“Not really.” I gestured toward a set. “Look. Plates. Oh, look, more plates. Gee, what do we have here, Erika? Why, I think it’s plates.”
“Why do you have to be so difficult all the time? I was really hoping over these five years that you would’ve grown up a bit.”
“Sorry to disappoint. But seriously, can we get going?”
She gave me an annoyed look. “Why are you in such a rush to go see your mother anyway? You’ve been gone five years, leaving Kellan to handle everything. He had to be there when she fell apart, and you didn’t even check in on her. You never called her or anything, so why now?”
“Because my brother has cancer, my mother’s an addict, and I feel like a shit son and brother for leaving and never coming back. Is that what you want to hear, Erika? I get it, I’m a fuck up. But if you could honestly just take two seconds to stop throwing it in my face, that would be really freaking nice.”
She huffed once, rocking back and forth in her heels. Her stare turned from me, to the plates before us, and we went back to our silence.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen-fucking-minutes.
“That one,” she nodded, pointing in front of her. “I’ll take that one. Grab two sets, Logan.”
Turning on her heels, she headed off in the direction of the cashier, leaving me flabbergasted. “Why am I getting two sets?!” I shouted. She didn’t bother to answer me, she just hurried off.
Juggling the two sets in my arms, I staggered to the front of the shop, setting the boxes down in front of the cashier. Erika and I remained quiet until the cashier told us the final pricing of the plates.
“One hundred and eight dollars, and twenty-three cents.”
“You have got to be shitting me,” I choked out. “You’re going to pay over one hundred bucks for plates?”
“That’s none of your business what I do with my money.”
“Yeah, but come on, Erika. You could easily buy some cheap plates from a dollar store or something, seeing how you’ll probably break them tomorrow anyway.”
“I don’t question what Kellan spends his money on, or should I say who he spends it on. So I’d rather you not question my spending choices.”
“You knew Kellan was giving me money?”
“Of course I knew, Logan. If there’s one thing Kellan is, it’s a bad liar. I don’t care that he’s giving you the money, but,” she sighed, and her eyes softened as she turned my way. For the first time since I returned, she looked defeated. “Don’t let him down, Logan. He’s tired. He won’t act like he is, but he is. He’s exhausted. You being back here makes him happy. You’re good for him right now. Just stay good, okay? Please don’t let him down.”
“I swear I’m not using, Erika. That’s not just some bullshit that I’ve been saying. I really am clean.” We each grabbed a box and walked to her car, putting them in the trunk before we hopped into the car and she started driving to Ma’s apartment.
She nodded. “I believe you. But, we are about to go see your mom, and I know how much a trigger she was for you.”
“I’m not the same kid I was.”
“Yeah. I hear you. But trust me. Your mom is the same person she was back then. Sometimes I think people don’t really change.”
“They do,” I said. “If they’re given a chance, people can change.”
She swallowed hard. “I hope you’re right.”
The moment we made it to Ma’s, I asked Erika if she was coming up, and she declined, looking around. “I’ll stay here.”
“It’s safer inside.”
“No. It’s fine. I don’t do too good seeing…that kind of lifestyle.”
I didn’t blame her. “I’ll be down in a few.” My eyes darted around the darkened streets, and I saw a few people hanging out on the street corners, just like when I was a kid. Maybe Erika was somewhat right. Maybe some people, things, and places never changed.
But I had to hope that some did.
Otherwise, what exactly was I doing with myself?
“Just don’t take forever, okay? Kellan’s show is starting in forty-five minutes.” Erika said.
“I guess we shouldn’t have spent like two hours standing in front of plates, huh?”
She flipped me off. A term of endearment, I bet. “I’ll be out fast. Are you okay out here?”
“I’m fine. Just hurry.”
“Hey, Erika?” I said, climbing out of the car.
“Yeah?” My eyes once again glanced to the people on the corners, looking our way.
