“Trix….”
She inhaled sharply through her nose. “No, I’ve gotten this far. I have to—just, I have to.
“You can probably guess what happens when a dumb girl starts hanging around with older boys. I probably should’ve… I should’ve just stuck to Max, but I only hung out with him when the guys were busy because he wasn’tcool. I was so dumb.”
Finally Jeff mustered the courage to reach across the table. He caught her hand in his. “Trix. You were young, not stupid.” But his mouth caught on what more to say.If someone took advantage of you.If they did anything you didn’t want.Even if shedidwant. Jesus. She was a kid.
He couldn’t get anything else out. He didn’t want to put words in her mouth, and his own was too full with horror.
She gave him a broken smile. “I kinda was, but thanks.” She squeezed his hand once and let go. “Anyway, I…. One day I was at Max’s place. His parents weren’t home. His mom was working and I think his dad had a fishing trip or something. Suddenly I got this stomach cramp, really bad, like I was going to shit myself. Except I knew I wasn’t. I just wasn’t letting myself really know.”
Jeff’s hand trembled as he took a sip from his own water bottle. He didn’t interrupt. He couldn’t.
“I must’ve freaked Max out with the screaming and crying. He broke the lock on the bathroom door and found me in the bathtub. He must’ve thought I was dying.”
“Jesus,” Jeff said finally as unexpected tears sprung to his eyes. His hand sneaked out again without his input and wrapped around hers. “That’s…. I’m so sorry you went through that alone.”
This time she didn’t pull her hand away. “I wasn’t,” she said, meeting his gaze for a moment. “I had Max. He helped clean—”
Their gaze, and her voice, broke. “It was the size of my fist. I couldn’t look at it, so Max got rid of it for me. I think that’s the worst part, that I couldn’t look and that Max had to.”
She cleared her voice, wiped at her face again. Come to think of it, Jeff didn’t think he’d ever seen her cry.
He guessed not much would register, after what she’d been through.
“I never told my mom, but she must’ve figured it out somehow because she—” Her throat worked soundlessly for a moment. “She said she couldn’t have a slut like me around the house. Didn’t want the competition.”
“Christ.” Jeff wanted to hit something.
“I moved in with my dad and stepmom,” Trix finished, “and that… that was it. Max never told. Neither did any of the boys. I guess they would’ve been in big trouble if they had. So I never got a reputation.”
As if that mattered, Jeff thought, but then, it did, didn’t it? When you were a preteen girl. Of all the things to have to worry about. Fuck. “Why tell me now?”
She lifted one shoulder in a minute shrug. “I’ve been treating you like shit. Even if I’ve been dealing with things—or not dealing with them—that doesn’t excuse the stuff I did. You’d be right to leave the band. I fucking deserve for you to leave, or to kick me out of it, or whatever. But I don’t want you to, so I have to do what I can to fix it.”
Jeff rubbed his face with both hands. He didn’t know if there was anything theycoulddo, at this point. “This is a fucking mess.”
Her face fell. “Yeah. Welcome to my life.”
At least this explained why she and Max were always so close, why it felt like Joe and Jeff were always on the outside. “All right. We need a plan.”
At that she jerked her head up. “A plan.” Hope lit her voice.
“Max is getting worse.” He’d stolen from Jeff, almost certainly to buy drugs. He’d definitely used while Jeff was in Willow Sound. He could be using right now. Jeff didn’t spend enough time with him outside of their gigs to know anymore. “He has to be, or you wouldn’t have pushed for the album so hard. Right?”
“It’s pretty bad. I made him move back in with me.”
“Narcan bad?” He needed to know what they were dealing with.
“Not since February.”
That was bad enough. Jeff downed half his water bottle. “He needs to go to rehab. Not outpatient rehab. Something with actual counselors and security.”
Trix bristled. “He needs to be a part of any discussion involving his future.”
Jeff didn’t have a comeback for that, because she was right, he couldn’t just go around deciding Max’s life for him. It wouldn’t work if Max didn’t want to quit. He held up his hands. “You’re totally right. I just… I’m not an expert, obviously, but he’s been to rehab before and it didn’t take. It seems like he needs more drastic measures.”
She massaged her temples. Somehow in the past hour, she seemed to have gained a number of fine lines around her eyes to go with the dark circles beneath them. “The trouble is, sometimes asking him about it can push him to use. I can work on it incrementally, but if we confront him… it could go really bad.”
