Caprice "Reecy" Chester (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
headingforsomething) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2017-07-22 12:35 am
headingforsomething) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2017-07-22 12:35 am
"Well I've got thick skin and an elastic heart..."
Who: Reecy Chester and Kyan Wilson
What: Letting go is hard, holding on is harder
Where: Four Seasons, Denver, Colorado
When: Friday
Reecy was sitting by the hotel window that had a perfect view over Denver. She was nursing a cup of tea and reading a book she had been looking forward to starting. It was a beautiful suite with views in in the distance of the mountains. It had been far from the easiest stop of their tour, however. Across the suite, Kyan had been passed out cold after way too much booze not just from the hotel bar, but he also hit the mini bar once she dragged him back to their room. He was usually a teetotal, but the decision to go visit his mom’s grave had tipped him over the edge.
She had lost count of how many times she got distracted from her book, looking over at him sadly as he slept. He had completely broken down at the cemetery. He seemed okay at first. She went with him, a supportive arm around his waist so he knew he wasn’t alone to face this extremely difficult task of visiting her grave for the first time since they buried her. He had already been distant through the meet-and-greet with fans and donors to Shades of Violet. She did most of the schmoozing and took the driver’s seat on liaising.
Not that there needed much. They were wanting to throw money at them because apparently Justin had helped rescue a young person, a fan of Justin’s, here in Denver from a suicide attempt. This was fucking news to her. She got the story secondhand from the young guy’s aunty at the benefit, who said that her nephew posted what was effectively a suicide note on social media. Somehow, Justin was either sent it or shown it, and he immediately got his dad to contact Euan to track down a way to contact the guy. Then talked him down on the phone.
Secondly, Kyan, as the Dirty Dancing lead, was a local so it was the busiest event they had attended. People were dishing out the cash left, right and centre.Then the young guy who had survived the attempt came and gave her this amazing framed sketch he did for Justin to thank him. Reecy was bawling. How could she not when she heard his story? He said he hoped Justin could have made it, but he completely understood that he was too sick to keep the commitments of the publicity tour. He also made friendship bracelets for Justin and Sasha, and asked her to tell them he ‘totally shipped them’.
After all that, they went to the cemetery. Four times Kyan had cold feet and nearly didn’t go, but ultimately his heart told him he had to. Kyan had a lot going on inside him recently, he needed all the support he could get, but it culminated with visiting his mom. Reecy had never seen him so upset, so distressed. His crying echoed off the whole sprawling cemetery and she held him as he collapsed in her arms sobbing his heart out when his legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. He was self-destructing, and she knew the only thing she could do was let him, even for awhile. Sometimes, the only thing you could do was hit rock bottom before you knew how to be helped up.
Back in the room, Kyan already steaming from triple shots at the bar (thank fuck there were no prying paparazzi), she put INXS’s greatest hits on for him at hiss request and he hiked the volume up on By My Side when it came on, and proceeded to deplete the mini bar of anything that remotely resembled booze. Finally, he projectile vomited all over the bathroom and passed out, almost smashing his head on the towel rail. She did the best clean-up she could, but ultimately just gave up and called housekeeping. At least they would have the products needed to tackle it. She offered the poor woman help, lying through her teeth that Kyan had come down with a terrible stomach flu on the tour (of course she was going to be a fan of him and Dirty Dancing). How he had been asleep for almost 27 hours now. Yes, she kept checking for a pulse.
Hearing movement, she looked up from the book and saw Kyan stumbling out of bed naked, getting tangled in the sheets, and tripping into the bathroom. Moments later, there was pained retching. He was driving the porcelain bus like an F1 champion. She had already ducked out to a nearby store to pick up some things he might need when he woke up with the inevitable raging hangover. Now he was up, she grabbed one of the fluffy hotel bathrobes and headed to the bathroom. At least he made the toilet this time. He looked terrible.
She crouched down beside him and kissed his forehead. “You need a shower, sweetie. You’ll feel better for it. Come on, I’ll stay in here while you do so you don’t pass out on me. Just tell me if you feel woozy, okay?” He was so much taller than her, so it wasn’t an easy feat to help him up from where he was slumped against the wall near the toilet.
“Sorry,” Kyan mumbled. HIs voice was hoarse and croaky. That always happened when he drank. If he looked terrible, he felt worse. He reeked of booze and sweat, he desperately needed a shave, his hair was a mess. It was fucking awful. He didn’t use get involved in behaviour like this, but everything got too much and it was all he could do to cope. He ached inside and out. His head was pounding, he felt sick. There wasn’t even any specific tangible thing that triggered this. It was seeing his mom’s headstone that re-opened his grief. From there, his emotions were in combustion mode.
