I keep waiting for the urge to walk away from everything to come, like it always seemed to, but it hasn’t. I hope it never does.
After breakfast she disappears into the shower and I join her five minutes later, unable to resist her wet and soapy body. The fiery desire in her eyes when she sees me naked under the water with her is exactly what I need. She likes the new me. At least physically, which is a start.
“You want to go for a walk in the park?” I ask her when we’re both dry and dressed. My doctor keeps telling me I need to go outside in the fresh air. I think he forgets I spent most of my life outside.
“I was hoping you’d ask that.” She glances over at my old guitar case in the corner. “Do you want to bring your guitar and play?”
She doesn’t know that I haven’t touched the guitar since I jumped because I’m afraid I won’t be able to play anymore. Sometimes the new meds make me feel blank. It’s an odd feeling I can’t put into words, but I’m afraid I’m going to pick up that guitar and my fingers are going to be lost on the strings. I’m afraid I won’t feel the lyrics and the melody in my veins anymore.
I had the same fears with Piper—that the intense love and wild attraction I’ve always felt for her would be killed by the meds. Thank fuck that isn’t the case. If anything, my feelings for her are stronger.
I’m still worried about playing and writing songs, though. So, I’m avoiding it until I’m ready to find out.
“Nah,” I reply, turning away from the guitar. “I just want to focus on you.” I tie my hair back and put a black baseball hat backwards on my head to deter people from recognizing me, since I ran into two fans at the airport yesterday. Former fans, I should say, as they stopped me just to tell me how much I suck for breaking up their favorite band and ruining their lives.
Even though they’re a trigger, I’ve read the ongoing shitty comments online, but having someone say them right to my face in public was like getting hit by a truck. People walking by stared at me with accusing eyes as the two girls went off on me. It made me want to never touch my guitar again. The thought of running to the airport bar and drinking their words away was temping. So was taking my rental car to the seedy edge of this town, a place I knew like the back of my hand, and buying tiny plastic bags of powder and pills and forgetting all this crap.
Yeah, I thought of all those things, but I didn’t do any of them, and I didn’t feel any regrets.
Instead I went to the hotel, drank a bottle of water, called Reece, took a long shower, and focused on what that really matters to me—Piper, Lyric, and my future with them. All the other bullshit faded away.
Now that I’m walking through the park holding the hand of the most precious and beautiful woman in the world, I know without a doubt that I can do this.
I beat the monster.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Walking through the park holding hands with Evan feels strange, but not in a bad way. In a good way. It feels both familiar and new at the same time. I guess much like a first date would feel with someone you’ve known your entire life.
“Seeing you sitting there every day was the best part of my day,” he says as we walk past my bench.
I smile up at him. “Really? Seeing you was the best part of mine, too.” It seems like just yesterday I was watching the clock waiting for noon to come, and I’d walk to the park with the feeling of a thousand butterflies in my stomach.
Continuing down the path, we pass the picnic table we used to sit at, and go down the dirt path to the old stone bridge. He stops suddenly, and takes a few steps backwards until he meets the wall of the bridge. Leaning back against it, he smiles and pulls me against his chest, bending down to kiss me softly at first, then deeper as his hands circle my waist and slide down to cup my ass.
“There’s no way I could walk by this spot without kissing you,” he murmurs.
I clasp my hands behind his neck. “Oh! Is this where….” My voice trails off as I look around us, remembering.
“It is,” he says, rubbing his nose along mine, awakening the butterflies again. “I still have your panties from that night. And the ones you were wearing the night before I left.”
“I’m not sure if that’s sexy or disturbing.”
“Probably both.”
Still holding my hand, he leads me down a short path through the woods until we come to a road, and I realize with surprise that we’re at the end of the dead-end street where the house with the shed is.
His house.
We stand at the end of the driveway and stare up at it quietly together. I’m not sure if being here is good or bad for his recovery.
“Ellie told me you used to live here,” I say softly. “How come you never told me?”
He shrugs after a few moments, with his gaze still on the old house. “I honestly don’t know, Piper.”
“That’s okay.”
He takes a deep breath and looks down at me. “Do you want to go inside?”
“Um….” His question is the last thing I expect. “Do you want to?”
“Yeah. I think I finally do.”
“Then I’d love to go inside with you.”
“It’s probably going to be dirty and smelly,” he warns as we walk up the driveway.
“That’s all right.”
We walk around the house and enter through the screen door of the porch. Everything is exactly as it was the last time I came here looking for him.
“When was the last time you were inside?” I ask.
“I think I was around twenty.”
“You bought a lot of notebooks,” I observe as we walk past the piles.
He stops in front of the door leading to the kitchen and looks back at the notebooks.
“Actually, I didn’t buy them. My mother ordered them. Apparently, she thought she was buying a pack of twelve and she somehow ordered twelve hundred.”
“Shit. That’s a lot.”
“Yup. At least I never run out.”
I watch as he bends down to move a large ceramic planter near the door, and plucks a key out from under it.
“I lost my set of keys a long time ago,” he says, unlocking the door.
Being inside the house is like stepping back in time. The refrigerator and sink are avocado green. There’s still wood paneling on most of the walls. The kitchen chairs have plaid seat cushions. The air is stale and musty, but at least it doesn’t smell like something died in here.
Evan sighs deeply and slowly walks farther into the room. “It’s exactly like it was,” he says with awe. “I’ll bet there’s still food in the fridge.”
“Let’s not look,” I advise.
He grins. “Good idea.”
Taking my hand again, we walk through the dining room, through the den, then to the living room. The rooms are huge, and everything looks as if his mother just ran out to get milk years ago and never came back. It’s all untouched, still waiting. A teacup, a pair of reading glasses, and an old book, open but lying face down, are on the table at the end of the couch. I wonder what happened to her. Did she go crazy here alone? Did Ellie ever come back to visit her? Were there other relatives to look after her?
“Are you okay?” I ask. “I don’t want this to—”
“Fuck my head up?” he asks.
“Well, yeah. I know you weren’t exactly happy here.”
“I’m fine. And living here was just like every other part of my life. Some days were good, some days sucked. But it wasn’t all bad. Ellie made it seem all bad, didn’t she?”
I nod.
“When my mother was good, she was fun to be around, and then my father wasn’t such a dick. When she was having a rough time, it was hard to be around both of them. He drank and yelled and she cried and ranted. So I escaped into my own head, and into my music, and I talked to the birds. It became my normal.”
“Evan….”
“What? I’m not going to hide it anymore. You already know I’m nuts.”
I frown and cross my arms. “You’re not nuts. I don’t want you to hide anything, I just feel bad.”