30. Bad Luck – Riggins
In less than half an hour, we’re in the car, driving to the easiest entrance of the woods. And then we start.
“Do you ever come here?” I ask after a few minutes of silence where we both watched Gracie sniff about nineteen thousand new scents, excited as can be. She might be a bit of an old girl these days, but on a walk, she’s still a puppy.
“Sometimes,” she says, voice low and defeated like she hates to admit it. “When I’m… lost.”
Some people might not know what she means, but I’m not most people. I’m Stella’s. I always have been.
The only person in our life who saw it, even then, was my mother. She’d watch us play together, shaking her head and smiling.
“Those two,” she would say more times than I can remember. “Meant to be.”
Stella’s mom would give a tight smile, unimpressed, and my dad would smile and nod, knowing whatever my mother predicted was almost always true. Stella’s dad would take us in curiously.
Stella would gag and tell me I was the grossest boy in the world, of course.
But as we got older, I saw it. The way I could anticipate her needs, her wants, sometimes before she even could. The way she always knew when I needed her, sending me a little how are you text or asking if I wanted to go to the woods. The way we one day started writing together and never stopped, an outlet we both desperately need.
So yeah, when she says she comes here when she’s lost, I get it.
“I hiked a bunch once I got sober,” I say, suddenly eager to fill her in on the past seven years, or at least the good parts of it. “All over. Every stop. Guys would go out and party, and, at first, I couldn’t be there. Orange juice or soda at a party felt… depressing.” Her eyes are on me, watching me talk as we pad along the trail, but I don’t look at her. I can’t.
“So I’d put on some boots and head out. It reminded me of you, of us. Of the last time I was at peace. It helped, I think. Even though you weren’t there, you were, you know?” A long beat passes before finally, she speaks, a slow, low rumbling of my name.
“Riggins…” she doesn’t know what else to say, though, so my name just hangs in the air between us.
“I was mad at you for months. Years, even.” The words are low and slow, a confession of sorts.
I feel bad throwing this at her now, with everything she’s been through, but at some point, we need to talk about it all, and I know she doesn’t want me to use kid gloves with her.
“I couldn’t understand… I didn’t understand it,” I say, referencing the night of the DUI when she answered and told me she was done. We walk a bit further, and finally, she speaks.
“Do you now?”
“Yeah. Most of the time.”
I think there will always be some times when I don’t understand.
Riggins, move on. I’m done.
Those five words haunt me.
On my worst days, I don’t understand how she didn’t come when I needed her the most. The look on the officer’s face when he asked if there was anyone else I could call when she didn’t pick up after calling, once, twice. The way I begged for them to call her again, knowing she’d pick up because she had to pick up.
And when she did, when I was in my deepest, darkest moment, she didn’t fucking come.
Riggins, move on. I’m done.
They plagued me when I was detoxing, when I was getting sober. Those first few days at rehab, that’s all I heard, those words swirling around me, reminding me of what I lost.
I get it now. Or at least, most days, I do.
Most days, I get it.
But some days, the quiet of the line, the way the lights played off the wet street as I sat on the curb, those five words... they ricochet through me, haunting me.
“But you weren’t there when I needed you,” I whisper. “Sometimes, that wins. I know I wasn’t there for you, that I fucked up first, but sometimes… I needed you, Stella.”
It’s selfish, I know, to bring this up, all things considered. I lied. I was a drunk. A user. I hid it, and I broke her even after she begged me. She told me what she needed from me, and I promised I could be that for her.
But I wasn’t.
“I couldn’t be what you needed,” she whispers. “Not then. I was too hurt, too angry. I couldn’t do it, Riggins.”
“I know. I know that Stell.” Silence hovers over us again as we watch Gracie run further ahead, chasing a squirrel, oblivious and content in a way I wish I could be. I once was, but then the world and reality came in, and it all came crashing down.
We reach the clearing, a place that used to be ours and still is in its own way, but also, part of me fears nothing will be ours again.
I can spend every waking moment trying to convince Stella to talk to me, to give me a chance, but there’s always the real chance she’ll never let me in again. A small chance, but it’s still there.
I look around the space, memories flooding in before I turn to her and finally speak.
“Why’d you leave?” I ask, whispering quietly. I don’t know what I expect, but it probably wasn’t a response and definitely wasn’t the response I get.
