Page 69 of Grumpy Bear

Coleman chuckled, but it was a bitter, disturbing sound. “Biggest cliché in the world. Tale as old as time. The addict musician on tour. Shitty motel room. Overdoses. Aspirates.” He held his hands up in something like a disappointed shrug. “He basically drank himself to death.”

Fuck. He did see Wayne when he looked at me. Here I was, another musician, making big speeches about putting my music first. I wished I’d known all this about his past before sharing so much of mine. With everything I’d confided in him last night, I’d just been digging a hole. Even still, I didn’t say anything about it, anything more about myself. I only let out a soft wordless hum of empathy for what he’d lost.

Coleman’s hands went up defensively. “I’m not the grieving widow everybody makes me out to be. A lot of people think I’m some kind of reformed gold digger, trying to honor Wayne’s memory. They think my unapproachable wall is grief. They think it’s guilt that I couldn’t save him. That's not what the guilt is about.”

I frowned. “What is it about then?” Whatever it was, I wanted to make it go away for him. I wanted to comfort him in some way, but I was afraid, at that moment, he wouldn’t want to be touched.

“I was with him. I cared about him. He was family. But I never really love-loved him. And because of that, I’m not entirely sure I deserve what he left me. Yes, I helped him build it, and I bust my ass to be worthy of it every day. But sometimes, I resent it. I resented the fuck out of him when he was alive. I was pissed at him for years. He dreamed up all this backbreaking shit for me to execute, but unless it involved being on the road playing music and fucking all the boys he could get his hands on, then he was basically useless. Other than letting us stay, he never helped me or Jim with anything. After he was gone, all that responsibility officially became mine, in a way it never had been before, and I felt trapped. It sounds ungrateful, I know. That’s what I feel guilty about.”

“It’s your life. Not Wayne’s.”

“I don’t keep it going for Wayne. I do it for Jim. Thank God for him because I couldn’t do this without him. He’s the den mother of this whole community. This is his home as much as it is mine. The guys on staff… it’s their home too. Most of them have nowhere better to go. The residents down in the park like Danny Foster, those trailers are where they plan to retire. There’s a lot of people here who need to be taken care of. It’s a big fucking family. Chosen family is more than blood. It’s not as easy to run away from because it’s what we ran to.”

“You said you came to love it here.”

Coleman’s chin lifted. “It’s my home. It’s my family.”

“So, let yourself love it.”

30

Luke

I watched Coleman sit there, nodding to himself for the longest time. But he didn’t say anything else. He eventually peeled back the covers and invited me under the sheet with a sheepish grin. He turned on his side and pulled my arm around him, holding my hand against his chest and sighing with either contentment or exhaustion. Probably both.

He fell asleep almost immediately, but it took me a while, lying there, thinking back over everything he’d told me, reconsidering all my moments with him in the context of his past. No wonder he’d been so closed off to me. On paper, I sure as shit had to look like another form of everything he didn’t trust, didn’t want, and wasn’t looking to repeat.

I woke up to him watching me, smiling. Some demons must have been exorcised by the long talk last night or maybe something had shifted for him earlier, and that was the reason he’d trusted me enough to confide in me at all.

“So, your song,” Coleman said as if we were in the middle of a conversation. “It was about here.” It wasn’t exactly a question.

I didn’t exactly answer. “Kind of.” I blushed, hiding it with a yawn and a stretch. It was hard to explain to someone how biographical stuff gets woven into the story of a song. How writing can be true without having to be factual. But that wasn’t the kind of answer he wanted from me, and I couldn’t bear to see the sudden doubt in his eyes. “Of course it’s about here. It’s about you.”

His full smile returned, and he reached out to tenderly smooth my eyebrow with his thumb.

He wanted an acknowledgment of how I felt about him, and neither one of us was likely to say something as blunt as I’m falling for you after only two and a half days. “It’s about everything that’s… happened. And the ending is about us. With a bit of a fairy-tale spin.”

He reached for my hand, examining my nails with a serious expression. “You could stay, you know. We could hire you on permanently. Or at least for the season.”

Here, finally, was my chance to ask. Point-blank. “What about Trey?”

“Trey?” He looked at me like I was crazy.

I tried to keep my voice casual. “I know he wants to stay on.”

Coleman frowned and muttered, “Who gives a fuck what he wants?” He continued as if I hadn’t mentioned it. “Think about it. You’d have room and board, a job, a salary. It’s easy to save money living here. That’s one benefit. You could write, you could play shows here. The guys loved it. You could still get gigs in Edgewood, which was your plan. You could get on PrEP.” His eyes widened, surprised he’d said it out loud. “Fuck. I didn’t mean you have to sleep with me in order to be here. For the record, I make sure all the guys have healthcare and access to PrEP. You don’t even have to keep crashing in my cabin. You can have your own place. We can scoot some people around. Hell, I’ll build you your own cabin. It doesn’t have to be about me for you to stay.”

“Coleman.” I sat up, taking both his hands in mine. “There’s no way being here could not be about you, and it would never be platonic for me.” As much as I could see myself here indefinitely, as much as I wanted to stay with him, this was his place, not mine. This was my fucking pattern. Again. “What happens when all this wears off and you want me to go?”

There was his shocked look again like my words were offensive. “Why would I want you to go?”

He’d mentioned me playing in Edgewood, but maybe he’d forgotten about the possibility of this show in Atlanta. I hadn’t. “Because I might want to put my music first or not contribute enough.”

“Whoa. Wait a minute.” Coleman reached to grab the back of my head and his eyes bore into mine. “You’re nothing like Wayne.”

I shrugged, honestly unconvinced.

“Yeah, so you’re a musician. You’re also nice to the guests, you have a good attitude, you’re a hard worker. You don’t even realize how well you get along with me because you haven’t been here to witness the chain of fuckups I’ve scared off.” His humor was meant to lighten the conversation, to cover the earnest compliments.