Zac
I spent the rest of our week off in my apartment, alone. After venturing outside and finding myself in over my head with someone I didn’t even know, I really didn’t want to face anyone new at all. And so I slept, ordered delivery food, and played video games for days on end, trying to ignore the reality around me.
The reality was that I should have been spending this break with my kids. Maybe not with my wife, but with my kids. They didn’t deserve to suffer just because their parents were horrible human beings. I typed and deleted a text to Kate what felt like a million times, but I never sent it. We needed to talk, and I needed to see my kids, but I wasn’t ready to face her yet.
I thought better of texting Carrick, too. I couldn’t help thinking that what I needed to talk to him about would be better in person. At least, it would be harder for him to ignore me that way. If anything could be done to save our relationship, or even our friendship, it had to be done in person. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure there was such a thing, but my brief encounter with that bartender only made it clearer to me that Carrick was the only person I wanted.
On the last day of our break, we gathered at the studio to get our schedules for the rest of the tour. Carrick wasn’t there, although I supposed he didn’t have to be. When we made our way to the venue for soundcheck, I still didn’t see him anywhere. I was sure he was avoiding me, but he couldn’t avoid me forever. Once we were on the bus together, we would have to find some way to get along. I decided we would have to sort that out before we left Tulsa, and I searched all around the venue for him, but no one seemed to have seen him. He would turn up before the show started… I hoped.
Eventually I gave up the search and headed for the green room in hopes of relaxing a bit before the show. I had to get in a better mindset; I couldn’t perform the way I felt right then.
I paused outside the green room when I heard voices. They were soft and low, something about the tone conveying that it was a private conversation I shouldn’t be listening to. I heard a soft laugh that struck a strange, familiar chord and I leaned against the door.
“… not bad crazy?” Another voice, not the one who had laughed. It was Taylor; his voice was always distinctive. There was something in it right then that I couldn’t place, though. Something that told me this conversation wasn’t for my ears, and I really didn’t care.
The other person said something I couldn’t hear, their voice little more than a soft rumble.
“I get it. I’m still here, for whatever.” Taylor lowered his voice, the rest of his sentence little more than a few disjointed words that made no sense to me. “Don’t regret… both pretty gone…”
“Definitely not… always wondered what…”
I pressed my ear to the door, but could make out no more of their exchange.
“–when I’m sober.”
It was then that I realized the door wasn’t locked, or even entirely latched. I had pressed too much of my weight against it, and it opened before I could prepare anything to say to explain my appearance.
“T-tay?” I stuttered out, surprised to see that the other person in the conversation was Carrick. Neither of them seemed prepared for my appearance either. “Are you–uh.”
“What’s up?” Taylor said, standing up perhaps a little too quickly.
I tried to focus on him, not Carrick. I recalled passing our keyboard tech in the hallway and briefly speaking to him. It gave me a ready explanation for my sudden appearance that wasn’t entirely a lie. “Oh, yeah–uh, Jake was looking for you. I dunno, umm, what he needed.”
“Thanks,” Taylor replied. He turned back to Carrick for a moment, then left without another word.
Carrick slipped his sunglasses on, which I thought was a little bit overkill, considering we were inside. He was trying too hard to look nonchalant, but I could see the way his knee was bouncing. The truth was, I felt just as nervous. Now that I was actually alone with him, I had no clue what to say or do.
“You need something?” he asked, his tone so sharp that the words almost physically stung.
“Carrick, I just–I wanted to talk to you. I need to talk to you.”
He sighed. “So talk.”
I took a small step closer to him, letting the door close behind me so that our conversation could be private. “I just need you to know how sorry I am. Not that you found out, but that I lied in the first place. It was stupid, and I think I really believed that I was protecting you or something, but I knew it was wrong. And I just need you to know that, okay? I know that doesn’t change the fact that I did it anyway, but I know I fucked up.”
“Good for you,” Carrick replied, rubbing his temple as though just the sound of my voice had given him a headache.
“I mean, I am a fuck up,” I continued, “so I guess I understand if you don’t want to be with me now. I just–I wanted you for so long, loved you for so long, and I finally saw a way to be with you. And I took it. I swear I’m not trying to justify it now. I’m just saying that’s how desperate I was for even a little bit of you. And I’m so fucking sorry that I just took that for myself and didn’t give you all that you deserved in return. I just wish I had the chance to do that now, that there was something I could do… to get another chance to do it right.”
Carrick was silent for so long that I wondered if he had just ignored every word out of my mouth. Finally, he spoke. “You wanna know the really sad part? I’m not even mad at you anymore. Not really.”
“I think I’m mad enough at me for both of us,” I replied softly, shrugging. I tried to play it off, but it was the truth. I hated myself for what I had done to him.
Carrick gave a shrug of his own. “Doesn’t really matter to me. Can’t really be mad at you for doing what you always do. Whole new level, but the same shit. And I knew, but I got greedy, so I put my blinders on and rolled with it.”
I sighed. I wasn’t sure how I expected this to go. I knew talking to him wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t expect to encounter someone so callous and to know it was all my fault. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from talking more, as though I could somehow dig myself back out of the hole I had created.
“Look, I’m not even–I’m not trying to get you to take me back or anything. I just need you to know that I honestly do understand how fucked up what I did was and how sorry I am. I mean, we have to finish this tour together somehow and I don’t know… I don’t know how to do it. I know there’s no way we can go back to normal, whatever that is, but we’ve gotta tour together anyway.”
“Shouldn’t be that hard,” Carrick replied. He stood up and walked toward me, his height more intimidating than usual when combined with his demeanor. “Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.”
“So it’s just that simple?” I asked. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t just–I can’t throw it all away that easily and act like I don’t want to be with you. I can’t just avoid you for the rest of the tour and then… then what?”
Carrick shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and I swore I could see the cracks forming in the tough facade he had put up. They were razor thin, but they were there. He sighed.
“Then I go back to Cali, and you… I don’t really care what you do. Now are you gonna get out of my way or do you wanna stand there and spout more ‘I’m such an asshole’ bullshit?”
“It’s not–it’s not bullshit,” I practically gasped out, still shocked by how cold he could be, even though I knew I deserved that and more. “If you honestly don’t care, then I don’t know why I’m bothering. But can you really tell me you don’t? Because I still do, and that’s not going to change. I don’t know how to show you the truth, how I really feel, but I want to figure out how. If it even matters now.”
He was shaking slightly, so faintly that I almost wondered if I was imagining it, just seeing what I wanted to see. His hands were balled tightly into fists. Looking away, he said, “It doesn’t matter if I care or not. What’s done is done.”
“It matters to me,” I replied. It was the only thing that mattered. If he could truly turn his feelings for me off just like that… or if they could be negated by my mistakes… then it wasn’t worth fighting for. But I had to believe that it was.
“That’s your problem. Not mine.” Carrick’s voice was nearly a growl, but I wasn’t deterred.
“Being in love with you isn’t a problem. It’s just how I feel, and I can’t turn it off or pretend I don’t feel it. I spent long enough pretending I didn’t and that didn’t really get me anywhere good. If you want me to leave you alone, I can do that, but I can’t pretend not to feel the way I feel.”
“Zac…” A single tear rolled down his cheek, and for a moment, I thought I had broken through the wall he was trying to build between us. His voice cracking, he said, “You need to get out of my way right now.”
I stared at him, willing myself to say something, anything, else. I was so close, and yet still so far. I realized, staring at him, that perhaps for once I needed to do what he asked of me. With a nod, I stepped aside.
He stood still for a moment, as though he hadn’t expected me to obey–as though maybe he hadn’t even wanted me to. Finally, he stalked off, leaving me alone in the green room, wondering if I had done even one thing right in that whole conversation.
All too soon, the door opened again. I briefly let myself imagine it was Carrick coming back to tell me he had changed his mind. But of course it wasn’t. It was Taylor, one hand pressed judgmentally into his hip.
“What?” I asked, blinking at him.
“How was your break?” He asked, his tone blatantly deliberate.
“Can we not do this right now, please?” I asked. “Is that what you and Carrick were talking about? What a horrible person I am? Because I already know, and I really don’t need to hear it from somebody else.”
Taylor rolled his eyes, shouldering past me and sitting down on the couch. “No, that’s not what we were talking about.”
“Well, you obviously already know all about what happened, so again, do we really have to have this conversation?”
“Do you have any idea what this week has been like for him?” Taylor glared at me. “Of course not, because all you think about is how it affects you.”
“Considering the fact that he’s completely shutting me out, I can honestly say that no, I don’t know. But please tell me more about how I think and feel.”
Taylor glanced at the doorway, then back at me. “Did you know he didn’t even come out of our guest room for the first two days? I had to practically drag him out last night. Whatever you did, you damn near broke him. But sure, let’s talk about you.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t know I wasn’t being honest with him,” I shot back, not understanding why Taylor was suddenly being so defensive of Carrick like they had been best friends all along. “So the truth finally came out, like I should have known it would, and I can’t exactly go back in time and do it right, be honest with him about my marriage–which, by the way, actually is over now.”
“I didn’t know until the last minute, Zac,” Taylor replied, his tone softening almost imperceptibly. “You kept it from me just as much as anyone else. Hell, I didn’t even know you weren’t straight. And I’m sorry about things with Kate, but to be perfectly honest, I really never understood why you married her in the first place.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why I did either. I used to know, but…” I shook my head and sighed. “I guess this is karma, though. I can’t even be happy that I’m free of her because I lost him in the process. I just–like it doesn’t even make sense to say I did it because I love him, because why would I hurt him if I love him? But I just… I saw the opportunity to finally be with him and I took it. That was as much as I thought it through.”
