Sing For Me by Rachel Schurig
Will
Ihave no idea why I came here.
I shouldn’t be sitting in my truck outside my parents still-dark house at six in the morning. I can’t even remember driving to the neighborhood.
When I left Eva’s, I couldn’t stand the thought of going home so I just kept driving instead. For two hours I drove aimlessly through the mostly-deserted streets until, somehow, I ended up here.
At some point during my meandering trek, it started to drizzle, and now it’s really coming down, steel grey sheets of rain making it hard to see the house.
I should leave, but I can’t figure out where I’m supposed to go. There’s no way I can talk to Rose right now so the apartment is still out. I could go to the shop, try to get some work done, but with the way my head is pounding, I’m not sure I’d be able to read a single line of my paperwork.
I’m almost relieved for the headache—it’s just about the only thing I can feel right now. The rest of me is numb. Frozen. My brain too foggy and slow to form coherent thoughts. If I try too hard to focus, the realization of everything that happened this morning cuts through me like a sharp blade and I lose the ability to breathe for a moment. So maybe numb is better.
I lost Eva.
No, I didn’t just lose her. I fucking walked away. She stood there in her kitchen, ready to fight for me, for us, and I threw it all in her face.
God, what the hell is wrong with me?
I jerk violently when I hear the rapping at my window. I peer out into the gloomy darkness of pouring rain to see my father standing next to my truck. He’s dressed in flannel pants and a t-shirt, meaning he just got out of bed, and he’s already soaked through to the skin from the deluge.
I pull open the door. “What are you doing out here?”
“Was gonna ask you the same question, kid.”
In spite of the rain and the early hour, he gives me a smirk that’s so familiar I feel a sudden tightness seize my chest. He looks so quintessentially himself in this moment, hair rumpled, eyes bright, smirking in spite of the howling winds and rain. Cash Ransome, internationally beloved rock star, the bad boy of the band.
My father.
But as he gets a clearer look at my face through the open door, the smirk and the brightness fade away, replaced with heavy concern. “Come on in the house, Son.”
I turn to face the windshield again, unable to look into his worried face. “I think I’m going to take off.”
He opens the door farther, his hand coming up to clasp my shoulder. “I’ve been watching you sit out here for the last twenty minutes. Come inside, Will. I’ll make coffee.”
I don’t bother to ask why he’s awake so early. Instead, I watch as my legs slide across the seat, as my feet hit the pavement and I stand. I feel like I’m outside of my body, watching someone else make these movements. Take these steps. I barely even feel the rain pounding down on my shoulders, even though I’m soaking wet within seconds and my brain vaguely makes note of how cold it is.
The house is silent when we walk through the door. My dad apparently brought a few towels down when he decided to come out and get me, because he throws one at me before I can take two steps into the house.
“Don’t drip on your mom’s floor.”
I towel off my hair, pull off my wet socks, and squeeze some of the water from my t-shirt, but there’s not much I can do about my sodden jeans.
“You wanna go get changed?” he asks, gesturing at the stairs. I freeze in place, the image of my bedroom—kept exactly the same since the day I moved out, the same as it used to be all those hours I spent there with Skye—hitting me hard.
“I can’t go up there,” I croak out without thinking.
Dad studies my face for a moment before nodding. “I’ll run up and grab you some sweats. Why don’t you start the coffee?”
I nod, swallowing hard. God, I shouldn’t be here. I know I shouldn’t be. The only thing that’s going to happen is another fight, and I don’t have the energy for yelling at my dad. Don’t feel like being pissed at him right now.
If I let myself start to feel anything I’m going to end up thinking about Eva. And I’m going to lose my shit.
You can make coffee,I tell myself. That’s something you can do.
My mom has one of those fancy espresso machines but my dad refuses to touch it. According to him, coffee should be simple, cheap, and black. I think he just likes to give her a hard time about it. But I go to his cheap little drip machine and start up a pot, praying the entire time that my mom doesn’t come downstairs. Or, shit, any of my siblings.
My dad must sense my desire to avoid everyone, because as soon as we’ve filled our mugs, he gestures to the basement stairs. “Let’s go downstairs. Then we won’t have to worry about waking anyone up.”
I raise an eyebrow at him, the slightest hint of amusement hitting me for the first time in hours. “You expecting yelling?”
