“It’s her fault if you fuck other women now,” he said, sounding bored, “and she’s smart enough to know that down the road, if you’re with her and something goes sideways and you end up fucking other women again, you’ll make that out to be her fault, too. Just like it’s her fault she hasn’t thrown caution to the wind to take up with an addict. I haven’t known Maggie all that long, and I don’t know her all that well, but even I can see she’s not the kind of woman who’s gonna do that. And if she was, brother, you wouldn’t want heranyway.”
I’d started pacing again while he spoke, and I paced right back over to him. “So that’s it? Everyone else in this band gets the woman of their fucking dreams, huh? Everyone else gets to smoke up, but I can’t,right?”
“Yeah, and this is the part where you feel sorry foryourself.”
Seth sat up, spinning his hat around backwards so I could see his face. He threw his arms on his knees and looked up at me, meeting myeyes.
“Throw yourself your fucking pity party, Zane, pile on the excuses to go have a drink. But nothing’s gonna change the fact that yeah, most of your friends probably can smoke up, and no, you can’t. You see me smoking up? It’s different for us, and you know this. Other people can have a beer, smoke a joint and have a good time, get up and go on with their lives intact the next day. It’s not like that for you and me, and it never was. That shit is poison for us. How many times can you smoke weed before you slip and decide a beer is okay? Once? A thousand times? I don’t know the answer to that, and neither do you. But you and I both know, you will slip. And once you take that first sip, you’ve fucked away your choice about it. That shit gets in your body, and you don’t get to choose anymore if you take the next sip or the next. It’s over. You want to flush your life down the toilet like that? You want todie?”
“No. Obviously I don’t want to fuckingdie.”
“Good to know. You gonnadrink?”
I knew what he wasdoing.
I’d been through this same conversation, more or less, with Rudy, about a thousandtimes.
“Don’t be an asshole. Do you see a fucking roadhouse outhere?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m an asshole. Everyone is an asshole, and you’re the king of the assholes, right? You got it all figured out and then some. That’s why you’re standing in the middle of some desert right now, fucking lost, with no idea what you’re gonna do with your nextbreath.”
“Got some idea,” I muttered. “Kicking the shit out of you right now sounds like a goodone.”
“Go ahead, you think it’ll make you feel any better,” he said, calm as shit. “But it’s not gonna change the fact that you’re a superstar and you’re actually standing here considering shitting your life away. You have everything, and you’re just gonna flush it away. Sounds pretty fucking pathetic tome.”
“I don’t have everything!” I leaned over him and shouted it in his face. Where the fuck did he get off calling me pathetic? Maybe I was, but shit. “I don’t have shit,” I growled, “because I don’t have the one thing I fuckingneed.”
“Yeah?” he said, still calm. “Tell me, Zane Traynor. You’ve got mad talent, fame, friends, pretty much any fucking thing money can buy. What else could you possiblyneed?”
“Maggie. I need fuckingMaggie.”
“Ah,bullshit.”
“What?” I pulled back like he’d bitch-slapped me. “The fuck do you meanbullshit?”
“I meanbullshit. That. Is. Fucking. Bullshit. It’s not Maggie you need so fucking bad that you just keep sabotaging it so you can never have her. It’s all that stuff she’s got that you want. All that good shit in her that you feel when you’re with her. All that stuff you wish you could have. That fucking hole she fills in you with all herbeautiful.”
I was pacing again, listening to him, wanting him to keep talking because everything he was saying was making some kind of sense—and wanting him to shut the fuckup.
“It’s all that shit you probably think you don’t have in you and don’t deserve,” he went on, “which is why you can’t get your shit together. But I’m telling you, man, you deal with your shit, you get yourself straight, fill those holes with whatever the fuck you’ve gotta fill them with… if it’s AA or it’s music or it’s God or it’s whatever-the-fuck, as long as it’s not booze or drugs or other women, or some other new addiction… if Maggie’s really the woman for you, she’s gonna come for you like a lightning strike. She won’t be able to stayaway.”
“Yeah?” I pushed back. “That how it was for you andElle?”
“Yeah. That’s how it was for me and Elle. That’s how it is for me and Elle, every moment of everyday.”
Well,fuck.
He was serious aboutthat.
I stared at him for a minute and he stared rightback.
Then I turned away. My eyes were starting to burn, because listening to him talk that way about his relationship with Elle… it did something to me. Grabbed my heart in a steel fist and fuckingtwisted.
I was jealous of that shit. Fuck, was Ijealous.
And he was right. I didn’t think I really deserved any of that beautiful shit withMaggie.
I neverdid.