“I couldn’t come in last anymore,” she whispers, sitting with her back against a tree. I stay standing a few feet away, but her eyes don’t come to me, don’t look at me at all.
“You always came in first, Stella,” I argue, slightly confused.
My entire world revolved around Stella. There was never a time when I doubted that we’d be endgame, that she was mine.
“No, I didn’t, Riggs. And that’s okay.”
“Stella, no. I was… you were always first. No one came before you.” She shakes her head in a sad move before finally looking up at me and I see it there. The resignation, the sadness and sorrow. The hurt.
“Not someone. Something. Music always came first for both of us. I was okay with that—I got it. It… it’s in your bones, in your blood. The music, the band, it’s what made you you. I was willing to be second to your music. I got what it meant to you, and considering you let me in on that, considering we did it together, I was more than okay with it. But I couldn’t come after the lifestyle you chose back then.”
“You didn’t—” I start, but my words trail off because that’s not fair. Lying to Stella now, when it doesn’t even matter that much, when the lies won’t save anything if there’s even anything to save.
It definitely won’t repair what’s broken.
And that’s what I need to focus on now: repairing and rebuilding rather than saving.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper. “I didn’t know how bad I was.”
“I know, Riggs,” she says in a consoling tone. I sit too now, my back to a different tree, three or four feet separating us that feels like an ocean, but somehow I know getting any closer will ruin this tentative peace, this fragile willingness to talk to me about all of this.
“I thought I had it under control.” I look down at my hands in my lap, taking in the small scars on my fingers from playing for years and years, a scab on my thumb from the time I tried to climb a tree in these very woods and found a jagged edge but didn’t want to tell my parents since we weren’t supposed to be there at all. Stella snuck out a first aid kit, patching me like she always did.
“I thought… I thought I was invincible. Saw my dad fall into that deep hole and knew there was the possibility of that addiction running in my veins, but I thought I would be stronger. “ I sigh, letting my head fall back on the tree and stare up at the fast-moving clouds. “I thought I was better than it than him. That I could… No, I thought I had to take part in all the road had to offer to prove he was just weak, that my mom died and he spiraled because he was weak.”
Shaking my head, a heavy sigh leaves my chest.
“I was a victim of my own ego. But history has a funny way of repeating itself, you know? You left, and in my gut, I think I knew why. I think I knew you knew I was using in secret, and it made me… righteous. Then I became angry and dug myself so deep when you left. I was fueled by heartbreak and loss and everything my father probably felt but worse because in my heart of hearts, I knew I could have avoided it.” I pick a piece of grass and start tearing at it, feeling Stella’s eyes burning on me, but for once, I’d do anything to avoid her all-knowing gaze.
“My dad… he wasn’t in control of my mom dying. Her cancer, we saw it happen, slowly and painfully, and we watched her leave, but nothing he did could’ve changed that outcome.” Finally, I look at her, meeting her eyes as I tell her my deepest truth, hoping she understands. “I watched you crumble on tour, watched you watch me fall deep, watched you beg me to stop. I watched you lose yourself while trying to quietly save me without scaring me off, and I let it happen. I could have stopped it all, but I chose not to. And that?” I throw the crumbled bit of leaf to the ground. “That kills me every day.”
There are so many responses she could give me, so many things I thought she might say when I confessed this. I”ve had the conversation with her a hundred times over and over in my head, then a hundred times more since I came back to Ashford and saw her.
You were stupid.
I hate you.
You should’ve tried harder.
And then on days when I’m feeling more hopeful, I’ve contemplated options like it wasn’t your fault or we were so young or it’s okay.
But I never accounted for this.
“What was the wake-up call?”
“What?”
“Your wake-up call. It wasn’t when I left.”
“When my dad died,” I whisper into the quiet. A bird chirps overhead, and Gracie”s tags jingle as she looks to the sky to find the source.
“I know,” she whispers. I know she knows, of course. She sat beside me and held my hand even though we hadn’t talked in two years.
“Then I hit rock bottom,” I say, another fact we both know too well. “The guys threatened to end everything if I didn’t get better. They would be done with me. I think they knew if I kept going, there”d be no band anyway, so they helped me, encouraged me.” I smile, remembering. “The first tour, a year after rehab, everyone was fully sober. It was the most boring tour of all time.”
