Ease My Worried Mind
“The cake’s here!” Malcolm called out. Picking up the cake we had ordered for Layla’s party was the only task Avery was confident we could put her husband in charge of, and if his exclamation was anything to go by, he had indeed managed to accomplish that task.
The 3CG offices were a strange place to hold a first birthday party, but there was a big rehearsal space that could be converted to serve virtually any purpose. In this case, it was filled with balloons, stuffed animals and as many folding tables and chairs as we could drag in from the other rooms so that all of mine and Zac’s extended families would have a place to sit.
Making a big deal out of a birthday that Layla wasn’t even going to remember seemed ridiculous to me, but the party wasn’t just for her. It was for us—her family—and it was for Zac, too. By some sort of magic coincidence, her birthday was the very day he was being released from rehab, and so most of his family was there to celebrate his release… and finally meet Layla. Only the need to constantly keep going to make sure everything was set up was keeping me from having a complete breakdown at the thought.
Any minute now, Zac was going to walk through that door with his parents. The last time I had seen them, Layla was still just a growing bundle of cells that I didn’t want to admit held some of their son’s DNA. Now she was toddling around and yelling “balloon!” at anyone who got in her way.
I was still trying to find just the right spot for the cake when the room grew quiet. I spun around and saw that Zac was standing in the doorway, his parents right behind him. He was thinner than I remembered, and I wondered if I just hadn’t noticed that during our last visit, but he didn’t look unhealthy. He still had a happy glow about him, although his expression grew more and more sheepish the longer everyone stared at him.
“Well, I’m here,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with the hand that was no longer encased in a cast. “I guess the party can start.”
For a moment, no one said anything. Then, with the sort of perfect timing that only a clueless, innocent child can manage, Layla appeared from behind a table and waddled across the room toward Zac.
“Daddy! Daddy!” The word was clearer than it had ever been before, and there was no doubt about her joy at seeing him again.
I watched a number of emotions, including perhaps even fear and horror, cross Walker and Diana’s faces as Layla continued to giggle and call out Zac’s name. He fell to his knees and pulled her into his arms, and only then did their expressions soften to something closer to acceptance and just a hint of love. The two of them loved children; that was evident any time I had seen them with their children and grandchildren. Like it or not, Layla was their granddaughter, too, and I was glad to see that just maybe they weren’t going to hold the circumstances of her conception against her.
Without knowing what she was doing at all, Layla had defused all of our tension and worry. The party was now free to start.
It seemed like it took forever to Zac to break free of all his family members and make his way to me. It wasn’t until the cake was cut and we were sitting down to eat that we got to speak to each other at all. He plopped down in the chair next to mine and sighed happily.
“It’s good to be back, Colbs. It’s real good.”
“Yeah,” I replied, smiling at him. “I’ve kinda missed you, you know.”
“Only kinda?” He asked, smirking and nudging me.
I shrugged, but I couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across my face. Of course Zac saw through me. Of course he knew that I had been missing him nearly every day since I met him. But now, maybe, he was no longer going to be that missing piece of my life. Now he could finally be here to stay.
He leaned against me and grinned. “I kinda missed you, too.”
The flurry of activity started up again soon, giving Zac and I precious little time to talk in between bites of cake, potato chips and pizza. In what seemed like only a few minutes, Taylor and his wife—who seemed in her element as one of the party planners no matter how she felt about me—were directing things again, piling up the presents for Layla to open. Of course, Layla had no clue what was happening, but she tore happily at the paper while I helped her not to damage the presents themselves and Zac tried to point her in the direction of whatever camera was going off.
At some point, Zac vanished from my side. I was so caught up in helping Layla figure out the dollhouse she’d just received that I hardly noticed he was gone until all the boxes were gone as well and there were no more presents left to open. A bubble of panic rose up in my throat, but I had to fight it. Of course he wasn’t going to just leave in the middle of our daughter’s first birthday party. What reason would he have to? Even at his worst, I couldn’t quite picture that sort of behavior from him. And he was now, I hoped, quite far from his worst.
“Daddy!” Layla cried out, his movement in the doorway completely distracting her from the little plastic person she had been so enthralled by a moment ago.
Sure enough, there he was, and I felt like an idiot for doubting him. There was a sheepish expression on his face, and I understood why. His guitar was slung over his shoulder, and I realized that aside from what I had inadvertently heard at the rehab center, this would be the first time anyone in his family had seen him perform since before his accident—the first solo public performance of any sort that he had given for months.
Why he had chosen Layla’s birthday, his very first day out of rehab, to make such a big gesture, I didn’t really understand.
It seemed no one else understood either, because just like they had when he walked in, the entire room had gone quiet.
“What, you’ve never seen a white guy with a guitar before?” Zac asked, chuckling nervously. He ducked his head as he walked across the room and sat down next to me amidst all the wrapping paper and bows. “Have I made a serious mistake here? Is this really such a big deal?”
