The World: According to Graham (25 page)

I don’t want their sympathy, and I don’t need their support. What I do need is to pretend that today was one of my many nightmares, wake myself, and not mention this horrible dream to anyone else. I need for this not to have happened to Rachael and me. This could be like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books that I used to check out of the library as a kid. Oops! I chose the shitty path that leads to heartbreak and despair. I’ll just back up twenty pages and go down the road that leads to a healthy baby and a happy life.

Tomorrow, we have a live performance. I have to compartmentalize this loss and focus on making sure that the people who attend our show don’t feel as if they wasted their hard-earned dollars. The show must go on, and all that. My brain knows that, but I have no clue how I’m going to convince my heart.

Max reaches out to touch my arm, but I jerk it back. The only touch that I need is Rachael’s. “Look, man, I’m so sorry.”

Standing up, I reach down and pick up my bag. “I’ve just had the worst day of my life, and I had to leave the only other human being on this planet who can sympathize with my situation at home.” The guilt eats away at my insides. “I’m going to my hotel room and pretend to sleep while I look at the ceiling until I’m bored and then turn my stare to the wallpaper.”

Max spits out the first syllable of what I think is another apology, but I hold up my hand. I’ve heard enough apologies to last me a lifetime. Jake’s features have softened, but he doesn’t say anything, which is a blessing.

These guys have been my ride-or-die brothers. We met when we were eighteen-year-old kids. We all have the same tattoos on our calves that we got together after completing our fraternity pledge year. I thought up until this point that as long as I had them in my life, I had everything that I needed. That’s changed. I still need them, but Rachael has become more important.

“Revere . . . Revere . . . Graham,” Hank yells. I got lost in my own head—again—which lately has been a scary fucking place to hang out. He’s obviously been trying to get my attention for a while by the way that he’s waving his arms over his head.

“What?” I ask, looking up from my phone. I was mindlessly scrolling through some political blog, not reading a single word.

“The guys are ready to record.”

“Yeah. Okay. Give me a minute. I’ll be there.”

As I stand up, I feel every muscle and tendon in my body. It’s Sunday, and we’re hoping to record a couple of shows before I head back to D.C. I don’t know the last time that I’ve slept more than a couple of hours. My eyes feel like kernels of sand are scratching my corneas. I took one look at my contacts this morning and laughed. Today is a glasses kind of day. Usually, I can go like this no problem. Sleep is something that I can do when I’m dead, but today—well, today? It’s caught up with me.

Last night’s show was a nice distraction from real life. I had a long talk with my soul and found a way to push through the heartache to give the people what they wanted. For the first time since we lost the baby, I didn’t think about Rachael, or heartbeats, or futures, or stolen money, or a tour that’s degrading around my ears. I didn’t ponder what was next for me, or the pixie fairy who I had to abandon after the most devastating few hours of my life.

I drag my pathetic ass into the studio and pull up a rolling chair. “Let’s do this,” I declare to Max and Jake, with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.

“You look like hammered shit. Just go home.” Max turns away from me, shaking his head.

“No. I’m good. I’m ready,” I reassure my fellow Sons of Liberty as I slide the headphones over my ears.

I do a couple of tests with my voice while I adjust the controls, finding the right volume. Next, I grab my phone from the front pocket of my jeans, just in case Rachael or Caroline call, when Max yanks the earphones from my head. “Go home, fucker. We’re recording without you.”

My stomach plummets. I’ve never missed a show. We’ve aired reruns when the guys and I decided to take a vacation, but it’s always been the three of us on air. Never a substitute. Never just two. “No,” I state firmly as I reach for my cans.

He holds them out of my reach. His face is neutral. He doesn’t look pissed. If anything, he looks resolved. “I’d rather that you spent the next three hours fixing the rat’s nest that we’re calling a tour than record another half-assed show.”

My head drops. Max has always been the one that has called me on my bullshit.

