Page 28 of Pierce Me

And the fact that thinking about Eden right now is making me crave the quick relief of popping one is enough to raise all the red flags inside my head. I need to do something. Now.

My phone buzzes. It’s Skye.

Skye: On my way to you. Be there in two hours.

Isaiah: Do not come here, Skye. You are not wanted.

Skye: Whatever it is, don’t think about it, ok? Wait till I get there.

Dammit. Skye coming over. That’s the last thing I need right now.‘Just don’t think about it.’What sage advice. Others have told me that over the years, mom more frequently than anyone.

‘Just don’t think about it.’

‘Just don’t think about her.’

Mom and James are the only ones who know the story of what happened between her and me. Jude and Miki only know that I had a horrible breakup, and that’s it. Skye knows a bit more, like the fact that she is the reason I couldn’t go to college, and that she is my number one trigger for a relapse into my pill addiction.

Just don’t think about her.

After my rehab, talking about her became a forbidden topic in my family. As was talking about my dad, but for different reasons. Both left me, both broke me. My dad died suddenly when I was sixteen. It was beyond his control. He didn’t choose to leave me; he simply did.

Sheon the other hand… She definitely chose to leave me. She told me so. I begged and begged, but she never gave me an explanation, never changed her mind. She just broke me into a million pieces and disappeared out of my life for good.

I look down at the tattered piece of paper in my hand. I’ve been trying to scribble a few lines of lyrics since last night with zero success, but there is only one word written. I read it and I hung my head.

That is the problem.

The reason I’m broken. The reason I’m blocked.

The reason I’m so successful and so empty at the same time.

One word, written over and over again on the tortured piece of paper:

Eden.

…

Skye is barely three years older than me.

I am tall, but he is even taller, he refuses to wear anything but leather on his best day, he has an untamable mane of golden locks that reach down to his shoulders and he can play the guitar almost as well as Jude. But his talent in life is managing musicians.

Well, it was until I came along. From the moment he saw me, the day I signed into my label, he gave up every single other client he had. And he became mine.

My manager, my brother, my friend, my everything. I don’t know what I did to deserve him. Well, he is crazy, there’s that. So maybe we are a match made in heaven after all.

“Smells in here,” Skye says as soon as he steps foot inside my house.

Class act, as usual.

“Something died?” he goes on.

“Yeah, me,” I reply.

“Figures.”

He looks around him, taking in the music sheets strewn about the floor, the open piano, my guitars and violins leaning randomly on the sofas, and the half-full food containers on the cushions. He whistles.

“Talk about a massacre,” he observes.

---