“Of course it’s a big deal,” I said softly. “And you knew it was. You’re trying to prove yourself to them, and that’s okay. It’s okay that you want to… and it’s okay if you’re not ready.”
“I didn’t think about it that way,” He said. “Okay, maybe a little bit. But I didn’t exactly have time to get the baby girl a present yet. Otherwise occupied, you know. So I’ve been working on something, and I figured it would be enough for now. The superficial, commercial stuff can come later.”
“And what is it you’ve been working on? A song?”
He nodded. “It’s not an original one or anything. I mean, I’ve been working on some of those too, but they’re not ready. A little birdy told me you know this song, so… if you could help me out a little, just with the fret? Just, like, hold my wrist steady? And pick up the slack if I make a mistake?”
“Even if you do, it’s going to be perfect.”
I wasn’t positive, but I had a feeling I knew what song he was talking about. A quick glance at Taylor, who was kneeling in front of us with his camera glued to his face, suggested that I was right. Even with his eyes obscured, I could see a big grin spreading all the way across his face.
Zac cleared his throat as he carefully placed his left hand on the fret. The brace he wore, although smaller than the cast, meant that he had to adjust the way he held his hand, in a way I was sure only made playing more painful. He brought his right hand around to wrap the left tighter, and I saw how stiff his fingers were as he manipulated them into the right position. I positioned myself behind him and tried to mirror the way he’d held his left hand. When he turned and gave me a smile and a quick peck on the lips, I knew I’d done it right.
“It’s actually good physical therapy, believe it or not,” he said softly. “It’s just that I don’t have much flexibility back yet. And I may not get much more of it back. Guess I should have learned to play guitar left handed after all.”
He cleared his throat again and strummed the guitar softly. Sure enough, I recognized the first few notes of a familiar song. I cradled his left hand as tightly as I could without worrying I was hurting him, and helped him guide it into the first verse.
What’ll you do when you get lonely
And nobody’s waiting by your side?
You’ve been running and hiding much too long.
You know it’s just your foolish pride.
Aside from the sound of his playing and singing, you could have heard a pin drop in the room. Layla had crawled around to sit in front of us and leaned in closely, her eyes wide as she watched our hands move and produce a sound she was familiar with thanks to being on tour with me all spring. I had never seen her so enthralled by an acoustic guitar before—not even my violin seemed to interest her so much—and I knew the difference was Zac. She was just as enamored with him as I was, albeit in a different way. The awestruck look on her face said it all.
Layla, you’ve got me on my knees.
Layla, I’m begging, darling please.
Layla, darling won’t you ease my worried mind.
There might have been times when I had doubted how Zac felt about me. He had given me plenty of reason to. At my lowest, I might have even doubted his love for our daughter, but I realized now that I shouldn’t have. He might not have been free to give her all of his love, and he would always have to divide his time between her and his other three children, but that didn’t mean he had to divide his love. And I was realizing, too, that Zac was capable of just as much love as he was hate—and I had certainly seen plenty of the latter from him. Right then, though, all I saw, heard and felt was love.
I tried to give you consolation
When your old man had let you down.
Like a fool, I fell in love with you,
Turned my whole world upside down.
This moment, the three of us here with our family, had been a long time coming. Things weren’t perfect, of course; my family would never be complete again and hadn’t been since I was sixteen. And that would never be okay. But I could be okay. I could create a new family for myself, with friends like Avery, Tobias and even Taylor.
And in spite of the strange, tawdry way our relationship had begun almost two years prior, I was beginning to see that I could have a family with Zac, too. So what if it was never entirely conventional? Why did it have to be? Nothing else about my life was.
All that mattered was right in front of me. I couldn’t see Zac’s face, but hearing his voice crack and his back tremble like he was trying not to cry, I knew that we were all right where we belonged… finally.
Let’s make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane.
Please don’t say we’ll never find a way
And tell me all my love’s in vain.
He might have only been a few hours out of rehab, but this was a new Zac. Of that I was certain, too. Was it possible that he could relapse? Sure. Anything was possible. Dwelling on those awful thoughts wouldn’t stop it from happening, but it would lessen the happiness I had right then.
It had been a long, strange road to finally bring us together, and there had been plenty of times when I had been convinced that we never should have been together… but I had been proven wrong. Not by Zac, because god knows he fought it as much as I did. Not even by Layla, because anyone could make a child—that didn’t mean anything other than the obvious. Maybe I had proven myself wrong. Maybe the entire universe had conspired to bring us back to each other over and over again until we were finally able to step outside of our own petty problems and realize we actually could be better together than alone.
Maybe it didn’t matter how or why it had happened. Maybe it just mattered that it had, and that we had each other.