one-hundred-fourteen.

DECEMBER 1st, 1998, LOS ANGELES, CA

       WHEN REAGAN LOOKED back on her twenty-nine years of life, she couldn't recall a worse year than nineteen-ninety-eight. Her twenty-ninth year, the last year before she entered her thirties, and it seemed rather appropriate that everything had fallen apart before she'd aged into a new decade of living.

Sometimes she questioned how she'd survived a year's worth of existing on autopilot. It was a curse to have felt so empty while being forced to live every day like things were normal. She supposed that someone, someone like Kimberly, would have told her 'that's life." She'd tried to tell herself that it was indeed just life, a facet of being painfully human, but she was starting to reject the notion.

Reagan had Gracie to tend to. She had her job to focus on, a beast in itself with its demanding workload that was unlike what she'd faced in Seattle. The former of those two responsibilities was the most important to her. The only thing that drew her out of bed each day was her daughter, waiting on her to be the mother that she needed.

It had been a little over a month since Dave had told her that he'd cheated on her. While Reagan had presumed the earlier bulk of the year to have been her lowest point, nothing compared to the weeks that had followed after Dave's confession to her after his weekend in Mexico.

She wasn't sad. She wasn't angry. She felt nothing, imagining that some vital piece of her soul had died and taken the core of who she was along with it.

Both Kate and Chris had been reprimanding her over the phone for days, demanding to know why she hadn't left Dave yet.

'He CHEATED on you,' Kate had seethed. 'Why are you giving him the impression that that's okay by STAYING?'

Chris's response had been less scathing, though the implication of warning had still been there.

'Get out while you can,' she'd said, 'before he does it again.'

Reagan had fed them both the same line, too drained to go on a tangent about how she really felt and how complicated it was to walk away from everything she'd cherished for the past nine years.

'I'm not going to tell Gracie that her parents are getting a divorce with Christmas right around the corner,' was her default reply.

It wasn't entirely a lie. The thought of sitting Gracie down before one of the happiest times of the year for a kid her age and revealing that she and Dave were separating seemed utterly heartless. She didn't want to think about what kind of a mother that would have made her if she'd done that, ripping apart her child's family when Gracie was supposed to be reveling in it.

Yet, Gracie wasn't the only thing that kept Reagan in uncomfortably close living quarters with Dave.

She was terrified to let him go.

Despite what he'd done, she had come to understand that nothing in the world, not even his infidelity, had made her stop loving him. It was true what he'd said about fucking up. Sleeping with Louise had been a mistake, but it hadn't kept Reagan's heart from yearning for him, wanting and wishing for him as she'd had from the beginning.

She couldn't trust him, though. No amount of love that she had for him could have replenished the trust that he'd poured gasoline on and torched. Cheating on her had been out of his character, but he'd done it anyways and it was undeniable that it had changed things.

Reagan had believed that fall that they could have worked on the problems they'd unearthed earlier that year. She'd been hell bent on fixing them, convinced that she could live in a relationship that consisted of her and the Foo Fighters as dual partners, but her effort to try had been wiped out.

She was certain that if she was to forgive him, the next time he went on tour, let alone anywhere where she wasn't present, would be harrowing for her. She wouldn't be able to sleep knowing that just maybe, he was capable of cheating on her again.

Whenever Reagan had happened to feel a flash of anger as she'd processed what Dave had done, it'd always been centered around his sheer choice in timing.

For nine straight years, he had toured with two different bands, exposing himself to countless women who would have been more than happy to sleep with him. He'd had every opportunity to cheat on her in the past, but he'd picked that year, the worst year of all, to do it whilst knowing that it couldn't have come at a more horrible time.

It was true that she'd been cold, perhaps cold enough to push him to do it, but not once had he taken into account what she'd been through before he'd made his choice. He'd cheated on her with the full knowledge that she was in pain, even if she hadn't made a show of it. She'd never assumed that a monologue was needed for Dave to know that inside, she'd been dying.

Sometimes she asked herself why he hadn't just walked out on her instead. She could have lived with that. If he'd come to the conclusion that she wasn't making him happy, he could have at least spared her the pain of being betrayed.

