2. Luca
TWO
Luca
I had no idea what time it was. Based on the cheesy infomercial for some commercial-grade blender flickering on the television, I suspected it was late.
Why did these things always play in the middle of the night, anyway? Did people often wake up at 2 a.m. to take a piss with the irrepressible urge to buy kitchen appliances possessing the horsepower of a small lawn mower? The woman on the screen was wearing a hideous orange jumpsuit and was way too fucking happy about pulverizing a bunch of green vegetables to a pulp. Anyone buying a Vitamix at two thirty in the morning wouldn’t be making a smoothie that didn’t contain body parts, and there was nothing anyone could say to convince me otherwise.
I sat up on the couch and pushed my fingers through my hair, thick with grease, studying the woman with the severe ponytail and too-white teeth. Locked inside my sixty-five inch television in her prison-issued ensemble, I imagined her as my cellmate.
“Isn’t this amazing?” she shouted over the power drill sound of the blender. “In a pinch, I like to use this bad boy to shred the meat for my world-famous chili. It’s that good. It’ll tear your chicken up in no time.”
Chicken. I snorted. More like the testicles of some asshole named Ted. This blender can beat any meat, guaranteed.
I fished for the remote, finding it wedged between the cushions, and clicked the Off button.
Sorry, lady. I prefer solitary confinement.
My apartment was dark without the glow of the television, but that wasn’t saying much. The blackout curtains I'd installed in the spring had been closed for months. What little light that did manage to sneak inside came only when I opened the door to grab my grocery delivery or takeout on the rare occasion I actually felt like eating.
I hadn’t seen another human in weeks. Not since I’d ordered Chinese and the Uber Eats guy had forgotten to bring up my spring rolls. He jumped as though he’d seen a ghost when I answered the door, nearly dropping the Styrofoam container. I couldn’t entirely blame him as I snatched the food from him. I’d been avoiding my reflection, but in that stranger’s wide stare, I’d seen enough to know I didn’t want to see myself at all.
I padded through the minefield of take-out boxes, plates, and half-empty cups of coffee that littered the floor on my way back to the bedroom. The only light guiding my path came from the modem in the corner of the living room that I hadn’t bothered to conceal even after years of living here.
The bedroom was submerged in darkness except for the angry-looking red numbers on the digital clock resting on the nightstand next to my phone, letting me know it was just after 3 a.m. I flopped on the mattress, cloaking myself in the cool, dirty sheets. The short trek from one room to the next had been enough to put me out of breath.
I reached for my phone as a reflex, but the screen remained black. I’d turned it off days ago and hadn’t made an effort to turn it back on. There were dozens of unopened messages and voicemails that had been accumulating since I’d been “traveling,” but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to listen to them. Not that it would matter if I did. At this point, everyone that had tried to contact me probably either hated me or had forgotten about me. As they should.
My throat was thick as I shoved the phone beneath my pillow and closed my eyes, waiting to be welcomed into the black void of a dreamless sleep.
Buzz…buzz…buzz…
I pried one eye open, attempting to orient myself in the darkness, and the buzzing continued.
Was there a fucking fly in my ear? How was that even possible? I had the place locked down tighter than Folsom Prison. How had a goddamn fly managed to get in my home, let alone in my fucking ear?
I lifted my head off the pillow, and the sound became muffled.
“What the…” I shoved my hand under the puffy cotton beneath me and grabbed my phone. The light from the screen made my head hurt as an unknown number flashed across the screen. Hadn’t the damned thing been off the night before? How was this fucking possible? I went to swipe my finger over the Decline button, but my hand slipped, causing me to hit Accept instead.
“Shit. Hello?” I answered, my voice gritty like gravel.
There was a pause and a beep followed by a chipper baritone. “Hello! I’m looking for Luca Sterling, please.”