He just shrugs. “We can yell or talk or sit in silence. Whatever you need to do, Will.”
I swallow hard, guilt churning in my gut, and follow him into the basement.
I avoid this area of the house as much as possible. For the most part, the finished basement is my dad’s domain. There’s a large living room complete with rows of leather recliners where we used to do most of our movie watching when I was younger. There’s a pool table and foosball—which my dad and his brothers play even more than the kids. I have a lot of happy memories in this basement.
On the other side of the game room, though, is my dad’s music room. He doesn’t have a full recording studio in the house—that would be at Reed’s house a few blocks away. But he does have a room he uses to store his instruments and to play with his brothers whenever they’re hanging out over here. It cost a shit ton of money to build—special measures were put into place to alleviate any instrument-warping moisture from being underground and the entire thing is massively soundproofed. He keeps about two dozen electric and acoustic guitars here, plus a few bass guitars, a Steinway, and a set of drums.
I used to practically live in that room. And I’m relieved as fuck when he takes his coffee over to one of the couches in the living room instead. He throws the sweat pants and a t-shirt at me. “Go get dry.”
You should go home, I tell myself, over and over again, like a mantra, the entire time I’m changing in the bathroom. But when I’m finished, I somehow find myself sitting on the couch, just a few feet away from him. My dad sips his coffee, and watches me.
“You’re up pretty early this morning,” he finally says.
I shrug. “I’ve been driving around for a while.”
A pause. “Well, I’m glad you came here.”
I wait for him to ask me what’s wrong, to wonder what sent me out driving through the dark streets of LA in the middle of the night. To ask why he found me sitting in his driveway for half an hour at the ass crack of dawn. But he doesn’t say anything. Merely drinks his coffee, watches me, and waits.
“I broke up with Eva,” I blurt out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him stiffen, but I concentrate on my coffee, not trusting what he’d see in my face if I looked at him.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he finally says. “I got the feeling you really liked her.”
I fucking love her.
But I don’t tell him that.
“You want to tell me why?”
I run a hand through my wet hair, feeling agitation spark in my belly. “You really need to ask?”
“Yeah, Will. I do. Because you sure as shit don’t talk to me anymore.”
I glare at him, that agitation shimmering into something a lot like anger. Maybe it was stupid to want to stay numb. Because this, having a target to direct all the shit in my head—is starting to feel pretty damn good.
“I can’t imagine why that is, Dad,” I snap, sarcasm bleeding through my voice.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even look away. “I know exactly why it is. What I don’t know is what it’s going to take to get you to admit it.”
“Admit it? Admit what?”
“How angry you are.”
I stare at him, having no idea what the hell he’s talking about. I don’t think I’ve made any secret of how angry I am.
As if reading my mind, my dad sighs. “You act angry, Will. You act like you can’t stand the fucking sight of me. But you won’t actually tell me. You won’t talk about it. You won’t—”
All of a sudden, that rage in my chest swells, too big to contain anymore. “You want me to talk about it? You want me to tell you? Fine, Dad. I’ll tell you. I think Skye would be alive right now if it wasn’t for you and your brothers.”
He holds my gaze, unblinking, giving me no sign that my words cause the slightest pain. It only makes me more pissed off. I’m up on my feet without even realizing, pacing around the room.
“She was too young to be thrust into that world,” I say. “She was only sixteen when you signed her! And you all threw her to the wolves. You signed her death warrant the minute you offered her a contract.”
“She was a drug addict, Will.”
I whirl on him. “Yeah, and do you have any idea what that felt like for me? To see her getting worse and worse, every damn day? To wake up in the middle of the night and hear her on the phone with some asshole dealer? To find the bed empty in the morning and no idea where the hell she was? To wonder, all the time, if this was going to be the day she didn’t make it home?”
I’m breathing so heavily it’s a wonder I can get the words out. I want to rip the tired, sad expression off his face. Want to stomp into that music room and start ripping it all apart, every guitar, every platinum record he has hanging on the walls.
“Do you have any idea,” I gasp out, my voice breaking, “what it was like to know that I couldn’t help her? To know that she was choosing that shit over me?”
