Page 33 of It Happened on a Sunday

“Don’t,” I tell him, pressing my fingers to his lips. “I’m okay with him being the legend who died too soon. I’m content to be the woman who drove him to his death.”

“No one has to be okay with that!”

“Yeah, well, I’m not no one.” But even as I say it, the memories rise up around me. They drag me down, drag me under, until it feels like I’m right back in that bedroom with my life shattering around me and no getaway car in sight.

This is the part I’ve been dreading from the moment I started telling this story. This is the moment when my whole life crumbled.

“You’re shaking,” Sly almost whispers. “We should get you somewhere warmer.”

“I know this isn’t what you planned for this date,” I tell him. “But I want to finish this.”

“The only thing I had planned for this date was getting to know you. And I want to hear whatever you want to tell me. I just don’t want you to have hypothermia by the time you’re done.”

I shake my head. “I’m not cold. I’m just…”

“Overwhelmed?” he supplies. “Exhausted?”

“Sad,” I answer with a sigh. “But I want to get it out now. Who knows if I’ll work up the courage to do this again.”

“Okay.” He nods, then squares his shoulders like he’s preparing for a long drive to the end zone. Maybe he is. God knows, it feels like I’ve been trying to make my way to the other side of this for centuries. “What do you need from me?”

“You’re already doing it.” This time, I’m the one who takes his hands.

I close my eyes, and for a second that one horrible night comes back to me in perfect detail. I feel the breeze from the open balcony door, hear the rain pattering against the windowpanes, taste the sweet raindrops against his skin.

I think I always will.

I take a deep breath and hold it for several seconds before blowing it back out. And then I tell Sly…everything.

“Five years ago, I came home to L.A. from a quick Chicago trip only to hear from my manager that he had gotten another girl pregnant. He hadn’t even had the guts to tell me himself.

I remember feeling angry… So fucking pissed and hurt and betrayed.

And violated. He hadn’t even cared enough to wear a fucking condom when he was screwing around on me.

I just…couldn’t believe it. Except, I also totally could.

“I’d put up with everything he’d pulled, everything he’d done, and he’d cheated on me for what? A quick fuck?”

The story is pouring out of me now, the words—and old emotions—barreling through me like a freight train.

“I knew even before I got home what he was going to say. That it didn’t mean anything.

That he was just following where his muse took him.

That I was the only one he loved and nobody else mattered.

“But when I got home to confront him, he was already high. He’d done a massive dose of something—part of his latest quest for enlightenment—and I was done.

With him, with the drugs, with the excuses everyone, including me, made about his unbelievably selfish behavior.

I told him as much, but he wasn’t even cognizant enough to pay attention to the fact that I was leaving him. ”

My voice shakes nearly as much as the rest of me as I approach the climax of that awful, horrible night.

“Instead, he dragged me along with him as he danced around the patio. He was so happy, because he’d just written the chorus to ‘the most brilliant song ever.’ He tried to show it to me, but at that point I had no interest in having anything to do with him.

I just wanted to pack my stuff and get out.

“But he cornered me by the edge of the pool, explaining to me that monogamy was a limitation of our society. And that we shouldn’t let anything limit us.

That we could do anything we wanted, be anything we wanted to be.

And right then, what he wanted more than anything was to prove that I was the problem.

Not him. Not the drugs that made him capable of ‘superhuman’ things. Me.

“He could break all the rules and still win if I would just stop holding him back.” My voice threatens to break, but I keep it steady with sheer will alone. “To this day, I don’t know if I fell in the pool trying to get away from him or if he pushed me—or if it was a little bit of both.

“All I know is we were both in the pool and he was tripping, seeing things in the water that weren’t there.

He wanted me to see them, too, and when I couldn’t, he shoved me underwater and held me there.

I kept trying to get up, to get a breath, but he’d just shove me back down, telling me to look. Asking if I could see.”

I shudder now, my lungs constricting like they did that night when they were filling with water, when I was so sure I was going to die.

“In the end, I got my head above water long enough to talk him down. I got him in the house so he wouldn’t hurt himself.

And then I called his manager to come deal with him and I left. ”

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Sly’s voice is filled with so many things, I have trouble picking them all out—sorrow, concern, fear, even disgust—but that disgust doesn’t seem to be aimed at me, which is refreshing after the fallout of the last several years. “But I’m so glad you’re okay.”

But despite all those emotions roiling around in him, his eyes are steady on mine. Safe. Warm, like dawn slipping through the cracks of a tunnel that never seems to end.

I think about all the things that happened after—wrestling Jarrod into the house because I wasn’t going to leave him in that damn pool to die. Calling his manager to come be with him because I couldn’t be. And then fleeing with nothing but the wet clothes on my back.

I lean into Sly’s warmth and safety to get through the last bits, keep my eyes on his so I can get the final words out. “The next day, he called me about a hundred times, but I refused to pick up. After that, he sent me a recording of a new song he wrote for me.”

“‘No More’?” Sly asks darkly.

I nod. Because for once there’s no stage, no glitter, no spotlight. Just the truth and the man who refuses to look away from it.

“I didn’t text him back. Four hours later, his manager went to take a shower. And Jarrod, high as a fucking kite, took one risk too many.”