29. Come Down – Stella
I listen intently, curled into myself, as I hear his boots leave my house, his truck backing down my driveway. I listen as Riggins does exactly what I requested of him, leaving me be. With everything happening, all of the raked-up emotions and memories, this episode has been rougher than usual, and I’m not even sure if I have any tears left to cry. It’s not fair to be disappointed and hurt that he actually left when I told him to, but a small childish part of me hoped he wouldn’t have.
What might be minutes or hours later, though, I think I’m hallucinating when I hear the low rumble of a truck driving down my drive again. I don’t move, convincing myself it’s just the mail truck driving a package to my front door or someone getting turned around and using my driveway as a U-turn.
But the sound of the engine cuts out, and a door slams. When the front door creaks open, the jingle of dog tags and Riggins’ voice travels through the living room into where I lay.
“Come on, girl. Let’s go find her.”
My bedroom door opens again, and something wet brushes my cheek.
It isn’t tears, not this time.
It’s Gracie’s nose on my cheek, nudging and whining.
“Take care of her, girl. I’ll be back,” he says, not speaking to me but the dog who settles in the spot my curved body makes, her head propped on my hip.
“Riggs?” I ask, not looking at the door where, somehow, I know he’s standing.
“She’s gonna keep you company, little star. Rest. I’ll be back,” he says, his voice low and sweet.
“Riggins—” I start, but then my bedroom door is closed. Gracie’s face turns to me, her knowing eyes reading my soul before she moves, cozying up closer to me. Looping my arm around her, I snuggle my dog and fall back asleep.
“Stell,” the voice whispers, pulling me from sleep. “Stell, sweetheart.” It’s Riggins” voice swimming in my dreams and waking me, and the soothing touch on my forehead is him as well.
“Riggins?” I ask, my voice croaky.
“I’m here, baby. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. I’ll make your bed, then you can come back.”
“What?”
“Tub,” is all he says. Gracie moves as he does, jumping to the floor. I sit up, squinting around the room, noticing it’s at least dusk now, the room darker, and Riggs’ hand is out, offering for me to grab it. When I look up at him, his face is kind and understanding, devoid of judgment.
So, for some reason, I take it.
I let him help me out of my bed, let him hold my hand as he walks me out of my room, like he’s afraid I’ll fall or run if he lets go.
“I’m okay, Riggins. Really. I’m… I’m coming out of it. You don’t have to stay here,” I tell him. I’m not lying—I do feel myself slowly digging out from it, swimming to the surface. There’s sun glittering beneath, and in a few days, I’ll be back to my fucked sense of ‘normal.’
In the hall, the clothes are cleaned up, and I can hear the dryer running in the mudroom behind the kitchen.
“I know I don’t have to,” is all he replies as we move toward my bathroom.
When we reach it, I notice it’s clean—not immaculate, not like a professional had some hand in it, but it looks like Riggins has wiped down the surfaces and gathered all the dirty laundry.
For a moment, I wait for the shame to hit me, for the embarrassment as it starts to fully click what has been happening here, what Riggs has been doing while I slept with Gracie, but that tired ache still living in my bones doesn’t allow for me to expel the extra energy.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asks.”While you get in?” My brow furrows as I try to understand what he means, what he’s saying. That’s when I notice the warm, steaming bathtub, small bubbles dotted along the surface of the water.
He ran me a tub, the smell of the lavender bubble bath I’ve used since I was a kid, even though it’s probably horrible for my skin and the world, filling the room.
For a moment, I almost argue, telling him I don’t need a bath, but unfortunately, I know that isn’t the truth. With not having to get myself up and out of the house for work each day, I’ve kept my daily activity to the absolute minimum, taking my pills and feeding myself just enough to survive another day, but not much more than that.
At my worst, that’s the most I can do to survive day the day until it starts to ease.
I look from the water to him and shrug.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” I say, my words low as I tug the shirt I’ve been wearing for at least two days over my head and push down the shorts with a similar fate before stepping into the tub. He makes me hold his hand as I do like he’s afraid I’ll fall if he doesn’t.