“Shh. Don’t be sorry. This is me, remember?” Reecy gave him a little gentle cuddle around his middle and turned the shower on. She made sure it wasn’t too hot so he didn’t overheat, and once he was in there, passed him in his toothbrush with some toothpaste on it, his razor and shaving gel. She went and flushed the toilet and closed the lid so she could sit on it and wait while he showered. It might be a long process, especially when, at one point, he was crouched down over the drain being sick again, and ended up sitting on the floor of the shower letting the hot spray run on him.
Why was it that free-flowing booze, crying himself in dehydration and trying to go into permanent hibernation didn’t erase some of the bad thoughts about his life in general? Everything felt so difficult. Worse, he had to be back in New York by Friday night to be back at work and he wasn’t even sure he had the strength to get back up off the shower floor. He did, though. One foot in front of the other, he went through the motions on autopilot. Reecy was right, it did help. Not a whole lot, but a little less like he had been bit by a bus. He was so dry and thirsty. It was only in turning the shower off and getting out that the embarrassment about being naked hit him. “Fuck,” he cursed softly, covering himself with his hand to reach out and grab the towel she hung in reach for him.
“This is the part where I tell you that I’ve seen it all. You don’t have to be embarrassed. I’ve seen it, and you could seriously get into stripping for a living.” Reecy joked, because she knew he needed it. That’s what friendship was about, being there for your friends, playing a part in their lives, sharing mutual things, making memories… not always good ones. She got up and helped him put the bathrobe on, rubbing his back to try to offer a little comfort. “I’ve got half an ocean of Gatorade out there. We need to get some fluids in you. You don’t have to talk to me about anything, but you know you can. If you need to.” He said some things while he was drunk. Actually, he said a lot of things while he was drunk, but some of it was muddled and all meshing into one messy situation. One that she knew she had contributed to.
Kyan fell quiet and stopped by the bed, looking at her quietly. “Am I supposed to be regretting it?” He looked away and went to the mini bar to get some Gatorade out. When he bent over, the nausea sloshed away in his gut again. He put the back of his hand to his mouth, holding himself up on the bench above the fridge. He was definitely regretting everything he couldn’t remember drinking, and remembering why he hardly ever leant on alcohol. It never ended well. He put the Gatorade down and ran to the bathroom again. Fuck, this could be a long day. A long day in a place he no longer wanted to be anymore.
Reecy didn’t know the answer to that. She was just worried about his aftermath and how he would cope. Very worried, because this was Kyan. He was usually the rock. The calm and collected one. The quiet and shy one. The one who smiled through the pain so no one was burdened with it. The one who played one of the hottest roles in live theatre but still didn’t see himself as sexy. He saw it as acting. She gave him some privacy in the bathroom and instead, tidied the bed, make sure the bottle of Gatorade was waiting for him. He was so very hard to read like this. Mostly, he was just a 6’4” hangover right now. At least he managed to take a shower and have a shave. He might feel a little more human, but as long as he was dehydrated, he would going to still feel sick.
Kyan came back out yet again, wiping a wet face cloth over his face. Reecy was near the bed, so he came and sat down on the edge of it. “I’m going to move back in with Trey.” He glanced up at her, pain showing on his features. “This isn’t the life I envisaged and I’m not going to keep fooling myself, nor do I want anyone to look at me and think, ‘Fuck, he’s a fool’. I’m not in love with her anymore, and I have to move on.”
Reecy put a small trash can beside the bed and then sat with him, giving him the opened Gatorade so he could hopefully get a bit into him. Her friendship with Autumn was non-existent now and had been for a very long time. She couldn’t even recall their last conversation. She asked Justin now and again about her, but he would just shrug and say he didn’t want to get involved because he still had to work with her in an intimate capacity. She stopped asking. Ironically, perhaps Kyan was now more of a best friend to her than Autumn was. She didn’t know. Life was about picking your battles. More fool you if you picked ones where you were the only one putting any energy into them. Kyan’s statement was heavy. Extremely heavy. She never thought she would hear anything like it. “Are you sure? Or are you just… lost?”
Kyan closed his eyes with a small shake of his head. “I’m sure. How can you be in love with someone who’s not there? It’s been too long coming. I’m not dead, I can’t live like i’m buries. I want to live my life again. I fucking don’t know where to start, but I know I have to somewhere. That’s what Mom would have wanted. She would never want any of us stuck somewhere we feel miserable. I miss her. I miss her so fucking much. If she was here, I’d talk to her about everything and she would know exactly the right things to say. She always did.” He was tearing up and he just let them fall, brushing his fingers over his cheek. “I was so sure I had things right. So sure she would’ve been proud. I never saw any of this coming. I’ve dealt with it in the worst possible way and dragged you into it.”