“Lock your doors.”
***
I didn’t know what I was walking into. I knew it would be bad, but I guess I didn’t know how bad off Ma was. Kellan always kept those conversations short, telling me that I had to worry about making myself better instead of me worrying about making sure Ma was good.
Now it was his turn to take his own advice.
But that meant that someone had to step up and check in on her, and it had to be me. And I couldn’t let Kellan down when he needed me the most.
The front door was unlocked, which worried me enough to make my gut tighten. The apartment was completely trashed with beer cans, vodka bottles, empty pill bottles, and dirty clothes all over the place.
“Jesus, Ma…” I murmured to myself, somewhat shocked.
The same broken-down couch set in front of the same disgusting coffee table. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spot the baggie of coke on the table.
I snapped my bracelet.
Just breathe.
“Get off!” I heard screamed from the kitchen, Ma’s voice loud and fearful. My heart dropped to my stomach and I was back in hell. I hurried into the room, ready to tear my father away from her, knowing that whenever she screamed, his fists were finding their way to her soul.
But when I stepped into the room, she was alone, having a panic attack. She aggressively scratched at her skin causing it to turn red. “Get off of me! Get off of me!” She hollered louder and louder.
I held my hands up and walked in her direction. “Ma. What are you doing?”
“They’re all over me!” she screamed.
“What’s all over you?”
“The roaches! They are everywhere! The roaches are all over me. Help me Kellan! Get this shit off of me!”
“It’s me, Ma. Logan.”
Her dull eyes looked up in my direction and for a split second, she reminded me of Sober Ma.
Then she began to scratch again.
“All right, all right. Come on. Let’s get you a shower. Okay?”
After a little work, I got her to sit inside of the bathtub as the shower rained over her. She kept scrubbing her skin as I sat on top of the closed toilet lid.
“Kellan told me you were going to cut back on using, Ma.”
“Yeah.” She nodded rapidly. “Definitely. Definitely. Kellan offered to send me off to rehab, but I don’t know. I can do it on my own. Plus, that stuff costs a lot of money.” She locked eyes with me and smiled, holding her hands out to me. “You came home. I knew you’d come home. Your father said you wouldn’t, but I knew.”
“He still sells to me sometimes.” She looked down and started washing her feet. The bruises on her back and legs almost made me gag. I knew they were from my deadbeat father. And the fact that I wasn’t there to step in between the two of them made me feel as if I were just as bad a person as he was.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” she whispered. Tears were running down her cheeks, but I didn’t even think she knew she was crying.
“You’re beautiful, Ma.”
“Your father called me an ugly bitch.”
My hands formed fists, and I took a few deep breaths. “Screw him. You’re better off without him.”
“Yeah. Definitely. Definitely.” She nodded rapidly again. “I just wished he loved me, is all.”
Why did we as humans always want love from the people who were incapable of such a feeling?
“Can you shampoo my hair?” She asked
.
I agreed. I lightly touched the bruises against her skin, and she didn’t seem to react at all. For a while we sat and listened to the sound of the water. I wasn’t sure how to communicate with her. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to, but the silence was too much to bare after some time. “I was going to run to the grocery store for you tomorrow, Ma. You want to get me your food card?”
She closed her eyes and clapped her hands together. “Shoot! Oh shit. I must’ve left it at my friend’s apartment the other night. She lives right down the street from me. I can go get it,” she said, trying to stand up, but I stopped her.
“You still have soap in your hair. Wash it out, towel off, and meet me in the living room. We’ll figure out the food another day.”
I stood up and left. When I hit the living room, my eyes fell to the baggie of cocaine on the table. “Fuck…” I whispered, snapping my band.
Focus. This isn’t your life. This isn’t your story.
Dr. Khan said after I left rehab, moments would come up when I’d find myself seconds from stepping back on the hamster wheel of my past, but then he’d say that it wasn’t my story anymore.
