Change
I woke up the next morning to the lovely sound of someone puking. Panic set in immediately, until I realized that it couldn’t possibly be Layla, who was gurgling and mumbling to herself just a few feet away in her crib. No, it was Zac. I hadn’t been drunk the night before, so I remembered it all.
While he was still hurling out what sounded like everything he’d ever eaten, I crawled out of bed and pulled Layla from her crib. I settled her into her high chair in the kitchen and found a bottle in the fridge that I’d pumped for her. She would make a mess of it, but it made her happy to try to sip from a small bottle. Once she was settled in with that, I decided I should probably have some breakfast, too. And because I was the pushover that I was, I started cooking something I knew Zac would like. I had seen him hungover enough during the tour to know that fried eggs were his hangover food of choice. He was lucky I had a few eggs that hadn’t gone out of date yet. I put on a pot of coffee, too, knowing that sound would draw him out. Zac insisted he didn’t like it, but he would drink a gallon of it when he was coming off a bender.
I almost hated that I knew his habits so well and he probably didn’t even remember my middle name or my birthday—which was coming up in just a few days, in fact.
A few minutes later, when I was scraping eggs off the pan and onto a plate, Zac walked into the room. Running a hand through his messy hair, he asked, “What’s for breakfast?”
“Breast milk, applesauce and cheerios for the one without a full set of teeth,” I replied. “Fried eggs, toast and coffee for those of us with.”
Zac scrunched up his nose in disgust, but grabbed a coffee cup from my dish drainer anyway. I held out a plate of eggs and toast to him and he accepted it. I gave him a minute to get seated at the bar and have a few bites before I said anything else.
“Zac,” I began, then waited for him to raise his head. “I don’t know how this is supposed to work…”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… well, you leave here, you go straight back to her. I know you will. And maybe you’ll lie to her about where you were, maybe you won’t. But you’ll effectively be hers again, until the next time you get pissed off and you run to me or the nearest bar. This pattern… this back and forth… it’s not good. It’s not going to work.”
“Are you finally doing it?” He asked, just a hint of venom in his voice. “Are you asking me for more?”
“Not more… just… different,” I replied. “I’m asking you to change. You can’t keep going on like this. I can’t. We can’t. I just don’t see how any of this is going to work in the long term, and I don’t like to see you destroying yourself like this.”
I was talking about more than just the affair, but I didn’t know how to say that. I didn’t know how to get him to see that I was worried about him. But wasn’t it the sort of thing he had to figure out and want for himself? I didn’t know a lot about addiction, but I knew that much.
“I’m just… I’m having trouble seeing how to make this work,” I continued. “You keep asking me what to do… and I don’t know, Zac. I really don’t. But what we’re doing right now isn’t it. What you’re doing… isn’t it.”
“I’m not doing anything different than I’ve done all along,” Zac said, his tone quickly turning defensive. “What changed?”
“I guess I did,” I replied, biting into my toast.
He pushed back his plate. “Are you kicking me out, too? Is that what’s happening here?”
“I didn’t say that.” I sat my plate down and turned my attention to helping Layla with her breakfast. “But I just don’t want to feel like I’m the second choice, the one you run to when you fight with her. When you come to me, I wanna feel like it’s because you really want to be with me. And, I’ll say it again because it apparently hasn’t sunk in yet, I don’t want you to come here drunk.”
“It’s really just about the drunk thing, isn’t it?” He asked.
“It’s certainly not not about that.” I sighed. “I mean, do you even know the shape you were in last night? No, because you probably don’t remember it. Or any number of other nights. Or even that one afternoon you came here smelling like a bar—once again, because she pissed you off and you couldn’t cope. Well, I can’t keep being the one you run to just because you can’t cope.”
“Well,” Zac said, standing up. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You’ve obviously made up your mind.”
“I don’t want it to be this way,” I replied. “But until you can find a better way to be… a better way to make this work. I—I love you, but I can’t do this.”
Slamming his coffee cup down like a child throwing a tantrum, Zac nodded. I kept my back turned so he wouldn’t see that I was tearing up. I could hear him walk out of the room and shuffle around in my bedroom. A moment later, I heard his footsteps behind me, then felt his lips on the back of my head. I knew he was trying to break down my defenses, and it nearly worked. But it wasn’t fair.
“Just go,” I said. “Go back to your wife.”
