Chapter 8It’s time to get better.
EIGHT
It’s time to get better.
Trace
“Sal, don’t forget the cooler by the door!”
“Ay, I won’t, I told you a thousand times I won’t forget it!”
“But you forgot it last week so don’t tell me you know, just grab the bag already!”
Shuffling and rustling, followed by four minutes of my upstairs neighbors arguing in a language I’m too hungover to decipher, and then they’re finally gone.
A sigh escapes me, and I roll onto my back, swiping my hands beneath the pillows to find the pockets of cool, undiscovered sheets. Thankfully there are no stupid birds building nests and chirping around here like at my last apartment in Hollywood, so when my eyes close again, I start drifting.
I’m on the cusp of sleep when a loud noise sounds at my front door.
“What is this fuckery? Is the world conspiring against me right now?” I roll out of bed and grab my gold watch, bringing it close to my eyes. It’s not even eight in the morning, and I’m pretty sure it’s fucking Saturday. “ Whaaat ?” I shout angrily while trudging through the apartment hallway, my foot catching a stray pair of panties from the floor. I kick the pink thong off, and it ends up on a lampshade. That makes me smile.
Without looking through the peephole because I’m not a wimp that needs to peek out front to make sure I’m safe, I yank open the door and find Deuce on the other side.
“It ain’t a work day,” I launch with no preamble. I’ve known Deuce for the better part of twenty years. We’ve said hello, hi, how’s it going enough for the rest of our lives. “It’s early and it’s Saturday. What ?”
“Hello to you too, sweetheart.” He smiles, pushing past me in his leather jacket and blue jeans. God, so cliché. Then again, I guess I am too.
Fuck.
Leaving his boots on, Deuce sinks back into the couch, jerking forward to pull a woman’s bra out from under his ass. “I came to talk and since you’re part naked and definitely not strong enough to throw me out, you’re gonna listen.”
“I could throw you out.” I grab an old t-shirt off the countertop—one I took off in the throes of passion. By the way it smells, those throes were a few days ago. Maybe even a week. Boxers intact already, I sit down across from him on the edge of my coffee table. I’m not sure a cup of coffee has ever been on this table.
My bare ass while a beautiful woman rides me? Yes.
A naked woman covered in cocaine? Yep.
But a cup of coffee and, like… I don’t know, a newspaper? Fuck no. That’s for grandpas.
“Want some coffee, peepaw?” I ask as Deuce eyes my place, judgment heavy in his brow. Okay, maybe I don’t know that he’s judging from just his face but… I also do. He’s been judging me for years. Even when I was on the road and we’d FaceTime once a week, when the topic veered from art and ink into my personal life, his brows would pull together. He’d get really kinda bitchy.
I sense that coming now.
He snorts. “You even have coffee to make me? And by the way, we’re the same age.”
I shrug. “You seem much older.”
“Listen, I’m too tired from Ace being up all night cutting teeth. I have no silk to wrap this up in, so I’m just gonna empty my apron, got it?”
I scrub a hand down my face. When’s the last time I shaved? “I’m not followin’ that metaphor but say what you came to say so I can get back to sleep.”
He steeples his hands beneath his chin, gaze surprisingly calm as he takes me in. After a sigh, he says, “I got a proposition for you. It’s the next leg of the Get Trace Back tour.”
“Get Trace Back tour,” I repeat on a snort, shaking my head. Though the booze lingers, leaving my neck and brain sore as shit. Instead, I run a hand through my hair and rest my elbows on my knees. “I’m here in Bluebell. I’m at Ink Time. I’ve done what I said.”
Deuce’s head tilts sadly just like in a country music song, and an equally empathetic expression curves his lips. “Sober up and live your life. Get back to caring about tattoos because showing up at Ink Time and giving 30% of what you’re capable of isn’t being back. ”
We don’t use words like addicted and sober, because it brings a level of reality I’m sure we both realize I can’t handle. But today, he’s telling me to get sober, and as much as the words bring a knot of emotion to my throat, I fight them.
I fight back when someone cares, when someone wants to show me love. I push them away and I pick them apart and destroy them all, because it’s easier to be a hated, drunk asshole than to be devastated.
Lost.
Heartbroken.
