fifteen minutes pass without us speaking, and I’m not even sure where the hell we are. But who cares? I told him to drive. It doesn’t matter where we go. Everywhere seems to be the same for me these days: shit.
“Are you sure you’re OK, E? I’m sensing something from you I don’t like.”
Shit, why’s he asking me that again? “I’m great,” I say, wondering how the hell Dillon sees everything. “Just hot, tired, and ready for a beer.”
“A beer sounds good to me. Then maybe you’ll tell me what’s been bugging you since you left Tara’s.”
“Nothing to tell.”
He squints; the Dillon-not-buying-it expression. “You know what your problem is? You’ve not learned the value of talking things out before they become problems. You wing it alone and let shit fester and never get over anything.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I want talk to you about my life.”
“That’s fair. But don’t give me bullshit about everything being great when I can see that it’s not. We’re friends, you know. I’m here to help if you need it. And from where I’m sitting, you’ve got something heavy sitting on you, weighing you down.”
I roll my eyes at him, but the truth is I’ve felt like a fucking cement block has been lying on me since we pulled away from Eric’s house, but not over Tara as Dillon no doubt suspects.
The issue is Hana.
Every morning after breakfast, no matter what I call it—coffee with a girl, a date, hanging out—I go see Hana. I thought I was doing the right thing spending time with her each day. I thought it might help her not miss Eric, but today I realized it’s another mistake in the fucking long line of mistakes I’ve made.
We were just having our usual morning visit, lying on the backyard grass with her gibber-jabbering away, and my stomach dropped when I noticed she was twirling my hair around her fingers, tying me to her.
A gesture I’d seen a hundred times.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that she might confuse me with her dad, seeing as we’re identical twins and she’s a little girl. But it freaked me out.
She’d never done that with me before, only with Eric, and it made me feel like a piece of shit. Like I’d invaded his turf and that his daughter might be turning me into a replacement for him.
Eric won’t be gone forever.
Even if he never came back it wouldn’t change reality.
He’s her father.
I’m not.
And Hana adores him.
Only the worst kind of bastard would try to come between that. And I have no right to foul this up for him, unintentional or otherwise. That made me wonder if I’d been doing that all along, overstepped with my brother’s family unknowingly, making things harder for him even before he skipped town.
That’s when all the shit Kaley’s yapped at me started to make sense. How my always being so involved with Tara and Hana wasn’t a good thing. And for the first time I got what she’d been telling me, that it was time to put some distance between me and Eric’s family.
I couldn’t let myself become Hana and Tara’s substitute for him. Worse, I haven’t a clue how to fix the damage I’ve already done or how to step back.
And I’ve no one to blame for this but me.
That’s when the cement truck parked on my chest. When I realized Eric doesn’t own every broken thing in my life.
I own this.
My screwup, not his.
And with that came more truth I hadn’t let myself admit. It isn’t only Eric’s fault my life is in the same shit pit as his. Each decision that brought me there I made.
After Eric married Tara I could have taken off back to school, gone on with my life as planned, but I didn’t. I stayed and told myself someone needed to watch out for her and hold my brother together for her sake.
I could have let the band self-destruct months ago, but I held the guys together and told myself I did it for Eric.
I could have tried to get something going with Avery long before Eric did, but I convinced myself it wasn’t right and by staying away I was helping to save her from him.
I don’t know how it happened, but our lives are some sort of weird interlocked yin and yang. Everything the same. How we look, down to how we wear our hair. The band. Our friends. Avery. Tara and Hana.
Down to the ugly reality: we’re both fuckups.
I just wear my suckiness better.
And the truth I’ve refused to let into my head is that no one can make you a fuckup unless you’re willing.
That’s what Grandpa Jack always used to say to us.
Right before he’d tell us, “Don’t be a fuckup.”
But that part I missed.