Chapter 17
The highway unwinds before me, stretching toward a horizon that never seems to grow closer, no matter how many hours I spend chasing it. Above it, the sky is a hazy, washed-out blue, bleached by the late-afternoon sun.
A light vibration rattles through my bones as the road hums beneath my tires.
I quickly tired of the interstate, with nothing but the same green exit signs promising gas, food, lodging, and relief.
Instead, I’ve been following back roads that carve through the countryside like lazy rivers for the last few weeks.
At some point, they all began to blur together.
All of them with faded white and yellow lines dividing the pavement, creating lanes that don’t do much of anything when you’re the only car for miles.
Each cuts through similar small towns with such a tiny cluster of buildings that don’t even register as a dot on a map, but never failing to have a bar.
The Owl’s Nest, Last Chance Saloon, Whiskey River, Frank’s, and a slew of other dives that feel like they were built specifically for men like me, men with nowhere to go and nothing else to lose.
My hands rest loosely on the steering wheel, the leather worn smooth beneath my palms from decades of use. Rosie always teased me about how much I loved this car.
We’ve been driving for hours. No destination. No plan. Just the two of us on the long open road, with the windows down, and the warm summer air flooding the car.
Despite my ample protests, Rosie has her feet kicked up on the dash, her bare toes tapping absent-mindedly to the rhythm of each song wafting through the speakers.
Her hair whips around her face in chaotic strands, catching the sunlight.
It weaves threads of caramel and amber through the otherwise-umber locks with every turn of her head.
“You know,” she chimes casually, her voice raised slightly to speak over the rush of wind, “you’re rich and famous.”
“Really?” I snort. “Because I hadn’t noticed.”
She completely ignores my sarcasm. “I’m just saying, you could afford a fancy car.”
“This is a fancy car.” I tighten my hands around the steering wheel like her insult is a personal attack.
Rosie laughs, a full, unfiltered, head-thrown-back laugh that fills the car. “This”—she waves her hands around at the cracked leather seats and sun-faded dashboard beneath her feet—“it’s a relic.”
“It’s vintage.”
“It’s old.”
“It has character,” I retort, running my hands over the smooth leather of the wheel.
“It has problems.”
I cock a brow and shoot her a playful look. “You have problems.”
She gasps, dramatically pressing a hand against her chest. “Wow. All these years and this is how it is.”
“This is how it is,” I confirm, solemnly.
“You’re impossible.” Her eyes are narrow as she shakes her head, but there is no hiding the smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“You love me.”
“I do,” she replies without a second of hesitation, leaning her elbow against the open window. Her fingers thread through her hair, combing it out of her face. “But I think you love this thing more than me.”
“I could never love anything as much as you.”
Reaching across the seat, I wrap my fingers around her wrist. She gasps with surprise as I tug her toward me. “Easton.” She laughs, bracing her hand against my shoulder as I drag her across the bench seat and into my lap. “You’re driving.”
“I’m aware.” When she’s fully across my lap, I snake my free arm securely around her waist. Her body fits against mine like it was designed to be there.
Her hand slides up my chest and curls into the fabric of my shirt as she shakes her head. “You’re insane.”
Not pulling my eyes from the road, I press my lips to hers as I veer onto the shoulder and slip it into park. Barely breaking our kiss, I whisper, “Absolutely crazy for you, dreamer.”
The gas light flickers on, and the small amber glow on the dashboard pulls me back to the present. WELCOME TO KANSAS, a big blue sunflower-adorned sign announces my arrival. I don’t remember crossing through Oklahoma, but I don’t remember passing through Arkansas, either.
My days since leaving Nashville have bled into long, indistinguishable stretches of asphalt and alcohol.
I thought fleeing our home would fix the parts of me Rosie’s death broke, that being somewhere else would dilute the grief.
Foolishly, I thought that, if I put enough miles between myself and the life Rosie and I built together, I might stop feeling like a ghost haunting my own existence.
But as the anniversary of her death approaches, I only miss her more.
Instead, grief climbed into the passenger seat.
It buckled itself in and is determined to come along for the ride.
It sleeps beside me in bed and stares back at me from empty pillows at three in the morning.
It follows me into every bar, wrapping itself around my throat until the only thing that loosens its chokehold is whiskey. Even then, it doesn’t really let go.
As the sky streaks orange and purple with the onset of the evening, I pull into a motel parking lot with a neon VACANCY sign flickering in the office window.
The building is squat and rectangular, painted a tired shade of beige.
