“You’re her everything, you know that,” she says to me as we sit down.
“I used to be,” I say to her. “I lost her trying to protect her.” Closing my eyes as the sun basks down over me the wind has a ghostly chill in it, and it makes me feel all kinds of sick.
“Look,” she says to me. “Open your eyes.” Her hand is on my forearm and as my eyes crack open her phone is on my lap, a picture of a half guitar black outlined and stunning it looks just like the one I play. Looking closer I see all the details. It is mine. Shock hits me as I run my finger over it. Running along the side of my guitar is a half rose laying parallel to it in a deep blood red. Tiny snowflakes carved into the petals with a white that shines as the words wind in-between running up along her ribs, ‘I will always come home, I will always be here.’ James Dean +Tru Monroe 2018.
“I didn’t even know,” I say to her my eyes not even leaving her phone. “How did I not know this, how did I become so disconnected from her that I didn’t see anything.” Sinking back into the chair I pass her phone back to her.
“We all make mistakes. It’s how we move on from them that counts.” She says to me her hand squeezing my knee. “Come back in when you’re ready.” With that she stands up and walks away from me and just like that I am once again alone.
Slowly, I approached the door, pushed it open and entered. The nurse looked up at me as I entered with a small smile and a quiet hello. Nodding at her as my palms sweated, I rubbed them down my distressed black jeans. Mental note, go and get some trackpants and tee’s from the penthouse. Fuck the thought of that place alone sent chills up my spine at the same time her scent assaulted my nostrils. The same smell that’s on her scarf that I took with me on tour that lays in the bottom of my backpack. How is it that before all I could smell was puke and hospital, now I smell her. My senses are amplified a thousand times more than they were before I lost my shit and fucked up.
Her smell was all over my skin, in my pores, in my nose, in my fucking mouth. And fuck, did she smell good. I couldn’t understand how someone could smell so sweet. My eyes fall to her as she lay on the bed, on her back. She wasn’t moving, just lying there. My heart was hoping she was just asleep and not unconscious in a coma of drugs and bad decisions. My hands formed fists at my sides. Was I going to be able to touch her? Would I be able to touch her unmoving body to make sure she was alright? I had to try. I had to see if she was okay, at least after all I caused this. The blanket lay crisp over her body as I approached her with slow, unsure steps. The linoleum squeaked under my feet. I gazed down at her. She was beautiful, painfully beautiful, just like I’d told her she was. But right now, that I am looking, really looking with the knowledge that I may still lose her. Her face this close is so much more, she is so much more. Her face is a map of freckles with faint lines and the most stunning white with soft pink blushed skin, each lash a stark contrast to the cheeks they lay upon. Her pouty mouth was closed slightly her lips red and cracked another mental note she will hate to wake to them feeling that way so Chapstick is needed.
She looked so vulnerable as she slept, so beautiful yet so broken. I reached out for her, unable to stop my hands from touching her, I brushed a hand against her cheek, her beautiful, soft skin tight under my fingertips. Her skin was cold, but I could feel her breathing against my palm. Thank fucking God for that. “Tru, baby,” I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper. I wanted to kiss her so badly. Her hair fanned out on the bed and her breathing barely there, I wanted nothing more than to touch my lips to hers, to feel her breath on mine. I managed to get my hands under her body, and I lifted her up gently to get her in a better position. She sighed when I moved her, the sweetest sound, I froze. My eyes zapping to the nurse whom was standing on the other side of her bed. “She is just letting you know she is still there,” she said to me. My heart dipped slightly at the thought. “So, she’s not gone completely, she’s fighting,isn’t she?” Nodding at me she passed me a fluffy pillow. I placed the pillow behind her head, making sure she was sitting semi-upright just in case she puked again or did that flipping out shit she did before. Her body was limp and powerless compared to mine. My hands felt huge against her small body.Suddenly it felt wrong. She had gotten so small while I was gone. She became so heavily broken choking on the vile shit I was doing to her and she had nothing left to do other than numb it. I will carry this guilt with me forever. I let my fingers wander down her skin gently, teasing her arms into goosebumps, burning the moment into my memory because I don’t know when she wakes up if she will even want me around. The way I grazed my fingers over her skin and the way I placed my lips to her dry, cracked ones made her sigh and fidget restlessly as she slept. Coma she may be in, but she was waking for me to my touch. It was like a fucking miracle, like a dream, like something I should be setting free as I did the damage to begin with.
She was perfectly vulnerable in this state she was so vulnerable when I met her and when I left her, she was still my sweet, headstrong, girl. Under the heavy cloud of it all she was coming back to me and I have never wanted anything more in my life. My head was pounding though with fear and the comedown. I was still detoxing hard and it was fucking with me. For years I had pumped my body full with all kinds of narcotics and now I was shocking my system into submission by trying to go clean. It was fucking hurting my soul though when all I wanted was a taste. As I kissed my baby’s lips though I could taste a slight residue of drugs left from her OD. She tasted good so good that it had my body humming with desire. Pulling back, I gathered the faux fur throw from the chair beside her bed and gently covering her with the fabric. She stirred in her sleep and I tucked her in, pretending just for a minute that she was ok that I had just came home after a concert and she had fallen asleep waiting for me. Pretending that I’d get to do this every night, I moved away from her. Taking two steps back and watching her breathe more easily now, fast asleep I hoped. Looking at her my mind ran over all the pain she would have been in and looking at her soft features why was she so perfect? Why couldn’t I save her? Why did I hurt her?
