Troubled Times Read online

  And was that all?

  I didn’t knock. I just opened the door and walked right in, because it was my room, and he was my man, even though he was stretched out completely nude in the middle of our bed, surrounded by not one, not two, but three naked girls. They all had cell phones and they were all taking selfies of themselves with a very nude—and very passed out—Tyler Cook.

  “Get the fuck out.” I didn’t scream or yell, but all three of them started scrambling for their clothes, already apologizing. I guess something in my voice made them react that way. Or maybe it was the look on my face. I have no idea.

  Once they were mostly dressed and had grabbed their stuff, they slunk past me like dogs with their tails between their legs in their short skirts and high heels, their tits spilling out of their blouses. I wanted to grab them by the hair and knock their skulls together, like in the cartoons. I wanted to put my hands around their necks and strangle them so hard I left finger-shaped bruises. I wanted to kill them. All three of them. That’s how much rage heated my chest as I watched them make their way to the front of the bus.

  Instead, I walked them to the door.

  “I’m sorry,” one of the girls murmured, but I didn’t acknowledge it as I pushed past them to the door and stood in front of it.

  “Delete them,” I demanded. “Take your phones out and delete everything.”

  I was tempted to just take their phones instead, but I didn’t. They looked at each other, hesitating, and that just made me madder.

  “If you don’t delete every single picture you took, I’m going to shove those cell phones so far up your asses, you’ll be sneezing SIM cards.” I looked around at the group of them, still itching to throw a punch. “You’re not going to spread any rumors, do you understand me? And you can go spread chlamydia somewhere else!”

  All three of them took out their phones and started pushing buttons. When they’d showed me their picture files—and when I made sure they weren’t in the trash folder—I let them file past me out the door.

  “Sorry your boyfriend wanted to fuck me,” one of them called over her shoulder.

  “Sweetheart, he wouldn’t fuck you for practice.”

  I shut the door behind them, still so angry I was shaking. I had to sit down at the kitchen table for a minute to let myself calm down. Seeing Tyler in the middle of that impromptu selfie orgy had shaken me to my core. I was awake, aware, and in pain—for the first time in weeks. I’d been numb for so long, I almost didn’t recognize the feeling at first. It started in my chest, just a tickle at first, something tugging at my heart. Then it began to burn. A searing pain, like someone was trying to tear my very soul from inside my body.

  I leaned over and put my head between my knees, sure for a moment that I was going to puke. When that feeling passed, I sat up, looking around the bus I’d called home for the past several months. Such a tiny space. But it was familiar and comforting all the same. All the venues were different, a maze of hallways and back alleys—I understood, now, how Tyler and Rob had mistaken those doors for a restroom back in Detroit—even the hotel rooms changed, but our bus was constant. It was home.

  I made my way back to our room. Tyler was still passed out naked on the bed and I saw a spoon and a syringe sitting on the ledge above our bed. He’d come back here to get high. Why he’d brought the girls with him, I didn’t know. Maybe they’d just tagged along, and he’d let them because he was in a hurry to come back here. He’d told me to meet him here, so he hadn’t planned it. Whatever went down, it had been an impulsive thing.

  Not that it lessened my pain one iota to know that.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at him. My God, he was beautiful. Even skinny—we’d both lost weight since we stopped smoking so much weed and started mainlining heroin. It was a great side effect. Sort of. I traced the ridges of his abdomen, achieved by a hundred sit-ups every morning, hung over or not. Even when he was strung out, there were things Tyler was vigilant about. He never missed a show. He never missed a workout. He might pass out, but he never checked out. He was always with me, even when we were high.

  Maybe more, when we were high.

  He’d told me things he’d never told anyone when he was high, in the slow, muttered words of a junkie. He’d confessed growing up in foster care, how it was for him to live poor, without a mother or a father. And I’d told him things too, about my life, my parents’ divorce, how much I hated and blamed myself sometimes. I wondered if we would have gotten so close, so fast, if we hadn’t fallen down this rabbit hole together, if we hadn’t had this secret to keep. We’d been allied against Rob, trying to keep it from him, and we’d mostly succeeded, I think. Rob was preoccupied with Sabrina. I knew they Skyped together every night and I talked to Sabrina a couple times a week. Okay, maybe once a week since we started mainlining. But she was preoccupied too. Madly in love with her rock star.

