Chapter 19

Stevie McGabe

It’s been two days since I’ve been home, and I am getting sick of being asked how I am feeling. I feel like nobody believes me when I say I am fine.

Even Gray is treating me with kid gloves—letting me choose what I want to watch on TV and offering to get me drinks and junk food.

I wander downstairs, expecting the house to be empty—Mom is in the middle of getting a big new account for the business, and Grayson is at football camp—but to my surprise, my dad is sprawled out on the sofa, totally invested in some dumb shoot-’em-up game of Gray’s.

“Hey, Dad,” I smile, dropping down next to him.

“Hey, kid,” he pauses his game, draping his arm over my shoulders and pressing a kiss to my temple. “How you doin’?”

I shrug, leaning forward, picking up the other controller, and joining in his game. We play together for a while, the easy banter that I always have with my dad relaxing me in a way that only true familiarity can do.

“So, how come you’re at home in the middle of the day, Dad?” I ask, and he sighs, hitting pause again.

“Your mom thought it was best not to leave you on your own right now, so I took a vacation day.” He frowns a little. “You know, you’ve not really told us exactly what happened…was it something Darryl did or said?”

I blow out a slow breath. “I’m beginning to think it was as much my fault as his this time.” I pull one leg up underneath me, twisting slightly so I can look my dad in the eye. “He accused me of not trusting him, and I stupidly reacted in a way that meant he felt he couldn’t trust me. But now, I don’t know how to come back from it…how ~we~ come back from this.”

“Was what you did unforgivable?” he asks. I shake my head no. “Was what Darryl did unforgivable?”

“I hope not,” I reply softly.

“You know your mom and I managed to move past our previous misgivings and questionable pasts. If what you have with Darryl is half as strong as what we had back then, then it’s worth fighting for. You’ll figure out what to do to move past this…it will be far from the last bump in the road of your relationship.”

I throw my arms around his neck and hug him tightly. “Thank you, Daddy.”

He chuckles, patting my back. “You’re welcome, honey.”

***

After another night of tossing and turning, I’ve made up my mind. I need to find out exactly what Darryl is doing, and there is only one person who will tell me the truth without sugarcoating it.

I grab a sweatshirt and pull it on over the vest and yoga pants I am hibernating in, push my feet into my battered Chucks, yelling out to my mom that I am going next door as I dart out the door.

Jake opens the door with a sad kind of smile. “Hey, Stevie…how are you doing?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes, the need to be polite to adults still ingrained into my very soul, instead giving him a tight smile back. “I’m fine,” I say with a small lift of one shoulder. “Is, uhm, is Vinnie in?”

“Yeah, he’s up in his room, nose buried in a book as usual,” Jake does roll his eyes, the bright green identical to Darryl’s. “Go on up.”

I give him another tight smile as I walk past him and make my way up to Vinnie’s room, unable to stop my eyes from wandering to Darryl’s door, which is slightly ajar. I catch a glimpse of his unmade bed, his stack of vintage metal records, his pile of discarded clothes which obviously didn’t make the cut when he packed to go on tour.

I knock on Vinnie’s door, waiting for his quiet ‘come in,’ before pushing it open. Where Darryl’s bedroom always looks like it has been struck by a manic whirlwind, Vinnie’s is always as neat as a pin; even when he was little, all his toys had their own place to which they were always returned after he’d finished playing.

Vinnie is sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back leaning up against his bed, a large D&D playbook open on his lap. His face is full of confusion when I walk in, closing the door firmly behind me. “Hi.”

“Hey, Vinnie.” I sit down on the floor next to him. “What’s going on with Darryl?”

I have decided that my folks would probably know—Jake tells my mom everything—and that Darryl’s folks would definitely know what is going on with him because Mikey would be keeping them in the loop, but if I went to any of them, I would more than likely get some watered-down version of the truth. But Vinnie would have been lurking, listening when the grown-ups thought he was engrossed in the pages of a book, and he would tell me the truth.

His Bambi-like eyes widen even more as he chews on his bottom lip, doing his best to avoid meeting my gaze. “Please, Vinnie…I don’t care if it’s bad, I just want to know what’s going on.”

“He’s been doing drugs again,” he practically whispers. “After…”

“After we hit a rough patch,” I fill in for him. “I made my boyfriend feel so bad that he fell off the wagon.” I shake my head, blinking back hot tears, not wanting to ask the next question playing on my tongue. “Was he with that girl…Dalia?”

“He…he talks about her a lot, but I don’t know for sure if he was with her when he was doing drugs. My mom and dad are talking about making him stop playing with the band. They’re worried about him having another…~accident.~” His voice breaks on the word. Vinnie peeks up through his long eyelashes at me. “I’m sorry, Stevie.”

I put my arm around his thin shoulders and hug him into me. “I’m sorry, too, Vinnie.”

That night, as I lie in my bed, watching the stars through my open curtains, my mind wanders unbidden back to the night I had gone out and gotten blind drunk. I wonder when Darryl had been doing the same thing—albeit he was doing much more besides—whether he had felt as broken and lost as I had at that moment, making that same decision to fall into oblivion.

I wonder if he had been with Dalia—or any other random groupies, for that matter—because that was sure the impression that was being plastered all over social media. Although he had done the same before, back when he lived in San Diego. His Instagram feed had always been full of photos of him draped in hot emo chicks, but he said that he’d never really done anything with any of them.

I toss and turn, haunted by thoughts of Darryl losing his dream—the only thing he’s ever wanted, to be in a band, one that means something to people. He isn’t preoccupied with being famous like most people who are in bands are, just producing amazing music that brings people together. I think that is why the band works so well—Smit and Evan are of the same mindset.

I need to make this right. I need to make him see that he ~can~ trust me, and that I do trust him. I miss my best friend, and I want him back.