52. Tom Cobalt #2
“Fuck you,” I curse. “I bet you didn’t even go to sleep. Didn’t take a nap. Just stared at your phone all night—”
“Because I’m an insomniac, Tom! I don’t fucking sleep!!” His bloodshot eyes bear into me. Steal oxygen right out of my lungs.
My throat swells. Pressure compounds on my chest. “What?” I blink through the pain in my sternum.
Phoenix kneads the back of his neck. His voice is as raw as the look in his eyes.
“I’m lucky on a good day to get four, maybe five hours.
Otherwise, I’ll take three. Chronic exhaustion has ruined me in so many ways.
The irritability. My short fuse. You don’t want that, man.
One thing I will never apologize for is letting you sleep.
There are things you can sacrifice for our band, but not that. ”
My anger evaporates off me slowly. I thought he needed to understand me, but maybe I just needed to understand him. “How did I not know?” I say into an agonized wince. “I just thought you were…I don’t know…like a cat taking a bunch of naps.”
“Basically yeah. Just the naps are short and shitty.”
“Dude, how long have you been without sleep?” Worry climbs up my spine, and I check my phone, trying to do mental math. He’s been projecting, right? That’s why he’s so overly obsessed with my sleep schedule. He’s the one being mentally fucked all the time.
I hate I didn’t know. I didn’t realize…
“‘Wired,’” I name a song we wrote together, agony swelling in my chest. My eyes burn.
I sing this song five nights a week. “‘I eat through time like a regnant beast, while time laughs back at me.’ You came up with that line. I didn’t think…
there is pain in it?” I thought it was boastful, but Phoenix is forced to eat through time.
He doesn’t want to be awake.
“Yeah,” Phoenix murmurs, so quiet. He steps closer and slips his hand against mine just to gently take my phone away and toss it on the U-shaped couch behind me.
“This is why I haven’t told you,” he explains.
“You don’t need to be concerned about me.
This has been my life for years. And my brother is already on my case. I’m good.”
I study his face. He has his normal half-moon darkened circles under his eyes. But besides that, I wouldn’t be able to tell he’s exhausted. “Okay, but I have questions.”
“I might have answers for you.” He catches my wrist and drags me down to the couch.
The cushions are stiffer back here, and I already feel myself writhing against the concrete foam. Like what else could this be made from?
Frustrated, I collapse back on the long stretch of seat and extend my legs.
“Just take up all the room,” Phoenix says dryly.
“I will. I am,” I say, a lot softer than usual.
He suddenly hovers over me—his forearms on either side of my head, his warm body pressed against mine—and a smile hooks my lips. Phoenix smooths back the hair out of my face, and being fused together with him, like this, calms me down even more.
I wonder if he feels that too.
“Do you take sleeping pills?” I ask.
“I have in the past. But I’ve always ended up building a tolerance to them, and I don’t want to rely on meds anyway.”
“What helps?” How can I help? I really want to ask.
His brown-blue eyes sweep my face. “Exercise, sometimes. Melatonin, sometimes. Cannabis, but it’s a motivation ruiner, so I avoid that.” He lets out a deep sigh. “I don’t know. Mainly I just say my nightly prayers, man, and hope for the best.”
Exercise. My mind is whirling. “What about sex?” I ask. “Does that help?”
His eyes dip from mine to my lips, then back to my eyes. “Hmmm.” He sucks a lungful of air through his nose. “No. It hasn’t. Unfortunate, really. I’m sure you would have loved to help me sleep. Get to be the hero, Cobalt god.” He pinches my chin.
I swat him away and flip him off.
He returns his hand to the edge of my jaw, then presses a kiss to my lips. Just one before he asks, “Are we going to talk about you?”
“What about me?”
“You just had a mini meltdown over losing maybe four hours of work time.”
“Dude, I would call that a full-blown meltdown. And what’s there to talk about? I didn’t know sleep was a sensitive subject. I get now why you’d turn off my alarm.”
“But you still feel like those four hours might be the reason we fail?”
Tension tightens my spine. “I know it seems stupid, but every minute counts. Every opportunity could be the one that matters the most.”
“You can’t…that’s not…” He blows out a frustrated breath. “It’s impossible to do everything, Tom.”
“It’s not.”
“You have to sleep, man.”
“I honestly don’t need it,” I tell him. “I’m kicking fine with two to three hours. I have been for over a week.”
Phoenix stares harder at me. Way more intensely. His elbow rests above my head on the cushion. He’s studying me, his eyes on mine. “Did you lie to me?” he asks. “About taking coke?”
Fuck. Fuck.
I’m rigid.
“No. I didn’t.” I swallow a rock. “But I am taking Adderall.”
His jaw tics. He pulls up off me in an instant. The lack of skin-to-skin contact—the sudden emptiness without the pressure of his chest on mine—flames me in a horrible way.
“I want you to stop taking it,” Phoenix says.
“I can’t,” I tell him, sitting up against the concrete couch. “I truly can’t, dude. Like it’s helping so much. The shows are incredible. I’ve never been tired. It’s honestly a miracle drug, and it’s not cocaine. Okay, doctors prescribe this shit.”
Phoenix narrows his eyes. “You’re getting it from your doctor then.”
He’s not asking.
He knows I’m not or else maybe I wouldn’t have hid it in the first place. “I don’t see the big deal,” I tell him.
“The big deal…” Phoenix shakes his head.
“Adderall masks sleep deprivation. You haven’t crashed yet.
But it’s coming for you, and then what are you going to do?
Take more?” His expression fractures. “It causes insomnia, Tom. Do you know what I would give to be able to fucking sleep. And you’re just throwing that away like it’s not the most priceless fucking thing in your life! ”
My eyes scald.
My throat is raw sandpaper.
I don’t want to fight with him—but I don’t know how to change what’s happening in my head.
“Phoenix, I understand all of that. I really do,” I choke out. “But it feels like if I don’t take it, my entire world is going to end.”
“It won’t,” he tells me.
“I’ve had this dream since I was a little kid. And the one thing in my way right now is time. I don’t have enough hours in the day, and it’s such an easy solution. Just let me do this while we’re on tour. I’ll stop once it’s over. Okay?”
His face breaks. He crawls off the couch completely and leaves me in the back lounge alone.