I grunted. “Uh…”
He took that as a green light to keep going. “This is John from USA Auto Services, and we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty. Could I—”
I ended the call and face-planted into the pillow with a groan, my phone still clutched in my hand. The damn thing hadn’t been on in days, and when I somehow managed to power it on in my sleep, a fucking scammer named John is the one calling me. I would’ve been willing to bet he and his buddies were the ones clogging up my voicemail too.
I rolled onto my back and scrubbed my hand down my face before illuminating my phone screen again. I had to type in my passcode because even the facial recognition software couldn’t discern who I was anymore.
There were five hundred forty-three unread text messages. I didn’t check to see who they were from, opting to look at my full voicemail box instead. My finger hovered over the screen, prepared to mass delete John’s shady attempts to scam me out of money. But I stopped when I found the names of my friends and former bandmates stacked one on top of the other, sometimes alternating, sometimes back-to-back: Katie, Derek, Dallas, Dallas, Jo, Liv, Katie, Antoni, Derek, Ella, Ella, Jax, Grace, Cash, Cash…and the list went on. There were only three unknown numbers wedged randomly between their names.
I scrolled all the way back to the first message on May 27, put it on speaker, and let it play.
“Hey, Luca! It’s Katie.” I pictured her bright grin as her voice continued. “So, Dallas and I are starting this new thing. We’re hosting monthly game nights. Our first one is next Saturday night, and we were hoping that if you’re back in town, maybe you’d come by. If not, hopefully you can come next time. Okay, that’s all. Talk to you later.”
One from Dallas came in only days after.
“Hey. Are you coming Saturday or what? Call us back, dude. Where are you?”
A message from Derek left in mid-June came next.
“Hey, man. It’s me. Just checking in. Jo and I are in town this weekend so we can go see Jax and Liv at CMA Fest, and we were wondering if you were going. We’d love if you could come over for lunch beforehand. Little Addie’s getting so big. You’ve got to see her. Let me know if you’re back, and we’ll grill out. Oh, yeah. That’s a thing I do now.”
“Hey, Luca. It’s Liv. Jax and I are playing at CMA Fest, and we were hoping you could come. We’re all getting together for lunch at Derek and Jo’s beforehand. Well, not all of us. Ella and Cash and Grace and baby Betty are still in LA. Antoni and Nate will be in town, though. Anyway, we’d love to see you. Jonathan and Chloe miss their Uncle Luca, and we miss you too. The adoption will be official next month. Isn’t that crazy? Anyway, call me when you can. Bye.”
God, it had been a long time since I saw the kids. Months were practically years in kid time. They probably looked so different now. Children had never been my thing, but I enjoyed seeing my friends’ kids. It never occurred to me that they liked seeing me too.
I moved my finger down and selected one of the unknown numbers.
“Hi, this is John from—”
“Fuck you, John.” I skipped down the list and played a message Jo had left just after the Fourth of July.
“Luca! Where the heck are you? Did you get the pictures I sent of Addie watching the fireworks? Seriously, where are you that doesn’t have a cell signal, mister? Katie and Dallas are having another game night next weekend. Please say you’ll come.”
“Hey, Luca. It’s Cash. I was just calling to see how you’re doing. Haven’t heard from you in a while. You know if you need anything, I’m just a phone call away, all right? Hope to talk to you soon. Bye.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Sterling. Hi. This is your friend Antoni. Remember me? You know, the one you haven’t spoken to in months. If you’d kindly let me know where you are so I can fly my gorgeous behind there and kick your ass, I’d greatly appreciate it. Listen, I know you like your space and shit, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Call me back. I’m worried about you. We all are. So, call me.”
The next message I listened to came from Grace and kicked off with an earsplitting shriek.
“Luca, it’s Grace, and I just called to tell you I’m engaged!” I swallowed hard as her voice cut off midscream. I’d known Grace before she even started dating her British superstar boyfriend. She was still in high school when I met her, and now she was getting married?
Her mom Ella came next.
