110. Rock Bottom
ROCK BOTTOM
LAYTON
The drawback with escaping problems is they’re always waiting, but instead of patiently standing aside, problems always wait for the most inopportune time with the worst possible outcome.
There wasn’t a day I skipped in the gym when it wasn’t worse when I came back.
Not a diet that I put off that was easier after waiting.
And now, after a full day’s sleep, after being awake and jostled for far too long in the car, I find myself in an ambush.
All I want is water. And since I didn’t plan ahead last night… or this morning—time is so jumbled—I walk toward the kitchen and directly into hell.
“Morning, sunshine,” Braxton offers from his spot in one of Pop’s recliners.
My oldest brother doesn’t look like he has a care in the world.
Colt is on his lap. At a year and a half, he’s Braxton’s spitting image.
“Laaaaay,” he screams and climbs my brother, scrambling for the top of the chair, and throws his arms up and down.
I high-five him as I pass, not trusting myself to hold him. My psyche cracks a little more along the fault that’s growing inside me. The list of what I can’t do is mounting, and each one slices me more raw than the one before.
Eventually, I’ll just be nerves and atrophied muscles with a dark mind and withered heart. I may have survived that crash, but my old self died when the Jaws of Life were needed to pull me from the mangled wreckage.
And, right now, I don’t have the comfort of my home, my bed, my dark room, or my oxy.
I move into Pop’s kitchen and reach for a glass and fill it with water. The sound of the door opening and closing and boots shuffling along the wood floors is unmistakable.
I turn back to avoid being trapped in the kitchen with no escape and wander into the living room, making a beeline for the guest room at a snail’s pace.
“Layton.” Pop’s voice is authoritative and lacks his typical warmth. “Come have a seat, son.”
“I need to lie down, Pop. Yesterday’s trip did a number on me.” I move to push past him, but a firm hand lands on my chest.
I look down at it, fighting the sudden burst of fury that wants to bubble up.
When my eyes meet his, I know I’ve lost. Pop’s kindness and pain is there, mixed with determination and pride.
No matter the storm raging inside me, I can’t see past his resolve.
But that mixed with the worry I see painted on his face is my undoing.
I drop my gaze from his to the floor, nodding once in defeat and moving toward the furniture.
There’s no good place to sit. No place less painful.
So I stand and shift the weight as much as I can to my right side, holding myself in a position that hurts the least, and wait.
I could count the clock’s ticks with the silence and the inhales and exhales throughout the room.
The only sounds are Sola scratching behind his ear and Colt babbling and slapping things.
I do not look up into the faces of Exton or Willa or Brighton or Pop. I studiously avoid Braxton with my nephew and focus on Sola, who demands the least of me.
When no one says anything, I turn the walker to walk away.
Braxton rises from his chair to stop me.
“I’ve never done an intervention. I don’t know how.
This”—he motions around the room—“is not my bag. They say I’m supposed to tell you how you’re hurting me, so I can get your attention.
I’m not going to do that.” He hugs me, eventually pulling back to put both hands on my shoulders, and looks me in the eye.
He’s only an inch taller than me, but he’s solid, and the strongest one in the room without a doubt.
“You’re not hurting me. You’re hurting yourself.
You are the most disciplined person I’ve ever met.
You fought tooth and nail for nearly two decades for your dreams. It doesn’t hurt me that you lost it.
It worries me that you did. I want everything for you.
I want every dream you have to come true and stay true.
I want it for you as much as I want it for Colt.
” He looks around for his son, only to find him lifting Luna’s ears and leaning to kiss her nose.
“You’re not hurting me, Layton. I won’t accuse you of that. But watching you hurt yourself is brutal. Watching you give up is foreign to me. My brother, the fighter? That man never surrendered.”
“Did you just Goonies never say die me in a speech?”
“Yeah. But it’s true. Layton Ranger is too good a man to let this get him down.”
I clench my jaw. Braxton isn’t effusive with me. He dotes on Colt and would fight the world for his fiancée, Emberleigh. But he’s rarely emotional like this with me. He’s a marshmallow for them, but as my brother, he’s never been the protector. Until now.
“Can I go next?” Willa’s strong voice implores the room.
Pop says nothing but motions that she has the floor.
Willa doesn’t leave the sofa. She doesn’t get in my face.
She stays tucked into Exton’s side. “Since your accident, I’ve thought of how we met.