“Your thoughts are going to destroy you if you keep with the blame and questions, Mr. James.” The nurse pulls me from my head as she pushes some buttons on Tru’s machine and changes a bag over on the IV stand.
My bottom lip trembled at the harsh realism and I knew she was right. Fuck me, I felt the exhaustion hit me like a semi-truck as I stepped back toward her. Pulling the blankets back I slowly scooped her tiny body in my arms and as I moved her slightly, she murmured again in her sleep state. A small smile kissed my lips as I slipped into the bed with her. My eyes grew heavy as the nurse smiled at me.
“I will tell all staff to be quiet when they enter. That you’re both resting.”
“Thank you,” I said back to her as my eyes fell shut holding onto the fantasy of me and Tru just living happy inside the walls of a home we built on dreams, hopes and love; not hate, lies and drugs.
***
I woke up with a pounding headache, rolled off the bed and vomited all over the floor. With a groan, I picked myself up and dragged myself to the bathroom and showered the remains off my body. The cold shower woke me up a little but did nothing to help my head that was begging for painkillers. I knew though that’s where I would slip and go wrong. My body was craving drugs, any drugs and I couldn’t allow even the smallest taste near my lips.
Flicking the water to warm, I let it roll down my body. Relishing in the feeling as I lowered my head against the wall, I just let the water wash all the worries from me and down the drain.
“I smell like you.” My skin erupted in goosebumps and I bit my bottom lip nervously looking at her on her side looking at me. Her eyes were glassy her hair fanned around her. I swallowed thickly, my heart pounding in my chest. She was awake, she was talking in a husky tone that sounded like it hurt, like she hadn’t spoken in months. I was thirsty for more, more of the sound for her to speak to me again. I fell onto my knees my hair dripping around me.
“I’m sorry, James Dean,” she spoke out to me as my hand flew over my mouth. I shake my head and drips of water fall around me, hitting the over polished floor under me. “Okay? I’m really sorry. I know I’m a mess. I’m a train wreck—” I let out a little whimper at her admission. It was one thing to know she knew she had fallen so far off the wagon but a whole other feeling hearing her say it, hearing her blame herself for what had happened like I had no part in it. “I’m sorry, Tru I am so sorry. So, so sorry,” I repeated over and over and over unable to move. “I just want things to go back to how—” my words were lost as the door to the hospital room opened and a gasp left the new morning nurses mouth as she dropped, the tray holding Tru’s fresh bags of IV meds. Her hands were shaking as she raised them to her mouth. What a sight we were. Me in a towel on the floor on my knees dripping water, Tru lying awake in bed looking at me. Her eyes were red raw, and her lips cracked while a pool of spew spreads from the other side of the bed tracking its way slowly under the bed towards me.
“This was the only way I knew how to forget, how to distract myself. Drinking and eating pretty little pills. It was the only way to block out the horrible thoughts inside my head. Telling me that you didn’t love me, want me, need me, that they all meant more to you. That you needed them and their fake love. I couldn’t handle the feeling of being sober and having you high. High on them, high on drugs but not high on the one thing I needed you to be high on, ME. I knew that eventually; I would stop spinning from the social media crap. The paparazzi finally broke me, and my life would come to a stop. You would see me for the loser that I actually was not James Dean wife material, and you would leave me. You did leave me, and it was just me and my mess of a life, all fucking alone. So, I did what I have always done, bowed out and numbed it all with the drugs of a past that just about killed me.” Blinking at her as tears rolled down the nurse’s cheek as she leant down to clean up the spew on the floor.
“You were dead, Tru. You died so many times in my arms and on the cold floor. Here inside these walls of this hospital you killed yourself taking me with you. With each shock of the paddles I begged you to stay with me.” Looking at my baby laying there, she had pulled her body deeper into the faux fur. Her hand was behind her head as she curled onto her side looking at me. Her eyes never left mine.
“Latibule, baby is a noun. It means a hiding place, a place of safety and comfort. You were my place, baby and still are. You’re so beautiful and broken that all I want is to hide and keep you safe.”
“I want you to always be mine,” she says as her eyes close.
“Baby, hey baby. Stay with me.” I jump from the floor and fall around her on the bed so worried she’s faded back into the dark.
“Baby, you’ve always been mine and I will always be yours,” I say into her skin as I kiss her face and wrap my hands around each side of her head, I cup her face and hold her to me.
“She’s exhausted, Mr. James. That is all. That would have taken a lot from her.” The nurse stands tears streaking her cheeks her eyes red with her nose running.
“That was beautiful, by the way. So sorry for… well you know. Look at me.” Smiling weakly at her I walk to my bag to retrieve out some clothes.
“It’s fine,” I say while waving her off.
“You’re like the modern-day Romeo and Juliet,” she says walking from the room.
I’m left standing there in a towel processing all that has just transpired while my head still pounds.
I shrugged my body into my black hoodie and jeans, grabbed my backpack and I kissed her forehead. I lingered a little longer than normal, breathing all of her in before I walked from the room heading out to the two places where the haunts are so dark I don’t know if I can walk from unscarred.