“You didn’t rape me. You weren’t even drunk at the time,” Reecy reminded him. She gently stroked her fingers through his hair. “Trust me, I get what you’re saying. You’re right. You can’t love someone who’s not there. You might think you do, but it’s just as toxic as being too close to someone constantly. Something will eventually give. Humans aren’t built for extremes. We need a balance, we just have no fucking rule book on how to balance anything. It eats away at us before we realise, and then all of a sudden, nothing feels like it used to anymore. Like chafed skin, the more it rubs, the worse it gets.” Comfort sex. Quite possibly what contributed to him leaving and going to the bar downstairs. She thought he might have gone out for a walk to clear his head, but when he didn’t come back, she went to look for him and he was already drunk by them.
Kyan still wasn’t quite sure how he went from a complete breakdown in the cemetery where he could barely function, to back in the hotel room with Reecy where things just… happened. He never believed in that stuff before. He never thought it was possible. But she was there and he had been in such desperate need for closeness and comfort. Her hug had been so comforting, and in that moment, he wanted to switch everything off. He wanted to shut the world out and forget it existed. It was an escape. Now, in the cold light of a sober - yet hungover - day, he felt numb inside his chest and emotionally exhausted. “What’s supposed to happen now? I can’t lose you as a friend, I feel like I’ve got hardly anything left.” More tears came and he put his hands over his face.
“Nothing changes,” Reecy promised him, peeling his hands away so she could wrap him in a hug, trying to reassure him. She rubbed his back. He was so miserable and upset. Her heart was breaking for him. “You listen to me, Wilson. You’re never going to lose me as a friend. You’re too important and you’re too special. Not just that, but I’m going to help you with all of this. You’ve always been one of the strongest people I know, but strong people break too. Especially when everything they loved and had faith in starts to fall down around them. You’re allowed to be sad and in pain. You’re allowed to be anything you need, but don’t let it destroy you. You’re too good to be destroyed.”
“I’m tired, Reecy. I never wanted a complicated life. I never wanted a flashy one. I just wanted something simple, and I thought I had found it. But I was so fucking wrong.” Kyan didn’t have much more steam than that. He didn’t have the energy or strength to break down again. He was still wiped out from what happened at the cemetery. He didn’t know how he kept going after that, when it made him feel like he wanted to crawl into a hole next to his mom and never come out again. “I’m sorry. All this is horrible and ruining your trip. We don’t need to talk about any of it. When do you get to see your little girl? You said it would be soon after all this. Did they give you a date yet?”
This was pure evidence of how selfless Kyan was. He had a lot of pain inside, mostly revolving around his mom’s absence and missing her more than words could say, but he was still asking her about what was the most important thing happening in her life at the moment. Stressful, but she hoped it was worth it. She had to keep remembering that nothing was guaranteed, and she was operating in a system where everything could change in a heartbeat. She gave him a couple of Tylenol she left sitting on the bedside table, and then stood, pulling the covers back. “You need to lie down and rest. Life gets complicated when it matters. The more people who come into your life that matter, the more complicated it gets. But not all complicated is bad. Some complicated is what makes life worth fighting for.” She waited for him to climb into the bed and then got in with him, tucking the covers in around him and making sure his pillow was fluffed around the edges. “Next week. If everything goes smoothly. But it’s the services. It might not. I’ve been working with a great social worker who makes sure I always remember that through the whole process. They said she’s beautiful, though.”
“All babies are beautiful. You’re going to be a great momma. I think you’re just made to love kids liked Justin. Life has this way of causing so much fucking pain, but at the end of it, you get to this place where it feels like things happen for a reason…” Kyan wet his lips, looking up at the ceiling. His eyes were still damp from the tears but he was calming down a bit. He had put his body through the wringer, it was understandable he was fragile. It was a little better lying down. After a moment, he took Reecy’s hand to hold against his chest. “Thank you,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
Reecy squeezed his hand. She understood his need for closeness right now. She had been there. When it felt like your whole world was falling apart, you felt so distant from everyone and everything, like they were out of reach. Sometimes, you couldn’t even verbalise the pain you were feeling or it felt like no matter what you said, none of it was coming out right. She knew why he was thanking her. For just being there. “Wise words, Yoda Wilson,” she murmured, glad to see he was relaxing, even if it was just physically. Exhaustion always amplified everything. She saw it in Justin many times, but if that kid was manic, he could keep going until he slammed into the danger zone. Kyan had more emotional filtering than Justin. “But it’s impossible to believe your own wise words when you’re hurting, I know. Tell me what you want, sweetie. If everything was back to being good and light again, what would you want?”