Sighing, I settle into the tub, leaning my head back on the edge of the tub and closing my eyes.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I say. “Or clean up. I hope you didn’t do too much.”
“Nothing I didn’t want to do, Stell.”
We don’t speak as I sit in the tub, Riggins sitting on the toilet seat, watching. Not in a way like he thinks me naked in a tub is hot, but in a way like… god, I don’t know.
Like he can’t believe he has the privilege of sitting here, watching over me.
A few minutes later, I can feel him moving behind me until he”s behind the big tub. “Sit up,” he whispers.
“What?’
“Sit up. Let me do your hair,” he says.
“Riggins.”
“Humor me.”
For some reason, I do as he asks, sitting up, then tipping my head back when he asks. He starts gently working on the hair tie which I know from experience of coming out of one of these episodes is tangled with my hair.
When it’s free, a thumb presses into my shoulder, and he whispers, “Tip your head back.” I do what he asks, not questioning it, and he takes a cup, slowly pouring warm water from the tap over my head, avoiding my eyes diligently. His fingers work slowly once it’s all wet, scrubbing in shampoo, using the tips of his fingers to rub at my scalp, and slowly loosening knots before rinsing out the suds. Next is conditioner, which he slathers in my hair, then takes a comb he must have found somewhere and slowly, meticulously begins to brush out the week of neglect.
As he does, silent tears roll down my cheeks, the quiet, kind gesture ripping through me, both healing and painful somehow.
He never questions it, never asks if or why I’m crying, never even mentions it. Instead, he just keeps brushing my hair until it’s smooth. He rinses it out once more, and then he leaves, coming back with a fluffy white towel.
“Stand, Stella. The towels are fresh from the dryer, and I have new pajamas on the counter.”
I look to see a folded stack of grey sweats and a tee shirt. I”m unsure of when he grabbed those, but I”m thankful all the same. The water sloshes as I stand and step out, and I don’t have any modesty left in me as he wraps the towel around my body and then a second around my hair. When I dry off, I forgo lotion, instead sliding right into my pajamas before Riggs grabs my hand, leading me past the bedroom and to the kitchen.
It’s clean now, a mix of relief and embarrassment passing through me, and he sits me at the table, putting a grilled cheese and a soda in front of me.
“Do you need to have food in your stomach for these?” he asks, lifting the orange bottles I know so well. I keep my eyes down, avoiding his, but shake my head no. I know he stands there reading the labels as I lift the sandwich and take a bite, suddenly hungry.
A good sign in the grand scheme. My appetite is the first thing to return as I’m stepping out of a depressive episode.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I whisper to the sandwich as he puts pills onto the table next to me.
“I know,” he says. “I didn’t do it because I felt like I had to.” Gracie comes into the kitchen, her dog tags clinking, and she rests her head on my lap. I scratch behind her ear before responding.
“Then why did you?”
“Because even if you aren’t ready for that again, you’re mine. That means you’re also mine to take care of.”
I could cry then, but I choke it down and start back on my sandwich.
It’s after my dinner, after Riggs unraveled my hair from the towel and gently brushed it out, and long after I got back into my bed with clean sheets and bedding, Riggs climbing in with me wearing a pair of sweats he didn’t come here in.
“When did this start?” he asks, his body wrapped around mine.
“It’s always been there, but I think something broke in me when I left,” I confess. “You called me your sun, but when I left, it was so dark. I couldn’t… I couldn’t see a way out.”
“That’s why you changed,” he muses, not an accusation but an explanation like it makes a bit more sense to him now.
I don’t know why I do it.
It must be the meds or him taking care of me, or maybe I’m just in some kind of delusional state that has me telling him everything that happened after I came home, but I do all the same.
“I came home, and my mother... well, you know what she said before we left. It was a lot of I told you so’s, and I wasted my life. She wasn’t wrong—she told me I’d get hurt.” I feel more than see the look he gives me, it fills the room with regret, but I ignore it. “I didn’t know who I was without you and the band and writing, so I became whatever she thought I should be because it didn’t matter to me anymore. Might as well make someone happy. You know?”
