▪️Saturday, January 23rd, 2018▪️

▪️Phoenix, AZ▪️

I don't know how to ask this. The first time she mentioned the pain killers it didn't alarm me. Her injury was evident. She's been living with it for years. There's so much about Angie I love that not paying attention to the signs at first was easy. Ignoring them when I saw her take her meds, and then take them again was easy too. Maybe I could've turned a blind eye to the red flags longer, but I promised myself to not ignore it when the people I love are going through hard times. I've done it with Louka. I'm not repeating that mistake again.

I've tried at the Dairy Queen this morning, but the birthday festivities, being surrounded by the crew-not the right place or time to press the issue. I must take care of her, and asking hard questions is part of being a good partner. The thuds of my heart should break my ribcage. My fucking organ betrays me by ramping up, migrating into my shoulder, and Morse coding my thoughts into Angie's forehead.

Please, let me in. Tell me the truth. I kiss her silky, light-brown hair, inhale the cacophony of smells from this crazy day. Maybe I should wait and not mess up her birthday, but I'm not even sure when I'll see her again. I can't wait for another indefinite stretch of time. I need to make sure she's okay, and if she's not, if it's as I suspect, there are rehab facilities, therapists. I got out of that trap, and so can she. She's a hundred times stronger than me. A million.

"Did you take something this morning?" The question that's been on my tongue since her party is out in the air.

Angie's head moves so fast her forehead slams into my chin. The impact snaps my jaw shut. The sweet metallic taste of blood means I probably bit my tongue, but I have no time to pay attention to myself. I'm watching Angie and hoping.

"What?" I analyze her expression. She's either going to kick me out or come up with another joke to mask her feelings. That's not what I want.

"Earlier at Dairy Queen. I saw your pupils." I'm craving her honesty. "You were out of it."

"That? I was just tired. One of the longest mornings of my life. Best birthday ever. I'm not complaining, but I'm not a morning person. You know." She rubs the spot where my chin and her head collided, shrugs, and gives me a one-sided fake apology smile.

With anyone else, I'd drop the line of questioning, but she's not anyone. I've neglected the weird behavior of my brother when he got in with the joyriding crowd. I saw the signs then but ignoring them was easier. Enjoying my life at college was more important to me, but not this time.

"No, I think it was more. I've noticed this the time before your concert in LA. Seems like any time there is a performance involved, you changed." I should just go for it. "I've been high. I lived through that, as I've just told you. I get it. You can trust me. What kind of drugs are you on?"

"I'm not high." She pushes off the bed and takes the sheet she's wrapped in with her. "I told you, I'm tired and my hand hurts. I take some painkillers, but they are prescription. It's been a long 2 months on the road. When the tour is over, I'll relax, and everything will get back to normal."

She's not hearing what I'm saying. I need her to listen to me.

"No, Angie. I've just been honest with you. Be honest with me." I slide close enough to wrap my arms around her, but she jumps away before my hands get anywhere near.

"I thought you were telling me about your life. Sharing. Didn't realize it's I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours deal." She stalks in her unraveling bedsheet toga to the bathroom and slams the door.

Fuck. I can't do anything right. I didn't mean that she must share because I did. My heart is in my temples. Pulsing. Forcing me to admit the truth. Liar. I'm such a liar. Telling her was a relief. Carrying the weight of how I fucked up the lives of people who mattered most to me was to release my pain, but also to see the support in her face. To hear her say, I'm not the Beast. But also... also to show her I trust her and for her to trust me.

"Please. I'm trying to help. I'll do anything for you, you know that, right?" I lay my hand on the smooth wood between us. The door is not a barrier. I could kick it down in thirty seconds. Nothing seems to demolish the fence around Angie's heart. "Please, hear my words."

"I hear you plenty well." Her voice comes from somewhere far in the bathroom. "You are the one who refuses to acknowledge what I'm saying. I'm fine. I don't need help. Let me be."

"Everyone needs help sometimes. The more you push me away, the more I'm sure you need help. You know there are rehabs, programs, therapists. I'll be with you through it. You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to be ashamed. Let me help you." Mom was the one who got me through my year of hell. With the thought of Mom for a millisecond, my heart recalibrates its violent throws around my body and softens with gratitude. I have the best Mom. I lost the damned scholarship, but I got clean. I'll always be an addict, but I can live my life. I'm back on track, and Angie can be too.

"What right do you have?" Something thuds against the door, but I hear no crash. "I don't need fixing. So, what if I took a couple oxies? It's been a really stressful time. My hand hurts."

Oxies. Oxycodone. Opiates. I lean my back against the door and speak into the crack between the casing. "I think it's more than that. Talk to me, tell me the truth. I'm here for you." Mom, my therapists, they listened to me. Listening is the main thing I can do for her now. I can't make the decision for her. She's the one who will have to decide, to commit to change. "Don't shut me out."

"I'm not shutting you out." Another thud hard enough to shake the door.

"You literally are." I say in the calmest voice possible. I will the blood in my veins to slow down, to quiet my body, but my insides are anything but calm.

Fuck.

A storm is brewing beneath my ribcage. If speaking the story of my dumb hurtful mistakes brought tears to my eyes, my powerlessness around Angie's problems kills me. If this was about me, I could hold it longer, but the thought of Angie, her talent, the gifts she is yet to share with the world, for her insane ability with music. . . that can't go to waste. I can't fail her too. "Open the door. Please, Angie, please. Bruce Lee." I'm not crying. But only because I'm shaking from a new nameless feeling Angie fills me with.

