Page 45 of Heartbreak Honey

Before

Trevor went to Oli’s. He felt pathetic doing it, but he didn’t care anymore. He needed a friend.

He didn’t have a phone so he couldn’t call, and he was lucky Oli answered his door. Oli frowned when he saw him, which told Trevor he must look as awful as he felt. Before Oli could even invite him in, he started spilling out the story. He barely registered it as Oli took him by the arm and led him through the house, sitting him at the kitchen table. Oli made coffee and Trevor talked. And sobbed. He wasn’t sure if he was even coherent, but Oli sat in front of him listening.

His untouched coffee was cold by the time he finished. When he ran out of words, he didn’t know what to do next. Oli said he’d move Trevor’s car into the garage, and then he took him to the guest room and told him to lie down. So Trevor lay there alone, fully dressed on top of the covers, and stared at the blank green wall for who knew how long.

Until he heard someone pounding on the front door. He bolted upright, panicked.

Oli cracked the bedroom door and poked his head in. “Skyler’s outside. Do you want me to let him in?”

“No,” was all Trevor managed to say. But it was enough for Oli, who promptly walked away.

Skyler was still pounding, and Trevor could hear him shouting for someone to open the door. Then all the noise stopped. Oli must have opened it. Skyler was begging to see Trevor now, but Oli wasn’t talking as loudly, so Trevor couldn’t make out what he said in response.

He crept to the open bedroom door and listened.

“I told you he’s not here.”

“He is! He has to be!” Skyler said. “I already went to Jermaine and Noah’s!”

Trevor noticed he didn’t mention checking at Sierra’s place. So even though he’d said that terrible thing, implied Trevor was cheating, that wasn’t the first or second or even third place he thought Trevor would be. That was something, maybe. Or maybe not.

“I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” Oli told him calmly.

“No, he’s here. I know he’s here. Let me see him. Please.”

“He’s not here,” Oli repeated. “And honestly, Sky, I don’t know what you did this time, but I’m betting whatever it was, you’ve gone too far. You need to calm down and take care of yourself, and then figure out how to make this right. And if you can’t, if Trevor decides he doesn’t want to be with you anymore, then you’ll need to accept that.”

Skyler didn’t respond.

Trevor couldn’t blame him, taken aback himself by Oli’s tone. He was pretty sure easy-going, human Labrador Oliver McKinley had never spoken to anyone so harshly in his life.

After a few moments, he heard Oli shut the door, and that was it. Skyler was gone.

Trevor had been in a fog for the past twenty-four hours. He’d stayed with Oli, eventually fallen asleep. Then he’d woken up in the morning and eaten whatever Oli put in front of him. But nothing seemed real.

Things couldn’t be this bad. This couldn’t be his life.

And yet, it was. Because he was here, backstage at the Grammys. The show must go fucking on even though his heart was broken.

He didn’t know what he’d say when he saw Skyler. Didn’t know what Skyler would say. Didn’t know if Skyler wanted to break up with him or if he’d apologize. Didn’t know how he could accept either one of those things.

But Skyler didn’t show up for their final run-through. They did it without him, leaving space where he should have been and pretending he was singing his parts. Maggie was livid. And Trevor was falling apart, but either no one noticed, or they didn’t have time to care. He stood on his mark, and he sang his lines, but it was like he wasn’t really there.

He heard Noah talking to Maggie afterward, trying to figure out what they’d do if Skyler didn’t show up for the performance.

What would Trevor do?

Jermaine cornered him as he went to grab a water bottle from the refreshments table. Asked him what was going on, what happened, what he’d done. What he’d done.

Why was it his fault?

Maybe it was his fault. Or maybe it was Skyler’s. Or maybe it was both of theirs, but what difference did it make? Everything was a mess.

Miraculously (or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it), Skyler did show up. He barely made it in time before they were supposed to go on, and he was clearly drunk, but he was here. Everyone was shuffling around backstage, the performers and the crew, and Noah was glaring at Skyler, but no one stopped him from going on with the rest of them.

Trevor didn’t know if Maggie was so relieved he’d made it that she hadn’t noticed the state he was in. Or if she’d made a split-second decision that any form of Skyler was better than the rest of them going out there and trying to rework their performance around his absence with no rehearsal. Skyler had certainly had a few drinks before performances in the past and everything had been fine.

But this time it wasn’t.

Skyler stumbled around like a baby giraffe learning to use its legs, almost knocking over both Jermaine and their bass player. He sang the first verse of their song loudly, but he wasn’t hitting any of the right notes. Then when the song reached the chorus, he bent over and threw up on his own shoes.

The rest of them shot panicked looks at each other, waiting for someone to decide what to do. They kept going, but Skyler wasn’t even trying anymore. Turning his back on the audience, he flung out his arm and inadvertently whacked Noah in the chest.

And Noah, who had apparently reached his limit, reacted. He shoved Skyler away hard, and Skyler hit the floor.

Trevor ran over and punched Noah in the face.

In the disastrous chaos that followed, Trevor’s brain vaguely registered the fact that all of this had aired on live television. But he couldn’t muster up any will to care.

Maggie hadn’t had time last night to let them know how much deep shit they were in, because she was too busy trying to do damage control. But she’d changed her plans so that she’d be riding on the bus with them today, which was supposed to leave at eight a.m.

Trevor didn’t know where Skyler was. He hadn’t taken the car home with Trevor last night, and when Trevor had woken up after finally falling asleep around four this morning, he still wasn’t there.

When the car had arrived to take him to the bus, Trevor probably would have gone back to sleep and let the driver wait outside forever if it weren’t for the fact that Oli had been in the car. He’d come inside and physically dragged Trevor out the door.

And now they all stood outside in the parking lot. Trevor, Oli, Jermaine, Noah with a black eye, crew members, Maggie, Christian, and the bus drivers. But no Skyler.

Nobody had heard from him, nobody could reach him, nobody knew where he was.

Nobody knew what was going on.

Nobody knew what to do.

Trevor felt like his heart had shriveled up and died, and it was only by a mistake that he was still standing.

Eventually, after they’d waited an hour, Maggie sent them all home. She said she’d have to cancel their first show tomorrow, and possibly the one after that, until they could find Skyler.

For a while, Trevor, Oli, Jermaine, and Noah didn’t move. They all stood there in a small circle staring at each other. Noah looked furious, but Oli and Jermaine looked worried. Jermaine apologized to Trevor for whatever he’d said to him before the performance last night, but Trevor didn’t even remember it.

Everything had fallen apart.

He should have seen it coming a long time ago. But somehow, in all the scenarios he’d thought up about things going wrong, he’d never imagined that it could all end up like this.

His driver attempted to take him home, but Trevor couldn’t go back to the place where he knew Skyler wouldn’t be. And he couldn’t try to find him right now. He didn’t know if he wanted to.

So he had the driver drop him off at Sierra’s.

He knocked on her door, and when she opened it, all he could say was, “Hi.”

She took one look at his face before holding out her arms.

And there was nothing left for him to do but step into them.