24. Heartbreak sucks
CHAPTER 24
Heartbreak sucks
CALUM
The thick smell of smoke clogs the air. I pull the joint between my mouth, and puffs of smoke escape my lips and nose. My eyes water as smoke invades the studio. It will take a while for me to get used to smoking this much. Not like it helps. It only dulls the pain for a few hours.
Heartbreak sucks.
A door opens somewhere behind me. It must be one of my nosy bandmates, and I’m proved right when someone snatches the blunt from my hand and stomps it on the floor. I glare at their foot, my gaze trailing up to the face of a very unimpressed Sam.
His hands drop to his hips. “You can’t smoke in here.”
“Who says?”
“I do. It’s my fucking house,” he mutters.
Then he shouldn’t invite me over if he will police my behaviour. Stopping behind me, he places a hand on my shoulder. The door opens, but I don’t bother to check the new intruder. This is probably another intervention. They think I’m heartbroken. Well, they’re not wrong.
“Man, I don’t know what happened to you in Yorkrinth,” he begins. I drum my fingers on the table. I’m in his studio. “But you need to snap out of this before it leads to something else.”
The memory hangs over us. We never talk about my spiral down the rabbit hole when I began doing drugs. This time is different. I won’t get addicted. I only do it because it keeps me sane.
My head tips over the chair to meet his gaze. “Something like what, Samuel?”
Weed should be legal for all. It can be good for heartbreak. It numbs the pain. Sam sighs. I pat my pockets and hand over the blunts to him. There are three wraps. He frowns at them.
“You can have them,” I say.
“Jesus,” Sam groans. He walks over to the trashcan and dumps the joints inside. Everything seems slow. I don’t know if their concern also stems from the fact I locked myself away during the Christmas and New Year holidays. “You need to stop doing this to yourself, Cal.”
“What the hell happened?” Lucas asks. I’m not sure when he appeared, but he needs to go away. They are blowing this out of proportion. It’s just weed. I tap the keyboard on the table, and a sound breaks through the silence. I don’t know how to play or how I got here. “And Sam is right. You need to stop smoking this shit. I don’t care what you think it does for you.”
Lucas pushes away from the wall and stops by my chair. Sam moves to the left, leaving me in the middle. We stare at our reflections on the glass window. Do I tell them I have more at home? If I do, it will sound like I’m addicted, but I’m not. I smoke at least twice a day. Once in the morning, when my thoughts are the loudest. Then, at night when I’m reminded of the loneliness. But sometimes, the urge comes during the day when I need to make a new song.
“What happened in Yorkrinth?” Lucas asks.
The incident happened in October, but this is the first time we are discussing it. I’d rather not.
“She moved on. End of story,” I say. The headset on the table doesn’t belong to me. But I grab and slide it over my head, wincing at the sound that assaults my ears. Lucas slaps it off my ears. Jesus. “Quick question. If smoking doesn’t affect my singing, why is it a problem?”
“It could affect your health,” says a third voice.
The headset drops to the floor as I shoot to my feet. I lied. I fucking lied to myself. I thought we could move past that and become a normal family. But I was wrong. My head spins from the sudden wave of anger and hunger that erupts over me. I palm my face, willing myself to calm down or breathe. That’s the thing with smoking. It gets me super hungry. I’m famished.
Mum dares to take a step forward. Her coat hugs her frame. It’s colder this time of the year. “You spend more of your time smoking than you do with your friend or the music. It’s bad.”
How dare she?
My finger points in her direction. If she comes closer, I’ll poke her chest or eyes or anywhere that will leave a permanent scar, so she knows better than to meddle or mess with my life.
“You, of all people, don’t get to tell me what to do, Mum,” I say. I need to act my age, but I’m pissed and tired of letting things slide. She has moved on, but I can’t. I might never do that. I take a menacing step towards her, but she holds her ground. “Or should I say, Dani ?”
As the question leaves my lips, I run my hands over my face. I’m letting her get to me. I can’t let her get to me. I don’t care. Women aren’t shit. Maybe not all, but some. And she’s wrong. I’ve been working on the music. I’ve just not been interested in teaming up for a project right now.
“Leave us,” Mum says. She sends a pleading look to the boys. “Please. Give us a minute.”
“Na, Dani. Nope.” This is Sam’s place. Shaking my head, I point to her first, then the boys. “No one is leaving. If you want to leave, go ahead. In fact, if anyone should leave, it’s Dani.”
Lucas looks to Sam for help, but they do nothing. If Mum weren’t working for the label, we wouldn’t even speak or see each other. The doors of my house are permanently closed to her.
A resigned sigh escapes her. I stride back to my seat and sag into it. Tremors travel up my arms as I bend to grab the headset. I don’t know if it’s hunger or nerves. A door shuts. I pull the headset over my ears and hit the play button on the table equipment beside the keyboard.
This time, the lyrics to the song I’ve been practising play in my ears. I’m not a producer, but heartbreak gave me some insights. God, I sound stupid. But that’s how it is with her. I always get some inspiration around Cathie. In this case, her unspoken rejection inspired this song.