“To be happy. Be in love, with affection and passion. Be able to help people. That’s all. If you’re talking reality. If you’re talking anything in the world. I just want my mom back.” Kyan’s grief didn’t help his nausea, but he was pretty sure he had nothing left inside him to come out. To have someone to talk to about his mom meant the world to him, because he couldn’t talk about her to Trey. Trey still very much struggled with her death, but in a completely different way to Kyan. Where Kyan felt it so deeply, so fresh, like it just happened yesterday right now, Trey had buried his head in the sand and threw himself into his job because it was the only way he could cope. “Oh my god, she would have been a nightmare to shop for Mother of the Groom outfits. She hated shopping,” he added, not sure where that thought even came from, but it made him laugh. It hurt, but somewhere through all this, he found a glimmer of hope to clutch onto.
Reecy laughed too, because he was drawing down deep inside to some special memory she wasn’t privy to, but she knew it was priceless that he was sharing it with her. “Oh, yeah? We could have sent her with Paris. Or maybe Ajay, if we didn’t want her to come out with 101 Reasons why her baby boy should stay single for not having to deal with couture. She wasn’t a fashionista, huh? Maybe that’s fitting. You never got around to shopping for your own outfit either.”
Kyan gave a little shake of his head, only enough to not set his brain off on another skull-crushing splice of pain. “No, not even close. I got that off her. Trey was always more of the stylish one. Mom and I were simple, but she was so beautiful. Even through the chemo, even towards the end, she was beautiful because when you have a beautiful soul, it shows through. She would’ve looked stunning. But she never would want me to marry for the wrong reasons, or if I wasn’t completely happy before taking the leap. That was something she taught us from the start. Trust our hearts. Do you wonder that stuff about your dad? What he was like when he was alive?”
Reecy was back to stroking his hair with the hand he wasn’t holding. As crippling as his grief was, his happy memories of his mom outweighed the pain. It always would, that was why the pain would never just ease. He was going to feel her loss for a very long time, if not, forever. “All the time. But Dad kept his memories alive. Still has. I remember when I was about ten years old, I was upset because a kid at school told me I didn’t have two dad and I was lying. The next day, I came home, and Dad had turned the walls of my room into a mini theatre. He borrowed three movie projectors and on on the three walls, pictures and movies of them were playing. All the happy moments. A movie of them at the sonograms and cuddling the framed sonogram picture, rubbing my surrogate mom’s belly. They were so in love and really thought the best years were ahead of them. Cancer’s the worst thing in the world, sweetie. When it takes one of the very reasons you live and breathe, there aren’t enough words to explain its evil.”
Hearing Reecy’s story, Kyan was getting teary again because he understood. “Mom would’ve loved your dads. They sound like they had the same parenting style. I know you miss him, even if you don’t remember ever meeting him. Mom’s probably up there right now shaking her head, wondering what the fuck I was thinking…” He was wondering the same thing, though he knew the answer. He wasn’t thinking, because he hadn’t wanted to. He had been thinking too much and finally the pain got so bad, he couldn’t hold up through it anymore.
“I don’t know, sweetie. She knows you. She’s probably up there just wishing she could reach down and give her baby a hug. Because any good parent knows there will always be times their babies fuck up, especially when they’re hurting. She’s up there sharing notes with my dad on how to send down some happy vibes and hoping that they get through and help you get back up just a little easier when you’re feeling better.” Reecy smiled faintly. The thought of her dad and Kyan’s mom hanging around up there together warmed her heart. “Was your house anywhere near here? Where you grew up?”
“I hope they are. She would look after him, I promise you.” Getting his brain to work with the hangover was a hard push but he tried to map out the route in his head. “About half an hour drive south. I know what you’re thinking. I don’t know if I can. It’s… I still remember them wheeling her out to the ambulance with a sheet over her. Then I had to go back there and somehow have to figure out how to function to decide what I was supposed to do next. She always thought I’d stay after she died, but I couldn’t. Too far away from Trey and it had all our memories there. I had to pack all her things away in boxes not long after she died so it could be ready for sale. That whole time of my life was awful. I don’t know if I can.”
Reecy shook her head. “No, no… I’m not saying you have to. I just know that it probably does have some of the worst memories for you. It’s where you took care of her and nursed her through. But it also has all your childhood memories and memories with her when she was well. We’re here, I just wanted to plant the seed so you don’t go back to New York regretting things, feeling worse, or feeling any guilt. Your beautiful memories don’t stop being beautiful because they hurt. If you can’t, you don’t have to. Hell, if you want, honey, we can jump on the next plane out of here and go home. We can stick with the stomach flu story, no one will be any the wiser. Maybe it’s Trey you need to be with right now more than anything.”
Kyan closed his eyes, trying to get his headache to figure this out, through the aching hangover haze. “I… I think I want to go home.”
“To New York?” Reecy asked quietly, pushing his hair back to kiss his forehead.
