Chapter Twenty - Maddie
December 31st
New Year’s Eve
11:50 PM
“Here. It’s a regular-sized straw. I’ll pour the juice in a cup and you can drink it that way. OK? Please?” That’s me, talking to Tyler. The nurse gave up trying to get Tyler to drink from the juice box – which he says he won’t because the tiny straw freaks him out – and went back to the nurses’ station mumbling something about “bullshit way to spend New Year’s Eve.” But he has pills he’s supposed to take and he started choking when he attempted to dry-swallow them, and then he spit them back up.
I seriously don’t think I could love him more if I tried.
The fact that he can be the toughest son of a bitch I have ever met and the most hard-headed infant all at the same time is just... well. It’s perfect.
He tried to leave the ER last night and just go home, but then he collapsed on his way out the door, so the doctors insisted he be admitted. At least we were able to get him a private room. I can’t imagine we’d be here right now if he had to share a room with somebody. I can’t imagine it because he said, “I ain’t fuckin’ staying if I gotta share a room.”
The cops have been back a couple of times over the course of today. They actually just left a little while ago. We’ve now told them the whole story of exactly what happened three different times, but they just keep asking the same questions, always prefaced with some version of, “Let me make sure I’m getting this right.”
We called Robert and Evan in Paris to kind of fill them in on everything that’s happened. Evan wanted to jump on a plane and come straight back, but Tyler convinced him that there’s nothing they can do, and we’ll take care of stuff with the house. Although it’s possible they won’t be able to come home when they planned anyway, depending on how long their place is a crime scene. We had them on speaker and I did hear Robert saying in the background, “You didn’t teach him how to turn on the alarm?” Which is a fair question and caused me to wonder how long Logan had been watching us in the house after we got back. But then that thought creeped me out and I decided it doesn’t matter much now anyway.
We also gave the police Ricky’s card to have them confirm everything we were telling them with him, but I don’t know if they’ve been able to make contact. God only knows if Ricky’s even still got a job. I hope he’s OK. I wonder if we’ll ever see that guy again. I dunno.
“I don’t need no fuckin’ pills,” Tyler tells me now. “Seriously, babe. I’m fine. Know what? Let’s get out of here. We’ve got ten minutes. We can get to the Strip and at least see some fireworks. K? Fun times. Let’s go.” He throws the sheets off his legs and goes for the IV drip in his arm, but I manage to stop him before he pulls it out.
“Will you stop?” I implore. “Babe, we’re not leaving. Seriously. Give that up. We’ll be able to see fireworks from the window. Here, I’ll pull the shade up.” I do.
“Fuck,” he says, flopping back down. “I’m... Fuck. I’m sorry.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and stroke his cheek. “Why? For what? What are you sorry about?”
He bites at the inside of his mouth and lets out a sigh. “We should be in a fuckin’ treehouse and wearing loincloths and... I dunno. I’m sorry.”
“Babe,” I say, “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Nothing,” he mumbles. “Stupid.”
I turn to him now and say, “Listen to me. OK? Please? Can you listen for a second?” His lips purse, like he wants to protest, but then he relaxes and nods.
And I begin.
“So... I used to think that there was a right way to do everything. It was what I would tell myself to excuse the fact that things seemed to be so off track for me. Like, I just hadn’t figured out the right way yet, and the right way was out there and as soon as I could crack the code, everything would fall into place. You following me?”
He nods. I go on.
“And then you came back into my life, the way you did.”
“I’m—”
“And,” I cut him off, “I came back into yours. And, as we both well know, at that moment, it pretty much seemed like the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. In fact, I think I may have said words to that effect.”
“Yeah, I may have heard something about it.”
I kiss him on the forehead and go on. “But that’s only because of the simple fact that I had an idea of what the right way to straighten shit out for myself might look like and it didn’t, at all, resemble what was happening then. Right?”
“Sure.”
“But this”—I gesture between the two of us—“this is, by far, and without even close competition, the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Do you get that?”
He shrugs and half mumbles, “I dunno.”
“Well, if you don’t know, then you’re not paying attention. Because it is. You are. We are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And whether we’re in some magnificent hotel suite somewhere, or on a beach in Mexico being shot at by drug runners, or in a hospital room on New Year’s Eve, as long as it’s us, I’m good, babe. As long as we’re together, it is the right way for things to be. And I don’t know if you can believe that, or if I could even explain why it’s true, it just is. And so, while I now know that there isn’t and never will be a right way to do everything, I know that as long as we’re scaling Everest together, we’ll figure out the best way to do it. For us. And we’ll always reach the top. OK?”
There’s a long moment of silence while he just stares at the wall, away from me.
“Babe?” I ask. “What is it?”
“That was just so beautiful that I don’t wanna fuck it up by arguing that I would take the ‘being shot at by drug runners’ thing out of the speech, because that really did suck pretty bad.”
I close my eyes, shake my head, and smile. “Just take your pills, dumbass.” I stick the pills in his mouth and then place the straw to his lips as he sips.
Once he’s finished swallowing, he leans back and lets his head land on the pillow. He grimaces a teeny bit. “You OK?” I ask. “Hurt too bad?”
“Nah,” he says. “I think I’m just tired.”
“Well, stay up for a couple more minutes so that I can kiss you at midnight while you’re still awake, will ya?”
“Just a kiss?” he asks.
I look at him with arched eyebrows. “Why? What were you thinking?”
“I dunno.” He shrugs. “That Chuckie should get to ring in the new year too.”
I just start laughing, which I imagine I will be doing a lot of in the years to come, and I say, “You. Are. Insane.”
“You’re only just figuring that out?”
“No,” I say. “No, it’s been pretty obvious from the start.”
“Yeah? And that doesn’t freak you out? That you’ve hitched your wagon to an unpredictable maniac’s train?”
I press my head to his so that I can look right into his eyes. “No,” I say. “You wanna know why?”
He nods, and after I let out a small moan of want and desire and passion that lasts for several long moments, I tell him, with all the honesty that I feel in the depths of my once-filthy, currently being cleansed, evil, pure, devilish, angelic, and entirely contradictory soul that could never be satisfied with anyone more predictable...
“Because, Tyler Hudson Morgan, my love, there’s no one else it could’ve been.”