The door moves, and I brace against the casing not to fall. Our pact worked. I reach for a hug, to show I'm here for her, to thank her for trusting me. Angie's hand touches my bare shoulder. I did it. We're going to talk, and she'll tell me what's wrong. I'll listen, and we'll be okay. Her shove is sudden, and I stumble backward.

"There." Another shove. Her make-shift bedsheet dress is now a knot on her chest and a long trail of white cloth behind her. "We are talking. Does this make you happy? Does this make you feel better about yourself if I smile and tell you how much I need your help, and what a hero you are to take care of me?"

"No, that's not the point." I move back to her. My fucking heart tries to leap out of my chest and jump into hers, so that she can feel, know what I mean, what she means to me. "I just want to help you."

"Help me?" Another shove sends me three steps back. "Or help you feel in control?" She catches up. "This." She shoves me. "Us." She shoves me again. "We were supposed to be hot fun."

I step back voluntarily this time, as she approaches me: brows drawn, hair in disarray, beautiful but the angriest I've ever seen her.

"And now you are trying to fix me?" She stops inches away. Her breaths ragged, like she's running out of space for her anger that's enveloping me like a toxic cloud. "Why do you have this compulsion to fix everything?"

I stand my ground and listen. I seal my lips, and don't let a single caustic word slip out. My mouth blazes with the unsaid words. They are teaming behind my teeth, but I'm stronger. I run the swelling bitten tip of my tongue against the back of my teeth and ignore the lingering tang of blood. I have to listen to let Angie tell me her side, to open up to me. This is what I wanted, so I can take her venom.

"I'm not yours to fix," she says.

If my eyes were closed, if I were only listening to her, if I didn't hear the words that came before this moment, I could've mistaken that voice of hers for calmness, but my eyes are open. I see the raised lip, the flared nostrils, the gathered eyebrows, and the glare that burns through me.

She tilts her head and moves her lips to my ear. "You screwed up with your brother and now you screwed up with me," she whispers. "Get out." Her shout ruptures something in me.

I wish it were my eardrum, but instead of blood coming out of my ears, my mouth opens. "Forgive me for caring," I spew at her, no longer in control. "Won't make that mistake again. I bare my soul to you, and the only thing I see you do is put a wall between us. Pretend I'm what? One of your fans?"

Kicking and punching is how my body knows to flush the dangerous mix of emotions taking over me. But this is not a dojang. I don't know what to do with my arms, my hands flail, my legs want to kick the air, the wall. I can't scare Angie into thinking I'm getting violent.

Fuck. I spend the last tiny drop of sanity on stepping way the hell back from her, from an accident I'd never forgive myself. Fuck. I run backward until my back slams into the wall next to the bedside table. The lamp rattles, and its modulations match the ones rumbling through my body.

"You know what." I raise my hands. In defeat? In surrender? "I open up and tell you the things I've not told a living soul outside of my family. Think we have something special that you are the one, and you can't even admit to me you were high this morning." The wrecking ball of my heart goes wild. The internal punches it delivers would debilitate the strongest, most resilient person. "I must have this all wrong. I can't be the only one who is trying. You need to invest in this relationship if you want us to be together, and the investment I'm looking for is your trust. Just be honest with me. I follow you around this country. I've changed my plans. I maxed out my credit cards-at this rate, I'll never be able to move out of my mom's house-so I could be with you. I even did your stupid mall singing parade and dressed up as Santa. You know now what memory wearing a Santa suit stirs. I don't know what else I can do to prove to you I'm all in. That I'll do anything for you."

"Oh, poor baby." Angie crosses her arms on her chest, and I can hear another fence drop around her. Concrete, with reinforced steel beams. Impenetrable. "I'm so sorry being with me is such a chore." She changes her scowl into a smile, and somehow, it's scarier. So wrong. It has no place on her face. "I'm going to make it easy for you. We are done. Get out."

I raise my chin. My heart has been traveling around my body. It stops moving and drops into the lowest part of my torso. My stomach lurches. "You can't be serious."

"I'm completely serious." Her smile wanes. "Get out." She runs to me, locates my shoulder, and pushes me. She finds purchase on the floor, squats, and pours her strength into dislodging me from the wall. Disoriented, I watch her repeat the maneuver, and I find myself in the entryway.

Push. Push. Push. She opens the door into the hallway.

I stand on the threshold. I need to find the right words. This is ridiculous. This is not happening.

Push.

I lose it. My balance. My grasp on reality.

"Maybe you need the drugs to keep hiding from your future." As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret them. I should never have said that. That was unforgivable. I'm the biggest asshole. My back hurts from falling on the hard floor of the hallway. My heart hurts more. I lift my head to apologize.

"You know nothing," says Angie. Her face betrays no emotion, but I can see the wetness in her eyes. The fences and walls around her cannot hold everything.

"Angie. I'm sorry," I cry.

She shuts the door.

I scramble up from the scratchy commercial carpet. I knock. "Angie."

I knock, and kick, and knock until a woman in the room down the hall peeks into the hallway. "Keep it down. This is not a motel. Decent people need rest." She disappears before I say something I'd regret to her too.

"What am I supposed to do now?" I ask the textured surface of the door in front of my face.

"Well, you are a know-it-all, you'll figure it out." Angie's voice is so close. She's right there on the other side. I take a step away, as if everything would come into focus, and I would be able to see her.

The door opens, and my backpack flies into my chest. My clothes land in a scattered jumble around me. "Here. No need to thank me," says Angie. My phone is in her hand. "Fetch." She throws.

The device whizzes by and plops onto the thin carpet a foot away. My hopes drop next to it.

The door slams again.

My legs give out, and I kneel on the floor. My heart is nowhere to be found. I'm cold. Shivers return, and I crumble. Inside. Outside. I match the pile around me.

Fuck.