Kyan drew in a deep and through the heavy exhalation that followed, “Both…”
LOG, COMPLETE
What: Letting go is hard, holding on is harder
Where: Four Seasons, Denver, Colorado
When: Friday
Reecy was sitting by the hotel window that had a perfect view over Denver. She was nursing a cup of tea and reading a book she had been looking forward to starting. It was a beautiful suite with views in in the distance of the mountains. It had been far from the easiest stop of their tour, however. Across the suite, Kyan had been passed out cold after way too much booze not just from the hotel bar, but he also hit the mini bar once she dragged him back to their room. He was usually a teetotal, but the decision to go visit his mom’s grave had tipped him over the edge.
She had lost count of how many times she got distracted from her book, looking over at him sadly as he slept. He had completely broken down at the cemetery. He seemed okay at first. She went with him, a supportive arm around his waist so he knew he wasn’t alone to face this extremely difficult task of visiting her grave for the first time since they buried her. He had already been distant through the meet-and-greet with fans and donors to Shades of Violet. She did most of the schmoozing and took the driver’s seat on liaising.
Not that there needed much. They were wanting to throw money at them because apparently Justin had helped rescue a young person, a fan of Justin’s, here in Denver from a suicide attempt. This was fucking news to her. She got the story secondhand from the young guy’s aunty at the benefit, who said that her nephew posted what was effectively a suicide note on social media. Somehow, Justin was either sent it or shown it, and he immediately got his dad to contact Euan to track down a way to contact the guy. Then talked him down on the phone.
Secondly, Kyan, as the Dirty Dancing lead, was a local so it was the busiest event they had attended. People were dishing out the cash left, right and centre.Then the young guy who had survived the attempt came and gave her this amazing framed sketch he did for Justin to thank him. Reecy was bawling. How could she not when she heard his story? He said he hoped Justin could have made it, but he completely understood that he was too sick to keep the commitments of the publicity tour. He also made friendship bracelets for Justin and Sasha, and asked her to tell them he ‘totally shipped them’.
After all that, they went to the cemetery. Four times Kyan had cold feet and nearly didn’t go, but ultimately his heart told him he had to. Kyan had a lot going on inside him recently, he needed all the support he could get, but it culminated with visiting his mom. Reecy had never seen him so upset, so distressed. His crying echoed off the whole sprawling cemetery and she held him as he collapsed in her arms sobbing his heart out when his legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. He was self-destructing, and she knew the only thing she could do was let him, even for awhile. Sometimes, the only thing you could do was hit rock bottom before you knew how to be helped up.
Back in the room, Kyan already steaming from triple shots at the bar (thank fuck there were no prying paparazzi), she put INXS’s greatest hits on for him at hiss request and he hiked the volume up on By My Side when it came on, and proceeded to deplete the mini bar of anything that remotely resembled booze. Finally, he projectile vomited all over the bathroom and passed out, almost smashing his head on the towel rail. She did the best clean-up she could, but ultimately just gave up and called housekeeping. At least they would have the products needed to tackle it. She offered the poor woman help, lying through her teeth that Kyan had come down with a terrible stomach flu on the tour (of course she was going to be a fan of him and Dirty Dancing). How he had been asleep for almost 27 hours now. Yes, she kept checking for a pulse.
Hearing movement, she looked up from the book and saw Kyan stumbling out of bed naked, getting tangled in the sheets, and tripping into the bathroom. Moments later, there was pained retching. He was driving the porcelain bus like an F1 champion. She had already ducked out to a nearby store to pick up some things he might need when he woke up with the inevitable raging hangover. Now he was up, she grabbed one of the fluffy hotel bathrobes and headed to the bathroom. At least he made the toilet this time. He looked terrible.
She crouched down beside him and kissed his forehead. “You need a shower, sweetie. You’ll feel better for it. Come on, I’ll stay in here while you do so you don’t pass out on me. Just tell me if you feel woozy, okay?” He was so much taller than her, so it wasn’t an easy feat to help him up from where he was slumped against the wall near the toilet.
“Sorry,” Kyan mumbled. HIs voice was hoarse and croaky. That always happened when he drank. If he looked terrible, he felt worse. He reeked of booze and sweat, he desperately needed a shave, his hair was a mess. It was fucking awful. He didn’t use get involved in behaviour like this, but everything got too much and it was all he could do to cope. He ached inside and out. His head was pounding, he felt sick. There wasn’t even any specific tangible thing that triggered this. It was seeing his mom’s headstone that re-opened his grief. From there, his emotions were in combustion mode.