With my back turned, I could only hear, not see, him walk away and out the door. I hadn’t meant to give him an ultimatum, but the longer I talked, the less I could a way out of our situation. All I knew was that if there was a way out, it had to be his doing. Zac had to want to fix this. And right then, I wasn’t so sure that he did.
A few hours later, Layla and I were off to the record store. I could have asked Avery to babysit, and probably should have considering the mood I was in, but I didn’t feel like bringing another Hanson into my problems for the day.
I could tell, from the second I walked in the door, that Tobias sensed my mood. His eyebrows raised and he just stared questioningly at me.
“Don’t ask,” I said, hurrying past him to set Layla up in her playpen in the back. I had taken to leaving it there so that I wouldn’t have to worry too much about her now that she was crawling everywhere and even trying to walk.
Of course, as soon as I had her settled in and walked back into the store, Tobias spun around and put his hand on his hip. “Well? You know telling me not to ask means I’m going to fucking ask.”
“Yeah, well,” I mumbled. “Same old story—dealing with the sperm donor. And I really thought things were different this time, but he didn’t take long at all to prove me wrong.”
“I don’t even want to know what he did this time, because I don’t need another reason to dislike him.” Tobias hadn’t even met Zac, but he had heard enough about him from me. He was quick to tell me when I thought I was being too hard on him, but just as quick to come to my defense and threaten Zac’s life when he thought I was being mistreated.
If I told him about Zac telling me he was in love with me and then showing up shitfaced… I didn’t know what Tobias might do.
Tobias’ expression turned even more serious as he eyed me. “Anyway, I don’t know if I should even bring it up, considering the fantastic mood you seem to be in…”
“But?” I put my hand on my hip and glared at him.
“Well, I doubt anything will come of it, but you know… those songs we finished yesterday were really good, and I was looking around online earlier…”
“What. Did. You. Do.”
Tobias gave me a weak smile. “I may have entered your songs in an opening act contest?”
“You may have?” I asked. “What, did your finger just slip and land on the upload button? I mean, either you entered me or you didn’t, and if you did… it was completely without my permission. What the hell?”
“Look, I can withdraw from the contest if you want. But people need to hear your songs, Colbs. And this is an easy way to get out there and be heard. Did I mention you would be opening for Loveless?”
Loveless. I knew that name, because I kept up with the music scene pretty well; I had to, thanks to my job. They were a little more mainstream than I usually listened to, but I’d learned my lesson about judging bands for supposedly being mainstream. They were still at the small venues and festivals level, I was pretty sure. I wouldn’t have to play to a stadium audience, at least. Maybe I could do it…
If I won. Which was a very, very big if.
“What about my job? What about Layla? What about—” I cut myself off before I asked about him. What did it matter what Zac thought or did while I was gone? I could survive without him; he could survive without me.
Couldn’t he?
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t really think about Layla… but I mean, I could go with you. You’ll need accompaniment, right? And then you’d have an extra set of hands, an extra babysitter…”
I sighed heavily, then shook my head. “We are getting so far ahead of ourselves. I probably won’t even win.”
“But you might,” Tobias said, nudging me and grinning.
“But I might,” I agreed. His enthusiasm was infectious. “Okay, okay. Just let me see the website or whatever.”
Tobias pulled his iPad out from under the counter and fiddled with it for a moment. He slid it across the counter and sure enough, there was my name and photo on the website for this contest. The photo wasn’t a very new one; I had posed for some photography classes my last semester of college and posted those photos to my Facebook. But Tobias had found an artsy black and white one that made me look interesting and deep. He’d posted a clip of one of my few upbeat songs as the sample.
And to my surprise… I was in the top five.
“This is really happening, isn’t it?” I asked. I pressed play on my song just because I could. I had already heard it what felt like a million times.
“It is,” he said. “And I know I shouldn’t have gone behind your back, but I knew you wouldn’t have taken this chance on yourself. But you deserve it. So much.”
There were still two weeks left on the voting, and I knew anything could happen. Maybe I wouldn’t win. I most likely wouldn’t, in fact. But I couldn’t stop the butterflies that were fluttering up in my stomach, and I couldn’t stop my mind from filling with images of what this tour might be like. I thought I didn’t want to tour again… I was wrong. I just didn’t want to tour with Zac.
Zac… what would he think of all this? I had no clue. My first instinct was to call or text him and let him know, but I immediately shot that idea down. After the way we had parted, I couldn’t just call him like nothing had happened.
And just like that, the butterflies was gone and I came crashing back down to earth.