I want him to know me. To see everything I am, the bad as well as the good. I need to show him everything.
“There was a boy called Connor,” I begin. It feels like I’m telling a story at bedtime, only in this one, there’s no happily ever after, and the handsome prince leaves the girl all alone in the end. “I loved him, and he…he loved me back. Just not enough. Not more than his next fix,” I add quietly.
Ryland’s face changes. He lets out a long breath, and his body relaxes, just a little. “Come on,” he tells me quietly. “You can tell me everything. If you want.”
He leads me around to the back porch. There’s an electric lantern swinging from a rafter; Ryland switches it on, then sits on the dusty wooden steps. I take a seat beside him, not touching, but close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body.
It gives me strength, somehow. Enough to keep talking, and tell the whole sorry tale.
“I remember when Dex called me.” I stare straight ahead into the darkness. “They were in Europe, on tour. Connor had been messing up during shows, partying too much, on edge and aggressive. They confronted him, and found out he’d been using. Heroin,” I add bitterly. “The rock star’s weapon of choice.”
Ryland shifts. His hand finds mine on the bare wooden board, his fingers overlapping mine. I close my eyes a moment, his touch giving me the prompt to keep going. “They wanted to call off the tour and pack him off to treatment,” I explain, “but Connor worked his magic charm on them, just the same as he’d done with me. It wasn’t a problem, he’d quit just fine, he said.” I remember the excuses, I heard them all by the end. “He told them he needed to play, just let him finish out the rest of the shows, and then he’d do whatever they wanted. They were under so much pressure from the label, I guess it was easier to believe him than face the truth. Connor always could make you see the best in him, he had that way about him.”
I pause. Ryland wraps his fingers around mine now, and squeezes gently.
I keep talking, even as tears well in the back of my throat.
“Dex called me, and I flew straight out to be with them. It made sense to me, that’s the weirdest thing. Like a part of me was relieved I had an answer, to why he’d been acting so strangely, pushing me away.”
It had gotten to be so hard by the end. I felt desperate and needy all the time with him, seeing him withdraw, drifting further away from me. “Isn’t that terrible?” I ask bitterly. “That I was glad it was a reason, and not that he didn’t love me anymore.”
Ryland doesn’t say a word, but he’s listening. So I keep going, pushing the words out, even as they describe the horror of that terrible night.
“I tried to be supportive, but I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t understand why he would do something like that, why he needed the high. He had everything he ever wanted: the band, the fame, the money.” I pause, feeling the rejection all over again. “Me.”
Ryland shakes his head. “It’s not about us, Tegan. Sometimes there’s no reason you can find, just a shitty choice they made, and kept on making.”
I nod slowly. “I know that now, but at the time…I thought I could fix him. Save him somehow, if only he loved me enough to try.”
“I thought the same thing with my mom,” he admits quietly. “A thousand times over. But it was never enough.”
“We fought, awful fights that lasted for hours. Screaming and begging and tears,” I admit. “It got so bad. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. He said I was the only thing getting him through, and I didn’t want to let him down, even after everything. But then we got to London.”
I pause. I’ve never said these words aloud to anyone, not Dex, not my therapist. I’ve kept my guilty secret all this time, but now I know I can’t keep it hidden anymore.
I need to tell the truth.
“We were staying at this fancy hotel,” I whisper. “The label fixed it for us. It was gorgeous, so romantic. But all I could do was watch Connor, wondering if he was telling me the truth, if he really was clean. He seemed like he was over the worst of it, like he was getting back to himself again, but I don’t know what it was, but I just had this feeling… So, I searched his stuff,” I say, remembering my guilty suspicion, rifling through the drawers while he was out at soundcheck. “I found a needle and a bag of dope hidden in one of his socks. He was still using. It was all a lie, everything he’d said to us, every promise he’d made. I couldn’t do it anymore.”
My voice shakes. Ryland pulls me closer now, slipping his arm around my shoulder, holding me up.
“He came back, and found me looking. I told him I was done. He begged me, promised he would go straight to rehab when the tour was over, he swore it would be different, but I’d heard it all before. My heart was breaking. I loved him, but I was so angry, so mad he was risking everything, and for what?” I look up to Ryland, my eyes clouding with tears. “I tried so hard, I gave him everything, but it wasn’t enough. He was throwing it all away.”
I inhale a ragged breath, remembering his desperate pleading, the ring skittering across the polished floor.
The slamming of the door behind me as I walked away.
“So I left.”
“You had to,” Ryland’s reply comes, low and comforting. He holds me against him, solid and true. “You couldn’t have changed his mind, you know that Tegan. You have to know.”