“I ain’t gonna talk around it anymore. I’m not pretending that we don’t see it, me and Ev.” He scoots to the edge of the couch, hands still steepled as he speaks low and calm. “Come live in the house next to me and Ev. It’s ours. We bought it to fix it up and flip it but now with Ace, and, well, you…” He grins, making a joke to break the mounting tension, but I don’t smile.
“Live in the house you bought and fix it up?” I question. What a legendary plan.
He nods. “You live there for free?—”
“I got money,” I say, knowing we both know that much. I’m just so used to using money to keep my problems away. We sit in silence a moment before Deuce continues.
“I don’t need your money for rent. You live there and instead of coming home from Ink Time and drinking, come back and use your hands. Fix that place up for us.”
“Free labor, eh? I can see why this plan works for you.” I get up, knocking over a half-drunk beer with my ass. It glugs onto the table, and neither of us move to clean it up. Instead, I go into the small kitchen, ducking beneath the cabinet to see him as I fill a glass with water. My head is throbbing.
“Call it repayment for all those free tattoos you’re giving out at my business,” he says. A dig at the fact it could’ve been ours had I not chosen reality TV? I don’t know. But he isn’t wrong. I fucked up the other day.
“One tattoo. There was only one free tattoo.” For some reason, it seems important to punctuate that truth. I only fucked up once… and it was because I couldn’t get my mind off of Ivy. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about how she’s the first woman I’ve thought about like that since… her. Since Cat. “I was just… in my head.”
“Get out of your head. Use your hands to get it out, whatever it is,” Deuce says, his hands now resting open-palmed on his spread knees as he speaks. “You gotta get better. And if you don’t think you deserve it, do it for Ev.”
That same lump of heat and tension coils in my throat. My eyes burn. Everly has become like a sister to me. Taking care of me in my darkest times. When I’d crawl back to Deuce, my only goddamn friend in the whole world, the only person who didn’t want a thing from me but my friendship, she’d be there without questions, without judgment, free of lectures.
She’d have water. Food. Tylenol. A pillow. A ride. Words of wisdom. Sometimes just a hug. But she’s always been there. I’m pretty sure she can’t stand me, but she’s been there.
Deuce has too, but the thought of hurting or disappointing both of them gnaws at the soft spot deep inside me.
“Come. Come live by us. It’s time to get better.”
“Better, huh?” I know what he means. I know I’m not living a path of longevity. And without the show, without the fans, without the continual hype, my partying and drinking will only become more and more out of place. More and more of a problem. As if it’s not already.
“Don’t get angry. Don’t fight me. Don’t fight this.”
“I’m good, man,” I say, my ego choking the rational parts of me, not allowing me to admit that he’s right. Not only do I need to get better, but this is the place to do it. And with the people I love? The only people I love? It’s time. But I fight. Because admitting that I’m broken—admitting that I let her break me—it’s a jagged pill I refuse to swallow.
There’s a knock at the apartment door, jarring our focus. I slam the glass of water and come around the counter to the door.
Opening it, there’s a woman on my porch. Black makeup is pooled beneath her eyes and her hair looks like it would benefit from a brush. At eight in the morning, she’s wearing a pink miniskirt and black cowboy boots and nothing for a top except… a bikini.
She looks past me to Deuce, who lifts a hand to silently say hello. Smiling awkwardly at him, she returns her focus to me. Despite the whisper she’s using, I know Deuce can hear her. For Christ’s sake, he’s less than one foot behind me.
“Hey, Trace, umm, I think the condom is stuck inside me. You know, after last night.”
I twist in the doorframe, facing my friend. The sign that he’s right is asking me to pull last night’s condom out of her. And I haven’t even had my coffee. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll… I’ll move into the place next door. I’ll start fixing it up. I’ll… Fine,” I say as Deuce gets to his feet with a grunt.
The girl eases her way inside. “Help me get it out?”
“That’s my cue,” Deuce says, shimmying past her. From outside the apartment, he outstretches his hand and we shake on it. “Come by my house after… this,” he says, nodding to the girl. “I’ll give you the key and show you the place.”
He leaves and ten minutes later, she’s gone, too.
Deuce was tired because his son was teething and as I stand beneath the spray of the hot shower, washing away this morning’s condom retrieval, I think about how I want to be tired for good reasons, too.
Deuce really is right, damn him.
It’s time to get better.