21. Be Yourself – Brad
The entire ride home was excruciating, with Charlie lobbing questions at me like it’s an Olympic sport, and she’s going for the gold medal. I can only deflect so much since she’s so fucking smart. She knows something is going on, and from her questions, she has an idea that it has to do with Tess.
Fuck me.
It’s hard enough to deal with my own thoughts and feelings in this, but I also have to contend with Ren and Jude breathing down my neck from across the world. Today, I am not a fan of technology. How quickly Ren knew about the post, saw the post, and then called to bitch at me about it is mind boggling. It had to have been only a matter of minutes from going up or coming down for her to react so fast.
But I also can’t blame her for her reaction since it mirrored mine. Charlie is off limits to any outsiders, including press and social media. As parents who happen to be in the limelight, we agreed on that years ago. Of course, back then, it was more because she was married to Jude Lockwood of Indigo King. My spotlight is recent, but that doesn’t make it any less glaring when it comes to my daughter.
To be fair, Tess and I never discussed the boundaries regarding Charlie in that way, but I don’t feel like fighting fair right now. No, I want to rage because I still feel betrayed. It’s not even what she posted, because, yeah, it was a fucking great video of me and Charlie. I actually love the video. Or at least I did.
But she didn’t fucking ask.
She just took it upon herself to post a video of my little girl to social media for all the troll piranhas to eat her alive. Not a single fucking thought of what that means to me or her mother, or to fucking Charlie herself. Yes, she took it down, but God only knows how many assholes captured it somehow to use in ways I don’t even want to imagine.
My blood curdles at the horrendous thoughts running through my mind. People are sick fucks.
“Daddy, can I have some ice cream?” Charlie’s voice cuts through my downward mental spiral.
I need to blink a few times to bring her into focus. “Sure thing, baby girl,” I say, standing from the couch I just fell onto and rolling my shoulders, trying to release the tension building up inside of me.
“I’m not a baby,” she whines, just like a baby, as she trails after me into the kitchen.
“Yeah, well, you’re my baby, and always will be. Don’t you forget it.” I grab some bowls from the cupboard and start scooping the ice cream for both of us. “You’ll be thirty-five, married to some dude with a desk job and a tie, with your own hoard of rugrats, and you’ll still be my baby girl. Got it?”
She giggles as she scrunches her nose at me. “Eww. A tie? Really?”
I stop and stare at her, playing up the disbelief. “What? You don’t like ties?”
She shakes her head at me, still smirking. “Nope.”
“Oh, that’s right. You like beanies.” I smack my forehead. “I totally forgot about that.”
Her cheeks flush almost as red as her hair, but she snatches one of the bowls of ice cream and a spoon from the counter and rushes to the living room without another word. That’ll keep her quiet for a few minutes at least.
As much as I love teasing her about shit like that, something in my gut twists at the thought of little Charlie eventually dating. If I’m honest with myself, that time is going to come a lot quicker than I want it to. I am not going to handle that well at all. Especially if this video incident is any fucking indication. I’m going to have to lock her in a tower or something, like in one of those Disney movies we enjoy trash-talking together.
If only.
After a few hours of dealing with Charlie’s sugar rush and subsequent crash, there’s a knock on the apartment door. I haven’t looked at my phone this whole time because I don’t want to see any of the fallout. Not yet. I’ll deal with it once Charlie goes to bed and I can focus my attention on it. Not to say it hasn’t been in the back of my mind, because it has been. A lot.
My first instinct and thought are that it’s Tess. She somehow got my address and is here to apologize. My adrenaline pumps up a little, a small flicker of hope rushing through me that we can put this all behind us. But then I remember what she did, and that hope fizzles. I can’t want to work things out. So why the fuck do I all of a sudden?
“Dad?” Charlie asks, her brow creased with concern.
I snap out of it and look at her. “What’s up?”
“Are you going to see who it is?” The arch in her brow is bordering on sarcasm, and it dawns on me that I haven’t moved. I’ve been lost in my head.
Again. Fuck.
The knock on the door repeats, and it’s a little louder this time. Reluctantly, I get up and head to answer the door.
When I open it, I find Dakota on the doorstep. Not Tess. The disappointment that rolls through me makes zero sense, but I shove it down, and plaster on a smile.
“Hey, man. What’s up?” I say, offering a hand for an awkward handshake that turns into something like a bro-ritual. First a regular handshake, that morphs into an arm-wrestling pose, then another position that feels weird. After a few transitions I give up and drop my hand, feeling like an idiot who doesn’t know the first thing about ‘cool bro’ handshakes.
Fair enough.
Dakota is unphased, but still seems a bit reserved. His beanie is missing, and his hair is tied back low on the nape of his neck. Charlie will be so disappointed.
“I wasn’t sure if I should still show up for our lyric session,” he starts, still in the doorway, glancing around the living room, “since you guys left so early… I tried texting, but thought I’d swing by anyway in case I had your number wrong.”
Holy shit. I totally forgot we planned this earlier today. In all that’s happened since this afternoon, it completely slipped my mind that I’d invited Dakota over to write together.
“Sorry about that, dude, come on in. It’s all good.” I force a smile as Charlie runs over to greet Dakota. Maybe she’s not so disappointed after all.
Girls.
It takes a good half hour to convince Charlie that she needs to get ready for bed. She’s wrapped up in all things Dakota, tossing a million questions at him, and he’s wrapped around her little finger. Just where she wants him.
At least I have company.
When she finally concedes and goes to her room, I head into the kitchen. “Can I get you a beer or something?”
