Nov. 14, 2013. Fredericton International Airport, Lincoln, NB.
Taylor
The end of a tour is always bittersweet, and that was truer than ever before when it came to this particular tour. It had begun like any other, but in a few short months my life had been turned completely upside down. I felt like a teenager again, torn between so many people who wanted so many different things from me. The difference this time, however, was that I wasn’t a teenager anymore, and physically, I felt even older than my thirty years. Any more of this back and forth and I might lose my fragile grip on sanity altogether.
At least one of the people I’d been engaged in emotional tug of war with had seen fit to let go. Somehow, that wasn’t as much of a relief as it ought to have been. It wasn’t like a normal breakup. Zac was my bandmate, my coworker and my brother. Not all ties between us could be severed. Still, he had done his best to avoid me for the last two weeks of the tour. I wondered what he thought and felt, and what he did at night when I could swear I heard him leaving the hotel so late. But I didn’t dare ask any of those questions; he’d built up such a huge wall between us that I knew I wouldn’t get any answers.
How had any of this happened?
It wasn’t the first time I had cheated on Natalie; that part didn’t surprise me at all. I knew me. I knew my weaknesses. Scott hit all of those weak spots, and I think he knew that, too. But Zac… that was something different, an entirely different weak spot that went so much deeper than I realized. What I felt for him had never been sexual or romantic before, but was it really so surprising that my obsessive, protective feelings for my baby brother could get so twisted? When I thought about it that way, it made a strange sort of sense.
And it was equally unsurprising that something so twisted and wrong would blow up in our faces and burn out as quickly as it began.
In just two short months, everything had changed, and now we were expected to return home like nothing at all was different. Whenever I thought about it, I felt like I was suffocating. How could I go home to Natalie now?
I wasn’t, though.
I had promised Scott I would come visit him during our break in the tour, and I was going to do exactly that. My plan had more holes in it than Swiss cheese, but it was too late to back out now. I had changed my flight a few days ago from Tulsa to Los Angeles. When we arrived at the airport, I went for a coffee first before getting in line, allowing a buffer to build up between myself and the rest of the group so that no one would realize I was lying when I told them the flight had been overbooked and I was being moved to a different connecting flight.
It was a horrible plan. I knew it was. But it was all I had. By the time anyone realized I had lied, I would be long gone and I wouldn’t have to worry about the fallout until I returned to Tulsa… whenever that would be. I still hadn’t booked a flight home.
After getting my new boarding pass and checking my bag, I headed through security and found the rest of our group. It was a small airport, so they weren’t exactly difficult to locate.
“Okay, I think the ticket thing is sorted out,” I told them, trying to sound appropriately exasperated. “Good news, I have one now. Bad news, they couldn’t get me back onto the same flight to Tulsa as you guys, what with the different connecting flight. So I’ll be here until this evening, I guess.”
Zac, I was sure, could see right through me. Even if no one else in the group could, he would be the one. I hurried away and took my seat, just one gate over from theirs. It was going to be a long, awkward wait, but somehow I would have to survive it. I pulled out the book I had bought in the gift shop, just to buy myself even more time before facing them all, and flipped to the first page.
Only a moment later, I saw Zac out of the corner of my eye. He plopped down right next to me, but pulled out his phone and thumbed through it. I thought he wasn’t even going to speak to me, but then he asked, “So, you’ll be home late?”
“Yeah…” My eyes flickered to him for just a moment, then back to my book. “They’re rerouting me through Montreal instead of Toronto.”
Zac nodded, but seemed far more interested in his phone than whatever I was saying. Maybe I was wrong; maybe he didn’t suspect anything. Who knew what was going through his mind these days? Certainly not me. All I knew was the he looked tired, as tired as I felt if not more so. When had my baby brother started to look so old and so like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders? I supposed I was to blame for that, like I was for everything else.
He glanced up at me and scowled. “Do you mind?”
“I’m not… I wasn’t doing anything,” I replied, frowning. How had we gotten to this point, where we couldn’t even have a civil conversation?
“Right,” Zac replied, rolling his eyes. “Just keep your eyes to yourself, right?”