  Almost as madly in love as I was with mine. Maybe.

  I touched Tyler’s cheek. He hadn’t shaved this morning and had a sexy little stubble going on. The girls loved it. I did too. I leaned in and kissed it, feeling it tickle my lips, my tears, finally falling, dropping onto his cheek.

  “Katie?” He stirred, my sleeping, beautiful rock god, and the first thing he did was call my name.

  “I’m here.”

  “Did you take off my clothes?” His words were slurred, and his eyes fluttered open again and he frowned down at his nude state for a moment. Then the dragon pulled him back in.

  He didn’t remember anything. He’d been nodding off when those three sluts had decided to undress him and take selfies, probably so they could tell everyone they had a little mini-orgy with Tyler Cook from Trouble. I still had visions of those pictures showing up on TMZ. Rob had thrown a fit about some girl leaking photos of her and Nick Franco, Trouble’s bass player, petting backstage—I couldn’t imagine what he would do if actual naked pictures leaked out.

  “Want me to do it?” Tyler’s eyes half-opened again, his head coming up, then going back down again.

  I knew what he was asking. Just looking at the spoon and the syringe had me jonesin’ for a high. My arm actually itched. And I could. I knew how to do it myself now—Ty had me do him all the time. Up until now I’d kind of enjoyed being a junkie. I loved the high. I loved the secret we shared. I loved the connection it created between us. We were in this together, no matter what, both of us hooked, on the drug and on each other.

  What part of me had looked at Lana when she told me Ty had gone back to the bus with three girls and had thought, “Oh well?” Was I that numb? That disconnected from my own feelings? That scared me. Because seeing Ty naked with those three girls had finally, nearly broken me. I could share anything with this man, and I had—but I couldn’t share him. That’s where I had to draw the line, even if he was passed out and completely unaware anything had happened.

  And I’d be stupid to think this couldn’t happen again. This, or worse.

  I looked back at the spoon and syringe sitting on the ledge.

  I wanted it more than I could say.

  I wanted it even more than I wanted him, if I was being honest, and that scared me too.

  I stroked Tyler’s stubbly cheek, my tears falling on his chest, but he wasn’t feeling them. He wasn’t feeling anything at all. He was somewhere else, blissed out, gone. How many times had we done this together? I’d been kidding myself, all along, I realized, believing this man loved me, wanted me. He didn’t care who was in the room when he was getting high, as long as it was someone.

  I thought we’d been sharing this together, but we’d just been sharing it next to each other.

  My heart broke. I’d heard that expression a thousand times, but never really knew what it meant until then. It didn’t break in half or shatter, it fucking exploded in my chest in a messy, red spray of gore and I died. I put my head down on Ty’s chest and sobbed, my heart bleeding out the last of me. I loved him so much it hurt to look at him, and worse, i
t hurt to look at myself. I would have done anything to be with him, anything. Becoming a junkie was nothing. Kicking women out of his bedroom, nothing. I had lied, cheated, stolen, and would have killed, if I had to, just to protect him and what we had.

  But what did we have? We had each other, we had the needle, and we had the tour. And when the tour was over? Then what? Part of me already knew. I imagined going back to my little apartment without Ty, with a great big monkey on my back. I owned that monkey now, it was mine, no one else’s. And maybe it wasn’t as big as Ty’s, but I was smaller, and to me, it felt enormous.

  I could feel the weight of it as I laid there, my wet cheek against Ty’s bare chest, staring at the needle. That fucking needle. I wanted it and I hated wanting it. I’d become addicted, not just to the heroin itself, but to the sting of the needle too, and that rush, that glorious rush, which had never been quite as good as the first time. I needed more, now, to get me high, and I never reached those heights again. They were long gone.