She couldn't figure out what the point of it all was anymore. She'd been wounded by Dave's busy life on the road before, a component of his dedication to being in a band, and it would only be worse now that he'd dismantled her trust to microscopic pieces.

Nothing would ever be the same again, not when she couldn't fathom the idea that if things were to get bad again in the future, he'd cheat on her as a source of reprieve. He'd effectively demonstrated that when the going got rough between them, there would always be another woman for him to fall into.

It had been horrible to watch him try to make amends. Whether it was covering her in blankets when she fell asleep on the couch, too uncomfortable to join him in bed, or holding her hand as means of affection when she neglected to touch him any more than that, Dave had silently fought for her.

He'd realized early on that words alone wouldn't make up for what he'd done. Without use of them, he'd quietly done everything he could to win Reagan back. Getting up early in the mornings to brew her coffee. Going above and beyond to keep the house clean, even she'd already finished the job of wiping every room down. Leaving notes scattered everywhere, scrawled onto torn sheets of notebook paper, proclaiming in them that he loved her.

She'd even heard him on the phone one day, talking to Lisa as he confessed to her what he'd done. Telling by the desperate angle that the conversation had taken, Lisa had made her brother keenly aware of how far below the belt he'd hit.

Reagan wanted it all to click. She wanted his efforts to piece her heart back together, to mend the direct split down the middle that he'd caused.

It just wouldn't.

To distract herself, she'd started drumming whenever he wasn't at home. She would sit behind her kit and pound out every and any rhythm that she could think of for hours until sweat prickled on the back of her neck and gathered around her eyes. It had been a long time since she'd poured that much energy into the drums and just as it had when she'd been a teenager, it was therapeutic. It was the perfect form of escapism, even if just for an evening.

While everything around them failed, the only thing Reagan was sure they'd still excelled at was being parents to Gracie. She hadn't picked up on anything amiss with her parents, remaining bubbly and content as the weeks had droned on. In Reagan's reluctant opinion, she and Dave were playing roles, assuming a new talent as actors as they tried to play it normal for their daughter. Whatever they'd so far done, it was working.

She'd given it the time that she'd promised herself she would. She had waited, silently pleading to the universe for a reversal of the past, or at least the resurgence of her devastatingly-in-love feelings that she'd had for him. She loved him, more than she'd probably ever love anyone else, but it wasn't enough to plaster over the fracture wounds of his betrayal.

Reagan sat at the dining room table, staring blankly ahead and wishing that she could have pulled down the sun and moon if it meant manipulating time and reversing it. She would have done a lot differently if given the chance.

It was late and Dave had yet to come home from an evening of band business. When she finally heard the front door open and the bang of it closing that follow, she lightly closed her eyes.

Her mind was made up, set firmly in stone. The decision hadn't come it easily and she'd fought against the inherent naturalness of it, despising the way that it had presented itself so obviously. She could no longer deny that the her and Dave's relationship had consumed them too deeply, just to finally blow up in their faces and leave disaster in its wake.

He had driven that final nail in the coffin, but she would always blame herself for being the one to lower it six feet under.

He walked into the kitchen, in the middle of shrugging out of a zip-up hoodie when he saw her. Freezing in place, he contemplated what to say before finally addressing her.

"Hey," he said gently.

Reagan shifted uneasily in her chair. "Hi."

"Gracie asleep?"

It was the same strained small talk that they'd been forcing since October.

"Yes, for about an hour now."

Dave removed his jacket and draped it over a chair, leaning with his hands splayed over the back of it. His deep brown irises, once tiny whirlpools of light that had given Reagan something to fixate on for hours on end, looked empty.

"You want me to make you something to eat?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No. That's okay."

"You sure? I could make spaghetti."

Her heart panged as she remembered their first real date in Kurt's shabby little apartment, complete with Virginia Grohl's recipe for spaghetti. It was the night that they'd admitted to being in love with each other.

"Can we talk, actually? Just for a minute?" She took a deep breath when she said it, surprised that her voice didn't quaver as her insides did.

Dave looked cautious of the invitation, carefully pulling the chair he leaned on out and sitting down in it slowly.