“Luca, where the fuck are you? It’s August first. Fucking August, and no one has heard hide nor hair of you. We miss you. We’re worried about you. Just freaking call me or someone and let us know if you’re alive or shacked up on a yacht with a supermodel named after a fruit. And my oldest daughter is engaged. Engaged, Luca. AARP won’t stop sending me shit in the mail, and I still have a baby girl at home. Is this the kind of irony Alanis Morissette was singing about?”
“Luca, it’s Cash. Listen, we got some bad news. Ella’s mom passed away this morning.” My breath caught in my throat. “She and Grace are devastated. We’re about to board a plane home to Nashville now. The funeral is gonna be on Wednesday at Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens, and we’re all coming back to the old house after. It would mean the world to Ella if you came. It would mean a lot to me too. Call me, okay?”
“Luca, it’s Jax. Dude, where are you? I know you don’t want us in your business, but come on, man. Missing Ella’s mom’s funeral? This isn’t like you. I get that you’re traveling, but seriously? You couldn’t come back for that? What’s going on?”
With a trembling finger, I tapped the last message Ella left, fully expecting a tongue-lashing from hell because it’s what I deserved. Instead, her voice broke, and it was obvious she was speaking through tears.
“Luca, please call us. Please. I’m worried. It sucked that you didn’t even come to my mom’s funeral. It fucking sucked, but I’ll get over it, okay? I’m just really concerned about you. Call me. I’m begging you.”
Every message was a needle digging deeper beneath my skin, trying to reach a splinter embedded so deep it had become part of me. I’d missed so much. And they’d missed me. I didn’t think they would. I didn’t think I mattered. I’d always been the outsider of the group. The disappointment. I blinked furiously, sending salty liquid spilling over my lids, tracing invisible lines down to my ears. I wasn’t like them. They were better than me. But they still missed me?
The last message came from Katie the evening before, asking me to go to their game night and letting me know they missed me. Her normally peppy voice was heavy with sadness. I’d let her down. I’d let them all down.
Even still, they hadn’t forgotten me. I’d ghosted them. I’d completely shut them out, but they hadn’t turned their backs on me. I was the one who’d walked away. I told them I was traveling because it was easier than telling them the truth. It was easier than telling them everything fucking hurt and that sometimes I wished it would just stop. That I could just stop. I wanted to shut my eyes and disappear. I wanted a second to fucking breathe without this imaginary fist around my neck, choking the life out of me.
My entire body shook, cold and hot at the same time. Every breath came in ragged sobs that made me feel like I’d jumped into the deep end of the pool when I couldn’t swim.
I missed my friends. I used to try to piss them off just for fun—always testing the waters to see who would abandon me first. I picked fights and gave them shit, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care. I did. I just couldn’t tell them I fucking loved them. I didn’t know how. How could I ever be good enough to love them? Would I ever be good enough to be loved by them?
Even when I didn’t deserve them, they never gave up on me. I had given up on me.
But they were still there. I could go back. I could try.
With a trembling hand, I reached over to the nightstand and turned the light on.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sit?” The counselor, who couldn’t have been older than I was, peered up at me from the armchair she was sitting in.
I shook my head and shoved my hands in my pockets. I did not want to sit. In fact, I wanted to make a fucking break for it. Coming here was a mistake.
Lacey Milburn was the first person who could see me out of the numerous counseling centers I’d called. I’d left messages well outside of business hours, probably because part of me hoped nobody would return my call, which would mean I wouldn’t actually have to come.
But Lacey did. She called the next afternoon and offered me her last appointment of the day at 8 p.m. She’d greeted me at the door herself Wednesday night and locked it behind us, not at all unlike a serial killer. I followed her to the small office. It was homey and filled with colorful paintings on the wall, and it smelled like freshly brewed coffee.
This chick was prissy, blonde, and squeaky fucking clean. She wouldn’t know misery if it jumped up and bit her in the—
Lacey cleared her throat. “Why don’t you tell me a little about why you’re here today, Luca?”