“Shh. Don’t be sorry. This is me, remember?” Reecy gave him a little gentle cuddle around his middle and turned the shower on. She made sure it wasn’t too hot so he didn’t overheat, and once he was in there, passed him in his toothbrush with some toothpaste on it, his razor and shaving gel. She went and flushed the toilet and closed the lid so she could sit on it and wait while he showered. It might be a long process, especially when, at one point, he was crouched down over the drain being sick again, and ended up sitting on the floor of the shower letting the hot spray run on him.
Why was it that free-flowing booze, crying himself in dehydration and trying to go into permanent hibernation didn’t erase some of the bad thoughts about his life in general? Everything felt so difficult. Worse, he had to be back in New York by Friday night to be back at work and he wasn’t even sure he had the strength to get back up off the shower floor. He did, though. One foot in front of the other, he went through the motions on autopilot. Reecy was right, it did help. Not a whole lot, but a little less like he had been bit by a bus. He was so dry and thirsty. It was only in turning the shower off and getting out that the embarrassment about being naked hit him. “Fuck,” he cursed softly, covering himself with his hand to reach out and grab the towel she hung in reach for him.
“This is the part where I tell you that I’ve seen it all. You don’t have to be embarrassed. I’ve seen it, and you could seriously get into stripping for a living.” Reecy joked, because she knew he needed it. That’s what friendship was about, being there for your friends, playing a part in their lives, sharing mutual things, making memories… not always good ones. She got up and helped him put the bathrobe on, rubbing his back to try to offer a little comfort. “I’ve got half an ocean of Gatorade out there. We need to get some fluids in you. You don’t have to talk to me about anything, but you know you can. If you need to.” He said some things while he was drunk. Actually, he said a lot of things while he was drunk, but some of it was muddled and all meshing into one messy situation. One that she knew she had contributed to.
Kyan fell quiet and stopped by the bed, looking at her quietly. “Am I supposed to be regretting it?” He looked away and went to the mini bar to get some Gatorade out. When he bent over, the nausea sloshed away in his gut again. He put the back of his hand to his mouth, holding himself up on the bench above the fridge. He was definitely regretting everything he couldn’t remember drinking, and remembering why he hardly ever leant on alcohol. It never ended well. He put the Gatorade down and ran to the bathroom again. Fuck, this could be a long day. A long day in a place he no longer wanted to be anymore.
Reecy didn’t know the answer to that. She was just worried about his aftermath and how he would cope. Very worried, because this was Kyan. He was usually the rock. The calm and collected one. The quiet and shy one. The one who smiled through the pain so no one was burdened with it. The one who played one of the hottest roles in live theatre but still didn’t see himself as sexy. He saw it as acting. She gave him some privacy in the bathroom and instead, tidied the bed, make sure the bottle of Gatorade was waiting for him. He was so very hard to read like this. Mostly, he was just a 6’4” hangover right now. At least he managed to take a shower and have a shave. He might feel a little more human, but as long as he was dehydrated, he would going to still feel sick.
Kyan came back out yet again, wiping a wet face cloth over his face. Reecy was near the bed, so he came and sat down on the edge of it. “I’m going to move back in with Trey.” He glanced up at her, pain showing on his features. “This isn’t the life I envisaged and I’m not going to keep fooling myself, nor do I want anyone to look at me and think, ‘Fuck, he’s a fool’. I’m not in love with her anymore, and I have to move on.”
Reecy put a small trash can beside the bed and then sat with him, giving him the opened Gatorade so he could hopefully get a bit into him. Her friendship with Autumn was non-existent now and had been for a very long time. She couldn’t even recall their last conversation. She asked Justin now and again about her, but he would just shrug and say he didn’t want to get involved because he still had to work with her in an intimate capacity. She stopped asking. Ironically, perhaps Kyan was now more of a best friend to her than Autumn was. She didn’t know. Life was about picking your battles. More fool you if you picked ones where you were the only one putting any energy into them. Kyan’s statement was heavy. Extremely heavy. She never thought she would hear anything like it. “Are you sure? Or are you just… lost?”
Kyan closed his eyes with a small shake of his head. “I’m sure. How can you be in love with someone who’s not there? It’s been too long coming. I’m not dead, I can’t live like i’m buries. I want to live my life again. I fucking don’t know where to start, but I know I have to somewhere. That’s what Mom would have wanted. She would never want any of us stuck somewhere we feel miserable. I miss her. I miss her so fucking much. If she was here, I’d talk to her about everything and she would know exactly the right things to say. She always did.” He was tearing up and he just let them fall, brushing his fingers over his cheek. “I was so sure I had things right. So sure she would’ve been proud. I never saw any of this coming. I’ve dealt with it in the worst possible way and dragged you into it.”