"Okay," he said, phrasing the reply like an apprehensive question.

Reagan stared directly into his face. It was a face she'd fallen in love with a thousand times over, never able to get enough of the way he shined when he smiled and the way he could go from hyper to subdued in the span of minutes. She thought about his voice, so much softer than she'd expected when she first met him, and how it had guided her through the last nine years effortlessly.

It hadn't been hard to fall in love with Dave. The only thing that had proven difficult was grasping the fact that it'd been just as easy to be blindsided by that love.

"I want a divorce," Reagan said, blurting out the announcement abruptly. She knew that she didn't sound like herself, but it was impossible to keep a grip considering the subject matter. Her fingers picked at the place mat in front of her as she continued to stare, waiting restlessly for his reaction.

It was a delayed one. Dave stared back, his expression void of any emotion, until his eyebrows finally cinched together in the middle.

"What?"

"I want a divorce, Dave."

She wished he would say something. He simply sat there in silence, looking at her as if he wasn't completely positive that she was real. He looked at her like she was a hallucination, like he questioning whether or not he was in a dream.

"No . . . no you don't," he finally uttered. Disbelief was starting to bloom in his eyes.

Reagan swallowed. "I do. I really do."

"No. No, no, no, no, no."

Each exclamation of 'no' deteriorated into a mutter as Dave rushed to look everywhere but at her, his head turning side to side as if he was waiting for someone to jump out and assure him that it was all one big joke, albeit a horrible one, but still a prank like the ones he was used to playing.

"I'm sorry, Dave," she whispered. "I tried. I tried to move past it."

"Can't you . . . can't you wait?" he asked, struggling to get each word out coherently. "It's almost Christmas. What about Gracie?"

"We won't tell her until Christmas is over."

He held his hands up as a silent plea for her to stop. "Please tell me you're lying. Or that you haven't actually made your mind up yet. Please."

"I have. I've thought about it for a while, now.'

It was easy to read on his face that he was stunned, his reception almost suggesting that the last several weeks hadn't even happened. Reagan might as well have been dropping a bomb on him in the midst of sunshine and rainbows, as if they'd been floating on a consistent high note of their relationship.

"Won't you give it some more time?" When he forced his response out, it was partially strangled.

"I've given it time. I don't think I can last any longer than I have."

She dropped her eyes down to the table. Little did Dave know that she'd already rehearsed those words that morning, gasping through tears on the phone with Kate as her sister had coached her through the textbook speech that would end her marriage. As Reagan had sobbed that she couldn't do it, that she was too weak, Kate had urged her to find some measure of strength to see it through.

He cheated on you, she commanded to herself, feeling her resolve start to edge away. He broke your trust.

"You're not serious," Dave muttered, flexing and un-flexing his hand into a fist. "You're just still upset. You haven't thought long enough."

"I'm sorry," she whispered tightly. "I didn't want it to ever end, especially not like this."

He shoved his chair away and leapt up, spreading his hands across the table and leaning forward with a maddened look in his eyes. Reagan flinched backwards in shock.

"It doesn't have to end," he said through his teeth. "We don't need a divorce, Reagan. We can fix this."

"I thought we could for a long time, but now I don't think we can. I don't know how to trust you anymore," she said, tentatively explaining while trying to reel herself back in. Her biggest fear was that of regret.

"This is bullshit and you know it." Dave stabbed an accusatory finger through the air at her. "You're ending things like we're in fucking high school. We're married."

His charge of her wrongdoing stung, pricking to life a wave of interred anger. Standing up so that they both were inclined over the table, Reagan mashed her lips together as her nostrils flared.

"You cheated on me," she reminded him defiantly, stabbing a finger back at him. "You broke my trust on your own."

"It was one time. One time."

"Two times, actually. Twice in the same weekend."

She'd barely started the conversation and already she'd had enough. Reagan whipped around to stalk out of the dining room, hoping that a slight distance between them would calm her down before she could resume the discussion, but she was twisted back by Dave's hand sliding over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, suddenly in a hurry to pedal backwards on his negative reaction. "I'm sorry. Hold on. Don't walk away. Talk to me about this."

