For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) (7 page)

"I’ve been in therapy since you left. A lot of therapy. You know I’m not the type to be scared of anything." She glances up at me, and I can’t help but smile.

She’s always been a demon, my girl. Fearless. They used to call her Tamazon in school because she was so tall so early, but I never saw it as an insult. She is like an Amazon—strong, brave, ready to battle for those she loves, a true warrior princess.

"When your drinking got so out of control, I was scared for the first time in my life, Walsh. I was scared you were going to hurt yourself. I was scared you were going to hurt someone else. And when you got sick that night, when all that blood was pouring out of your body and you weren’t even able to stand on your own two feet, I was terrified."

I die a little inside from knowing I put her through that with my selfish, cowardly behavior.

"I thought it would get better once you went to rehab. I guess… I don’t know. I was really naïve. I thought that, when you were dried out, we’d go see you at this pretty place and it would sort of be like you were having a stay at a spa, you know?" She chuckles, almost to herself. "What an idiot I was. I’m so sorry. I had absolutely no idea what you’d be going through, what being an alcoholic really meant."

I speak softly, not wanting to interrupt her train of thought but needing her to forgive herself. "None of us knew what it meant, Tam. You were twenty-six years old and had lived a perfect life. You weren’t supposed to know what it meant. I wasn’t supposed to show it to you either."

I see her wipe at the corner of her eye before she continues. "When we went to visit that first time, and you were so angry, so distant, and sad, my fear felt like it was going to crush me. There wasn’t anything pretty about that place. All the fancy furniture in the world couldn’t make what was happening to you pretty. And I’d never felt so far away from you, Walsh. Never. You had pain I couldn’t ease, feelings I hadn’t known. You were experiencing life-changing moments that I couldn’t be part of. I really thought I’d lost you."

"You did, Tammy.
We
did. A part of me is never coming back, but it’s the part that took me to that place. The part that let me drink instead of dealing with shit. I’m not the same guy. I never will be, but hopefully I’ll be something better."

"You already are," she whispers, and I feel my heart tear just a little, somewhere so deep inside it must be the absolute center of me.

She takes a deep breath and then storms into the most painful part of all. At least it is for me.

"I was undone. After we left you at rehab that night, I was undone. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t talk. I really thought I was going to die from the pain. And Joss? He was hurting too. I could see it. And I think my pain made his worse. We sort of fed off of each other. I see now, looking back, that what we needed was to be around other people. People who could help us step back, because we were both locked up in there with you. We needed someone to get a set of keys and walk us out of there. The irony is, you had people to help you—therapists, counselors, whatever. But Joss and me? We had no one—except each other—and that’s how it happened. It was like this row of dominoes tumbling, and before I knew it, it was done."

She stops and, for the first time since she started talking, looks directly at me. There is no question—as if there ever were—that she is stricken with remorse, that she hates herself and what she did, that she is as sorry as someone could ever be for that brutal, life-altering mistake.

I know she needs my forgiveness as much as I need hers. And as painful as her actions were, I also know that Tammy loved me, and never would have hurt me on purpose. She was my everything for half my life, and I can’t let her go on thinking that I hate her for one mistaken hour in all our years together.

My voice is rough as I speak, and I clear my throat a few times to get it started. "I understand, Tammy. I really do. I know you wouldn’t have hurt me on purpose. Everything in our lives was always about me.
My
music,
my
friends,
my
disease. It’s no wonder you were so scared of losing me. I kept you tethered to me so tightly you never had a moment to do anything but worry about me. I was really selfish, Tam. For most of my life, I’ve been really selfish. And I’m sorry you paid the price for that as much as I did."

She huffs out a laugh through her sniffles. "I guess we’ve discovered the meaning of ‘codependent,’ haven’t we?"

My breath hitches for a minute as I hear her use the term my counselor in rehab threw at me. Even in the months after I got out, I never said the word to Tammy. I couldn’t bring myself to admit that what had seemed so right for so long had really been wrong. My dependence on her kept her dependent on me. It was all twisted, and it’s why we need to stay away from one another now.

"It was wrong, and we were too young to understand what we were creating, but hopefully we’ve learned now and we can move on to some better things."

"I still love you, Walsh," she whispers.

"And I still love you, sweetheart—"

"So where does that leave us?"

I give her a small smile. She knows the answer to this. I only wish she wouldn’t make me say it out loud.

"Tammy. We harmed each other. Badly. No matter how well we understand the reasons why it all happened, it can’t change the fact that we did that damage. No amount of love prevented it. I think we pretty well proved we shouldn’t be within a fucking mile of each other."

She shakes her head. "No. We made some mistakes, we’ve been working through them, and we took time apart to do that. But now we’re better. We can start fresh. You’re part of me, Walsh. I can’t just leave you behind like I don’t need that part."

I feel the longing well up inside me. As much as I wish I could believe in what she says, I can’t. There is no way I will risk her heart or mine again. We’ve been through too much.

"I’m sorry, Tam. It’s too late. I can’t let either one of us go through that again. Any more might break one of us for good. It’s time to move on. You need to go back to Portland and"—I swallow down the bitter taste that I have in my throat and mouth—"and start a new life. Meet some great guy who doesn’t have all my baggage and takes care of you instead of expecting you to take care of him all the time."