  Tyler coughed in his sleep, jarring me out of my reverie. I looked at him, frowning, and he coughed again. He was completely gone now, hands open and limp, eyes only half-closed but completely unseeing. If I’d come right back to the bus with him, we’d both be just as high, passed out, in our own little worlds. The cough came again, but this time vomit came with it. It filled his mouth as he coughed, his body shaking, but he didn’t wake up. He was far too gone for that.

  “Shit!” I swore, grabbing his shoulder and turning him. It was easier than it would have been early on in the tour. He weighed less now.

  Hot, wet vomit streamed out of his mouth onto the covers. Then he coughed again and sprayed it on the wall, all over me, everywhere. I gagged, grabbing a pillow and yanking off the pillow case, wiping it away from his face, actually digging into his mouth to get the rest. Then he did it again, the gag reflex working all on its own, even while he was unconscious. The smell of pizza and beer hit me, and I remembered Cliffie carrying in a case of beer and five large pizzas into the dressing room before the show.

  Tyler coughed again, several times, but then was still. His breathing returned to normal, deep, even, slow. Christ, what a mess. I held my breath, trying not to gag as I began to clean him up. I stripped the sheet out from under him, the pillowcase off his pillow, everything, rolling it up into a ball and shoving it into a corner. I found an extra sheet in the closet and covered us up with that. I was shivering by that time, and not from cold, but from fear.

  Tyler was on his side and I spooned him. The whole room smelled like vomit and I thought that was strangely fitting. I was disgusted with myself and even considered, for a moment, shooting myself up with enough dope to send me out too. Completely. Forever. But I didn’t move. I held onto Ty, my hand over his heart, feeling it beating, slow and steady, and I cried. I cried for the first time in weeks, maybe years. I’d been so numb, for so long, and even as my body craved the thing that would take the pain away again, I denied myself.

  He would have died. If I hadn’t been there, he would have choked on his own vomit like so many other rock stars before him and just… died. I could see the headlines. Hear the commentary. So tragic. So talented. Such a waste. It was horrifying, sick, ghastly. There was nothing glamorous or exciting about this. This was the terrible, sordid truth about this life. The man in my arms was a barely breathing example of how it could all go wrong.

  And I loved him more than words could say.

  Even with all the pain and the drugs, even with the blackouts and the numbness and the endless stream of dope, I was clear enough to know that much. I was deeply, madly in love with him, maybe even more now that I knew who he really was. The shine had rubbed off the rock star image a long time ago. We’d been scratching each other’s monkey’s backs for a month or more, he’d seen me sweating, aching, begging him for a hit when I’d tried, unsuccessfully, just a few weeks ago, to quit. I’d cleaned up his vomit and stuck my fingers in his mouth to look for more.

  I’d come into a room to find him naked with three other women.

  And I was still in bed with him.

  That was either love or madness. Or maybe both.

  “I love you, Ty,” I whispered, feeling my own hot tears welling up again as I kissed his shoulder.

  But in the end, I knew love wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to get us through this. We needed help. I knew where to go for it, but I also knew it would ruin this. Us. Ty would never forgive me. I could save him. I could even save myself. But in doing so, I’d have to give him up. What else is new, Katie? You lose everything you love, eventually. Why had I ever believed that Ty would be any different?

  And some, secret part of me knew I’d been expecting this all along.

  My body was already twitching, my muscles contracting, expanding, like they were trying to crawl out of my skin, to reach the needle, the thing they craved the most. But I needed to think, I needed to be clear, as clear as I could be.

  So, I stayed awake, aware, feeling weeks, months, years of pain rushing back in, staring at the tip of the needle hanging off the ledge until I finally decided what I had to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Katie, are you all right?” I ignored the knock on the door, glaring at it, hating the woman on the other side of it more than I’d ever hated anyone or anything in my life.

  Sarah was my jailor, my keeper. She did nothing but talk about rehab facilities and watch me like a hawk. I refused to pee in any of the cups she kept insisting I fill and I’d tried, unsuccessfully, to kick her out of my apartment three times already. In a week.

  “Katie?” She wouldn’t leave me alone. She refused to let up.

