The four days that followed in between our Louisville show and our Chicago show passed in an unmemorable blur. We’d had shows in Grand Rapids and Indianapolis, but I didn’t remember them when I first woke up in my Chicago hotel room.
Last time I went on a bender was when I found out Gramps had stage 4 liver cancer. It happened over the span of four days. I was with three girlfriends I only turned to when I wanted to drink and party…so I guess they weren’t necessarily friends, more like three friendly drug connections. We did a lot of coke, Molly at night when we made it to the clubs, and when we went to our favorite lesbian bar, the bartender hooked us up with some free shots. And then we danced for hours, stayed up to at least seven a.m., crashed at one of the girls’ apartments, slept in until five, woke up doing more lines, and then repeated. Alanna had a key to my apartment, waited for me to come home the whole weekend, but I was too obliterated and preoccupied to call her back after the numerous missed phone calls. And when I finally returned home four days later, she screamed at me, sobbed, asked me if I did drugs, and I said no, but I knew she was smart enough to know I was lying. And then I collapsed in my bed and sobbed, feeling awful for scaring her the way I did, feeling awful because I got screamed at, feeling awful for what I did to my body, feeling awful about hearing that Gramps got his death sentence, and feeling awful from the withdrawal.
I had no idea why Alanna didn’t break up with me then. I never gave her credit for all the shit she dealt with.
Flash-forward a year, I was back at it again. I sort of just woke up in a hotel room, hearing the honking from cars outside. The sun burned my eyes, and I had no idea why the blinds were open when they could have easily been shut. I tossed a pillow over my face, trying to ignore the awful morning sun, while a pulsating pain throbbed in my head. The front, my temples, behind my eyes, the top of my head. Every part of my head hurt.
“Blair?”
I slowly removed the pillow and squinted to find Reagan getting up off the couch on the other side of the suite. She walked over to me in her pj’s with her hair in a loose messy bun, the sign she hadn’t yet showered.
I wanted to ask her where we were. I had a few memories of the last four days, so slowly but surely, the memories of playing in Grand Rapids and Indianapolis resurfaced. Barely, though.
“Hmm?” I moaned.
“Are you feeling okay?”
As I sat up, the headache grew worse. It felt as if it was ready to implode. “Fuck,” I muttered and held my head between my hands, falling back down to the pillows. “Are we in Chicago?”
My question pulled her eyebrows closer together. “Seriously?”
I hesitated. Crap, she was mad now. “No?”
“You had that much to drink last night?”
“No?”
“You puked again. On my bus.”
I closed my eyes and felt her glare zeroing in on me. This is bad. God, this is so bad.
“I’m sorry, Reagan—”
“Miles, Ethan, and Charles had to drag you up here because you were so incoherent.”
“I’m sorry—”
“And were you really that drunk when you were performing? Because you were acting like it.”
I opened my eyes again. This knowledge had my heart racing. “How was I acting?”
“You seriously don’t remember?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Can you just save the lecture right now and tell me?”
“Slurring your words anytime you spoke to the audience. You kicked a speaker after you jumped on it. I don’t care if everyone was cheering for you. You know the average age of the girls in the audience?”
“We’re adults. They know we drink.”
“You don’t drink on the job, Blair! Oh my God!” She threw her hands in the air and let them land on her head. She got off the bed and paced around a little bit before snapping her scowl back at me. “My reputation is already on the line with this hacking. The last thing I need right now is for my opener to go out there wasted with a bunch of middle and high schoolers.” She paused as she gave me a quizzical look. “Have you been sober at all since Louisville?”
The answer was no, but I still looked at the ceiling and thought about it anyway to lessen the blow.
“Wow,” she said. “Just wow.”
“You never had a problem with my drinking or smoking before.”
“That’s because it didn’t knock you out for four days. You were still able to perform without kicking a goddamn speaker.”
“My piece of shit father just showed up in my life. I think I’m allowed to be a little upset.”