He doesn’t respond, but really, how do you respond to that?
“So I started working at the diner and lived the way she wanted me to. But I didn’t get better. It didn”t help me find… me.” There’s a long beat while he runs his fingers through my now dry hair, the feeling soothing and calming. We might lay like that for hours or just minutes, I’m not sure. I’m coming out of my episode, but I’m still lost to time, especially when I’m in Riggs’ arms like this. It’s in this daze that I confess to him.
“I’m sick,” I whisper, the words my mother has told me a million times before. I’m not depressed, I’m just sick. As I got older and got help from professionals, I realized it wasn’t a lie, not really. Just an illness of the mind rather than the body.
His hand around my back continues its circuit, up and down and back again, before he finally responds.
“What does that mean to you?” he asks. I shrug but don’t answer. “Is that you speaking or your mother?”
He was always able to read my words like a manuscript he would pick apart to see what I was really trying to say.
“I have recurrent brief depression.” Silence sits between us, but not uncomfortably, no judgment in the air, so I continue explaining.
“It comes every so often. I can usually feel it on it’s way, and it usually lasts less then a week before I can pull myself to remember who I am without the clouds. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones because it doesn’t last indefinitely.” More silence, his hand swiping up and down, up and down. A metronome to my confessions.
“I’m on meds, which helps. They come less now. But sometimes things happen, trigger things. It’s...” I sigh, the words catching in my throat before I push them out. It’s part of the menagerie of reasons I’m scared to try again with Riggins, the fear that this will be too much for him. “It’s who I am now. You want me to give you a chance, but for what? This is who you’ll get now.” He shakes his head almost instantly, the hand on my back moving to my jaw and tipping up from where my face was buried in his chest and forcing me to look at him.
“I’ll take you any way you’ll give you to me, Stell. That’s what you’re not getting. Sad, happy, scared, I’ll take it so long as you’re also mine.”
I roll my lips into my mouth, tears welling.
“Some days, I can’t get out of bed,” I whisper. “I can’t make myself do it. My house turns into a disaster, and I don’t shower or brush my teeth.” I’m telling him both as a warning and a challenge because who the fuck wants that? Who wants to live with that, to spend their days knowing one day, I’ll wake up like this.
“Is it okay if I lay there with you?” he asks. My brow furrows, and I shake my head gently, not in a no, but because it makes no sense.
“What?”
“The days you can’t leave bed. Can I lay in it with you?”
I think that’s the moment I let a small part of myself go back to Riggins, knowing this time, I’ll never truly get it back. The moment I give into the need in my bones to be his again, to let him take care of me, to battle the fear and the uncertainty, even if I’m not ready to say it out loud.
When I wake up the next morning, I’m transported to being 19 and going on tour with Atlas Oaks.
It was just a few days in, and my phone had been ringing off the hook, calls and texts from my mother flooding in, all of them spewing hatred and anger, telling me I was throwing my life away, each one somehow getting worse and worse, meaner and meaner. Eventually, Riggins had to confiscate my phone, only handing it to me if Evie called or texted, giving me his when they were on stage in case something happened and we got separated.
I remember it then. Feeling the dark waters creep up on me, feeling like I might shatter at any moment, but I also remember feeling like it was endurable, doable, survivable so long as Riggins was holding me.
It was always like that, like his strong arms, even when they were gangly and unmuscled, were holding me in place, keeping me together.
The first time I felt the waters creep up and he wasn’t there to hold me when I realized I might drown without that life preserver holding me just barely afloat was the first time I made an appointment with a psychiatrist.
But now, with his vice grip around me, I feel like he’s holding the pieces together. Not saving me, not curing me, but holding it together while I heal, keeping me above water while I rest and catch my breath so I can do the final work to pull myself to the surface.
“Morning, little star,” he whispers into my hair, always able to know when I was awake and when I was asleep.
I mumble an incoherent sound, and he laughs against my back, the sound rumbling through me.
“Still not a morning person?”