My hands were sweaty, and I took a seat on the couch. I didn’t know when it happened, but somehow the baggie of cocaine was in my hands. I closed my eyes, taking in a few deep breaths. My chest was on fire, my mind wild. Being back in town was too much for me, but leaving Kellan wasn’t an option.
How was I going to survive?
“Look, we are going to be late—” Erika came barging into the apartment and paused, seeing me with the cocaine in my grip. I quickly glanced back and forth to the cocaine and Erika. She sighed. “Figures.”
She turned on her heels and hurried out of the room. Shit. With haste, I followed her, calling her name, but she ignored me the whole way to the car. Once we were inside, she revved up the engine and pulled away from the curb. A few minutes passed with no words exchanged.
“Listen, what you saw up there,” I started, but she shook her head.
“Don’t talk.”
“Erika, it’s not what you think.”
“I can’t do this, Logan. I can’t. I can’t be the one driving you around to go on these joy rides. I can’t watch you disappoint your brother.”
“I’m not using.”
“You’re lying.”
Tossing my hands up in defeat, I released a weighted sigh. “I don’t even know how to remotely talk to you.”
“Then don’t.”
“Fine. I won’t.”
Erika’s fingers were gripped tightly around the steering wheel and I watched as her air freshener swung back and forth on her rear-view mirror.
“He’s sick, and he’s trying to not show his worry about you or your mom, but he’s terrified. I think we need to face reality, and the reality is I just saw you with drugs in your hand. The last thing Kellan needs is for you to stress him out more.”
“What goes on in your head? You make up all of these crazy stories and judge people for things that never happened. You are a lot like your messed up mother, you know that?”
She pulled up to the restaurant and put the car into park. With one harsh tone she turned to me and said, “And you are a carbon copy of yours.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Logan
“I am nothing like my mom!” I whisper-hissed, chasing Erika into Jacob’s restaurant.
“I saw you!” she whisper-hissed back, poking me hard in my chest. “I saw you, Logan!”
“You think you saw something but you didn’t. I wasn’t going to.”
“Don’t lie to me, you jerk! How could you?! You promised! You promised!”
Before I could reply, Kellan walked over.
“What took you guys so long?” he asked. Erika had her frown glued to her face, but forced it to change directions when she saw the worry in her fiancé’s eyes.
“I just had to make a stop on the way,” she said, kissing his cheek. “But we are here! And I can’t wait to watch you perform!”
Kellan’s stare moved over to me, and his worrisome eyes remained. I slightly shrugged my shoulders, unable to ever truly lie to my brother.
His brows lowered with understanding. He nodded toward the front door. “You want to go get some air with me, Lo? My set doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, for sure,” I replied. My hands were stuffed into my jeans pockets, still in fists from the way Erika spoke to me in the car minutes before. I couldn’t even truly be mad at her about it, though. The person I was when I left town years ago, was the only person she ever knew me to be. In her eyes, I was the drug addicted asshole who screwed up their lives and broke her sister’s heart when I never called back. In her eyes, I was the jerk who almost killed Kellan and Alyssa the night I was messed up and took the wheel into my hand. I was the person who was responsible for Alyssa losing our child. In Erika’s eyes, I was Alyssa’s and Kellan’s baggage that they both deserved to unload.
In her eyes, I was the me that I’d tried so hard to never become again.
Kellan and I stepped outside, and the chill of the fall night hit our faces quickly. He leaned against the brick wall of the bar, with his left foot resting against the stones and his eyes closed, as his head tilted toward the sky. I reached into my pocket for a cigarette, and paused.
Shit.
No smoking.
I leaned against the wall beside him. “How are you holding up?” I asked, pulling out my lighter and flicking it on and off.