“Yeah? And my whole phone is out there for everyone to read, but I wasn’t incoherent for days. Blair, there was nothing behind your eyes. They were blank. You know how scary that is?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you really sound like it,” she said sarcastically.
I rolled out of bed. I wasn’t going to stay in the room to listen to her criticize me. I slipped my shoes on and snatched my phone from the nightstand.
“You know what, I’m gonna leave,” I said. “My head hurts way too much to hear you criticize me.”
“Yeah, and where are you gonna go?”
“Somewhere that doesn’t make me feel like I’m stuck in a prison.”
“Um, excuse me?”
I faced her and noticed her eyes blazing with fury. That once beautiful smile that instantly drew me to her was on the other side of the planet because what was in its place was a look I’d never seen on her before. I probably should have apologized or stopped talking right there, but the aching in my head and all throughout my body didn’t really help the anger that still remained in me.
“We hide in a hotel room or a bus every night,” I said. “Now I can’t even drink, apparently—”
“Did you just refer to me as a prison?”
Wait, did I say that, rational me said. But the rational me wasn’t in control of my speaking ability at the moment. Hungover me was in charge, and she was irritable and mean.
“I did because we can’t do anything—”
“Because that’s what happens when you’re in this industry, Blair. That’s what happens when your phone gets hacked, and text messages and pictures and videos of your personal life are on the front page of gossip magazines for people to talk about at fucking happy hour. Now, if it feels like you’re trapped in a prison, by all means, let me snip you free.”
“You used to be fun.”
“Yeah? You used to be sober.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Alanna.”
“Alanna?” She belted out a mirthless cackle. “Okay, glad to know you’re not just this way with me. If you feel like you’re in a prison because I’m upset that you’ve been intoxicated for four straight days, performed on my tour completely drunk, and made a fool out of yourself, maybe you need to go find someone else.”
“Or I need to find someone who can take risks instead of hiding all the fucking time.”
“Wow! So, I’m boring because I’m aware that my actions have consequences?”
I shouldn’t have said that.
“No—”
She took a step forward and pointed a sturdy finger. “I’m boring because I know that I have little girls looking up to me, and I want to be a good role model for them?”
“Well—”
“I’m boring because I don’t want to get shitfaced every night like you’ve been doing this whole week? Hell, this whole tour? I’m boring because I value my privacy and the close relationships that I have with the very few people I trust? I’m boring because I don’t want people intruding on that?”
“No—”
“I took a risk falling for you, my opening act. I took a risk falling for a girl who I knew had the power to completely destroy me because she doesn’t like relationships. I took a risk collaborating with someone who I was hooking up with, knowing full well that if it didn’t work out, I would forever be tied to that song and that person for the rest of my career. If all of that isn’t good enough for you, then leave me, and go find someone else worthier of your time.”
“Reagan, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
“Great. You can sleep with Miles tonight or get your own room.”
“Seriously?”
America’s Sweetheart really knew how to cut you with her glare. “Does it look like I’m joking?”
I’d never seen her look more serious. Her beautiful warm eyes now darkened with a rage burning inside them.
I raised my hands to surrender. “Fine, I’ll leave.”
“Good. Bye.”
I grabbed my book bag off the ground and stormed out of that room. Having nowhere else to go, I texted Miles to find out what room he was staying in. I waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I wandered around the lobby and had to ask the front desk where the buses were, and when they escorted me to the sectioned off underground garage, I also had to text Tony to see if he could give me the keys so I could bunk up. But just like Miles, he didn’t respond as fast as I wanted him to.
So, I slid down the concrete wall, hiding behind the buses so I could cry. I wanted to call my mom and tell her what happened in Louisville, but there was only one bar of service in the garage, and I had no energy to aimlessly wander around the hotel again looking for a private spot to cry to her on the phone. I also had no energy to tell my mom that the man who abandoned her twenty-four years ago just popped up from the pits of hell.
A half hour later, Miles finally responded and told me his room. When he let me in, I found him shirtless, in his flannel pj pants, his hair disheveled in every single direction, and Ethan in his bed. My eyes widened at the sight.