I mumble another response but don’t answer, not really. I was never a morning person as a kid, and that didn’t change into adulthood, though I usually have a better routine in place, so waking up before the sun isn’t a total drain.
He turns me then, moving my body until I’m facing him and I let him, both because I don’t have the energy or mind space to argue, but also because I don’t want to. I want to face him, to see his sleepy morning face, interested if he’ll have the boyish tired look he used to have, the one he had when I left his bed while he was sleeping last week.
When I see his face, the light playing on the lines that are sharper than my memory has cataloged them, I see he does still have that sleepy, boyish look.
I can’t help but smile at him, his own smile widening as I do, that dimple I always loved deepening and begging for me to brush my lips to it like I did when we were young and in love.
His hand moves, brushing my hair back, then stopping on my cheek and resting there. “How do you feel?” he asks, low.
I take a moment to take stock of myself, too exhausted and drained to lie, but I don’t take note of my physical being, of how my body feels, but my mind. The exhaustion is still there, but the feeling of heaviness, like a weighted blanket covering my body, is lighter.
We’re at the tail end of this episode, it seems.
“Alright,” I whisper.
“Don’t lie to me,” he says.
I can’t help it—for what feels like the first time in forever, as it always feels after an episode, a smile tilts the edges of my lips. My hand reaches up, pushing the chunk of hair breaking up his handsome face to behind his ear. A mirror of the move he did just a moment before.
“I’m not. I’m feeling alright, not one hundred percent, but I’m feeling… better. I’m sure that has a bit to do with you.” I don’t know why I confess that, but it hangs in the air between us, a bright shining confession I both want to take back and want to repeat so he knows the truth of the statement. I do neither and I’m relieved when he doesn’t ask for clarification, instead asking me a question.
“This happens often?” I sigh and fight the urge to turn away, to hide. He’s seen me at my darkest, and I know, in a way, I’ve seen him at his. We’re even now, I guess, in a weird, twisted way.
“Often is… I don’t think it”s the right word. It”s not regular, not every day, but not irregular.”
I do the math, knowing this was a longer episode than normal like the stress of the world kept it around a bit longer. “This one lasted ten days, which, for me, is longer than my normal.”
He doesn’t say anything, which makes me both anxious and relieved, simply watching me, his thumb brushing over the curve of my cheek as his eyes take my face in, categorizing and memorizing everything.
I do the same, taking note of changes that I haven’t noticed on his face yet. Small changes over the last seven years, small lines beside his eyes, the way the boyish softness has left his cheeks.
“What helps?” he asks after long moments.
“What?”
“Is there anything I could do to help?.” I stare, blinking and trying to understand his question before answering.
“It’s not necessarily predictable, but stress… doesn’t help.”
His face shows pain, clear as day, guilt, and pain, and I instantly want to remove it.
“No. Not like that. It was… just a lot. The last couple of weeks have just been a lot. My mom was… my mom was the trigger. I also had work to motivate me to get up and get moving, which probably didn’t help when she fired me. I didn’t have to leave the house, so… I didn’t.”
I didn’t want to leave my house for fear of seeing anyone in our small town and having to endure their inevitable questions, either about my mother or Riggins or whatever other stories have been spun in the days since Atlas Oaks returned to Ashford.
“Leaving the house helps?”
“What?”
“Leaving the house. Does it help?”
“Sometimes. Exercise and fresh air and sunlight help, but it could also be a placebo.”
Eventually, he nods and moves, letting go of me and rolling away. My body instantly misses his touch, his warmth. Suddenly, I feel alone and small again.
But then his hand is held out to me, his tee and sweats rumpled from sleep as he hovers above me.
“Come. Get dressed,” he says.
“What?” I don’t move; I just stare at his hand and then at him, confused.
“I said get dressed, Stella.” I sit up, holding the blanket to myself.
“Riggins, I?—”
“Get dressed, Stella. Leaving the house helps. Sunlight and fresh air help, so we”re getting it.” I don’t say anything, but his hand stays out, waiting for me to grab it. “Come on. We’re taking Gracie for a hike.”