“Where the hell have you been?” Heidi jumped up when I entered the back door.
I didn’t respond. It was two days since I’d been home. I knew she’s worry, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Dave kept calling like every five minutes! He said you ran off like in the middle of the night, and you were drunk and stuff.”
“I did,” I mumbled, heading for the stairs to go to my room.
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tayler, what the hell!”
“Heidi, please.”
“You never tell me anything anymore, and you expect me to be okay with it. You go out with all these druggies all the time, and I can’t-”
“Druggies?”
She shrugged.
“Druggies?” I repeated. “You’re talking about Dave, aren’t you?”
“Well, you know all the weed he smokes.”
“You knew, didn’t you? You knew about the coke and didn’t tell me.”
“I just-”
“You suck.”
I didn’t have enough energy to yell. I was so tired from vomiting, bleeding, and crying that I could only sigh heavily and make my way upstairs.
I wanted to flop down on my bed, but when I opened the door, Dave was in there, sitting on my bed.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out before I could say anything.
“Please just let me sleep.”
“We need to talk.”
“We don’t need to talk. You’re on crack, and I tried to kill myself again. We both suck, we both are sorry. Discussion over.”
“Tay…”
“Am I wrong?”
“No, but I just don’t want you to think-”
“Dave, we’re still friends, we’re still going out, we’re still tiggety tight. Can I go to sleep now?”
“Since when are you insincere?”
“I’m not being insincere. I totally mean it, but I just need sleep.”
“I came to tell you that they want us to go on tour to promote the album we’re gonna make.”
“Really?”
“Yea.”
“What about Travis? Doesn’t he want to sing?”
“They want you, not him.”
“They do?”
He nodded. I was so excited. I wanted to vomit. Blood rushed to my head and I almost fell over. I sat down next to him. “Where are we going to go?”
“We can talk about it after you get some sleep.”
“Stay?”
“Sure.”
We crawled into my bed and fell asleep.
“Taylor!” I screamed, running through the back doors without even knocking. “Taylor? Where are you!” I was frantic.
“What is it?” he came out of the living room as I ran by. We bumped into each other. He looked frightened and held my arms.
I hugged him so tightly, “Guess what!”
“What?” he drew me away from him to look in my face.
“Last week when I came home, Dave told me this. I didn’t want to say anything about it until I was sure.”
“What is it?” he smiled, seeing I was excited and not hurt or something.
I was still holding his shoulders, “We’re going on tour.”
“Tour, like the band?!”
“Yes!”
We hugged again, even tighter this time. When we let go my ribs hurt.
“Dave says we’re going to go all around singing in like clubs and stuff. We’re going to record!”
“I’m so proud of you,” he hugged me again.
“What’s all the yelling?” Zac said as he descended the stairs. When he saw me in Taylor’s arms, he smiled, “Do I interrupt?”
“Zac!” I jumped on him to give him a huge hug, too, “I’m going on tour with Dave’s band!”
“No way!”
“Yes!”
I was so giddy. Such a change in my life. Ike came down and we went into the living room and I told them all the plans, like to go on weekends at first, so that we wouldn’t miss classes, but as things got better, and if we got good response, then we’d miss classes and go to farther places.
I was so excited. I forgot about all the bad things, and Tay and Ike and Zac and I hung out like old times. We stayed up late and then at like 2AM I walked home in the dark and almost fell in the creek while the boys were still sleeping.
As I lay in my bed in the dark, I pictured Tay’s face when I was screaming. He looked really worried about me. It sucked to make everyone worry about you. I didn’t know what to do to make it not that way. I would think of a way.
“Where’d you go?” Tay’s voice was sleepy as he whined like a little boy. I could picture him sitting on the couch, rubbing his eyes, whispering in the phone to check on me.
“Home.”
“Why?”
“Do you miss me?” I laughed.
“Why did you go?”
“I thought I should come home so Heidi didn’t have to worry about me.”
“So you let me worry about you?”
“You like worrying about me.”
“I do not.”
I laughed, “You enjoy being the worried boyfriend type.” Right away I wished I didn’t say that. We were both silent. Finally I sighed uncomfortably.
“Annnywayy…” he said, sounding just as weirded out, “What are you up to today?”
“I have class in an hour.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Not really.”
“Wanna meet after and hang out?” he asked.
“Sure.”