"What?" Her voice is genuinely confused. "Find some great guy? Are you out of your mind, Walsh?" I see a flush come to her cheeks, and her voice rises. "Did you not hear what I just told you? I love you.
You
. Not some random guy in Portland who I haven’t even met yet. I don’t want someone else. I’ve never wanted anyone else—"

"Tammy," I interrupt. "You have to stop. Stop trying to fix something that can’t be fixed. You and I are done. I came here tonight to apologize, to ask forgiveness, to get it all out there, but we can’t go back. There’s nothing to go back to."

"I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward. With
you
," she says, her jaw jutting out in a way that is all too familiar. Shit. Tammy DiLorenzo is in the house, and things are about to go from bad to worse.

"Tammy," I say with a warning tone in my voice. "I’m sorry if I misled you, but we’re over. We’ve been over for six months now—"

"You need to leave, Walsh," she says curtly. "This conversation isn’t done, not by a long shot, but my therapist warned me that, if I start to feel too angry, I need to take a step back."

I’m floored for a minute. Tammy has never, and I mean never, backed down when she wants her way. I’m stymied. I was gearing up for one our usual sessions of me trying to be reasonable and her bulldozing through any objections I might voice. Now, I don’t know what to say to this rational, albeit angry Tammy.

I realize I’m gaping at her, so I shut my mouth and lean forward in my chair. "Maybe—"

She stands up. "I’m sorry, Walsh. I really need to follow what I’ve been taught about these feelings. I need to be alone for a while right now."

She walks to the door and holds it open, indicating that my visit is over. I shake my head in wonder before standing up and walking to the open doorway. When I reach her, I lean forward to see under the curtain of hair that hangs alongside her face. She’s trying to avoid looking directly at me.

"Have a beautiful life, pretty girl," I tell her softly as I let her hair brush my cheek when I lean in.

Her head pops up and she looks me straight in the eye, our faces close enough to feel each other’s warm breath.

"Don’t be ridiculous, Walsh. We’re not done. We never will be."

I step back and walk out the door, wondering if she’s just made me a promise or delivered a threat.

Tammy

A
FTER
W
ALSH
leaves the boarding house, I stomp around the parlor for a few minutes, pacing from one end to the other, trying to practice all those things the therapist taught me back in Portland. The first step is figuring out if I’m really angry or just using anger to mask other feelings. I know immediately that I’m hurt. So incredibly hurt that Walsh would try to walk away from me—from us—like that. He makes it seem like the last fourteen years of my life were one big mistake, some sort of blight to overcome.

It’s obvious we had problems, but we were happy most of the time. And in all that time, I got an associate’s degree and learned management and promotions. Walsh went from playing in a garage to being in a mega-successful band. He became a millionaire, we traveled the world, and I managed the daily operations of a staff of anywhere from a dozen to fifty or sixty. He won a damn Grammy. There’s no way he can convince me that we were bad together.

So I’m hurt as much as I’m angry. Now I need to deal with that so the stress from it doesn’t just fester. I don’t want to be on these meds the rest of my life, and to get off of them, I need to learn how to deal with my stress better. I can’t just go ninja on everyone around me until I force them to do what I want. At least that’s what my therapist says. And Mel admitted the point as well, so I guess I’ll have to take their word for it.

I do my breathing exercises and count to ten about five times. I focus on feeling my pulse rate slow. My cheeks cool down, and I know I’ve got it under control. I stop pacing and stand, looking out the window across the front porch to the street, where it is silent and still—like I need my mind to be if I’m going to figure out how to deal with Walsh.

"Well, did he get his head out of his cute behind?" I hear Mrs. Stallworth say.

I turn around, my jaw dropping open at her language. "Um, he’s, uh…" I’m speechless, and her gleeful expression tells me that she’s loving it.

"Well, don’t stand there like a guppy out of water. Come to the kitchen and tell me all about it," she says as she turns and shuffles away.

I can’t help but grin. They may not have a Starbucks in Cowtown, Texas, but we didn’t have a Mrs. Stallworth in Portland.

I follow her to the other side of the house and into the large old-fashioned kitchen. She doesn’t even have a dishwasher. I’ve already been told that Wednesdays are my day to do dishes. She points to a chair at the kitchen table and I sit. I’m starting to think that Texas women spend a lot of time with visitors in their kitchens.

"He’s a good-lookin’ one," she grunts at me as she flips the switch on an electric tea kettle.

"I think so," I answer.

"And pretty polite for a boy these days."

"He’s a good guy, but he’s had a hard couple of years." I wipe some crumbs off the table into my hand and stand up to brush them off in the trash can near the back door.

"The damn bottle," she laments. "It’s ruined a lot of fine men."

I struggle to hide my surprise. I told her that I was staying in town because my ex was living nearby and we were working things out, but I never told her about Walsh’s alcoholism.

"What?" she says as she picks up the kettle that’s just clicked off and pours the hot water into cups. She walks over and sets one in front of me before sitting down in a chair across the table. She’s so small that she looks like a tiny child sitting in an adult’s seat. "It was Leanne who called me to get you a room. It wasn’t that hard to figure out your boy must be staying at the Double A. Everyone in town knows Ronny’s got a bunch of lushes out there." She shrugs.

I’m not sure whether to be offended or laugh. I decide that it’s too much work to be offended. Walsh
is
a lush. He’d say so too.