"I told you what I needed to say," she whispered over her shoulder. Of course he would apologize for the outburst, weakening her determination once again with his knack for being too damn sweet for his own good.

"That can't be it. You can't just say 'I want a divorce' and expect me to be okay with it."

"I don't expect you to be okay with that. I'm not even okay with it. But there are no more possibilities, no more chances, Dave."

When Reagan turned, he helped her along into his arms, squeezing her into an embrace that she tried to wriggle out of. It was too much to be close to him, to smell him and feel his calloused fingertips on her skin when she was still processing that she'd never enjoy the sensory experience of being pressed against him ever again.

"Explain to me why not," he insisted, his voice rising with anxiety. "Tell me why we can't start over. We can put this behind us."

"We can't. It's all I ever think about anymore and you can't imagine what that's like to wake up and fall asleep, picturing you with someone else. I can't get over what you did because it was the last thing I ever thought you'd do."

"And I'll never do it again. I swear to you," he pleaded in a scratchy whisper, reaching to brush her cheek. She jerked her face away.

"I don't consider it a slip-up," she said shakily. "You chose to do that even after everything that happened. Even after what happened in January."

"You weren't fucking talking to me, Reagan! What was I supposed to do? Watch paint dry and hope that you'd speak to me again?"

"So why didn't you leave?!" Her retort came out as a near shriek, but she caught herself when she remembered that Gracie was sleeping upstairs. Even as she lowered her voice, her eyes bulged and her hands balled into fists as she straightened out her spine to stand taller.

"You could have left," she continued. "I would have preferred that. I know that I hurt you too, and I know things weren't right between us. But that doesn't mean you get to go cheat on me as a means to end the marriage."

"I thought the marriage was already over," Dave growled.

"It wasn't. Not once did I fucking say that to you. Don't pretend to have heard those words leave my mouth. I never asked you for a divorce, Dave."

"It seemed implied."

"Your sense of judgement is way off, then."

He looked angry, his eyes swirling with a frustration that had clearly spanned months of being pent up, but they softened. As usual, he reined in his control, relaxing the taut line of his shoulders until they slumped. His jaw unclenched and the firm edge that his lips had been in gave way to trembling.

"I would never cheat on you again. I swear to you, I wouldn't."

Reagan folded her arms, feeling her indignant expression begin to wobble.

"How do you expect me to believe you when I've heard that line before? How am I supposed to think that you wouldn't do it again when you managed to do it when I was the most depressed I've ever been? You didn't have to do that to me."

"I tried to get you out of it," he begged. "I fucking tried."

"So the answer was to have sex with someone else?"

"God damn it." Pushing his hands back through his hair, Dave began to pace. Reagan backed away and stood watching him, wanting to soothe him with a touch, a kiss, just like she always had but knowing they were past those expressions of tenderness.

"Do you know what the next few years would be like for me — for us both — if we stayed together?" she asked gently. "They'd be hell. I'd be here worrying that you were going to do that to me again and you'd be stressed out from me worrying. It would be an endless cycle."

"Why aren't you listening to me?" he demanded in desperation. "It's not gonna' happen again!"

"Even if it didn't, I don't feel . . . like I used to." She couldn't say that she didn't love him, because she did. All that had changed was her faith in him, which was a matter-of-fact necessity in any relationship. She felt like the person she had married, the person she had so quickly come to love, had been buried alive in the passage of time.

"You don't love me? You fell out of love that quickly?" he asked.

"I do love you. I know that I always will. But we're broken — this relationship is broken."

"So let's fix it!" Dave rushed forward until they were standing chest to chest, his hands sliding hurriedly up her arms. "We'll fix it. We'll start fresh. We'll do whatever you think we need to do to make it work."

"Dave," Reagan pleaded, wheeling her eyes away from his out of fear that she would crack.

Suddenly, he released his grasp on her and scrambled to the nearest landline phone. He picked it up, almost fumbling it between his hands, and started to rapidly dial out a number.

"What are you doing?" she asked, startled by what he was doing.

"Calling John," Dave answered. "I'm quitting the band."

