It is never easy.
But.
Easy is empty.
It's bland and boring. It doesn't make my heart
Sing or dance or hurt.
Easy is empty. And you.
Are everything.
(Rike’s poems to Peyton)
The day it happens starts like any other. I’ve been home for two weeks now, and although we’re all working to bring Lindsay out of her shell, to get her to trust us and trust what she and Scott have, it’s not working. We can feel her slipping away, and feel him sliding into a deep depression. Rike is fighting to keep him, and Lindsay is vanishing before our eyes.
Rike pops into my studio early this morning, with another cup of coffee and a toe-curling kiss that pulls me instantly from the paints I’m laying out.
I’ve apologized to my clients, a furious backlog in my inbox that took me a full day to work through. Some I wrote off completely—I couldn’t remember enough about the work and the client to put together a solid piece. Others, I offered a discounted price and an apology with a new delivery date. And most were understanding—those who weren’t were people I didn’t want to work with anyway.
“What are you working on today?” he asks, leaning over my shoulder. He shaved recently, and the beard has since been replaced with an ever-present scruff that I love.
“I’m doing a painting of a wedding photo. They were married in in ’62. How long is that?”
“A long fucking time?” he offers, and I laugh.
Look at him over my shoulder. “Do you think we can do that? Be together that long?”
His expression gentles. “Fish. We’ve been through hell the past three months, yeah? If we can get through this, we can get through anything. Fifty years is a piece of cake.”
I nod, and he kisses me again before he steps away. “What about you?” I ask. “What’s the plan?”
Rike shrugs. “We’re meeting the band about song selection for the next album. Since Scott canceled the tour, they need to get that going to keep the momentum.”
“See you tonight?”
He nods, and leans in to kiss me. “See you then.”
***
I switch on the radio, and spend the next few hours painting. It’s easy to get lost in my art, and it’s when I feel closest to the girl I was. Around lunchtime, I go downstairs and make lunch with Lindsay. She seems alive when I’m the only one home, the depression and walls she puts up when Scott is present melting away until she’s laughing and alive.
I make us cold cuts and join her at the table. She’s got her computer open and she glances up at me as I sit down. “You’re a mess,” she says, wrinkling her nose.
“You’re one to talk,” I tease. “What are you doing?”
She flushes and that piques my interest. “What?” I ask, lowering my sandwich.
“Setting up gigs,” she mumbles.
I stare at her and she shifts in her chair. Slaps the laptop shut and glares at me. “Quit staring at me with those accusing eyes. This is for him.”
“He doesn’t want gigs, you idiot. He wants you.”
Her lips compress into a tight line. “We aren’t doing this,” she say sharply.
“Why the hell do you get to tell me that I need to come home and to get my head out of my ass but when I say the same thing, I get shut down and yelled at? Do you want to explain that to me?”
“I want to smack you.” She snaps back, “But to do that, I need to walk and we all know the likelihood of that happening.”
I let out my breath slowly, and reach for her hand. “Babe. I know why this is scary. But you have a man who loves you. Who wants to be with you. Don’t throw it away because you think it’s what he needs. Be brave, sweetheart.”
She snorts, a disgusted noise. “Like you have been? You’ve run as far and as fast as you possibly could.”
“I came home for you,” I say quietly. “And I woke up and realized everything we have. I’m not ashamed of that. You can’t make me feel guilty for being happy. Not when we were both happy and can both be happy.”
She looks so sad. Miserable. “He deserves better.”
I stand up. Disgusted suddenly with all of it. With her.
“Who the fuck are you to decide what he deserves? Scotty chose you. He loves you. After all the people who threw him away, all the shit that they both went through—he opened up and trusted you. And you’re going to decide that he’s wrong for making that decision? Fuck you, Lindsay.”
I stalk away before she can argue. Before she can fight back at all. Retreat to my studio. The wedding picture is sitting on my table still, quietly taunting me. Emotions are still thrumming through me, all of the fury and frustration. I want to shake her and I want to put our family back together.
I want to know everything I lost.
I reach for a piece of charcoal, and knock over a little curved dish. It clatters as it hits the wood of my studio floor, metal rattling around as it bounces and rolls.
Curious, I pick it up and glance inside.
A small ring clatters there, a brilliant fire opal shining from the center, surrounded by tiny, perfect diamonds. The band is worked with scrolling designs, elegant curves and twists that make my knees weak.
It slips, so, so easily, onto my ring finger, and I stare at it, I start to cry. Tiny tears that slip silently down my cheeks, and fall into my hands. Onto that ring that means everything.
A song is playing. My radio is off, but I can hear it. A song that he sang in a dirty bar, a lifetime ago, to a girl who was scared and running from a family she wanted to forget. I remember sitting in that bar, Lindsay at my side and her telling me to lock him down. The pride and envy in her, the happiness in his best friend’s eyes as he found me across the bar. And his voice, crooning a truth I couldn’t believe.
I remember falling in love with him that day, and never once looking back. I was his sea, but for me, he was the sun. The light that always guided me home. I couldn’t look away from him, because he was everything.
I scramble for my phone. Grab it from where it’s sitting on my desk and type the message while the memories crash over me.
Me: I remember
Rike: What??
The phone rings, and his voice is frantic in my ear, demanding. And I’m sobbing, laughing, the world crashing down around me. “Everything, Jokes. I remember fucking everything.”
Epilogue : Now
It’s raining, coming down in relentless sheets, and part of me says, Fuck this. Stay home. But Scott needs this. We haven’t shared the stage in almost a year, since before the accident. After all the shit we’ve been through, we need it. So we play, and when the crowd is worked up into a frenzy, I take the spotlight, grabbing my guitar and pulling out the song that took us from a tiny bar to this crazy thing that we call real life.
He arches an eyebrow at me and nods to the corner of the room, where a girl with flame red hair and the body of a fucking siren is swaying along to the music. A blonde with glasses and a half-smile sits next to her in a bright pink wheelchair, a small circle of space around them.