“Actually, Will, I do,” he says, his voice very soft. “Because that’s exactly what my mother did. She chose drugs over her family. And that’s something that I, and all of your uncles, have had to deal with our entire lives.”
Just like that, all of the fight goes out of me, leaving me weak and slumped and gasping for air.
It’s not a secret, what he just told me. I’ve always known that my grandmother—not Ruby but my real grandmother, a woman I never even met—had left her husband and children because she refused to get help for her addiction. My dad and my uncles were always open about that, about what it did to them, how much it hurt, how much it fucked them up.
But I somehow never connected what happened to them with what happened to Skye. I’ve been so pissed off and so hurt and so desperate for someone to blame that I never stopped to think how much I actually had in common with the men I condemned for helping to bring about her death.
“Dad…” I whisper, the word broken, and I feel him wrap an arm around my shoulder.
I’m not someone who cries. I haven’t let myself shed a single tear since the day I found out Skye had OD’d. It felt like a disservice to her, like I’d be tarnishing her memory somehow if I allowed myself to show that kind of emotion over anything less than the utter agony of losing her.
But I’m pretty sure I’m going to cry now.
“It’s my fucking fault,” I mutter, rubbing my hands over my eyes. “It’s my fault, Dad.”
His arm gets tighter. “No, it’s not, Will.”
“It is! All this time I’ve been blaming you guys because I couldn’t face what I did.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m the one who found her!” I yell. “I was with Reed and Wyatt that night we found her playing in that shitty bar. You weren’t even there!” I take in a deep, gasping breath. Why does it feel like my lungs are going to explode? “I’m the one who pushed you guys to sign her. I’m the one who insisted she could be the next big thing.”
“Because she was good, Will. She was really, really good. We all could see it. We just didn’t realize she was sick.”
“I should have realized she was sick!” I squeeze my eyes shut. “She was my girlfriend. I was supposed to take care of her! I was supposed to be the person who kept her safe and I…I couldn’t…I…” It’s really a struggle to speak now, wet heat building behind my eyes, clogging my throat. “I couldn’t help her.”
My dad’s sigh is deep and knowing and filled with all the pain of a child who grew to know far too much about addiction and loss. “That’s the shitty thing about life, Will. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t.”
The first tear slips out and I brush it away, my hands rough and impatient. His strong arm somehow gets even tighter around my shoulders. “It’s okay, Will.”
“It’s not,” I croak out.
“It is. You can cry, Son. You can scream at me. You can hit me. You can break shit. You can do whatever you need to do. I’m still going to be standing right here.”
The dam finally breaks and hot tears scald my cheeks. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to hold them back, how hard I try to keep a handle on things, I just can’t do it. Because Skye is dead and I’ll never know if there’s something I could have done differently to help her. And I’ve been so angry and scared and guilty about it that I’ve spent years pushing away four of the most important people in my life.
And a few hours ago, I pushed away the woman I love more than I ever thought I could love anyone again. And I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to make that right.
“You know what I think about sometimes?” my dad asks, and I wonder how in the hell he’s managing to keep his voice so steady when it feels like the entire world is falling apart around me. “I think about how Silas is the same age you were when you and Reed found Skye in that dive bar.”
That brings me up short.
“You always acted older than your age,” he continues. “You were always taking care of your siblings and your cousins. Always wanting to be one of the guys with Wyatt, even with me and your uncles. You were so fucking talented, too,” he lets out a short, sad laugh. “It was easy to let ourselves think you were a hell of a lot more grown up than you really were.”
I open my mouth to argue but I have no idea what to say to that.
My dad isn’t finished. “But then I look at Silas. And I think about how he’s sixteen. And he’s a great kid—smart and funny and loyal and talented and way kinder than I’ve ever been in my life. But he’s a kid, Will. You would never expect him to be able to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders. You would never expect him to be able to save a sick girl who had no desire to be saved. That wouldn’t be fair, and you know it.” He’s quiet for a beat. “So why in the hell do you expect it from yourself?”
“Because I—”
He doesn’t let me cut in. “You were sixteen when you met Skye, Will, and she was already using. Being thrust into this industry didn’t help. And I wish to God,” his voice cracks and he has to swallow several times before he can continue. “I wish to God I would have realized what was happening sooner. That we would have looked into her family more before signing her, realized how shitty and manipulative her parents were, figured out how they were going to use her.”
