His laughter turned to an altogether more acceptable sound. “Eric was in the band all during high school. Helped me put it together, actually. We were tight back then. His parents only live a street over, so we pretty much grew up together…”
“What happened?”
“Same things that’s happening now. He fucked it up with the band. He was always screwing around, never taking the group seriously. All he had to do was learn how to hit the fucking drums in time, but was he able to do it?” He held my hand to his chest, heart pounding away against the back of my hand. It felt strong, good, like the man it lay within. “Not a chance. I warned him, if he didn’t get his act together then he wasn’t coming west with us after graduation. Guess he didn’t believe me. Time came and I had to tell him he was out. He didn’t take it well.”
I sucked in a breath, blowing it out between pursed lips. “Hell. That must have sucked. Now I know why you were nervous about showing up to work at the Dive Bar.”
“Yeah.” He said no more.
We lay in silence, holding hands, ever so slowly dozing off to sleep. Despite my busy mind, exhaustion called to me loud and clear. Sheets and pillow smelling of Vaughan, the heat of his body right next to mine and a cool early morning summer breeze blowing in through the window. My own personal paradise. God, if anything I was overtired. The weight of my body seemed to have tripled, and yet, it felt light as a feather at the same time. Like I could feel myself sinking through the mattress and floating off into the ether, attached to the earth only by Vaughan’s hand. I wanted to float there forever, having sweet dreams.
I wondered how Chris and Paul were doing, living it up in Hawaii. Interesting, the thought could almost drift through my brain without me wanting to go into a berserker rage and set fire to shit. Almost. The time Chris and I had spent together, the wedding that never was, all of it just kind of free-fell through my mind.
Beside me, Vaughan’s bare chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm. All of his immaculate ink no more than a blur in the low light. The eye that I could see was closed, his poor battered face relaxed.
“I didn’t love Chris like I should have,” I whispered. “I think I was just lonely and all the attention … I don’t know, it went to my head or something. But it wasn’t real.”
He didn’t move. Nothing changed. The night went on.
I stared back up at his bedroom ceiling, my old friend. It made as good a witness to my confession as any. “In two and a half days I think I’ve honestly come to feel more for you than I ever felt for him. It’s different, though. I thought I knew exactly how life would be with Chris. What we’d do, how we’d be together. He fit into this mold that I thought I wanted and understood, and you don’t.”
I rolled my eyes back, moaning at my own drama-itis. Nothing made sense. Everything perplexed me. Vaughan Hewson had my vagina on insta-dial if he could just figure it out. Pathetic, crazy, and all the rest. Hang my sad sore heart to dry and be done with it already. Gah.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I wouldn’t give up a second with you for all the months of being lied to and manipulated by him, as insane as that sounds. That’s all. The end.”
There, it was out there, floating around in the universe. The truth as I knew it released.
God, it felt like some mammoth weight, some big cumbersome bastard, had been lifted off me and thrown into the abyss. Down and down into the darkness.
Let the new day begin and all of yesterday’s crap go. I was done with it. It hurt, it cost me, and I was done with it. I’d lived, I’d learned, et cetera.
Wisdom came at a bitch of a price. But I’d paid it and now I’d move on.
“Babe,” said a voice in the darkness, grasping my hand.
“I thought you were asleep,” I said, voice weirdly clogged. I guess throwing off your emotional crap into the depths of space took a toll on your nasal cavities. “Are you in pain? Do you need me to get you something?”
“No. Just stay with me.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
“Are you drunk?”
“No,” I said, feeling myself inside and out. “No, I don’t think so. I think it wore off a while back.”
“’kay.”
Silence.
“Lydia, the band breaking up, having to come back here…” His breathing in the darkness sounded so loud, profound, even. The silence broken and my secrets revealed. Man, it was so always the way with him. I couldn’t hide if I tried.
“Yeah,” I asked, urging him to go on.
“Meeting you makes it almost worthwhile.”
Almost. But his pain, his dreams had taken a decade or more than mine to grow and die. Our situations weren’t the same. That was the truth.
“Thank you,” I said, holding on tight to his hand.
“Go to sleep, babe. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN