today. Hit the salon if you want. I’m gonna head down to the studio. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
“Okay,” she said, and kissed me goodbye.
About six hours later, I walked out of Little Black Hole and had Liam drive me to West Vancouver. I told Taylor I’d be home for dinner when I texted her. But I wasn’t ready to go home just yet.
We drove toward the turn-off to the British Properties, where we usually took the turn to head to Bliss. But we didn’t turn. We kept going. North, up the mountainside. To the very end of the residential area, where the streets and yards gave way to tall trees. Liam parked us at the side of the road, at the foot of a hiking trail.
I got out without a word and started walking through the woods, alone, sunglasses on and my hat pulled low. The trees absorbed me and I was gone, into the dense cool of the forest. The filtered sunlight floated down. The path beneath my feet was packed dirt, some stones and tree roots. And it was so familiar, even though I hadn’t been here in years, the forest unchanged.
Gabe and I used to come here to ride our bikes when we were kids. Maybe twelve years old or so. His dad would drop us off, and we’d ride for hours, exploring the trails.
After we started to get famous, we used to come here just to disappear.
I followed the winding path with no end in mind, until I reached one of the little wooden bridges that arched over a trickling creek. I crossed it and sat down on a slab of rock, watching the water meander by below.
I felt spun out, like a shredded tire that had gone around the track one too many times. I felt exhausted, and I’d barely done anything today except wake up in a cold sweat, have sex with Taylor, and spend a few hours at the studio basically chatting with the band.
Then Xander just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. When he walked me out to Liam’s car and hugged me goodbye, he’d said quietly, right in my ear, “Happy birthday, brother.”
The look in his eyes was full of concern and compassion, and that Happy birthday meant so many other things. It was a quiet nod to Gabe, an acknowledgment of what he knew I was going through today. It was his way of saying, I know what this day means, and I’m here for you.
I wished I could be there for him.
But really, when had I been there for any of my friends?
Most days, I was drowning so deep in my own shit, it was hard to understand why they’d even stuck around. I didn’t deserve Xander’s patience, his concern, his loyalty.
It just sent me running.
It threw me off, a ripple in the surface of my desperate calm and control.
What control?
If I was in control, I’d be functioning like a normal person. But I’d never known how to be normal.
You’d think after so many years I’d have figured it out.
But I still felt like a baby when it came to this stuff. Blank and new, blinking at the world, hoping someone would pick me up and help me. The problem with that was I just couldn’t stand to let anyone waste themselves on helping me anymore. It made me nauseous to think of anyone I cared about trying to help me and getting hurt.
I’d vowed long ago, sometime after I resurfaced from the breakdown after Gabe’s death, that I’d never let people take care of me like he did again.
Because it killed him.
If I loved someone, how could I do that to them?
Courteney. Xander. Taylor. I couldn’t let them get that close. Because I feared what would happen. It was my greatest fear and it was fucking crippling. The one that always surfaced during the worst panic attacks.
The fear that something bad would happen to someone I loved because of me.
It had already happened, once.
I wanted to go home and hide. That was my failsafe. The only fix I knew.
It never really fixed anything.
But it was all I had. My greatest coping mechanism.
My prison.
My home was my safe place. That was what I told myself. But it was more like a crypt, where I slept with my ghosts and shut out the rest of the living world.
I wanted to bury myself in the dark and suffer for my sins.
But Taylor was there, waiting for me. And that