I appreciated your humor. I was scared and in pain, and you were kind and funny.
You distracted me from the madness swirling in my brain.
I’m not that pithy and I can’t wink the way you can.
I’m certainly not as charming as you can be. ”
Her speech is interrupted by Exton growling and turning his face to hers. She pats his stomach and looks him in the face. “He was charming. I wanted you. I still want you. Hello.” She points at her stomach and smiles widely at Exton before turning back to me.
“Layton, you are ease and sunshine. And you don’t have that right now. But I hope I can offer a little of that back to you as you go through this. Our situations aren’t remotely close, but if you need someone to remind you who you are, I’m happy to do it.”
I hold her eyes and nod. I’m numb. While her speech is kind, it doesn’t gut me. Nothing could gut me. There’s a black pit where any feeling could be. But I love this woman all the same. I’m thankful she’s in our family and pleased that Exton found her.
“One last thing,” She lets that dangle before she drops the hammer.
“You said you knew a PT that could come to the house and work with me after my surgery last year. Have you considered contacting him or her and having them work with you here? I know you’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know about muscles and rehab, but it can’t hurt to have a professional in your corner who understands your goals. ”
Sweet Willa just dumped cold water on me without even knowing it. I know PTs in Austin and recommended one for her. She can’t possibly know she’s put Livy in my face… Reminded me of every place I’m deficient in one fell swoop. I clench my jaw.
Once I control my emotions, I speak. “I’m not staying here, so that’s not an option.
And this”—I look around the room from Willa to my family, fighting the bubbling anger churning in my gut—“Is…” I shake my head.
“Are you literally challenging me on my own anger? My own loss? Do you think I’m not allowed to deal with losing everything the way I want?
When did any of you decide I need your permission to do any-fucking-thing? ”
I stare into their faces, feeling too many emotions, the numbness relegated to a corner of my mind that I’d like to find again.
No amount of therapy can fix what’s wrong with me and I certainly know better than wishing for a woman like Exton has, only one that reminds me of an origami Pixie.
Exton pipes in, staring squarely at me, face hard, but speaking to the room. “Intervention is over. Layton isn’t receiving anything we say, and he has no intention of listening. Let him go. He’s not at rock bottom… Yet.”
I don’t know which scares me worse—his giving up on trying to help me or the idea that I have further to fall into blackness. The one seems brutal, the other ominous in its prophecy. Neither are welcome. Nor are their alternatives.
I want to scream. I also want to numb, and numbing is faster and easier than anything else. I twist my walker and crutch my way toward the hall.
“Layton?” Pop calls.
“Not now,” Exton cuts him off. “Not if you want him to hear you.”
Pop grumbles under his breath, and his boots sound as he walks away. The front door opens and slams and silence falls over the house. A quiet click-click-click follows me to my room. Luna.
“Looney? You should go back to your mom. You don’t want to be with me.
” I’m pretty sure I say it out loud. I pop a full tablet and the crumbs of one I’d broken for quick access yesterday and cringe as I sit on the bed.
Lying takes another effort, and my breaths finally slow as I position on the mattress, waiting for the black edges to dissolve and dreams to take me.
Just before that moment, the clicking speeds, and Luna leaps onto the bed. She’s never done this before and isn’t graceful in the movement. But she tucks into my good side from knee to ribs and, with a huge exhale, burrows in.
Her breaths are slow and melodious in no time, providing a rhythm for me. Calm overtakes me for the first time since… Since Florida. And I sleep.
I notice as Luna shifts and runs in her sleep.
In the moment between asleep and awake, I allow myself a dream, a delusion of Livy next to me.
She’s warm and folded into my side as if she were made to fit here.
She pushes back into my dick and wiggles her ass against me as she talks in her sleep.
My cock recognizes her and reaches for her as I pull her deeper into my side, folding my nose into her hair and drinking deep of her scent.
Contentment overwhelms me as I know this is where I’m meant to be.
This is home. This is joy. This is… I’m sucked under again.
When I wake again, Luna is gone and a glass of water sits on a coaster on the nightstand. The ice has melted and there’s no condensation, so it must be hours old.
I have no idea what time it is and I don’t care. I take a sip, quelling my constant dry mouth. I turn onto my right shoulder and fight to find a dream that escapes me. It was easy and happy, or I was happy. That’s a specter, though, a ghost of an old life. Dead and buried. Never to be resurrected.