He shifts so he’s facing me and brings one hand up to cup the back of my head, forcing me to look at him. His eyes are so fucking sad—sad for me and sad for the girl we couldn’t help.
But they’re also filled with a fierce, unending fire. With love. “You were only seventeen when you found out how bad things were for her. Seventeen. Eighteen when she died.” His hand tightens. “It was not your fault.”
“But I—”
“It’s not your fault any more than it was my dad’s fault my mom wouldn’t get help. It’s not your fault any more than it was Reed’s, or Daltrey’s, or Lennon’s, or mine that our mother didn’t feel like she had enough to live for. Skye was sick, Will. And it was a really, really shitty situation. But it wasn’t your fault.”
I let out a breath, fresh tears falling, and for the first time in a really long time, some of the weight on my chest eases. Not all of it—the blame I’ve carried all this time is heavy shit. And I’m not ready to absolve myself of all the guilt yet. But maybe I can start to envision a day when that might be possible for me.
This time when my dad wraps his arms around me, it’s a full-on hug. And he doesn’t let go for a really long time.
“Your brothers are right about you,” I say after a minute, when the tears have finally dried up and I feel like I can breathe again. “You’re a sappy bastard.”
My dad laughs, the sound deep in his chest, and I can feel the rumble of it through the embrace he refuses to cut short.
“I’m a hugger, kid. Deal with it.”
I squeeze him back, just a little bit tighter. “I can do that.”
One cool thing about my dad—he never makes you feel bad even for the most embarrassing displays of emotion. He doesn’t say a word while I grab the Kleenex and mop of my face and when I come back to the couch, he’s grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the wet bar.
He waits until I’ve taken a few deep gulps before he addresses the next emotional disaster of my life. “What happened with Eva?”
I blow out a breath, tilting my head against the back of the couch cushion. “She’s talking about going back to work soon.”
“And that scares you.” It isn’t a question and I don’t respond. We both know it fucking terrifies me.
But I also know it isn’t the biggest issue. “I wasn’t ready for that relationship.”
He snorts. “That’s some bullshit right there.”
I glare at him, then gesture over at the spot of carpet where only a few minutes ago I was completely breaking down. “I’m fucked up, Dad.”
“So?”
“What do you mean so?”
He gives a maddening shrug. “Everyone’s a little fucked up, kid.”
In spite of myself, a laugh breaks out. He makes it all sound so simple. But I sober real fast. “She tried to get me to open up and I pushed her away.” I picture her in her beach house, telling me that she had battled her demons for me, and how brave that makes her. How different from me. I close my eyes. “Because I’m a fucking coward.”
“Hmm.” He’s quiet for a moment. “You know what’s really bothered me about this whole mess the last few years?”
“Uh, your son was being a raging asshole?”
He rolls his eyes. “Kids get mad at their parents. Hell knows I spent plenty of time pissed off at my dad. No, that wasn’t the big issue for me.” He meets my eye, the ghost of that familiar smirk on his face. “Don’t get me wrong—I missed the hell out of you, kid. But I can take your anger.” He clutches my shoulder. “What really got to me though, what scared the shit out of me, if you want me to be honest, was the fact that you weren’t talking. Not to anyone.”
“I talked to Rose,” I argue, but I know it’s not really true. And so does my dad.
“Rose knew what happened, but you didn’t ever tell her how you felt.” He takes a sip of his water, considering. “You know, I almost lost your mom when we first started dating. I was fucked up about a lot of stuff and I didn’t know how to deal with it. And I certainly didn’t know how to talk about it.” He studies my face. “You were always much better at that stuff than I was when I was younger, Will—being open with people. Being real. I never really worried that you’d repeat my mistakes. I never thought you’d be in danger of losing out on love because you were too afraid to let someone in.”
I manage a weak smile. “Because, unlike you, I was raised in a house where people hug all the time?”
He chuckles, flipping me off. But then his gaze grows more serious. Maybe even a little proud. “That’s not why. I never worried about you because you’ve always been much, much braver than me, Son.”
Just like that, my throat closes up again, wetness pricking at my eyes. I don’t deserve a Dad like him—not the way I’ve been acting for the last few years. But I’m damn well going to try to fix that.