“Well, that was harsh,” Lucas says. I tap a key on the recorder and disconnect the headset, and the sound takes over the studio. As expected, it silences them until I hear, “Shit. It’s fire.”
“Yeah?” I murmur. I catch my image in the window. My eyes are bloodshot from smoking. I finished recording it today. The weed may have helped to get the rest of the lyrics out of me.
“I like it,” Lucas mutters. His foot drums on the floor in tune with the beat. My voice is small and sad, but it conveys the lyrics since it’s about heartbreak. We will need a producer to work on it, but it sounds nice. Scott can take care of the technicalities. “Do we get to come in?”
“No?” I reply. It’s my song. Lucas laughs. “I don’t know yet.”
“Were you really crying in the backseat of a cab?” Sam asks. I turn off the music. Sam storms towards me and hits the button. The song replays. Fuck him and his perceptiveness. I stare at the ground, wishing for it to open. “How much of this song is real? Waiting for her? Crying in the backseat of a Yorkrinth cab. Grown men cry. ” They do. Maybe not actual tears, but they do. They also feel. I know because I felt everything. Mostly the hurt. “What happened?”
Hunger gnaws at my stomach. I need to eat. “I said it already, Sam. She moved on.”
“How do you know she moved on?” Lucas asks. My fingers tangle in my hair, and my elbows drop to the table. I hate it when they are being serious. “Did you even talk to her?”
“I didn’t need to. I saw enough.” They both groan. I know what I saw. “She was with her kid. That’s why she had that username. Mama Mace. Mace is her kid, not some chicken or a pet.”
Lucas stops the music. “I don’t know, man. What if it was her sister’s kid or something?”
“Cathie is an only child.”
“What if she was babysitting?” Sam asks.
“Do you honestly believe what you just said?” I reply.
They don’t get it, and I’m tired of this topic. Sam messes up his hair. Lucas looks defeated.
“Not really. But it’s a possibility.”
“Why would someone like Cathie want to babysit?” I throw back at Sam. He crosses his arms and rotates one shoulder. “Have you forgotten about GC or even BC? How does she go from founding that to being a babysitter? Believe me, if she’s holding a kid, then it’s hers. And if she has a kid, then she has a man. Or had, I don’t know. But I saw her with her boyfriend.”
“You two were fucking then, right? What if it’s your child?” Lucas says. Goodness. This guy really thinks with his dick. “And she’s waiting for you to show up and whisk them away?”
“Lucas, just shut up.”
“Maybe he’s just a friend,” Sam volunteers.
They are clutching at straws to make me feel better, and I don’t wish to be babied. It’s almost three months. We all need to get over her. We won’t always end up with the people we love. Sadly, I’m in that minority.
“It’s not a friend. They were hugging.” Sam opens his mouth, but I beat him to it. “It was the same guy from the pub. He was all over her. He helped with the baby. They hugged. They smiled at each other. It was intimate and…” My voice lowers. It can’t be my child, or she would have told me about him. She’s not that petty. I tug on the hem of my shirt. I think I might cry now. “…I felt like an intruder watching them. So yeah, she moved on. I will too.”
Sam stares at me, wanting me to give this another shot. But I’m not setting myself up for a second hurt to prove them wrong. Lucas is more relenting. He drags a chair closer to me and turns on the music. My voice floats into the air, and I pretend the lyric isn’t about heartbreak and the loss of the only girl I ever loved. Probably the only girl I’ll ever love in this lifetime.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lucas whispers.
“No, I don’t,” I reply honestly. I stopped knowing. “But I’ll figure it out. Eventually.”
He pats my shoulder to show his support. It has been weeks, but it feels like yesterday since I saw her hugging another man. I push those painful memories back. I only need them when it’s time to write a new song. Sam leaves the room, but Lucas stays behind. “Our tour, Cal.”
“What about it?”
“You know we’ll be going to Yorkrinth, right?” he says.
I know. I dread it.
But on the bright side, after our Europe tour, we don’t have another for the rest of this year. Lucas says something, and I strain my ears to pick out his words. He laughs when he notices.
“You know I don’t care for Yorkrinth. If you like, we can tell Scott to scrap it off the list,” he says. Our fans will loathe us. Tickets have been sold. “For what it’s worth, I hope you two get another chance to talk. To get closure and be able to move on properly. Why did she never try to reach out to you?” Because Mum sent her those emails. But they don’t need to know this part. “Cathie let you go, and you seem to be the only one making any efforts. Why’s that the case? I don’t know how love works, but if I love someone, I’m not letting them go that easy.”
“You don’t understand,” I reply in Cathie’s defence. But I don’t sound as convincing. She had the tickets. She had the money. Why didn’t she fly over to confront me? The questions leave a bitter taste in my mouth. “You don’t understand, Lucas. You don’t.”
“What I understand is that you two have a lot to say to each other and you can start by telling her you lost your memories,” he says. “She can’t be mad at that. It was not your fault you got into an accident, Calum.”
But it is. If I had stood my ground and refused the relationship, this would never have happened.