Numbly, I accepted the envelope from Tai, barely registering the heated conversation, leaving my bandmates to deal with it. I pushed past Tai and Paul, thoughts churning on repeat.
He’s dead.
There would be no post-concert early morning wake-up phone call, no more unsolicited—yet wise—advice from one of the most important people in my life.
My nails bit into my palms, regret surging through me like an electrical current. Theif only’sdancing around my head, tormenting me; suffocating me.
Still clenching the envelope with my flight ticket, I stomped down the hallway to the exit. I could hear two sets of footsteps following quickly behind me—Evan and Dare. They were uncharacteristically quiet. Their high of the show had been snuffed out just as quickly as mine.
The backstage door crashed against the brick wall when I threw it open and spilled out into the alleyway behind the venue. I couldn’t seem to draw in enough oxygen to my lungs. “Fuck!” I roared into the night, not caring there were fans loitering near the sidewalk, hoping for a glimpse of us after the show. A few of them took an uncertain step back, and I turned away from them.
My bandmates came out after me, the door closing behind them. The three of us had been tight since the third grade, so they were basically my brothers. Gramps had meant a lot to them, too. He’d overseen the start of our career, securing gigs for us and teaching us how to be the greatest musicians we could be, individually and combined. They both had a lot of respect for him.
Everybody did. Gramps had been a tremendous influence on the east coast music scene.
I felt the pressure of a heavy hand against my shoulder. “Cal…” Dare’s voice was laden with sorrow. Raw, I shrugged his hand off and shook my head, stomping over to climb into the limo waiting to take us back to the hotel. Normally, we’d each have a guest or two accompanying us.
Tonight, our guest was grief, and the suffocating silence that settled upon us on the drive back to the hotel.
I kept my gaze down as I boarded the plane and found my seat, my head pounding from lack of sleep and whiskey. The harsh lights of the airport had done nothing for the incessant rattling in my skull.
I couldn’t sleep last night—not with the grief still fresh. The grief and the heaviness of returning home for the first time in almost a decade made it impossible for me to close my eyes.
When I drifted off, a playlist of my biggest regrets haunted me, starting the day I left…starting withher.
Nine years ago, I left behind the girl I loved to pursue the dream I loved. I knew I couldn’t have both, and instead of being a man and facing her, I left without a word, without even saying goodbye. I was selfish, but I didn’t want to see her tears. I didn’t want them to sway me into staying. I was afraid if she asked me not to go, I wouldn’t…and I had to.
I couldn’t watch her heart break, but this was something Ineededto do. My friends were counting on me, and this kind of opportunity wouldn’t come around again. It wasn’t just about my dream to prove to my father I could be successful with my guitar and my voice; it was their dream, too. They wanted it, probably more than I did.
And I did; I proved it.Weproved it. Each of our band’s six albums has gone platinum. We broke into the alternative pop-rock genre with a bang, exploding onto the charts and never falling far from that number one slot. We became one of the hottest bands in North America.
In part, it was because of our crazy talent. Evan was an exceptional drummer, and Dare was amazing on bass. Evan couldn’t sing worth shit, but Dare could, and with our combined talents writing…together, we crafted fucking magic.
Luck also played a part; we were lucky to be discovered when we were. Lucky that we were young and brandable.
The moment we signed our names on the dotted line, they thrust us into the limelight. The label capitalized on everything from our looks to our unique musical backgrounds along the east coast. Our willingness to do whatever it took to get our music in the hands of fans—even dropping a self-produced EP on YouTube—also helped.
We were young and eager to play, frothing at the bit to hit the open road and tour. We were ready to put in the hours of sacrifice. Our live shows entertained and captivated audiences, and we rose quickly, both in the charts and in the public’s interest. We threw benefit concerts, supported Canadian music talent, and busted our asses off every day at what we did.
But all this work was the perfect excuse to avoid facing all that I’d left behind, even if I thought about it constantly. I hadn’t come home in nine years. Like a coward, I’d stayed away.
My family still resided in this sleepy little East Coast town, but I’d managed to get away with not coming back because the label had booked tour after tour—most in Central Canada and the United States.
When we weren’t on a tour bus, we were recording at the studio in Toronto, living in the penthouse apartment the label rented for us, attending the events they needed us to attend, and appearing at parties they required us to be at. The penthouse had never really felt like home. It was the label’s—they provided the furniture and minimalistic décor. It didn’t bother us, because we spent more time on a tour bus than we did there.
Music had always been my passion. Performing on stage was the only time I felt alive. When I was on stage, I transformed into something I didn’t completely hate. But the moment I stepped off the stage, the hollow feeling that resided deep inside of me threatened to swallow me whole.
My net worth had grown over the years, as had our collection of awards, but it was never enough to erase the past, to fill the depths of my heart and soul. Recently, the money and the fame had lost its luster.
None of it was enough to forget her. For years now, I’d been trying to convince myself I’d done the right thing for us both.
They say time heals all wounds, even the self-inflicted ones—but in actuality, the memories never fade, and the wound festers.
Harper Morrison’s face still haunted me. I still saw her everywhere, and I missed her desperately, with a hollowness I couldn’t fill—although I was too stubborn and selfish to admit it to anybody but myself.
I didn’t have a right to miss her, anyway. I was the one who left; I did the breaking.
But no matter how many miles I put between us, or how many willing women I slept with, it never could replicate the way it felt to be with her, to kiss her—to hold her in my arms. I hadn’t experienced intimacy like that since, and every attempt I made to forget her and purge myself of the guilt embedded into me failed. She’d be there, on the edge of my mind, condemning me.
