Page 125 of Catcher's Lock
“Sounds like you won.”
His head jerks up, eyes flashing in the halogen glow.
“Did I? I still bought the blow. I still ditched out on you and the show, and I turned off my phone, and—”
“You called me.” Squeezing the back of his neck, I tug him against my chest. “You called me, and you didn’t run.”
“I’m so scared,” he whispers. “You have no idea how easyit was. Like I blinked, and I was here with a pocket full of mistakes.”
“Be as scared as you want, baby. I’ll be right here, and we can be afraid together.” Tears leak from the corners of my eyes into his hair.
“I don’t want this to be our life,” he says, and the echo of my earlier prayer thrums against my ribcage. But his arms come around my waist, and his fingers clutch at my sides like he’ll never let go. “I know I have to be able to handle the hard parts and not just the honeymoon phase, but…why can’t it all be sex and surfing and circus omelets? Why does it have to be bigger than you and me?”
“Because the hard parts make us stronger.”Please let it be true. “And no one gets to skip the work. We didn’t promise each other easy, Quill. No one can. We promised to stay, and to keep trying. We promised to love each other, and here we are, keeping those promises. This isn’t our third-act breakup. You might be scared, but you reached out for help when you needed it, and that makes you so fucking brave. I’ll give you whatever you need, whatever that looks like. I know I can’t be everything, but please give me another chance to be enough.”
“Youareeverything, Rocket. I’m the one who’s not enough.”
“Don’t say that. You’re funny and earnest and clever, and you have so many talents you’re just beginning to explore. You make me believe in magic and remind me to let it in. You taught me that it’s okay to want things for myself, and that I don’t need to limit my dreams to other people’s expectations. Every day I get to wake up next to you is a miracle, and you’re so, so fucking beautiful. You take my breath away.”
“You’re the only one who thinks that,” he says, hiding his face in my chest.
“I’m not. And even if I was, it doesn’t matter.You’rethe onewho needs to believe it.”
“How can I?” Relinquishing his death grip on my shirt, he pushes back to meet my eyes. “I let my monsters drown me when I left you on the side of the road in Sonoma, Rocket. You’ve been doing CPR ever since you brought me home.”
“I don’t care. All I want is a life with you, and I’ll never, never stop doing what it takes to have it. If that means keeping you alive until you can breathe on your own, I’ll gladly be your life support.”
“And I’m so, so grateful—you have no idea how much—but we both know that’s not sustainable. It’s not what I want for us. I want to be yourpartner, not some burden weighing you down.”
“You’re not—”
“Listen to me, Rocket. I can’t keep doing this to you. Every time I ask for your forgiveness, it gets harder to stand back up, and I’m so tired of crawling.”
“What are you saying? You want to take a break when we’ve barely begun?”
“Want? Fuck no. I never want you out of my sight for more than five minutes. But I think…I think I made a mistake coming on tour.”
No, no. Don’t make me let you go so soon after I found you.
“Maybe I could convince Hals to hire another tech,” I offer, scrubbing a hand down my face and scrambling for a way to make it work. “It’s late to find someone new. But not impossible if I stay on part time until they’re trained. We could stay in motels instead of on the lot, and you can go to meetings and—”
“Stop.” His hand comes up to cover my mouth, stemming the desperate flow of words. “Listen to yourself. That’s crazy talk, and you know it. You can’t leave the show in its final year, and I…I’m not gonna ask you to.”
“Then what? What do we do? I’m not leaving you behind.”
“Will you take me back to rehab? You can’t quit the show, but maybe you could take one day off. I’m pretty sure my parents will agree if it’s to stash me somewhere safe. Especially if it’s voluntary this time, and I promise to do the work. When the tour is over, you’ll come get me, and we can start the next chapter together free and strong.”
It’s Oscar who comes through this time, with a connection to the admissions director at a facility called Cliffside in Big Sur. After closeting themselves in the Airstream with Gem for over an hour—an encounter from which all three emerge swollen-eyed but lighter—Shilo and Hals give me two days off.
We drive the whole way down the coast with the windows open to the California summer and talk only about after—our future in Colorado, and what our dream apartment will look like, and whether or not Zombie would enjoy a sibling or torment it into an early grave. When we run out of plans, he picks the music, and I sing along until he falls asleep with my hand on the back of his neck and a smile on his lips.
We spend the night in an Airbnb overlooking the Pacific, plundering each other’s bodies until we’re both drenched and boneless, and then lie awake until the sun comes up, unwilling to sacrifice these last few moments to the solitude of sleep.
In the morning, I take him to Cliffside. He’s silent in the passenger seat, face turned to the blue horizon and fingers working at the loose threads in his jeans.
“Are you scared?”
He gives me a wry look. “Yes. But that’s not what I’m thinkingabout.”