Dakota follows me in, leaning his lanky frame against a counter. “Nah, I’m good. I don’t drink.”
I pause for a minute, holding the fridge door open and glance over to study him. It’s almost unheard of to not drink in the music business. But then it’s usually one extreme or another. People either party too much, or not at all. There isn’t a lot of gray area.
It makes me wonder even more what Dakota’s story is. “You don’t? Which is it? Can’t? Won’t? or don’t?”
“Yes.”
“That’s valid,” I say, seeing that he doesn’t want to get into it, and I’m not one to press anything now. I’ve got my own shit. “Water, then?”
“That’d be great.” He loosens up a little at my not prying for further details, as if he was expecting to get the third degree from me.
We settle on the couch and start going through his notebooks, which is more like poetry than lyrics. The guy has a gift with words, and it makes me start to question my own talent as a songwriter. I’m no Shakespeare, but Dakota’s writing resonates on a deeper level. A level that I’m not usually willing to go to in a song.
I’m all for pouring my heart and soul into a song, but I seem to stop myself before it gets too close to home. I go to the heart of it, but not my heart. My defenses won’t let me expose that to anyone, not really.
But Dakota’s writing is almost too personal. One part captures my attention:
The void we hid in took you.
Back to the reality we ran from,
Stolen, or stupid, either way successful
In losing you forever
To The Abyss.
I read the entire thing a few times, and let the emotion of it sink in. The grief and longing in the words wash over me and strike a chord that I can relate to. Especially today.
“This is good stuff, man,” I say quietly. He’s been picking at the loose threads on his ripped jeans as I read, and I can sense his discomfort. It’s not easy to share your soul like this. I get it.
He lifts his shoulder slightly in response, not meeting my eyes, or saying a word. It’s almost painful to watch.
But curiosity is killing me. I need to know what this is about.
“Can you give me some context to this?” I ask, still treading carefully. I really don’t know Dakota at all, and this feels like an important moment. “If you can, I mean. I don’t want to pry into your personal shit.”
He shakes his head slowly, obviously considering whether to spill his secrets or not. I can relate.
“It…was about my wife,” he finally says, his voice barely a whisper. His face is stoic, but his eyes are deeply haunted.
“You’re married?” I can’t hide the surprise in my voice. I think he’s around twenty-six or seven, but he still seems too young to be married for some reason. There’s a quiet innocence about him that I think I project on to him since he was originally just a fan. But now that I look closer, I can see that any age about him comes from experience.
“I was…” he starts, hesitating and looking away. The ghosts in his gaze brightening. “She died two years ago.”
Fuck.
“Shit, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so personal.” The pieces start clicking into place in my brain. The lyrics. The haunted expression. The not partying. The story. It all makes sense now. And it puts a lot of shit into perspective for me.
He waves me off. “Nah, no worries, dude. It’s cool.”
It’s a standard brush off, and I recognize it, because I do it too. We all do. Saying things are ‘cool’ when they’re not. I can clearly see in everything about him that his late wife’s death still affects him deeply.
I brave another question, wanting to know all he’s able to tell me. “Can I ask how she died?”
He leans forward then, resting his elbows on his knees as he plays with the wrap-around snake ring on his ring finger, his head lowered. It’s then that I notice a line tattoo underneath the snake. The old wedding band tattoo that was popular a few years ago. My heart wrenches at the sight of it.
“You don’t have to go into it if you don’t want to, man,” I clarify, not wanting to make him any more uncomfortable than he obviously already is. We don’t know each other well enough yet for all our life stories to be told.
“She OD’d,” he says bluntly, and there’s an edge of animosity in his tone, or maybe it’s plain old anger. That’s fair.
Click.
So, I was right, at least. Everything added up to that, but I didn’t want to assume anything.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs again, but stays silent, still twirling the ring around his finger.
There are moments when people share things when words just won’t cut it. Or too many words will diminish it somehow. This is one of those. He doesn’t need a long diatribe about how much his situation sucks. He knows it already. He also doesn’t need a monologue from me about any of my own experiences with people who have OD’d. They don’t matter to him. I don’t matter in this situation.
It”s his situation.
All I can do is keep it short. To the point. I’m sorry.
Sometimes that’s all a person needs to hear – that someone is sorry that they’ve had to go through something. They don’t want the full-blown pity party, just the greeting card. Just a few words to make them feel seen.
And, man, do I see him right now.
Not that I’ve lost a significant other to drugs, but I’ve lost people. Friends. It’s an unfortunate side to this industry, hell, to life in general. It happens.
Shit happens.
I feel a bit hardened to it at times, but shit like this, like Dakota’s story, softens me back to it. His lyrics give it all meaning again.
“Would you mind if we used these?” I pick the notebook back up and point to the page in question. “In a song, I mean.”
The hesitation is back, and I can see his mind running a million miles an hour behind his hazel eyes.
Eventually, he nods. And it’s not just a half-hearted nod, it’s emphatic.
“Yeah, I wish you would, actually.”
It’s an odd response, and one I wasn’t expecting to say the least. I thought he’d fight it just a little bit more, but I’m glad to hear it.
“Did you already have a melody in mind? Or some sort of structure?” I get up from the couch and grab my old acoustic guitar from a nearby stand, anxious to see where this could go.
“I did, actually,” he says, brightening a little as he takes the guitar from me and starts playing.
He is not a singer, by any stretch of the imagination, but I get the gist of the melody he had in mind and start singing along as he plays. The contrast between the melody and the notes played gives it an even more haunting aura, and after about another hour of working and reworking, I think we have a song on our hands.
Pain can be powerful.