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Nash
I sighed as I looked at my therapist, Jordan, on the screen. He’d been unable to fly out yet, but he’d cleared his schedule and would arrive by the end of the week. He spoke in a slow, almost monotonous cadence that reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko.”
“Grief is a natural response to loss,” he told me again. “Losing someone you loved can shake your very foundations.”
“Biko” was all I’d heard for...was it days? Felt like weeks.
No. Shit. We’d been on the bus for four days. It just felt like forever because I missed Aya.
I wanted it out of my head. I needed to get past my fixation. I must stop focusing on the word loss as well. I hadn’t lost Aya; she’d chosen to step away after my hurtful words met their mark. I’d pushed her like I pushed everyone. And she’d had enough, so she’d kept walking.
Because fate was cruel.
Oh, a new song. Taylor Swift crooned about lost love.
I purred in appreciation because it wasn’t “Biko.” Fuck. Now, I was back to Peter Gabriel. What the hell is wrong with me?
Everything. I’d fought for Aya. And I’d managed to hold on to her until she couldn’t stomach any more of my ultimatums. Ones I never should have made.
Because I loved Aya more than I hated my mother for her weakness. I loved Aya more than I hated Brad for his selfishness, which had left me a teen in need. And I loved Aya more than my grandfather’s need to control me. Or her mother’s clumsy attempts to protect her from her father’s greed.
I needed to tell her that. Make sure she understood I meant it.
I’d read Aya’s mother’s will in its entirety on the bus the first day as we headed up to Virginia, the first stop on our tour that would bring us down the East Coast and back to Texas. I ignored Bridger, Jax, and Maddox when they tried to engage me in their PlayStation battle. I slogged through the legalese Steve had sent me before I went on stage and belted out some tunes. I followed that with some interviews and then hopped back on the bus that rolled us toward Charleston. During that leg of the trip, I read the entirety of my grandfather’s will—somehow not shocked to find my grandfather had left me his money with the same strings as Aya’s mother. Both our grandfathers and mothers had tried to manipulate us. Yes, mine too. I swallowed down the guilt I felt about my argument with Aya, which was chased by the remorse I felt every time I thought of my mother’s death.
Hard as I tried to avoid that unpleasantness, I couldn’t. And the next morning, after a sleepless night, I pulled up my contacts and called Jordan.
“The boxing is a good idea,” he said after I updated him on my feelings. “You did best when you had an exercise regimen to follow.”
I nodded. “But what if I fill the hole in me with boxing? That’s not really fixing the addiction.”
“Coping mechanisms come in a variety of forms,” he said. “I have a client who took up sculpture, another who’s big into martial arts. If you can function in your day-to-day life and you’re not falling back into toxic substances, I’ll call your hours-long boxing bouts healthy.”
“Two hours,” I mumbled. “And I’m sore.”
“Not surprising,” Jordan said. He waited. “Do you feel like it’s becoming an obsession?”
I considered the question. “No. And it helps me focus. I feel…clearer.”
“That’s good.”
“And it’s better than making Aya fill that space, right? I mean, it’s not her job to keep me sober.”
“You’re right. She can help you, but you have to want to stay clean.”
And she’d have to talk to me for me to know if she wanted to help me…or to continue to have a relationship with me at all. I gritted my teeth. Sobriety was going to be more work than I’d thought—the cravings would continue to rear up, eclipsing my will power.
I hadn’t given my mother enough credit for her attempts at cleaning up her act. Until recently, I hadn’t considered that she might have stayed away from me in an effort for me not to model her behaviors. Still, I struggled to forgive her…and myself.
Jordan and I talked more and scheduled another hour-long session for the next morning.
After an hour of boxing with Wu-Tang Clan blaring in my earbuds—I even set a timer so I didn’t overdo—I called my grandfather’s old personal assistant, Cynthia, who’d settled outside Charleston.
“Nash, my boy, to what do I owe the pleasure?” she said in her thick, syrupy drawl.
“Hi, Cynthia. How are you liking retirement?”
“It’s boring as all hell. The days are running together. I thought Charleston was supposed to be filled with culture and interesting things.”
