“But he said you’re finally turning a profit?”
“Yes and no,” I said, dipping a tortilla chip. “The album is making money and the last two legs of the tour were profitable, but we’re still in debt to the label. Until they’ve recouped the upfront costs, we won’t see a dime.”
“But,” Braden added, “they offered to send us an advance. We’ll have to pay that back too, but they seemed pretty positive that our next album will do even better.”
“That’s good.” Zack’s mom took another sip of her margarita. “In the meantime, I think a birthday celebration isin order for my boy. Did you guys have any ideas or did you want to hear mine?”
We hadn’t quite gotten as far as that. “What did you have in mind?”
“I think it would be so much fun to take him to all the bars in Dalton—and then we’ll have him drink a birthday shot in each one.”
I could practically feel my face drop.
Braden spoke out before I could. “Um…Lacey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Oh, damn. You’re right. I’m sorry. You haven’t all turned twenty-one yet—and it might seem a little weird for a mom to take her son out drinking by herself.”
“No, that’s not it. Um…”
Poor Braden was struggling, so I picked up the slack. “We have reason to believe Zack has developed a bit of a drinking problem.”
Letting a chip drop back into the bowl, her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Braden said, “By the end of the tour, he was drinking every day—and I literally mean everyday. It wasn’t just at night after shows to party with our fans.”
Her face indicated she didn’t quite believe him, so I jumped in as well. “He seems to be struggling with something internally, something he doesn’t want to talk about.”
“That sounds like my boy,” she said, visibly relaxing again. I started to feel uncomfortable, because it was like there was some kind of disconnect. Was it because we were holding up a mirror to her? Or did she feel like his drinking problem was her fault? “Always keeping to himself.”
“No, Dani’s right. It’s more than that. Yeah, Zack closes himself off sometimes, but this is something different. We…wouldn’t have told you if we weren’t worried about him.”
“Okay,” she said, sitting up. She eyed her margarita but didn’t touch it. “What do you think caused it? The stress? Being away from home?”
I wasn’t about to tell her my suspicions, that it had to do with her revelation about his father and Zack’s inability to connect with him before the man’s death. Instead, I chose to cut to the chase. “It could have been all that and more—but we were thinking about staging an intervention.”
At that, her brown eyes grew wide. “Is it that bad?”
“Yeah,” Braden said.
I’d never felt like I’d ever really known the adults in my life, but Zack’s mom least of all. Still, I’d always thought she was mostly all business, no nonsense, and a little closed off. I’d always known she loved Zack more than anything, but I’d underestimated her. As her eyes filled with tears, she said, “This is all my fault.”
Both Braden and I tried to assure her that it wasn’t. “Zack’s a grown man,” Braden said, leaning over the table a bit. “He—”
“Sure, Braden, but you’re all still kids. Did you know your brains aren’t fully developed until you’re twenty-five or something like that?”
The thought blew my mind, but I couldn’t allow myself—or, rather, any of us—to get sidetracked. “What’s done is done,” I said, almost marveling at how adult I sounded, regardless of my brain’s maturity. “We can’t change what’s happened, but we can’t keep ignoring his behavior. It’s like a cry for help.”
I felt so much gratitude for Braden when he nodded somberly, as if we were attending a funeral. Zack’s mom wiped the tears off her face as the waitress with the amazing memory gave us all the right orders without even asking. “Careful. Those plates are hot. Can I get you anything else?”
Although Braden and I shook our heads, Zack’s mom said, “A glass of water, please.”
For some reason, that felt like progress.
We spent the meal discussing what an intervention might look like—if we should involve professionals and if we should all but force Zack into rehab. Ultimately, we let his mom decide—and she wanted to have a birthday dinner with cake and ice cream for him…followed with a long serious talk. It would be small and intimate but it would be the band, his mom, and his grandfather—and she asked us to think of what we wanted to say as we brought Zack our toughest love. We set a date for the following weekend and, as Braden drove me home, we wondered out loud if we should warn the label that Zack might be out of commission and in rehab for a while.
We decided to wait.
CHAPTER 3