  Rob had sent me home with a babysitter, forcing me to leave Tyler, something I knew would happen, even as I told him about the Oxy, the heroin, the naked girls in Tyler’s bed with their cell phones, Tyler choking on his own vomit. I knew, and I told him anyway. He hadn’t even let me say goodbye. Tyler was still passed out, our room smelling like pizza-and-beer puke, when I went to Rob’s room to tell him, and he was still passed out when Rob packed my bag and put me on a plane back to Detroit.

  “Katie, please, just let me send you to rehab?” Rob actually begged me to go while we stood in the airport. I thought he would get Celeste or one of the roadies to take me, but he’d driven me to the airport himself, probably so he could tell Sabrina he’d done everything he could. “If you won’t go to one in California, I’ll find one around you. I’ve got plenty of resources. Please.”

  I stubbornly shook my head, refusing to meet his eyes.

  “Just help Ty.” That’s all I could say, all I kept saying. What else was there?

  I knew, once Ty was clean, I wouldn’t exist anymore.

  This was just routine for Rob. He did this at the end of every tour, cleaning up Tyler’s mess the same way I’d wiped the vomit from his face. I was just more mess to clean up, and I knew it. But I was determined to clean up my own mess.

  “If you won’t go, at least let me send someone to stay with you for a while.” Rob’s voice was oh-so-reasonable. “Just to get you through. Katie, you’re already going through withdrawal.”

  It was true. My skin was crawling, I was shaking, inside and out, like I had a fever.

  But what Rob didn’t know was that I’d stolen Ty’s pick case full of Oxy while I was throwing clothes into my bag—being a junkie automatically made you a thief—and I was going to take some the minute I got on that plane and just… drift away.

  “I’ll be fine.” My teeth were chattering.

  “Her name is Sarah,” Rob went on like I hadn’t said anything at all. “She’ll be able to help you.”

  “I don’t…need… help.” My teeth were chattering so hard I could barely get the words out.

  “Right, that’s why you came to me.” Rob rolled his eyes. “Because you didn’t need help.”

  “Tyler needs your help.” I spat those words out clearly enough. Tyler was the one who had nearly died. Tyler was the
one who was important.

  “And he’s going to get it,” Rob assured me gently. “But, Katie, sweetheart… you need my help too.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “I’m sending Sarah,” he insisted. “She’ll pick you up from the airport and take you home. She’ll stay with you for a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” I shook my head, shivering. “I need to find a job. I need to… I...”

  “Even if you found a job right now, you’d have a tough time passing a drug test getting hired, wouldn’t you?” He had a point. A good one. Which just made me shiver more. “And if they didn’t give you a drug test, you’d have a hard time keeping that job while you were off getting high, wouldn’t you?”

  “I told you, I’m quitting.” I stuck my chin out, defiant. I was determined I could do this. I had enough Oxy, I could slowly wean myself off. “I’m done.”

  “Said every junkie in the morning and by noon, they’re all high again.” Rob rolled his eyes, shaking his dark head. “You can’t do this by yourself.”

  “Yes, I can!”

  “Katie, please. Let me send Sarah. It’s the next best thing to rehab. Both Sabrina and Tyler will kill me if I don’t get you help. You’re gonna get me in trouble.” He half-smiled at his own pun.

  “That’s not funny.” I gave him a dark look.

  “I’m not kidding. Not really,” he said softly. “If you won’t do it for you, do it for me. Do it for Tyler. And if you won’t do it for him, do it for Sabrina. She’s your best friend, she loves you, and this is going to devastate her.”

  I didn’t really care what happened to anyone right then, except Tyler. He was the only one I cared about, the only thing I could see. And I kept seeing it, over and over, Tyler choking on his own vomit, Tyler’s head lolling to the side while three naked girls took pictures of themselves with him.

  But when Rob mentioned Sabrina, my whole life, my real one, came back to me in an instant. I was going home to nothing. No job. No fiancé. No family. My rent was paid through the end of the month, thanks to Ty, but I had hardly anything in savings. And I was so hooked on heroin, I couldn’t even go six hours without wanting another hit. What in the hell was I going to do?