“Hey, you’re alive,” he said, a neutral expression thinning his lips. I recognized the disappointment in his tone.
“Do you think we can talk for a little bit? Privately?”
* * *
Admitting to my best friend that I didn’t remember the past four days was completely embarrassing. I hated it, and I hated it even more that all this worry detailed his face as I cried. I didn’t admit to the coke, and maybe he was a little confused as only a few memories slowly rushed back the more we talked about what happened. I remembered sleeping a lot, and then when I woke up, I started drinking and doing lines of coke. I had a few more shots than I usually did in Grand Rapids, but I remembered that show and the crowd and how a fan in the front row held up a sign, proposing to me, and after our third song, I accepted. Then after the show, I drank, did more lines, and couldn’t remember the rest. And Indianapolis got really hazy the second I stepped onto the stage. Miles said he didn’t realize how drunk I was until the middle of our set when I hopped off a speaker and kicked it while wailing on my Fender. I was so glad I didn’t remember Finn and Corbin lecturing me about my drinking habits once we finished our set. But knowing that it was bad enough for Reagan’s manager and our manager to band together to confront me really put things into perspective.
But what really got to me was when Miles said that, despite all of that, Reagan insisted I stay on her bus and her hotel room.
“She took care of you the whole time,” Miles said. “You don’t remember any of that?”
If I had, would I have still made that awful comment to her? As if guilt didn’t already weigh me down. “No, I don’t,” I muttered.
“You’ve got quite the girlfriend. Even after you puked on her bus and kicked one of her speakers.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know if she’s my girlfriend anymore.”
“What are you talking about?”
I filled him in, wincing when I had to tell him that idiotic prison comment, and he called me a moron, which I rightfully deserved. I told him I’d have to talk to Corbin about getting my own hotel room in Milwaukee, and he said since I was with Reagan, he’d been inviting Ethan to spend time on the bus in between trips. And I was glad he finally found a tour hookup even if mine was falling apart.
Reagan avoided our green room like the plague at the Chicago venue. Our paths crossed once when we finished sound checking, and she was on her way to the stage. Our eyes locked for a brief moment, and then both of us darted away, not saying a word.
“Apologize to her,” Miles said once we grabbed a plate of food and hid out in the green room.
“I will. When she hates me less.”
“The more you wait—”
“I know, Miles. Just…I need some time.”
I only opted for one shot before the show to help loosen the stress coiling inside me. But as I watched Miles take his second before grabbing his drumsticks so we could stand at the side stage, my skin wouldn’t stop itching. When was the last time I only had one shot? The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it. The thought of it took over my mind, and it was the only thing I could focus on. The urge to drink another was so powerful, I broke out in beads of sweat, forcing me to clutch my Fender’s neck to fight against it. I felt like if I didn’t give my mind and body the temporary elixir it begged for, it would be like leaving a snake bite untreated. The craving was such a virulent force that it made me uncomfortable in my own skin.
Here I was, standing in front of twenty-three thousand people in Chicago, and my mind was programmed to think about drinking instead of soaking up the scene of thousands upon thousands of people staring up at me, swaying to the beat of the song. That didn’t matter anymore. Having a drink mattered.
The more I told myself to stay away from it, the more my skin crawled with the need to have it. Taming the angel gave fuel to the devil inside me. Drinking was also second nature. Preshow shots were a thing ever since we started performing in high school. Drinking after the show. Drinking at dinner. Drinking on the bus to pass the time traveling. Every night, I’d start drinking around five after we sound checked, then I had shots and continued drinking after our set until I passed out. Then repeated. And since the hacking? Well, I kept the local liquor stores in business, that was for sure.
After the show, I took a minute to collect myself in the green room, alternating between closing my eyes to resist the urge and then opening my eyes to see the bottles of Patrón and SoCo. Miles gave me the hint that he was going to fool around with Ethan for a bit in our bus, so I gave him space by staying in that green room, door closed, looking my demon square in the eye, challenging it.