“You didn’t rape me. You weren’t even drunk at the time,” Reecy reminded him. She gently stroked her fingers through his hair. “Trust me, I get what you’re saying. You’re right. You can’t love someone who’s not there. You might think you do, but it’s just as toxic as being too close to someone constantly. Something will eventually give. Humans aren’t built for extremes. We need a balance, we just have no fucking rule book on how to balance anything. It eats away at us before we realise, and then all of a sudden, nothing feels like it used to anymore. Like chafed skin, the more it rubs, the worse it gets.” Comfort sex. Quite possibly what contributed to him leaving and going to the bar downstairs. She thought he might have gone out for a walk to clear his head, but when he didn’t come back, she went to look for him and he was already drunk by them.
Kyan still wasn’t quite sure how he went from a complete breakdown in the cemetery where he could barely function, to back in the hotel room with Reecy where things just… happened. He never believed in that stuff before. He never thought it was possible. But she was there and he had been in such desperate need for closeness and comfort. Her hug had been so comforting, and in that moment, he wanted to switch everything off. He wanted to shut the world out and forget it existed. It was an escape. Now, in the cold light of a sober - yet hungover - day, he felt numb inside his chest and emotionally exhausted. “What’s supposed to happen now? I can’t lose you as a friend, I feel like I’ve got hardly anything left.” More tears came and he put his hands over his face.
“Nothing changes,” Reecy promised him, peeling his hands away so she could wrap him in a hug, trying to reassure him. She rubbed his back. He was so miserable and upset. Her heart was breaking for him. “You listen to me, Wilson. You’re never going to lose me as a friend. You’re too important and you’re too special. Not just that, but I’m going to help you with all of this. You’ve always been one of the strongest people I know, but strong people break too. Especially when everything they loved and had faith in starts to fall down around them. You’re allowed to be sad and in pain. You’re allowed to be anything you need, but don’t let it destroy you. You’re too good to be destroyed.”
“I’m tired, Reecy. I never wanted a complicated life. I never wanted a flashy one. I just wanted something simple, and I thought I had found it. But I was so fucking wrong.” Kyan didn’t have much more steam than that. He didn’t have the energy or strength to break down again. He was still wiped out from what happened at the cemetery. He didn’t know how he kept going after that, when it made him feel like he wanted to crawl into a hole next to his mom and never come out again. “I’m sorry. All this is horrible and ruining your trip. We don’t need to talk about any of it. When do you get to see your little girl? You said it would be soon after all this. Did they give you a date yet?”
This was pure evidence of how selfless Kyan was. He had a lot of pain inside, mostly revolving around his mom’s absence and missing her more than words could say, but he was still asking her about what was the most important thing happening in her life at the moment. Stressful, but she hoped it was worth it. She had to keep remembering that nothing was guaranteed, and she was operating in a system where everything could change in a heartbeat. She gave him a couple of Tylenol she left sitting on the bedside table, and then stood, pulling the covers back. “You need to lie down and rest. Life gets complicated when it matters. The more people who come into your life that matter, the more complicated it gets. But not all complicated is bad. Some complicated is what makes life worth fighting for.” She waited for him to climb into the bed and then got in with him, tucking the covers in around him and making sure his pillow was fluffed around the edges. “Next week. If everything goes smoothly. But it’s the services. It might not. I’ve been working with a great social worker who makes sure I always remember that through the whole process. They said she’s beautiful, though.”
“All babies are beautiful. You’re going to be a great momma. I think you’re just made to love kids liked Justin. Life has this way of causing so much fucking pain, but at the end of it, you get to this place where it feels like things happen for a reason…” Kyan wet his lips, looking up at the ceiling. His eyes were still damp from the tears but he was calming down a bit. He had put his body through the wringer, it was understandable he was fragile. It was a little better lying down. After a moment, he took Reecy’s hand to hold against his chest. “Thank you,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
Reecy squeezed his hand. She understood his need for closeness right now. She had been there. When it felt like your whole world was falling apart, you felt so distant from everyone and everything, like they were out of reach. Sometimes, you couldn’t even verbalise the pain you were feeling or it felt like no matter what you said, none of it was coming out right. She knew why he was thanking her. For just being there. “Wise words, Yoda Wilson,” she murmured, glad to see he was relaxing, even if it was just physically. Exhaustion always amplified everything. She saw it in Justin many times, but if that kid was manic, he could keep going until he slammed into the danger zone. Kyan had more emotional filtering than Justin. “But it’s impossible to believe your own wise words when you’re hurting, I know. Tell me what you want, sweetie. If everything was back to being good and light again, what would you want?”