His eyes went straight back to his phone, and it only made me more curious what he was looking at. He could have been texting Kate, I supposed, but I wasn’t even sure how often they talked these days. He rarely mentioned her in conversation—what little conversation we shared—but that wasn’t unusual. The two of them were always strangely private about their relationship, I suppose because they didn’t have as much to prove as Natalie and I did… or so I thought. I wasn’t so sure anymore.
“I wasn’t trying to be nosy,” I finally replied, shifting to the other side of my seat, putting as much space between us as possible without actually moving to a new seat.
Zac snorted. “There’s a first…”
“Zac, I’m not…” I began, then sighed. What was the point? It was clear that he just wanted to argue, even when it didn’t make any sense. “Just… can we not do this? Can we just… not argue, please?”
“If that’s the way you want it, fine,” he replied, his lips turned down into a deep frown.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache coming on. I knew it was one of my own making; when it all came down to it, I was the one who put us in this position. “Zac. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this is the longest conversation we’ve had since… you know.”
“No kidding,” he replied, heaving a sigh. He glanced down and mumbled, “Maybe I did overreact a little…”
“You… you think so?” I asked, purposefully looking just past him rather than at him.
He shrugged, picking up his phone again. “You know me…”
I wasn’t sure anymore if we were talking about how he had snapped at me just then or how our entire ill-fated relationship had gone off the rails, but I decided to take a chance and assume that it was the latter. Looking away from him entirely, I said, “Yeah, well… it’s not like it should have gotten that far. We knew that from the beginning.”
Zac nodded slowly, then to my surprise looked up at me with what I could only describe as hope on his face. It was the closest to happy I had seen him look in weeks. “Why don’t we go out when you get home? Grab burgers and beers, just… you know, hang out. We haven’t done that in a while.”
If my heart hadn’t broken when he walked out of my hotel room, I was sure that it did right then. I wanted so badly to take him up on his suggestion. There was still some hope that we could be brothers, normal brothers, again. I could see that so clearly.
Except… I wasn’t going to be home. And I couldn’t tell him that.
Our last hope to fix what was left of our relationship, and I had dashed it without even knowing it. I wanted so badly to run back to the ticket counter and tell them I had to get to Tulsa, even if it meant they shoved me in with the luggage. I had to get to Tulsa and salvage my relationship with my brother before it was ruined forever.
But I couldn’t. I had made my bed and I had to lie in it. And I had to lie to Zac.
“I… umm,” I stuttered out, doing my best to fake a smile. “Yeah, if I can get away from Nat and the kids…”
Zac rolled his eyes and smirked. “Like that’s ever been a problem for you. So… tomorrow or Saturday? Just you and me?”
There was so much hope in his grin, and it crushed the shattered pieces of my heart. I nodded weakly, feeling my own smile turn to something more like a grimace. “Y-yeah, sure. You and me.”
“Awesome,” he replied, giving me a huge smile and a nudge.
A shrill voice came over the PA system to announce that flight 5612 with service to Toronto was boarding.
“Well, that’s me,” Zac said. “Give me a call or a text when you land?”
“It won’t be until around eleven Tulsa time, I think,” I replied. It was a weak excuse, and I was sure Zac knew it, even if he didn’t understand why.
“I’m always up late, you know that,” he replied, his voice going a bit more serious.
My lies and excuses were starting to fail, I was sure. It was only a matter of hours before they failed entirely.
“Yeah,” I replied, giving him what I was sure was the world’s weakest smile. “We’ll make plans, alright? Probably Saturday night.”
Zac bite his lip, and I wanted to crawl under my chair and die. “Promise?”
Biting my own lip so hard I was afraid I would draw blood, I nodded. I couldn’t speak, but I could taste the lie in my mouth and it made me sick.
Zac stared at me, his smile faltering a bit. “’Kay… well, I’ll have my cell on when we’re not in the air. See you soon.”
“See ya, Zac,” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper.
He stared at me for a moment, and I braced myself. He could see right through me, I was sure. Of all the people in the world, even after all we had been through—or perhaps because of it—Zac would be the one to see right through my lies. After a moment, though, he just shook his head and walked away.
I was off the hook… for now.
I should have been relieved, but I knew the worst was yet to come. Everything was going to come crashing down around me, but it was too late to stop it. I could practically see my life flashing in front of my eyes. The worst part was that I knew even if there was a way to stop it, even if I could pinpoint one moment in time to go back and change my fate… I wouldn’t.