Taylor sighed, and I could almost see and feel his anger fading. Quietly, he said, “He still loves you. That’s what’s making him so sick, I think. We went out last night, and I guess he met some guy, but he told me all he could think about was you.”
“I still love him, too,” I breathed out. It was like a punch to the gut to hear Taylor confirm what I had hoped but couldn’t see for myself with the way Carrick was acting. And what were the chances we would both go through the same thing? “Of course I do. I never showed it like I should have, but it was always true. For years. And the thought of him with someone else… well, I’d be a hypocrite to say it, because I went out too and there was this guy–but nothing happened. I couldn’t do it.”
“Yeah…” Taylor mumbled, glancing away.
I ran a hand through my hair. “Look, I can’t… I can’t ask you to get in the middle of it and say anything to him, but I just don’t know what to do. He just shut down on me completely. If I can’t fix this before the tour is over… then I don’t think I’ll have another chance.”
Taylor was still looking away, and I hated that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “I… don’t know if I can do that. I’ve kinda… been there for him through this. I don’t think it’d be the same coming from me, especially not after…”
I stared at the side of his head, understanding that I had asked too much but not understanding why Taylor was so reluctant to try to at least help to keep the peace on tour. “No, I just… I don’t want you to interfere or whatever, but if there’s anything… anything he says or anything… if he talks to you about me… if you figure out what it would take, what I can do. I just need something, Tay, and I don’t think I’m going to get it from trying to talk to him again.”
“Some things can’t be fixed, Zac.” Taylor sighed. “I can’t say whether or not this is one of those things, but I think you need to deal with that.”
“I don’t think I can,” I replied, hating how weak and vulnerable I sounded. But that was what I was. Knowing I might have lost not only my chance to be with Carrick, but his friendship too, was more than I could handle. “I can’t… I can’t just give up on him, Tay. Not after this long.”
“So then you figure it out. If you really want something, you fight for it.” Taylor turned back to me and gave me the faintest hint of a smirk. “You’ve always been stubborn like that.”
I laughed weakly. “Sadly, I think that’s one of my better qualities.”
He sighed. “I just don’t want to have to pick up the pieces again. I’m glad I could be there for him… but he shouldn’t have to go through that.”
“I know that, okay?” I replied, sounding more defensive than I meant to. “And I’m sorry to you too, for putting you in that position.”
“I didn’t–I didn’t mind,” Taylor replied. “It was good to spend some time with him. It’d been a while.”
I eyed Taylor. He and Carrick had been friends first; I wondered if claiming Carrick as my best friend was yet another way in which I had taken what I wanted without thinking about other people. It was starting to seem like a pattern with me.
“Well, I suppose at least some good came of all this. And… and I guess I’m glad, after everything, that you don’t hate me, too.”
Taylor stared up at me, his eyes full of surprise and perhaps a little bit hurt. “I could never hate you, Zac. You should know that. You may be kind of an asshole, but you’re still my brother.”
I shrugged. “I think opinions vary on how much of an asshole I am. Not to throw myself a pity party or anything, but it just feels like I’m burning all my bridges here and losing everyone.”
He gave a long, ragged sigh and leaned back against the couch. Patting the seat next to him, Taylor said, “I won’t lie, you’re not doing yourself any favors lately. But at least with Kate, I think that was bound to happen eventually. Maybe not the cheating, but I think we all knew it wouldn’t last. Including you.”
“I know,” I replied, sitting down next to him. “It’s sad to say, but it’s not like I’m all that upset about losing her, it’s just… the circumstances. It’s that this was supposed to be what I wanted, but I screwed it all up.”
Taylor patted my knee. “You’ll figure it out. Whether that means making up with Carrick or not, you’re tough. You’ll survive.”
“I hope you’re right,” I replied, letting myself lean against him a little. “I mean, not about the ‘or not.’ But otherwise… I really hope you’re right.”
“You know, I’ve always been a little jealous of your strength. How you don’t let anyone walk over you.”
I smiled weakly, Taylor’s presence reassuring me more than his words. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s time for me to be a little less tough. I think I’ve tried too hard, you know? Forgot that it’s not all like… a competition to be won. That I’m playing with other people, and we all just end up losing that kind of game.”
“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for,” Taylor replied. He gave me a nudge. “You just do dumb shit sometimes.”
I snorted. “I think that’s the understatement of the year, but… seriously, thanks for standing by me in spite of all my dumb shit.”
“I’ll always be here for you,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders and pulling me closer. “No matter what.”