Then I remembered what I had in my book bag. Weed, cocaine, Ritalin, Xanax, and Molly. For the next five minutes, I told myself to ignore the book bag. Ignore the bottles. I used my pointer finger to dig half moons all up and down my thumb, hoping the pain and studying what resembled a path of footprints on the top of my thumb would distract me from the stifling thoughts.
I couldn’t go on the bus because Miles was getting some, and I couldn’t go to Reagan because we weren’t talking. God, we weren’t talking. She hated me. The woman I cared so much for couldn’t even look at me.
I broke.
The white powder flew up the rolled-up dollar bill and into my nose. I sank into the couch until my head rested against the back, feeling the cocaine drip down my throat and the warmth flow down my arms and legs. I loved how the drug promised euphoria for the next half hour or so. It was short but blissful, and I loved it when my limbs started tingling. The powder chomped away at the sadness like a game of Pac-Man in my bloodstream. Having those toxins in me brought the clarity I was desperate for, shutting out all those cacophonic voices and bringing me peace and silence. It reminded me of my pool hopping days when I loved sitting at the bottom of the pool so I didn’t hear anything. It felt like I immersed myself in another world for just a moment. A world of silence. Fucking goddamn silence from my own thoughts.
For the next hour and a half while Reagan performed, and Miles and Ethan used that time wisely until Ethan was scheduled to work right after the show ended, I played with my Hummingbird, did a line, played again, did another line. It killed the time, and hey, I wrote a new song about being sexiled.
And then there was a knock on the door. I shot straight up and glanced down at a rolled-up dollar bill, my ID, and the rest of the eight ball on the coffee table. The doorknob twisted, and as I processed that I needed to discard all the evidence, there was Reagan, her face shimmering from sweat, fresh off the stage and slightly out of breath.
“Hey, Blair? Can we talk for a second—” She observed me and then looked down at the coffee table, staring straight at the evidence, and once that happened, her mouth dropped. “What the hell is—”
“Get out!” I yelled as a reflex.
“What are you…what’s that—”
I jumped up and stood in front of the table to hide the evidence. “I said, get out!”
She glanced over my shoulder. “Is that…is that—”
“Reagan, Jesus Christ, get out! You can’t just barge in like—”
Ignoring my demands, she lurched closer, but I stopped her with my hands on her shoulders and held her in place. I should have known better than to resist because that just made her body fight me to catch a glimpse of what was behind me. All of that yoga she did every morning paid off. She shifted me to the side to get a better view.
Her eyes flicked back to me, and I could see the anger brewing.
“Are you serious?” she yelled.
Still hyped up on the last bump, it didn’t really take much for me to fire back. “I told you to get out—”
“Is that coke?”
“Reagan, seriously le—”
“You’re doing fucking cocaine?” She lunged forward to inspect me. “Great. Your pupils are dilated.”
“For the millionth time, you need to go—”
“You realize there are fans coming back here, right? Or do you not care about that?”
“Of course, I care—”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“It’s not really any of your—”
She pointed a steady finger at me. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
I threw my hands up in the air since that felt like the only defense I had. “You can’t just come barging in people’s rooms!”
“Seriously, Blair? That’s your argument? Are you going to answer anything I asked, or are you gonna continue to yell at me to leave?”
“It’s really not that big a deal.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Um, what?”
“It’s not that big a deal,” I repeated slower.
“You know, I wasn’t really into you guys pounding back shots and smoking weed before you went on stage, but I bit my tongue. Because you managed to kill it every night. But this? No, not after you can’t even remember the last four days and played the Indianapolis show completely plastered. No, this isn’t okay at all.”
“Reagan, can you please—”
“I’m not gonna have someone high on coke opening for me. That backfires on me. That affects my reputation just as much as it affects yours. Did you even think of that?” She waited for me to answer, but I had nothing. I was fucking miserable and depressed, and I needed an upper to help me get through the night. That was all I was focused on. “Of course you didn’t,” she finished.
