Page 85 of A Tragic Melody

I snoop for a bit before I decide to block them all. I even block Wyatt, because I don’t want to see any more pictures of him smiling with other girls, or with his family. Or the ones where you can vaguely see the drugs draining away his soul. Those ones look too familiar.

I wander into the venue, high on two lines of coke with a pill of ecstasy in my pocket. If I take it now I should be mellowed out by the time the show starts, and if not, well I’ve played plenty of shows fucked up before.

“Hey,” I say, strolling over to Wyatt. He is tuning his guitars, because he doesn’t trust the sound guys to do it right. “Veritas pays people to do this, you know?”

“I’m aware,” he snaps.

His tone is harsh, and makes my stomach tense up. We’ve been getting along fine lately, even after the whole going down on me situation, so I’m not exactly sure why he is snapping at me now.

“Okay,” I say softly.

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking up at me. “I’m not in a good mood today.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Can you just leave me alone today? Please? For both of our sakes, it would be good if you just stayed away from me today.”

“Okay.” I nod. “I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t.” He sighs. “I just can’t deal with you today.”

I nod. “Okay.” I turn, blinking back tears. It shouldn’t hurt. We’ve been enemies before. He has said mean things to me before—a lot of mean things, in fact—but some reason this hurts worse.

“Wait. Tues.” He grabs my shoulder. “Just…” He sighs. “I didn’t mean it like that.” I glance back at him, trying to keep my lip from trembling. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “You are high. You have more drugs. And I’m desperately wishing for some right now.”

“Why?”

“It’s my sister’s birthday. Or well…would’ve been.”

“Oh.” I look down. “How old would she have been today?”

“Nineteen.”

“Would you have invited her to the show?”

“Probably,” he says softly. “Or I wouldn’t have been on tour to begin with. We probably would’ve had a nice family dinner. Probably my mother’s famous meatloaf and mash potatoes.”

“That sounds nice.” I look back up at him. “I’m really sorry she is gone.”

“Me too.” He nods. “I miss her every day, but today…”

“It’s worse. I get it. I’ll stay away.”

“Thank you,” he says.

I nod and he releases his grip on my shoulder.

“Do you want to skip your song tonight?” I ask softly.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I like that tradition.”

“Okay. Well…I’ll see you at sound check.”

“Yeah.” He nods.

Staying away from Wyatt is easy, because he goes back to the bus after tuning his guitars, then stays there until sound check. I stay backstage. I popped my ecstasy right after our conversation, desperate to block out the pain in his voice. It hurt me more than him telling me to stay away, mostly because I can’t fix it.

I would if I could, though. I’d trade places with his whole family if I could. They sound like good people who made him happy. I would love to be able to do that.