He must sense my surrender because he says sympathetically, “You just lost your baby, man. Go take care of yourself and Rachael. We’ve got this.” He gestures between Jake and himself. “What we can’t do is fix the tour fuckups. That’s your department.” He sets the headphones down on the table in front of me. “Look. We can’t keep going on like this. Someone is stealing money from us. Hank is at his wits end with the tour. He’s clearly overwhelmed. Before every show, we’re holding our breath to see if it’s actually going to happen. We’ve never been on time once, and we’re paying huge fines for it. The lighting and sound guys think our cues are suggestions instead of facts. We either need to fix the tour or cancel the rest of the shows.”

His words are like a punch to the gut. I know it’s bad. I just didn’t realize that everyone knows that it’s this bad.

Jake walks over to me and slaps my back. “This is an opportunity that we’ve worked hard for. I don’t like seeing you this way. Take the time that you need to fix your shit at home. Then, join us again as the three Sons of Liberty, not the two and a quarter that we’ve got happening now. Make our tour what it should be. But you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends.”

“Thanks,” I reply, hanging my head. Grabbing my bag, I rise to my feet and drag my pathetic ass out of the recording studio and to a waiting town car. I’m sick to my stomach. This is not what I had imagined success feeling like.

I toss my duffle into the trunk and sink into the black leather seat. “Airport, please.”

Caroline must have been watching for me because as soon as George and I exit from the cab, my front door flies open and she meets me halfway between the curb and the house.

It always surprises me how tall she is. I guess I just assume that Caroline and Rachael are the same height, which is crazy. I can’t imagine the two of them ever being able to share clothes in college.

“Hi,” I greet her, as I bend down to unlatch George from his leash. He looks up with huge, round, thankful eyes. He runs around the yard, hot on the trail of some creature that dared to cross his domain.

“Good trip?” she asks. Her long hair is blowing in the breeze, and her face looks clean, fresh. She’s pretty, even without makeup.

I don’t bother to go into the details of just how shitty my life is, so I reply, “I could get used to flying on a private plane. Please thank Colin once again for me. George also appreciated having his own couch to lounge on.”

She waves me off. I’ve gotten the impression from Rachael that Caroline is still not one hundred percent comfortable with Colin’s wealth, acquired from his football career and smart investments. She told me once about how they’ve shielded their kids from Colin’s former life. To them, Colin is just their dad—not the star athlete and former endorsement king that I watched on TV every Sunday. “We need to talk about Rachael.”

“Does she know that I’m home?” I ask, nudging a stick with the tow of my loafer.

Caroline crosses her arms over her chest. “No, because she hasn’t gotten out of bed yet today.”

My watch says that it’s three o’clock in the afternoon—not out of bed yet. That’s not good. “Maybe her body just needs time to recover. I mean, it’s only been two days.” I’m making excuses for her. It’s my job to defend her.

Caroline is having none of it. “I know my best friend. This is mental, not physical. Last night we got plowed on tequila.”

My mouth falls open in shock. I’ve seen Rachael drink wine, but never tequila.

“It’s our thing,” Caroline says, once again waving me off like my reaction is silly. “Usually, we pull out tequila for important life chats. Last night, she just drank shot after shot. I tried to get her to talk, but she wouldn’t. I asked her about the book that she’s writing and got nothing. But, when I asked her about you, she said that you were only with her because of the baby.”

Caroline leans forward and pokes me in the chest. I step back, surprised by her reaction. “Let me make one thing clear, Graham. If that’s the case and you don’t wish to have a relationship with her any more, then you’re a real asshole. She is a wonderful, amazing, smart woman, who has maybe made some mistakes and not handled things well, but if you walk away from her, you’re a fool.”

Her fists are dug into her hips, and her eyes are slits. Frankly, she’s a bit intimidating.

“Noted,” I reply. “However, I’m not sure why Rachael would think that. I don’t know what else I can do to show how much she means to me.” I throw my hands up in defeat. A dam inside of me breaks. Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe it’s that the candle that I’ve been burning at both ends has finally met in the middle. I don’t know, but I can’t take another second of her doubt.

I thought we had moved past this. It seemed as if her accepting that the magazine pics were a fabricated story finally gave me the reassurance that I needed that we were good. One step forward . . . two steps back.

