Twelve
Peter
Igripped my sweet tea, wishing it was something strong.
Restlessness caused my knees to bounce beneath the table as indie musicians filtered on and off the stage.
No offense, but all of them sucked. Bea was in a completely different league skill-wise.
Bea was the third from last artist of the night and I pitied the singers who had to follow her.
The Kerrville restaurant was a typical burger joint—bar and grill.
Based on the noise level and lack of space between the tables, it felt crowded.
A little warm. Meadowbrook’s party squished around two glossy tables to eat our dinners while we listened to music and talked amongst ourselves.
I smiled as much as I could and chimed in here and there, but every engagement sapped the life out of my bones.
I ran my fingers up and down the sides of my glass, allowing the condensation to pool between my fingers. When a new artist moved to the stage and addressed the crowd, we all fell silent again, giving her some respect.
“Howdy, y’all. My name’s Yasmine.” She strummed guitar chords, jabbering as she did. About her hometown. Her style. Her songs. Her lyrics.
My consciousness fluttered elsewhere.
No one talked about how hard it was to stay mentally tethered to the earth when you couldn’t see it anymore. The past couple years had taught me just how far and wide a mind could wander. Conversations, movies, podcasts, and music couldn’t hold me. Nothing hit my brain louder than my own thoughts.
And I always thought about Sarah.
Trying to prevent vivid pictures from entering my mind was a pointless waste of energy.
Not like I could fight them off anyway. They came, bringing all their mixed feelings with them.
Sometimes, I spent hours trying to turn off the current, but I couldn’t.
Determined to suffer, my brain paddled through the sludge of my thoughts, looking for something new to torture my heart with.
And when I realized imaginations, memories, and dreams were the only sight I’d ever have again…I gave up. Just let go and let the current of thoughts sweep me away.
While Yasmine crooned a generic-sounding song about heartbreak, I drowned in them.
I moved from past to present and back a dozen times, reliving all the tiny moments that made up me—things I hadn’t thought of in years.
But Sarah’s hand on my leg pulled me back. She whispered, “Did you like that song?”
I shrugged and said, “It was good,” even though I hadn’t listened to a single word of it.
She squeezed my thigh. On instinct, I pulled away because her touch felt like a heavy coat over my shoulders when the walls were already too close—too tight.
When she removed it, a deep breath expanded my chest. Of all the times I had communicated I needed some space from her constantly touching me, it fell on deaf ears. My wife absolutely had to touch people. It was as essential to her wellbeing as oxygen. She would wither away without it.
Ironic that the two things we both needed were on opposite ends of the pole.
Per the usual.
A pang of guilt—as familiar to me as darkness now—stabbed deep in my gut as a memory of her walking into our high school played in my mind.
She had on my basketball hoodie, the hood flipped up and strings pulled tight, because it was raining outside.
Wisps of her hair stuck out of the opening around her neck and her blue eyes defied the morning’s gray gloom.
With her hands raised all the way over her head, she marched down the hall toward me and melted into my arms. I held her and swayed as she hummed against my neck.
That was the morning after she told me her parents never hugged her. And I promised to hug her every day.
But I’d broken my promise.
When ice rattled in the bottom of my sweet tea, it was Bea’s turn with the stage.
“Hey, everyone.” Bea’s voice poured through the amp situated somewhere on the right side of the room.
I could hear the smile in her voice. “It’s been a while since I sang live for an audience.
But, my oh my, you guys are a great crowd.
” She sounded nervous, a little awkward.
But she’d get back in the swing of it though.
“My name is Bea, but my father calls me Beatles because when I was five I was obsessed with the song Yellow Submarine.” That elicited a chuckle from the group, and she gave a soft laugh too, the tension in her voice spinning away as she did.
“I’ve tried covering that one a couple of times, but let’s just say…
Ringo does it better.” She immediately launched into the broken chords of Here Comes the Sun, her introductory words melting into her explanation on why this one was her true favorite.
Settling in to listen to Bea, Sarah scootched closer, pointedly snuggling against my shoulder. Having been attached to this woman for so long, I knew her body language. Her humming energy and insistent pressure screamed like a needy child.
Hold me. Hold me.
If things were different, I would pull my wife into my lap, wrap my arms around her hips, and let her obstruct my view of the stage the entire time.
I’d press kisses to the back of her neck and get drunk on the smell of her hair.
She would chide me with a whisper, but her lips would smirk, telling the truth—she loved it and there’d be hell to pay if I stopped.
Man, I ached for that.
Feeling guilty for ignoring her signals, my arm lifted to wrap around the back of her chair. It would mean so much to her if I held her for just a minute. Sarah stiffened, sensing my movement. But before my arm could move more than an inch or two, I stopped, easing it back down.
Because pulling her close felt like a lie.
And I wouldn’t lie to her. Nothing would stop us from breaking. I’d known for a while, and, whether or not she was ready to admit it, she knew it too. This entire trip to Meadowbrook proved what I already knew. Sarah and I didn’t have common ground anymore.
Our wants. Our dreams. Our hobbies. Our passions.