“Do you know who I am?” I asked. Not in the pompous way celebrities attempted to throw their clout around like confetti, but in a way that said I hope you don’t.
She glanced at the leatherbound notepad poised in her lap. “You’re Luca Sterling.”
“You know what the fuck I meant,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Do you?”
Lacey paused a moment, tucking a loose sliver of her hair behind her ear, and nodded.
I ran my tongue along my teeth, attempting to remove the acidity from my mouth. But it was pointless because that bitterness was coming from my very core. The bitterness was me.
“Then you tell me why I’m here, Lacey,” I said. “I’m sure you already have your theories, so let’s hear ’em.”
“I really don’t. That’s not how I work. That’s not how this works.” She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, tugging the sleeves of her pale pink cardigan over her hands.
“I don’t know why the fuck I’m here,” I admitted. “I’m sure no sooner than I walk out your door, it’ll be on fucking TMZ.”
“It won’t. I can promise you that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, do or don’t, that’s up to you,” she said, her voice even as a set of parallel lines. “The only way someone will ever know you were here is if you told them yourself or if they followed you, and I tried to prevent that by seeing you at a later hour.”
I squinted at her. “You mean you don’t normally see patients at 8 p.m.?”
She shot me a look that called me a dumbass in thirteen different languages.
“Why the fuck would you do that for me? Because I’m famous? Did you want a front row seat to the shit show?” I fired off my tirade of questions one right after the other and waited for a reaction, but she was immovable. “Oh. Let me guess. Because you fucking ‘care’?” I curved my fingers around the invisible word, hugging it. It was the closest I’d been to anything resembling a hug in months.
“Yes. I do care.” Lacey gave me a faint smile and shrugged as she leaned forward, resting her hands on her lap. When she did, the sleeve of her sweater slid up her wrist an inch, revealing a swipe of black ink I couldn’t quite make out.
Little Miss Priss has a fucking tattoo?
“I didn’t take you for the tattoo type,” I said. “What is it? A fucking butterfly? No, wait. A sparrow. Chicks fucking love bird tats.”
She pulled her sleeve up farther and turned her arm so I could see. “It’s a semicolon.”
I snorted. “What? Why? You big into grammar or something?”
She chuckled and tugged her cardigan back down. “No, nothing like that. Though I do have strong feelings about people who don’t know the difference between your and you’re .” Her gaze dropped to the floor for a second before returning to me. “To me, the semicolon represents a sentence not yet finished. It means there’s more left to say.”
“You couldn’t have come up with something better than punctuation?”
Her jaw tightened, letting me know I’d successfully made a chink in her armor.
Fuck. What am I doing? This lady worked me into her schedule when she didn’t have to, and I’m being a prick.
“I…” I swallowed hard, heat rising to my cheeks. “Shit. Sorry. I’m wasting your time.”
“It’s okay.” She raised her brows, the corner of her mouth tugging upward. “You’re paying me by the hour.”
Something shifted inside my chest, as though her witty comeback had made an impact and cracked across my sternum. Maybe it wasn’t her armor that was breaking down.
“Fuck. I don't know why I’m such a goddamn dick all the time,” I said, sinking onto the leather couch across from her and digging the heels of my palms into my eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“You’re hurting.” She said it so simply, as though I’d asked her for the time or a weather report or if she liked weird grammar tattoos. “And hurt people will hurt other people sometimes. Luca, everyone is fighting battles we can’t see.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face and blew out a breath. “I still don’t trust you.”
“I don’t expect you to. Trust is earned. And I’ve got the time if you do.”
“Because I’m paying you by the hour.”
“Exactly.” She grinned. “And since you haven’t sprinted for the door, I’m guessing you’re not in a hurry to leave just yet. So, how about we begin by you telling me a little bit about yourself?”