I walk past Caroline, leaving her standing there open-mouthed. George runs in the house in front of me as I beeline for my bedroom. The door is shut. I throw it open and it bangs against the wall, ricocheting as I use my right hand to block it. I barely notice.

She’s lying on my side of the bed with the covers pulled up to her nose. The blinds have been opened, I’m assuming by Caroline. I feel her presence behind me, but I don’t turn around and acknowledge her. My blood is boiling. My eyes are trained on one person and one person only. It’s the pixie lying in my bed, who
still
doesn’t believe that I’m crazy in love with her.

“You. You get out of bed,” I yell.

She pulls the covers down to her chest but doesn’t respond. Her hair is pulled up into a tight knot on top of her head, and her eyes are red rimmed and swollen. Rachael doesn’t look like any version of the fairy that she favors. No. She looks more like a limp dishrag.

I feel schizophrenic in the way my emotions keep shifting. Instead of yelling and demanding that she acknowledge all that I’ve done to prove to her how devoted I am to her, I crawl up the bed, leaning against the headboard and cradle her in my arms. She molds against me and I lean down, kissing her forehead, nose, and hair.

When I look up, Caroline is gone.

Rachael sobs into my chest. “I’m so sorry Graham. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t carry our baby. You gave me one job and I failed.” Her little body trembles in my arms as I clutch her to me even tighter.

“You didn’t fail, baby,” I try to soothe. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes really shitty things happen, and we don’t know why.”

“We deserve happiness,” she says. “Why us? Why, after all of our sacrifices, did we have to lose the baby? We didn’t give enough, Graham . . .”

Fortunately, she doesn’t finish the thought and I don’t let her. I kiss her lips, silencing the nonsense that she is spewing. She wraps her arms around my neck and I hold her against me, hoping that she’ll see just how wrong she is. I honestly don’t know why terrible things happen to good people while others always seem to come out unscathed. Why did my sister have to get breast cancer? She did nothing wrong. Yet there she was, a mom with a young daughter facing her own mortality. In hindsight though, I can see how it pulled our family together. It wasn’t just Kelly’s fight. I was by her side, and our parents, and my niece. Her husband became the mom and dad, but he did it with grace and courage. He’s a wonderful man and so devoted to his family. Would he have been this way without the diagnosis? Who knows?

After a long time, her tears subside and she stops shaking. I still hold her, not ready to end this connection.

Finally, she looks up at me with big, swollen eyes. “I have to use the restroom.”

I laugh and it feels so damn good. She even gives me a little smirk. “I’ve learned that even when you’re so dehydrated from crying that your mouth feels like sandpaper, you still have basic needs.”

I think that might have been an attempt at a joke.

She slides off my lap, and I feel empty without her weight. I was holding and consoling her, right? Or was it the other way around? As she walks into the bathroom, I watch her petite hips move side to side. Even in my old college lacrosse T-shirt, she looks gorgeous.

At some point in the evening, we move from the bedroom to the couch. Caroline had left a note telling us goodbye and to call if we needed anything. I find some old horror flick on NetFlix and click play. Neither of us, I think, actually watches it. We just cling to each other, seeking solace from the raging storm of problems surrounding us.

The rest of Sunday and Monday were more of the same. It’s Tuesday and the house feels like a morgue. Even George has noticed our solemn moods. I leash him up. “Hey, buddy, let’s go for a jog.”

He doesn’t bother standing up and looks up at me with an expression that says “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I bend down and stroke his head. “Will you do it for me?”

George stands up and stretches his long black legs behind him before he reluctantly agrees that this is somewhat a good idea.

“Rach,” I call. “George and I are going for a run.”

She’s lying on the couch, wrapped in my flannel plaid bathrobe that my mom bought for me when I went off to college. It swallows her, but she’s comfortable in it so I leave her alone. Frankly, just the fact that she got out of bed this morning at an hour before noon is progress. Whatever Rachael drapes around her small frame might as well be an evening gown if it means that she’s conscious for the morning hours.

“Okay,” she replies flatly as she stares at another episode of
House Hunters
. How many do they play a day? I swear HGTV performs some sort of magic trick where they manage to cram three hundred and seventy-two episodes into one twenty-four hour period.