Those things made up our foundation. And the accident crumbled us—from the ground up. After all this time, we were still looking at a pile of rubble with no idea what to do next. If, by sheer miracle, we were able to tack something together, it wouldn’t look anything like what we started with.
And no one in their right mind would want that.
Especially not Sarah.
She reached over and grabbed my hand, pulling it onto her lap.
Instantly, I couldn’t breathe.
It was too much for me. The music blaring from the amps, her weight leaning against me, the smells wafting from the kitchen, the scrape of forks against ceramic plates, the low chatter of conversation from tables that weren’t really listening, and now our hot hands palm-to-palm.
And the darkness covering it all.
So much darkness.
Every sensation landed like a pinprick against my brain.
My hand started to sweat as Sarah gripped it like a life preserver, as if her refusal to let go would somehow take us to shore.
Feeling nauseous, I wriggled free, swiping both palms down the thighs of my shorts.
Before I knew where I was headed, my knees lifted me from my seat, and I grabbed my cane propped against the chair.
“You good?” She whispered.
“I have to use the bathroom.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. Which way?”
She paused, probably looking around for it. “Uh, okay, it looks like you go to the wall on the right side and follow it around to the back. Want me to go with—”
“No.” I answered too quickly then slowed. “No, I got it.”
“Okay.”
I made my way through the tables to the right wall, struggling hard to listen to the echoes made from the metal tip of my cane.
It seemed like there were tables and chairs on both sides.
In a crowded space, the echoes I depended on for navigation were harder to track, but I figured it out, locating the bathroom doors and legally required signage.
Doing anything in a new space took one hundred percent of my brain’s ability and not a drop less.
By the time I exited the bathroom, the reason I left the table in the first place came rushing back.
I didn’t want to go sit by Sarah.
But did I have another choice?
Not far to my left was a swinging kitchen door, a rubber thap-thap sounding every time an employee emerged.
Like a portal to another world, the open door ushered in shouts and dishes banging, the kitchen crew fully engaged in the dinner rush.
Applause floated above the racket as Bea finished another song.
Her voice lifted. “Now, I’ve always sang indie folk and swore up and down that I didn’t like country music.
But then I married a cowboy, and I won’t lie to Texas—country twang is growing on me. ”
I lingered by the bathroom door so long that I garnered attention.
A chipper female voice, emerging from the bowels of the restaurant, said, “Can I help you, sir?”
I hesitated. “Yeah…”
“Mm-hm?”
“Is there a bar here?”
“Oh, yeah! We have a bar. It’s right over there.” She was probably pointing.
I lifted my cane, ignoring the tingle of humiliation at the base of my neck. “You might have to give me directions.”
“Oh!” Realization dawned on her. “I’m sorry!”
I waved her off. “Don’t be.”
Sometimes, I wished I looked blind. According to what others had told me, my eyes hadn’t changed at all and they even moved around as if I was visually engaging with the world, so it was easy for people to mistake me as a seeing person.
A few acquaintances from rehab wore dark glasses as a social symbol to kind of “let people know.” I had a pair, but I didn’t like wearing them.
Her voice turned away as she explained the path. “Well, it’s kind of around that wall right there. It’s separated from the…uh, well…” She turned back. “Can you follow me?”
“Yeah, thanks. That would be great.”
She graciously took a slow pace and I was able to follow her footsteps around a wall to a bar that seemed to be U-shaped. One side closer to the music, the other further.
I sat down on the far side, flopped my elbows on the cool counter, and put my head in my hands. For a few long minutes, all I did was breathe, breathe, breathe. Applause erupted again.
“Now, something that most people don’t know about my husband is that he is incredible with words.” Bea laughed into the mic. “He’s over there shaking his head.” She laughed again. “He’ll deny it, but as long as we’ve been together, he’s been helping me write my songs.”
I should’ve been over there, supporting her.
“This one is about a kiss. One that’s bitter and sweet all at the same time. A Kiss Like Molasses is my first country original, written by me and my husband, Tag.”
Slow, heartfelt chords began, the restaurant quiet as Bea held them captive.
“Hey, what can I get ya, man?”
I jerked my head up. “Oh, uh…”
Drinking hadn’t really been on my mind for the evening, but now that I had the opportunity, numbing for a few minutes sounded like a solution. I straightened up, “What do you have on draft?”
“Let’s see. We got Lone Star, Shiner Bock, Coors, Bud Lite, and a locally-brewed stout.”
“I’ll take the stout.”
“Good choice.” He tapped the counter. “I’ll be right back.”
I raked my fingers through the top of my hair again as the truth niggled at the back of my mind.
Even though I didn’t want to, I needed to talk to Sarah.
I needed to say it point blank: this wasn’t working.
By protecting her feelings now, I was delaying her moving on from all this. If I just ripped off the bandaid…
A glass kissed the counter in front of me, the heavy yeasty smell infiltrating my senses.
“Wanna open a tab?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“No problem, brother. Let me know when you need more.”
I took a long swig, relishing in the way the velvety beer filled my mouth and throat. Cancer made me wary of most substances, and Sarah wasn’t a big fan of the stuff due to her past, so we partook sparingly.
But alcohol certainly had its uses.
The stout slid down easily and it wasn’t long before I was flagging down the bartender for another.