My mind was screaming at me to bolt, but my legs were heavy and weary. I was exhausted of fucking running, and if I was being honest, running hadn’t fixed a damn thing. Maybe it was time to try something new.
I finally answered with a single nod. “Okay.”
“Have you had any thoughts of harming yourself or others?” Lacey asked.
I somehow felt even more depleted than when I’d arrived at Lacey Milburn’s office fifty minutes earlier. But it was a different kind of emptiness than I’d come in with.
Once I started giving voice to the monsters under my proverbial bed, they all started lining up, impatiently awaiting their turn to introduce themselves. After making their presence known, they exited my body and scattered across the room, staining Lacey’s colorful walls gray.
I was aimless. Without the demons filling every square inch of my soul, I felt strangely alone. Even demons started to feel like friends when they were the only company you had. They eyeballed me from where they loomed in the corners, a silent agreement that this separation was only temporary, and that they’d be coming home with me.
“Luca,” she said again, “have you had any thoughts of harming yourself or others?”
“God, no. I would never hurt someone,” I said. “I mean, yeah, I’ve gotten into a few bar fights in my day, but that was because I was being a fucking dick. I would never set out to hurt anyone.”
“Good.” She paused, tilting her head. “Now, what about you? Have you considered hurting yourself?”
“No.” I hesitated. “It’s not that. I just…Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not feel anymore. To not be miserable all the fucking time.”
“But you don’t have a plan to harm yourself?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”
She nodded. “While I don’t think you’re a risk to yourself or others, I do think it would be beneficial for you to be around people you trust. Do you have anyone like that nearby?”
I shook my head. “Not here. My friends…my family lives in Nashville.”
“Would you be able to go visit them? Or perhaps they’d come to you?”
“I could go there,” I said. “But that would make it hard for me to come back here for therapy.”
She crossed her boot-clad feet at the ankle. “How would you feel about virtual appointments?”
I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“I want to make sure you’re getting everything you need, Luca. So here’s my suggestion,” she said. “You go to Nashville and spend some time with your family. While you’re there, I want to meet with you virtually a couple times a week to start. But if at any point you start to have thoughts of harming yourself, I want you to go straight to the hospital, okay? And of course, I’ll only be a phone call away.”
“Okay.”
She gave me a small smile. “Let’s get you scheduled.”
A couple of moments later, Lacey walked me toward the door and unlocked it.
“All right, Luca, I’ll talk to you in a couple of—”
“Is this fucking normal?” I blurted out, cutting her off. There was a large lump in my throat as though I’d swallowed a Magic 8 Ball with the screen stuck on Outlook not so good. “I have everything. Well, not literally, but pretty fucking close. I was successful. I have enough money that I don’t have to worry about shit for a really long time. If I can have all that and still not be happy…” I trailed off, leaving the unspoken question hanging in the air. Will I ever be?
Lacey placed a hand on my arm, and I nearly flinched. It was the first time anyone had touched me in…well, a really long time. It felt foreign, like the burn of a new tattoo or like I’d grown an extra appendage.
“I can’t promise you happiness,” she said, and for the first time, I caught the hint of a southern lilt in her voice. “I wish I could, but I think happiness is a lot like rest stops. Life is the road we travel, the hardships we face, and the rest stops are those happy moments in between all the life we’re living.”
“So then, what am I doing this for if I might not ever be happy? Isn’t that kind of the point?”
“You ever ride with the windows down, music blaring, screaming your favorite song at the top of your lungs?”
I nodded.
“All that matters in that moment is your tires against the pavement and the wind on your face. It feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it does.” Until my appointment with Lacey, I hadn’t been behind the wheel in months.
“The right tunes can completely change the experience,” she said. “Therapy and working on yourself is a lot like that. It doesn’t always change the road you’re on, but it can change the ride.”
Her words followed me through the darkness as I got into my car. It was a short drive home, but I made it with the windows down and the music up as loud as it would go.