Sniffling, I shoved myself away from the table. I stumbled, but managed to stay upright. I guess I’d had more than I realized. Oh well, a couple more wouldn’t hurt then. When I moved to head toward the bar, Evan stood and grabbed my elbow.
“Let me go, Evan,” I snapped.
His mouth compressed into a firm line. “You’ve had enough; I’m taking you home.”
Scoffing, I jerked my arm away and pointed at the table. “I had two.” My words were slightly slurred, but I didn’t care.
Matt skewed his lips as he looked up at the ceiling. He counted something out on his fingers, then lowered his eyes to mine. “Uh, more like nine, Kell.”
Annoyed, I grabbed my jacket. “Whatever, I don’t need you guys babying me. I’m tired of being babied…I can take care of myself.” If I couldn’t drink in peace here, then I would drink in peace somewhere else. Scowling at Matt and Evan, I slipped my jacket on. Or tried to anyway. I couldn’t seem to find the right holes.
Matt stood up when he figured out I was leaving. “You’re not driving.”
Irritated at my guitarist, irritated at my drummer, and irritated at my life, I jerked my head from one band member to the other; the room spun a little. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want! All of you can leave me the hell alone!” Finally successful, I slipped my jacket over my shoulders. Inexplicably, the leather smelled like Kiera.
Matt rolled his eyes and looked over to Evan. He sighed, then started rifling through my jacket pockets. I batted his hands away, but he was way more coordinated than me at the moment. After fishing my keys out of my pocket, he tossed them down the table, out of my reach. They landed in front of Griffin; he stared at them blankly, then returned his attention to a girl at the next table.
I dove across the table to snatch my keys back, but Matt was quicker and nabbed them first. All I ended up doing was falling onto the table and knocking over Griffin’s beer. That got his attention. Saving his bottle from rolling off the table, he snapped, “Dude! What the fuck?”
Wishing I was anywhere but here, I laid my cheek on the cool surface and stared up at Evan. He was even more concerned than he had been before, if that was possible. Conversations battled in my brain. Some with Kiera, some with Denny. Some of them were good, some really, really bad. All of them made electric pain rocket throughout my body; I felt my chest sizzle, like someone was holding a hot iron to my heart…right over Kiera’s tattoo.
Not wanting to look like an idiot anymore tonight, I carefully stood up. Feeling weak, defeated, and utterly alone, I muttered, “All right…take me home.”
Evan not only took me home, he walked me to my door and unlocked it for me. I scowled at him, but he wasn’t intimidated by my anger. “Hey, if you don’t want to be babied, then stop acting like a baby.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he added, “Now, do I need to tuck you in?”
Grabbing my keys away, I shook my head. The world started spinning, so I stopped. I took a step inside, then looked back at Evan. “I’m sorry about tonight. I just wanted…I wanted to stop feeling like shit.”
Evan sighed, then clapped me on the shoulder. “I know. Get some sleep, okay?”
I nodded and went into the house, but I really wasn’t tired yet. At least, not tired in a lack-of-sleep kind of way. I was sick and tired of a lot of things. Stumbling my way into the kitchen, I poured a glass of water and started drinking it. As the soothing liquid went down, sobering me, I stared at my phone. Making a quick decision, I picked up the receiver and entered a number I knew by heart, since I dialed it almost every single day. The phone picked up on the third ring. “Denny? Hey…it’s Kellan. How are…things?”
I’d started calling Denny right after he left Seattle. At first, only his parents would pick up, and they’d always very nicely tell me to go to hell. I’d kept calling though, and eventually Denny had taken the phone from them and talked to me. He’d seemed mystified by my persistence, but…he was family to me. I’d wronged him, but I’d never stopped caring about him. He was my brother. I didn’t want to give that up.
Our initial conversations hadn’t been much. Denny didn’t want to talk, and I understood. I talked though. I told him how wrong I was, how sorry I was, and that I wished I could do everything over again. If I could, I would have told him about my feelings for Kiera before I acted on them. I would have told him everything from the beginning.
