Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Bowie
Thrashing, trapped in a web of blankets and darkness, was the worst way to wake up. It reminded me too much of the hospital, the endless stream of bandage changes and wound drains, cool air hit my skin as I struggled free of the blankets and wound up on the floor.
Naked.
Shit.
“Mmm, Bowie, are you okay?”
Double shit. Now I’d woken Pressley.
“Yeah, um, fine, just um, need the bathroom,” I stammered, bolting for the one down the hall instead of the en suite so I could puke in peace.
Every inch of that nightmare had been way too real, maybe because it reflected the past, all those hands holding me down, keeping me from moving, not just after the wreck, but during the long hours in the hospital when I’d endured more stitches, staples, and bandages than I ever wanted to feel again.
Binding, holding me together, even as I’d been freaking the fuck out wanting to see the damage, especially to my shoulder and arm.
Playing.
That’s all I’d been able to think about.
My first question to the doctors had been to ask for an estimate of when they thought I could go back to playing my guitar again.
Hearing the uncertainty in his voice was bad enough, being told physical therapy first had been worse.
No one said that the nightmares that lingered would be the truly horrible part of the whole ordeal.
I knew what had triggered them too. Maybe I should have said something to Pressley before we’d fallen asleep.
Instead, I’d pinned him to the bed the way I had after the previous show, when what I’d really needed was for him to hold me until it no longer felt like all of my broken pieces were grinding together and threatening to shatter completely.
Meeting the man who’d caused my wreck had brought back new memories, ones I wished I didn’t have, and then last night, in the middle of a set, two waitresses had collided, and bottles and mugs had flown everywhere.
It was the loud, shattering sound of all that glass hitting the ground that had thrown me, though not bad enough that I missed a chord.
Close though.
I’d flinched and somehow managed to suck in a breath and let my hands do what they needed to do before my head got too involved.
Glass on the tables, glass on the floor, and glass all over some poor guy’s shoes.
It was the shoes that were burned into my brain.
All those sparkling shards all over it. Shoes were all I could see when they’d been extracting me from the window.
Shoes covered in glass. The sound of glass crunching beneath boots.
Glass in the long strands of my hair as it dangled by my face.
That glass was all bloody.
Lurching, I puked again and clung to the bowl, eyes squeezed shut, shaking. I’d finished the set without freaking the fuck out, but I should have known there would be a freakout in the near future.
What the hell was I thinking, moving into Pressley’s room? He didn’t know about the nightmares. They hadn’t happened since I’d moved in, so I’d….
Taken the coward's way out and hoped that with all the good things happening for me, the bad would stay buried somewhere deep in the back of my mind. Too bad the universe had a way of smashing hope.
And now I had a new line I needed to jot down, because that felt like killer lyrics right there.
I guess it was better to be sitting here puking up dessert over a dream instead of an overindulgence of substances.
Before my wreck, I’d dabbled with more things than just the weed I still smoked.
Struggling to get off the painkillers I’d been given after the accident had taught me a serious lesson about leaving the harder stuff alone.
Fuck!
I’d left my cart in the room. Everything was in the room, even my clothes, and I wasn’t rockstar enough yet to risk an indecent exposure charge, even if Pressley’s yard was pretty damn secluded.
I had forgotten to move toiletries, though, which was now a minor mercy, because at least I could brush my teeth once I managed to heave myself up off the floor and flush.
My scars were the first thing I saw when I looked in the mirror, and they were the first thing Pressley’s parents were going to see when they opened that door.
Shit! Shit! And double shit!
I opened the medicine cabinet so I didn’t have to look at myself anymore and to get my toothbrush and toothpaste, and I left it open while I brushed because I could. It was a choice I could make.
Unlike tonight.
That…hadn’t felt much like a choice, and I was scared.
No. Scratch that. I was fucking terrified.
Down the hall I had a guy, and he was awesome.
Even when I’d dated before, I couldn’t exactly call it awesome.
There had been a lot of neediness involved, a lot of jealousy and stupid catfights between guys who’d pissed me off when they started fighting over me like I was the last spoonful of honey garlic shrimp at the China Buffet.
Maybe it was his age, or the age of the people I’d dated before, which had always been much closer to my own, but he hadn’t hung all over me when we were out together or whined when I took a moment to talk to someone else.
He also hadn’t stormed after me backstage when I’d motioned for the guy who’d hit me to come have a conversation, like I’d half feared he would do.
That would probably have been a dealbreaker, which would have sucked because I’d already fallen completely in love with him.
Which was why I was going with him tonight.
Because what if not going was a deal breaker for him?
I didn’t wanna fuck this up before it really got rolling, and I so did not want to puke again, my side still ached from all the puking I’d already done.
The scar tissue is always making the aches feel worse when the muscles bunch beneath my skin.
Tension.
I avoided it as much as I could. It made my entire body ache to the point where breathing was difficult.
See, there were things they didn’t really talk about in the hospital, their focus was on the damage, not the remnants left by the damage years later, when things hurt that shouldn’t hurt when I was only twenty-four.
Right now, as I shambled out of the bathroom and headed for the kitchen, my hip and shoulder throbbed from all the rocking and headbanging I’d done while I was playing.
My body had yet to catch up to the way we’d been grinding in rehearsal, the studio, and onstage.
It was way more than I’d been doing down in Portland, and I’d learned to expect periods of adjustment whenever I tried something new.
Every day it was getting easier, so why bother mentioning it?
It wasn’t that I was trying to keep anyone in the dark.
It was just that I needed to prove that I could do this without anyone side-eyeing me with worry.
Like Tony did.
There was more to the story than just he’s my best friend behind why we’d never dated.
Let’s just say he’d tried, and I hadn’t been in the right headspace for someone with a mother hen complex fussing when I pushed myself too hard.
Back then I’d pushed because I’d been angry and wanted to prove to my old bandmates that they were wrong for tossing me aside.
Now, I still wanted to prove that to them, but more than that, I wanted that dream I’d thought I’d lost when the accident happened, and it was right there; I was already touching it, so there could be nothing less than full speed ahead, balls to the wall, until the dream was a full-blown reality.
I should go back to bed, but I didn’t want to sleep, nor did I want to accidentally wake Pressley again.
I didn’t even want to wake Tony or disturb him, not with the way his phone kept beeping like he was deeply engaged in a text conversation with someone.
Not to mention having any conversation naked with him would just be awkward as hell.
In just our boxers was a different story, and at the moment all of my boxers were at the other end of the hall.
Note to self, stash a spare pair somewhere along with a notebook and pen; the three would really come in handy right now.
Instead, I resorted to the dry erase board after I fumbled around and found the light over the sink.
On the windowsill above it, Percilla sat proudly on her new perch, where she got even more sun than she’d been getting in my old room.
“Hey girl,” I muttered as I reached up to check her soil. “It’s one of those nights.”
Sometimes I wished she could answer me, other times I was glad she couldn’t.
“You know, until tonight I never thought about how lucky plants were. You guys don’t really move unless someone moves you.
You’re extra lucky; with all your prickles, someone has to be pretty determined if they’re gonna move you.
Yeah, I know, the box was a bit of a thing, and the roads were a little bumpy, but we did it all without you drawing blood, thank you very much. ”
Was it weird, standing bare-ass naked in the kitchen talking to a houseplant? Maybe, but at least I had the whole eccentric part down. Pretty sure that was par for the course when you were a musician.