The reviews from that tour were also atrocious. Riggins’ sobriety took the joy from his performance, one magazine said. “They were scared if I saw them partying, having a good time, I’d spiral too. Before the second leg, I had to talk to them, tell them I’d be fine, that being in the same room while they drank or smoked wouldn’t send me down that path again.” I shrug, remembering their disbelief
“It took a bit for them to believe me and longer for them to stop worrying I’d fall back in, but we got there.”
“Wow,” she whispers, her eyes wide because she knows how the tours were, how the after parties were, or at least how they were getting. Drugs and drinking and women and chaos everywhere. Every day, I thank whoever kept me from going even deeper, whoever up there stopped me from touching anything more than weed and liquor.
My mom, probably. I always liked the idea of that one, of my mother, watching over me, probably hurt and disappointed, but trying to save me all the same.
“I’m proud of you,” she says, breaking into my thoughts, the words quiet and unsure. “For doing it. Getting out. For living your dream but also for valuing your life. That was what I always wanted for you.”
More silence passes before I make my confession. I’m not sure if she’ll like it, but I will make it all the same.
“I did it for you, I think.” Her head snaps up, and this time, I don’t avoid her eyes. “The hope of it, of this. Of being able to talk with you again one day, for you not to look at me with pity and shame in your eyes, to sit in this spot once more.”
“Riggins…” she says, the word trailing off.
“I know things will never be the same. I don’t… I don’t want them to be. But I want you, Stella. In my life. I want you.” A bird sings overhead, but I keep staring at Stella and putting it all on the table. “And not as friends.” Silence spans again, but I don’t break it, leaving her to process my words and her feelings. Eventually, she speaks.
“I don’t know if I can give you me,” she says in a low, scared whisper.
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “We can take it day by day. It’s less scary that way. I learned that in AA. You take it day by day, figure out what you can handle, and don”t worry about the day after, the next week, the next month, or the next year. A year of sobriety sounds fucking impossible when you’re deep in there, but a day? An hour? That’s doable. That’s what we have to do. Take it day by day,” I tell her, hoping she understands, that she’d be willing to do that with me. She stares at me, deep and assessing for long minutes before she nods. My chest lifts, warmth taking over with the hope.
“When I’m having an episode, that’s what I tell myself. An hour. A day. I can handle being sad or numb for a day. An hour. If I tell myself it might last seven days, a week, a month at my worst, that’s impossible. Unimaginable. But I can handle an hour.”
I don’t say anything, waiting to see if she wants to expand or if that’s enough sharing for now, and when she looks to the sky, bright blue and filled with puffy white clouds, my body relaxes, thinking that’s it for now.
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
“I know,” I say. “I am, too. But what’s the point of swimming to the surface if you’re not going to fight to see the sun?” She sits perfectly still, and I wonder for a moment if I pushed too hard. But still, I wait, and my patience is rewarded.
“I’ll fight, Riggs,” she whispers finally.
It’s then I know we’ll be okay. Because if Stella is willing to fight, I’m never giving up. Never.
“Beckett’s birthday is Friday,” I say when the silence stretches long and winding. It may have been minutes or even hours, but time always passed that way when we were together. Easy and slow as we let ourselves get lost in thoughts and inspiration and words and melodies.
I wait until my heart has calmed a bit from asking about the past. It beats rapidly again but in a different way.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I look at her, and her eyes are on me, questioning. “Come to the party,” I say.
“Come to the party?” She echoes, and I stand, taking a few steps in her direction and offering her my hand. I’m not sure how she’s going to react, but when he reaches out, grabbing mine and allowing me to tug her to standing, it surprises me. Then she’s just inches from me, her face not far from mine.
“Yeah. As my date.”
A million thoughts fly over her face, only few I’m able to capture and interpret before the next comes.
Confusion.
Concern.
Excitement.
They’re all there, all at the same time, but I force myself to latch on to the good ones, telling myself only time can help with the others.
“Date,” she whispers, but it isn’t a question, more like she’s weighing the simple word and deciding how it feels on her lips. “Okay,” she finally says.
And just like she used to, just like when she would smile at me on my dark days, she lights up my world with a shy, quiet smile. A supernova in my dark sky.