I cut the engine, and the bottle in the cup holder catches my eye.
The glass is warm from the sun, and the amber liquid inside shifts when I pick it up.
My fingers curl tighter around it, muscle memory guiding the motion.
The cap twists loose with a soft crack. The smell hits me hard.
It’s sharp, familiar, and faintly nauseating.
I hesitate for a second when the rim reaches my lips, not because I don’t want it, but because I know exactly what will follow.
The burn across my chest will give a momentary, fragile illusion of relief, until the emptiness rushes in, even deeper than before.
I tilt the bottle back anyway. The whiskey slides down my throat like fire, igniting a familiar path to the emptiness inside my heart. Nothing about it feels like relief, just postponement.
When I wake, my cheek is pressed against a pillow that smells faintly of mildew and the person who slept here before me. My eyelids flutter open to the unfamiliar room, and panic flares for a moment before fuzzy memories settle over me.
The road. The motel. Rosie. The bottle…
I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth, trying to remove the taste of decay, as my head pounds in time with my pulse.
Weak sunlight filters through the thin curtains, painting pale strips across the stained carpet.
I push myself upright slowly, and my stomach protests violently.
When I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, my foot kicks the empty bottle, lying on its side on the floor.
Of course it’s empty.
For nearly three weeks, I’ve woken every afternoon with the same impossible wish in my chest: If I can’t forget how much it hurts to not have her, then I want to trade places. I would rather I’d died instead.
I can’t keep doing this. Not because I’m not strong enough or suddenly have an undeniable wish to live, but because this half-existence—the slow erosion of everything Rosie loved about me—feels like a betrayal I could never have committed while she was alive.
“I’m a fucking cliché.” The words scrape up my throat, the bitterness in them surprising me. I scrub my hands over my face and let out a dry, humorless laugh. I know this story. Everyone does. Famous musician drinks himself into oblivion, and eventually—inevitably—he ends up in rehab.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the empty room.
By late afternoon, the road stretches before me again.
But this drive feels different, purposeful in a way that makes my stomach knot.
My destination isn’t aimless. I found it last night during a brief internet search, choosing it simply because it was the closest and provided less time to change my mind.
It’s January 21st. Today marks exactly one year since the day I lost my dreamer. I need to do this today. For Rosie.
The rehab center sits at the edge of a wooded property. Gravel crunches beneath my tires as I pull into the parking lot. The building is modest, with wide windows, pale siding, and a wraparound porch lined with empty chairs, facing a strand of trees swaying gently in the wind.
The Bronco vibrates beneath me, as I sit with the engine running, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly they ache.
I debate whether or not I belong here instead of dive bars and cheap motel rooms. But I know where that road leads.
I see it every time I look in the mirror, in the emptiness behind my own eyes.
Rosie deserves better than watching me disappear, even if she isn’t here to see what I choose.
The intake process is quiet and clinical.
A man methodically checks my belongings for contraband.
His movements are practiced and detached, and his rifling through my things doesn’t bother me until he reaches Rosie’s journal.
He flips it open casually, his fingers roughly flipping through the pages.
“Hey!” The lone word cracks through the air sharper than I intend.
He looks up, startled. “I need to—”
“Don’t.” My voice cracks, and I swallow hard, forcing the words through the sudden tightness in my throat. “Don’t… touch it like that.”
He pauses, then closes the journal gently and sets it aside with deliberate care. “I’m sorry.” I nod, unable to explain that those pages are the closest thing I have left to her voice or that losing it would destroy me in ways alcohol never could.
After ensuring I’m not trying to smuggle in booze or drugs, he leads me toward the dormitory section of the center.
My private room is small and far cleaner than the beds I have been sleeping in.
I set my bag on the edge of the mattress and unzip it slowly.
Rosie’s sweater is sitting on top. I pull it out and press it to my face.
It still smells like her. Or maybe I’ve memorized her sweet floral scent so completely that my mind supplies what isn’t really there.
After laying it across the pillow, I grab the photograph and place the frame on the bedside table.
Her smile is infinite. She looks like someone who believed we had all the time in the world.
“I’m here, dreamer.” It feels important that she knows, because I know how badly she would want me to get help.
A knock sounds at the door, gentle but firm. An orderly steps into the open threshold and announces, “Group starts in an hour.”
An hour until I have to sit in a room and say out loud what I’ve been trying to drown out for almost a year. Sixty minutes until I have to admit to a room full of strangers that I’m not okay. That I haven’t been since the moment the world took her from me.