Carter was still out cold when he opened the door, so he tore a page out of his comp book and left it on the coffee table.Working some stuff out with Trix in the practice room. Help yourself to whatever if you wake up.—Jeff
Then he joined Trix and closed the door.
Jeff’s music room was the second-largest room in the apartment. It had its own lounge furniture as well as a drum kit, piano, and a selection of guitars. But Trix was sitting on the plush rug near the low table, her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin resting on top of them. He hadn’t seen her look like that since her platonic date ditched her on prom night to hook up with the captain of the football team.
He was still pissed, but he needed to know what was going on. He grabbed a couple bottles of water from the mini fridge and sat on the rug across from her.
“So.” He cracked open the bottle, then closed and reopened the cap a few times to have something to do with his hands. “Where do we start?”
Trix picked up her own water and slid her thumb under the paper label. “I know where it really starts, but first….” She took a deep breath and finally looked up, her eyes haunted. “What I did to you—the way I’ve been treating you—is shitty. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway, and you’re right if you hate me. I’m sorry.” Another deep breath, and she opened the water bottle. The cap clattered to the floor.
Instead of drinking from it, she set it closer to the center of the table, crossed her legs, and waited.
Jeff still didn’t understand, and he was still angry. “Okay. I’m willing to listen.” To be honest, she was freaking him out.
“Right.” Trix rubbed her palms on her thighs. “Remember when you called me in April? You’d had that breakfast with Max, and money went missing from your wallet while you were in the bathroom.”
Jeff had thought nothing of leaving it on the table since Max was right there and they were waiting for the check. He’d had a thousand or so in cash on him because he’d made an appointment to look into a used guitar he’d had his eye on. Only when he’d emerged from the washroom, Max had taken care of the check and was talking with some shady-looking guy Jeff didn’t know. He handed Jeff his wallet and Jeff pocketed it and hadn’t noticed until he went to buy the guitar that the cash was missing.
“I called you and asked you if Max was using again.” He’d just been through rehab in January.
She nodded miserably. “I said I didn’t know, but I knew he was. Is.”
Jeff exhaled, uncapped his water again, and took a small sip. “How bad?” Max and Trix had always been closer than the rest of them. Jeff had thought that would change, once. He’d figured a few years on the road together and they’d gel more. And they had, but not as much as he’d thought.
“That’s complicated.” She peeled the rest of the label off the bottle. “It’s…. He does okay when we’re on tour, you know? He doesn’t use while we’re working.”
Jesus. Jeff thought back over the past ten years and realized that was true. Max had never missed a performance, never shown up high when they were working on an album. “Was that what this was about this whole time?”
She bowed her head.
“Trix, that’s—that is so fucked. Max doesn’t use while we’re working, so we have to work 24-7-365?” He could feel the rage simmering below the surface, born of years of helplessness and feeling in the dark and months of Trix manipulating him.
“I know—” she said, but he cut her off.
“Do you?” She’d been counting on him trading his well-being for Max’s, indefinitely, and in the end it wouldn’t evenwork. “This is like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.”
“Iknow,” she said again, and this time her voice broke and Jeff shut up. Maybe he should let her get through whatever she had to say, and then he could tell her that he was still leaving. “Jeff. I’ve been awful to you and to Joe. I’ve been trying to fix my mistakes, but I just keep making more of them.”
With effort, he kept his cool. He took another deep breath, then a long sip of water, and made himself count to four. “I’m not sure what you thought you could fix by trying to force an album out.”
“The thing is, it’s my fault.” Finally she pushed the water bottle to the far right side of the table, out of reach. “I’m the reason Max is an addict.”
For once in his life, Jeff heard the warning bells and slowed his roll. He put down his bottle too. This seemed like something to visibly devote his full attention to. “What do you mean? You got him hooked on drugs?”
She laughed sharply at that, then wiped at her face. She wasn’t crying, but she looked hunted. “No. Well, yes, I guess, if you count sharing my stepmom’s Xanax. I meant it’s my fault because I… because something happened to me, and Max…. Max was the only one who knew about it. And I made him swear never to tell.” When she inhaled, her chest shook. “And I think he really needed to tell someone.”
Something about the way she said it made the hair on Jeff’s arms stand up. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was going to tell him, but if she’d been sitting on it this long—it had to be close to twenty years—then maybe her need to tell him outweighed that. “Tell someone what?”
Sallow-faced, she kept her gaze on the table. “When I was nine, my parents split up. I mean, you knew that. Um, and I went to live with my mom, and when I was eleven, she married my stepdad.”
A nauseating ball of ice formed in Jeff’s stomach, though he couldn’t have said why.
Trix blew out a quick breath. “My mom’s a narcissist. Which you know. My stepdad made her really happy, though. And he was great to me too. I thought, okay, my mom’s kind of a bitch but this isn’t so bad.”
Jeff’s heart pounded. He felt sick.
“Anyway.” She shook her head. “They let me do whatever, you know? I didn’t really have chores, they didn’t care about my grades. I started hanging out with some older boys because at least they paid me attention. I was twelve, I guess, or thirteen.”