Talking to him every day, while therapeutic for me, wasn’t really getting our relationship anywhere. It wasn’t until I confessed to him that Kiera and I weren’t a couple that he really started talking back to me. He was shocked that we weren’t together. He’d assumed we’d hooked up after the airport. I told him we hadn’t, that I’d said goodbye to her there and hadn’t seen or heard from her since. Surprising me, he’d actually told me that I was an idiot for letting her get away. That had made me laugh. I’d told him that it was for the best that we were apart, but only a part of me agreed with that. The rest of me agreed with him.
Denny’s laughter on the line returned my thoughts to the present. “Have you been drinking, mate?”
A small, queasy laugh escaped me. “Drinking? Yeah…maybe…a little. So…what’s up with you? How did your date go with that girl? Abby, was it?”
With a laugh, he started telling me about it. Things had loosened up between us even more once Denny had become interested in dating again. Now that he was seeing somebody, his entire mood had changed. Even though I didn’t know much about this girl, I was grateful that Denny had met her. He needed somebody to love to help him get over Kiera.
Aside from the one time he’d chided me about not dating her, Kiera was one topic that Denny and I never discussed. Without actually verbalizing it, we’d both decided Kiera was off-limits. We had plenty of other things to talk about though, and my phone bill was a bitch now. But we were beginning to repair our damaged friendship, so it was worth it.
Chapter 34
Emotional Release
After that dark moment at Pete’s, I toned it down with the alcohol. Instead of drinking away my problems, I shifted my need for emotional release into my work. I’d been writing ever since Kiera and I parted ways, and I finished a song that I’d written about her. Once it was done, I found I was reluctant to share my painful memory of Kiera with the world. Evan was the one who convinced me I should. He said it would be healing to sing about my pain. And unlike the last time I’d written a song for Kiera, Evan was okay with putting this one in the lineup, since this time around, the only person the song would hurt was me.
We debuted the song at Pete’s. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the whole piece; I lost it once or twice during rehearsal, which was almost unheard of for me. I’d sung gut-wrenching songs countless times before and hadn’t had any problems. But this one…it got to me.
It was probably the most emotional song I’d ever written, even more than the song I’d said goodbye to Kiera with. This one was about that last moment with Kiera in the parking lot, right before our lives had changed forever. I wrote down every damn detail of our parting. Then I shifted focus to where I was now…struggling to get through the days, scared I would never find love again, lonely, but never really alone, because Kiera was always with me wherever I went.
Evan and Matt had created a slow, haunting rhythm to accompany the song. It was different from our typical stuff, and I noticed that the crowd listened in a way they hadn’t before. Even my looks took the backseat for this one song. It was intimidating, having the entire bar so focused on something that wasn’t superficial, something real. It deepened my appreciation and respect for the art form that had ultimately saved my life. If I hadn’t had music…I didn’t even want to think about where I might be.
The bar was deathly quiet while I sang my grief. When I sang, “Your face is my light. Without you, I’m drenched in darkness,” some of the girls in the front started brushing away stray tears. With the words, “I’m forever with you, even if you can’t see me, hear me, feel me,” they started to openly weep. I closed my eyes to block them out and finished the song as perfectly as I could. Evan was right. This was much better therapy than drinking my problems away night after night. We started playing the song at every performance.
I wasn’t fully healed yet, not even close. Everything still reminded me of Kiera. My soul ached for her, and there was a void in me that would probably never be filled, but, slowly, I was starting to smile again, starting to talk again. Although, I still wasn’t sleeping with anyone. Every night, I went home alone to my empty house and faced the ghosts of regret lurking around every corner. It was hard, but I was dealing.
Sometimes I pretended that Kiera was in the crowd when I sang that song for her. Closing my eyes, I pictured her crying right along with the girls in the front row. She never came in though, and as soon as the song ended and I opened my eyes, my fantasy evaporated. Her sister showed up a couple of times, but that was the closest I ever got to Kiera. It ate at me that she never came in to the bar, but at the same time, I knew it was for the best.