“To be happy. Be in love, with affection and passion. Be able to help people. That’s all. If you’re talking reality. If you’re talking anything in the world. I just want my mom back.” Kyan’s grief didn’t help his nausea, but he was pretty sure he had nothing left inside him to come out. To have someone to talk to about his mom meant the world to him, because he couldn’t talk about her to Trey. Trey still very much struggled with her death, but in a completely different way to Kyan. Where Kyan felt it so deeply, so fresh, like it just happened yesterday right now, Trey had buried his head in the sand and threw himself into his job because it was the only way he could cope. “Oh my god, she would have been a nightmare to shop for Mother of the Groom outfits. She hated shopping,” he added, not sure where that thought even came from, but it made him laugh. It hurt, but somewhere through all this, he found a glimmer of hope to clutch onto.
Reecy laughed too, because he was drawing down deep inside to some special memory she wasn’t privy to, but she knew it was priceless that he was sharing it with her. “Oh, yeah? We could have sent her with Paris. Or maybe Ajay, if we didn’t want her to come out with 101 Reasons why her baby boy should stay single for not having to deal with couture. She wasn’t a fashionista, huh? Maybe that’s fitting. You never got around to shopping for your own outfit either.”
Kyan gave a little shake of his head, only enough to not set his brain off on another skull-crushing splice of pain. “No, not even close. I got that off her. Trey was always more of the stylish one. Mom and I were simple, but she was so beautiful. Even through the chemo, even towards the end, she was beautiful because when you have a beautiful soul, it shows through. She would’ve looked stunning. But she never would want me to marry for the wrong reasons, or if I wasn’t completely happy before taking the leap. That was something she taught us from the start. Trust our hearts. Do you wonder that stuff about your dad? What he was like when he was alive?”
Reecy was back to stroking his hair with the hand he wasn’t holding. As crippling as his grief was, his happy memories of his mom outweighed the pain. It always would, that was why the pain would never just ease. He was going to feel her loss for a very long time, if not, forever. “All the time. But Dad kept his memories alive. Still has. I remember when I was about ten years old, I was upset because a kid at school told me I didn’t have two dad and I was lying. The next day, I came home, and Dad had turned the walls of my room into a mini theatre. He borrowed three movie projectors and on on the three walls, pictures and movies of them were playing. All the happy moments. A movie of them at the sonograms and cuddling the framed sonogram picture, rubbing my surrogate mom’s belly. They were so in love and really thought the best years were ahead of them. Cancer’s the worst thing in the world, sweetie. When it takes one of the very reasons you live and breathe, there aren’t enough words to explain its evil.”
Hearing Reecy’s story, Kyan was getting teary again because he understood. “Mom would’ve loved your dads. They sound like they had the same parenting style. I know you miss him, even if you don’t remember ever meeting him. Mom’s probably up there right now shaking her head, wondering what the fuck I was thinking…” He was wondering the same thing, though he knew the answer. He wasn’t thinking, because he hadn’t wanted to. He had been thinking too much and finally the pain got so bad, he couldn’t hold up through it anymore.
“I don’t know, sweetie. She knows you. She’s probably up there just wishing she could reach down and give her baby a hug. Because any good parent knows there will always be times their babies fuck up, especially when they’re hurting. She’s up there sharing notes with my dad on how to send down some happy vibes and hoping that they get through and help you get back up just a little easier when you’re feeling better.” Reecy smiled faintly. The thought of her dad and Kyan’s mom hanging around up there together warmed her heart. “Was your house anywhere near here? Where you grew up?”
“I hope they are. She would look after him, I promise you.” Getting his brain to work with the hangover was a hard push but he tried to map out the route in his head. “About half an hour drive south. I know what you’re thinking. I don’t know if I can. It’s… I still remember them wheeling her out to the ambulance with a sheet over her. Then I had to go back there and somehow have to figure out how to function to decide what I was supposed to do next. She always thought I’d stay after she died, but I couldn’t. Too far away from Trey and it had all our memories there. I had to pack all her things away in boxes not long after she died so it could be ready for sale. That whole time of my life was awful. I don’t know if I can.”
Reecy shook her head. “No, no… I’m not saying you have to. I just know that it probably does have some of the worst memories for you. It’s where you took care of her and nursed her through. But it also has all your childhood memories and memories with her when she was well. We’re here, I just wanted to plant the seed so you don’t go back to New York regretting things, feeling worse, or feeling any guilt. Your beautiful memories don’t stop being beautiful because they hurt. If you can’t, you don’t have to. Hell, if you want, honey, we can jump on the next plane out of here and go home. We can stick with the stomach flu story, no one will be any the wiser. Maybe it’s Trey you need to be with right now more than anything.”
Kyan closed his eyes, trying to get his headache to figure this out, through the aching hangover haze. “I… I think I want to go home.”
“To New York?” Reecy asked quietly, pushing his hair back to kiss his forehead.
Kyan drew in a deep and through the heavy exhalation that followed, “Both…”
LOG, COMPLETE