Page 3 of Over You
From my pool deck, I had the perfect view of the San Fernando Valley. The city lights twinkled like a manmade heaven. A warm breeze rolled across the patio. Ripples disturbed the solitude of the infinity pool, casting eerie shadows onto the ivy-covered retaining wall, and I thought, maybe I would walk away this time. There was the quiet of the night, and then there was the silence when the rest of the world was asleep and I was still awake. Shadows appeared menacing. The distant sound of an ambulance became incredulously more ominous. I was left with nothing except my thoughts. Sometimes that was a dangerous place to be sober.
And the high from the party earlier was wearing off. Fast.
I shouldn’t have taken Georgia to Jag’s, but—and there was always a but—my intentions had been good. I thought us getting out and pretending life was normal would ease the depression. The tension. The life we’d somehow managed to end up with—one we’d begged for, fought for without realizing it was everything we had never wanted. Maybe I’d grown so used to smiling and pretending to be a decent human being for the fans that I’d forgotten the toll it took on a person’s soul to be fake.
Scoffing, I used a credit card to draw the drug into a chalky-white line.
Fake.We were all fake because the shitshow wasn’t near as glamorous as the selfies and Instagram posts made it appear.Had I only known. . .
And with that thought, like the habit it had become, I pushed my hair behind my ear, leaned over the glass table beside the lounge, and one, hard sniff later, that dusty line disappeared.
For the few minutes before the drug kicked in, guilt twisted my guts. Soon enough a form of repented peace bled from my fingers to my toes, and I somehow forgot that fame was a lying son-of-a-bitch.
I laid back on the lounge with my hands clasped behind my head, and I stared at the few stars the greedy LA lights hadn’t drowned out with their obnoxious, electronic glow. My life was far from perfect now, then again, it had never been perfect. Honestly, that’s just not the way existence worked. The universe wanted sweat-equity and heartache just as much as it wanted relaxation and happiness. It’s what kept the world in a constant state of homeostasis. Without darkness, we’d be oblivious to the light. Without hate, we couldn’t experience love. . .
Back in Van Nuys, Georgia and I dreamed about being able to take a vacation to Reno.Reno.The redheaded stepchild of Las Vegas seemed like a far-fetched dream when we had to scrape pennies for gas. We argued over bills—nothing else. Had we had money back then, we would have cheated the goddamn universe out of its balance. There would have been no dark to our light. We’d traded inthosedisagreements for trips to Fiji and a house in Beverly Hills once owned by Marilyn Monroe—and now, we fought about drugs. About the tours and the paparazzi. The girls. . .
Sex. Drugs. Rock ‘n Roll.Unfortunately, those were necessary evils in this industry.
Clouds crawled across the moon. Every once in a while, the night sky was interrupted by red and white blinking lights of a plane overhead. And while I stared off, my mind wandered. It crept past the coke and the booze, the after parties and tours, the girls begging for my attention when the only woman who should ever have it was Georgia. I wondered, had we not lost that piece of us, would I have stayed sober?
A kink twisted my guts. A grief I still couldn’t face. One I didn’t think Georgia Anne would ever get over. How was anyone supposed to get over something like that?
The lounge creaked when I sat up and leaned over the table to get another fix. Minutes ticked by, and that pain ate away at me like maggots on rotting flesh.
Palms leaves rustled beside the house barely visible in the dark. Then that euphoria set in like a shot of Novocain to the soul. It devoured that painful memory, and I exhaled at the relief.
The thing to know about me: I didn’t set out to be an addict. I mean, no one in their right mind swallows a pill and thinks, this is the night I ruin my life.
If the label had a fancy, typed-up list of job requirement for a musician, it would read something like this: killer pipes with the ability to shred on a guitar, fine-tuned art of seduction, and a knack for doing drugs. Let’s just be honest. The stereotype existed for a reason, and frankly, I didn’t know a rocker without a drug habit. Or at least one who didn’tused tohave a habit.
I watched Nash, my best friend since high school, pop and guzzle without a problem. Gage Bennet, Axel Stevens. Jimmy Rage. Jag Steele. All mega-superstars and they all snorted and swallowed. Being a newbie rocker was akin to being a ten-year-old at YMCA summer camp and watching all the other kids line up to do the high dive. I was terrified of heights, and I didn’t want to jump. With each kid that freefell into the water, the curiosity grew. Each and every one popped up with shit-eating grins, like hurdling off that springboard was the best thrill ever. None of them died when they hit the water.
Eventually, I climbed the rusted ladder to the springboard—I popped a pill.
I leaped into the cold water—I snorted a line.
And the thrill? Well, there was nothing else like it.
Another plane flew overhead, the rumble of the engine breaking me from my thoughts. I didn’t even know how long I’d been outside. The lights to the bedroom were off, and damn, I felt guilty for letting Georgia fall asleep alone.
Inhaling, I thought about what a shitty husband I’d turned into, then stood and fought against my blurry vision as I stumbled across the patio. After trying to quietly open the sliding glass door a few times, the suction finally caught, and the door glided on its track.
I tiptoed across the Italian marble we’d installed three months before, stopping halfway between the open door and our bed. The moonlight draped Georgia Anne’s sleeping figure in a silvery-blue haze. Monet, Van Gogh, not even motherfucking da Vinci could have painted something that perfect. She was the raw definition of beauty. Not in someVoguecover, in-your-face-glam manner, but in a way that sneaks up on you, like a sunset. One minute the sky was bright blue, the next a burnt orange, then pink. The longer you stared, hints of lilacs and yellows crept in. There was never-ending beauty in a sunset, and the same was true about that woman.
Her chest rose and fell on ragged swells. Ebony hair fanned over the pillow where my head should have been. And that shame crept back up like a zombie digging out from its grave.
My fingers pulled into tight fists while the coke sent my muscles twitching. Georgia mumbled “please” in her sleep, and my chest tightened. Guilt. Worry. Regret.
It didn’t matter if I was off-my-face high. If I were still the least bit coherent, seeing her asleep, alone, always got to me. Enough that I’d whisper that promise again.Tomorrow. . .
I slipped into the bed with my clothes still on and wrapped an arm around her waist. “I love you,” I whispered into her soft hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Because I was.
So unbelievably sorry for what I’d done to us.
Any idiot knew it was a death sentence when the fighting stopped. And earlier that night, when she had tossed the bag of cocaine onto West Santa Monica Boulevard, she hadn’t uttered a word.