Her stomach plunged to her toes.

"What?" she cried. She snatched the phone out of his hand as he raised it to his ear, mashing her thumb into the 'end' button. "You can't quit the band, it's your band."

She'd anticipated something like this from the moment she'd made her decision. She had known that Dave would try to do the impossible, like taking a sledgehammer to the foundation that his life was built on and had been built on long before he'd met her.

"Watch me," he said back tersely. He went to grab the phone but Reagan held it back, moving away from him.

"We've been through this," she said. "You're not going to quit what you love for me."

"What I love is ruining my fucking marriage. Give me the phone."

She held it over her head though he could have easily swiped it into his possession.

"No," she said. "You can live without me but you can't live without doing what you do. Don't ask me to be the reason that you tell the world you're done playing."

Dave scoffed in disgust. "Live without you but not the band? Are you hearing yourself right now?"

"Listen to me. It didn't work, Dave. It just didn't work. Things happened the way they did and I realized that it's just not . . . it's not meant to be."

"How can you look me in the eye and say that?"

The heartbreak was so thick in his voice that Reagan forced herself to take a shuddering breath, determined to avoid crying. On the inside, her heart had come to life and was shrieking and writhing with sobs, but she had to get through the conversation. She had to save them both before they emotionally tore each other to pieces.

"We were young," she struggled. "We thought we could do anything when we got together, including make this work. But you're trying to continually build this band up and I'm just trying to exist."

Dave didn't speak. He looked away, shaking his head to imply that no answer would be good enough. Nothing would suffice.

"You have to understand. You're doing something that's monumental. You're in magazines, on talk shows, touring the world and doing t.v. interviews. It makes you happy. I know it does. But I can't figure out what makes me happy anymore."

"How about me? Or Gracie?" Dave suggested rigidly.

"Of course Gracie makes me happy."

"And I don't is what you're saying?"

"We don't understand each other anymore."

"Reagan."

He spoke her name once with an intermingled mix of reverence and pain, like it was the last time it would ever roll off his tongue. He took her hands and balled both into his, holding them tightly and raising them to his mouth. He kissed them once and moved his lips against them, speaking quickly and softly.

"Don't do this. I'm asking you right now, please don't do this. Let's get out of here, out of L.A. for awhile. Forever. Let's go to Virginia. We can fly out next week to look at houses. We don't have to have more kids if you don't want to. It can be you, me and Gracie. We can do that. I'll give you anything if you just stay."

A film of tears glazed Reagan's eyes and before she could stop them from spilling over, she was crying, watching as he took one last stand to beg. Her hands were going numb as he clutched them, whispering into their conjoined fingers.

"You promised. We promised. We can fucking do this. Don't make me live my life loving someone I can't have, because I promise you, nothing has ever mattered to me more than you and Gracie do."

"And what about you?" she choked out. "What are you going to do? Be an accountant? Trade the guitar in for a briefcase?"

"There'll always be a job for me in my line of work. But there'll never be another you."

"And you'll look me in the eyes every day for the rest of our lives knowing that I was the one who forced you to give up what you're passionate about?"

Dave's face twitched with a flash of pain. "I never wanted to choose. But if you're asking me to choose, I choose you and Gracie."

"You belong on a stage. Not with me."

Reagan gently untwined her hands out of his. Holding them at her waist, she quickly slid her wedding ring off and Dave watched, pulling his upper lip between his teeth as his reddened eyes shined with tears.

She took his hand and flipped it over, laying the ring in his palm and closing his fingers over it.

"I don't want to believe that there's anyone else out there for you," she said, crying fully now, "but if there is, she'll be better suited to make you happy. She won't ever make you choose because there won't be a choice to make in the first place."

He looked look at his fist, slowly unfurling his fingers to stare at the diamond ring throwing faint glimmers in his hand. It was the same ring that had saved them from falling apart the first time — the time had done in which it had served its purpose full circle.

"I'll always love you," Reagan said, each word hiccuping out on hitched sobs. "I'll always be sorry. I'm so sorry."

She couldn't do anything else but leave the room, tearing her eyes away from the sight of Dave standing alone.

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