Miles appeared in the doorway with a smirk, like a nice hour and a half lay session should do to a person. But once he saw me, his grin washed away.
“What?” he said. “What’s going on?”
“You know she’s doing coke right now?” Reagan said, pointing at me as if he had no idea who I was.
“Say it a little louder please,” I said.
Miles checked out the coffee table. Just like Reagan, a frown contorted his face. “Blair, what the hell?”
“Really? So, you didn’t know about this? You’re not doing this with her?”
“God, no!”
“Cool. So, she’s high right now, just so you know. Right before a bunch of fans are about to come back here.”
“Oh my God, it wears off in, like, a half hour.”
Reagan stepped around me and lunged toward the table. “No. You’re not doing this.” She snatched the eight ball.
“Don’t you dare—”
That was when she looked me straight in the eye and then opened the bag to pour the rest of the cocaine on the ground. Then she snatched the SoCo bottle and poured at least three shots’ worth over the powder. All I could do was watch the contents dissolve into the brown liquor on the dirty wooden floor.
“Are you fucking crazy?” I howled and yanked the bottle out of her hands. I was so infuriated, I could feel it piling in my chest.
She dug her boots into the puddle and wiped her feet on the mess as if it was a front doormat. I could feel the weight of pure anger building up in my hands, strong enough for me to want to chuck another shot glass across the room. All the money I spent, all the things I needed to numb the feelings itching at my skin like an army of bedbugs, completely wasted in absolute filth.
“What the fuck, Reagan! What the actual fuck?”
I kicked my boots through the mess, and the concoction splattered up her bare legs. She observed it in utter disgust, as if I spat on her.
“What the hell? Stop it, Blair!” Miles shouted while pulling my arm to prevent another splash.
“She just wasted all of it.”
“Good!” she shouted. “Now I don’t have to worry about you drinking it like a cat.”
“Yeah, because that’s something I would have done—”
“Yeah, it probably would have been since you don’t seem to give a shit about anything or anyone right now.” She tossed a glance at Miles over my shoulder. “She does coke, she’s off the tour. Plain and simple.” She gave me the nastiest look I’d ever seen on her. Reagan Moore, with her beautiful smile that first reeled me in, the smile all over the magazines and billboards, America’s Sweetheart. I guess I’d chased that Reagan Moore away. “You have until Milwaukee to decide what your priority is. In the meantime, I’m fucking done with you, you understand me? One hundred percent done with you.”
Just as the burning sensation started in my chest, she swept past me, and I caught the scent of her wonderful perfume that used to comfort me in bed now reminding me of everything I just lost.
And then there was silence. My body felt as if it was filled with cement instead of contaminated blood. The puddle of SoCoke taunted me, splatters scattered across the floor and coffee table. I could feel Miles’s burning glare on the side of my face, and when I turned to him, he appeared as disgusted as Reagan. And then I glanced at the white wall behind him, and my limbs felt so clogged with crap that I just wanted to ram my fist through the drywall to get it all out. I had no control over my body. Forget the drugs, the rage that brewed inside me from all these months was more cogent than anything I’d taken in my life. Instead of the wall, I repeatedly punched the couch as dust billowed in the air. A punch for my grandma dying, a punch for Gramps dying, three punches for my fucking deadbeat dad crawling out of the pits of hell, two punches for Reagan’s fame sucking up the last bit of passion and romance from our relationship, another punch for the stress relievers Reagan turned into filth and probably a flesh-eating bacteria, and five punches for Reagan being one hundred percent done with me.
As I wound up for another punch, Miles caught my wrist and brought it down to our sides. He spun me around, and that detailed scowl never flinched from his face.
“What has gotten into you, huh?”
I fought to break free. “Nothing.”
He let me go, and I tossed myself on the couch, burying my face into my hands. “You better hope to God that Reagan doesn’t kick us off this tour, or you’re going to lose way more than just your girlfriend.”
“Miles, I’m—”
He raised his hand. “Apparently, you have until the morning to decide both our fates. So think really hard about that.”
And he walked out the door.