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
He opened his eyes, and I saw his fight to hold the tears back. “I was practicing the guitar, and my hand started to tremble. The other day it happened too, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I think it’s all in my head, because I’m afraid of the chemotherapy. I’ve read a lot online about chemo brain. That’s where a person kind of loses some cognitive functions. So I might not even be able to play the guitar anymore. Or write lyrics. I mean…” He bit his bottom lip and inhaled deeply. My tough, always strong brother was slowly cracking. And I couldn’t do anything about it. “I mean…music…that’s me. That’s my life. I spent so much time running away from it though, and now if I can’t play the guitar…”
“I’ll play for you,” I said, and meant it.
He snickered. “You don’t have a musical bone in your whole freaking body, Logan.”
“I can learn. And hell, remember when you learned to cook after my dad broke my hand?”
“When I made the turkey for Thanksgiving that one year?”
I chuckled. “And you yelled, ‘Who knew a damn turkey needed to be thawed for more than four hours?!’ as you tried to cut into it.”
“But seriously! Who knew that?”
“Um, everyone with a brain? I mean, to give you credit, I’d never seen a turkey that was completely burnt on the outside and completely raw inside. That takes talent. What did Ma say about it?” I asked, remembering the few good memories we’d shared.
We spoke in unison, “What type of fuckery is this?! If you wanted to kill me, you could’ve used a butcher’s knife. It would’ve been less painful than this damn turkey.”
Kellan and I both laughed this time. It wasn’t even that funny, but we were cracking up, laughing together so hard that our ribs started to ache. Tears of memories running down my face.
When we stopped, a cold silence filled the space, but at least this silence wasn’t lonely, because my brother was with me.
“How was she today?” Kellan asked about Ma.
“Not your concern, Kel. Seriously. I’m back, so I’ll handle her. You have a lot of shit on your plate. It’s my turn to help.”
He tilted his head in my direction. “Yeah, but what about you? How are you holding up?”
I sighed.
I couldn’t tell him how close I was to using.
I couldn’t tell him how heartbroken I was to see Ma in the shape she was.
I couldn’t fall apa
rt when he needed me the most.
I had to be strong for him, because his whole life was spent being the person who saved me. I wasn’t a hero, I wasn’t a savior, but I was his brother—and I truly hoped that would be enough.
“I’m good, Kellan,” I said. He didn’t believe me. “I am, I promise.” He knew it was a lie, but he didn’t call me out on it.
“I’m really worried about Ma. And I’m not sure how to help her…And if I’m gone…” He paused his words as his inner demons and fears accidentally slipped from between his lips.
Pushing myself off of the wall, I stood in front of him. “No. No. You don’t get to say that kind of shit, okay? Look, you’re here. You’re getting the chemotherapy. It’s going to work. Okay?”
His doubt was seen fully in his stare.
I lightly shoved him in his shoulder. “You’re not dying, Kellan. Okay?”
His jaw trembled, and he slightly nodded. “Okay.”
“No, say it like you mean it. You’re not dying!” I said, heightening my voice.
“I’m not dying.”
“Again!”
“I’m not dying!” he spoke into the cool air.
“Again!”
“I’m not fucking dying!” He shouted it the last time, his arms reaching out in victory, a smile upon his lips.
I pulled him into a tight hug and held him close. I hid the tears that started to fall from my face, and nodded my head slightly, whispering. “You’re not dying.”
We headed back inside of the restaurant, and I watched him perform, his hands shakier than I wanted to admit, but his music was so much better than I’d ever heard. Erika stared up at him as if she was looking at forever in one guy’s soul. She loved him. Which was enough reason for me to love her. Even if she hated my guts, such a big part of me loved her, for loving him to her core.
“I have to get back to finish grading my papers,” Erika said after Kellan finished his set. We all stood at the bar with drinks in our hands, laughing with Jacob, and forgetting for a while about the reality of our days to come.
“I’ll head out with you,” Kellan told her. He reached into his pocket and tossed me his car keys. “You can drive my car back, Logan.” Those words might not have meant much to anyone else, but it meant he trusted me.