I laugh as I bump him. “When do you wake up to do yoga?”
“Not the same, Jax.”
I chuckle.
Ten minutes later, we make it to the top. Wesley pulls in a long breath, a wide grin stretching his cheeks. “Man, this is beautiful.” He spreads his arms out and closes his eyes, tipping his head back. “God, I feel fucking free up here.” He opens them and looks at me. “You come here all the time? And see this?” He gestures toward the view in front of us.
“Yeah.” I sit on the bench and start unpacking the bag, pulling out bottles of water, fruit, crackers, and cheese. “It’s nice. Not much foot traffic and when people are up here, they want to sit in silence as well.”
Wesley sits beside me and cracks open a fresh bottle of water and takes a swig. I pass him the container of apples, and he picks a few slices and stuffs one in his mouth.
Our silence is relaxing, neither of us having the urge to fill it with nonsense. This is what I wanted with Evan—the ability to just sit and be. But he never liked to hike, and the one time he came with me, he complained the entire time. It erased the magic of the moment, and we turned around and went home before we even reached a halfway point.
But sitting beside Wesley, I’m able to enjoy the early morning, the view, and the company.
My mind clear, I start humming Lana’s Melody, the song feeling right in the moment. Any other time I came here, I wouldn’t say or do anything. I would just relax and clear my head. But today, it seems right that my mom is herewith us. She loved Wesley and would be proud of him for getting clean.
Softly, Wesley starts singing, his voice so ethereal it sounds unreal. As I keep humming, he sings louder, the richness of his timbre washing over me. I hum and hum, watching how his face transforms the longer he belts out lyrics. He loves it, loves music. It might have taken him to some terrible places, but he was meant to sing.
The last time I saw you, I knew you were going to be…
The person that made me love…
Me…
His voice trails off,and he smiles briefly before a look of such anguish crosses his face that I get worried.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I know you said…music, it’s?—”
Wesley turns to me and shakes his head. “It’s not about the music. It’s about who I wrote the song with. Vic.”
There’s that name again. He must have meant a great deal to Wesley for him to constantly be on his mind.
“Can you tell me what happened to him?”
Wesley closes his eyes and clenches his hands into fists against his thighs. “He overdosed.”
“Shit. I’m sorry,” I murmur.
He exhales roughly, a sob catching on the long breath. “I, uh…I was there.”
“What do you mean?”
Wesley rocks as he stares out at the forest below. “Mitchand Kas smoked weed, getting high whenever they could get their hands on a joint, but they never messed with pills or anything. But me and Vic? We found a way to get the harder stuff. My dad had pills from when he was in some kind of construction accident and didn’t notice if I lifted a few every now and then. Any other time, we’d score from local dealers at our school.”
I don’t speak, don’t ask questions, I barely even breathe. Wesley looks as if he needs to get this off his chest, and I don’t want to interrupt him while he’s unburdening his soul.
“For years,” he says, “we used together, Vic using more than me, but he always shared.” He releases a humorless chuckle. “But it was harmless, right? We made it to our gigs, we wrote music, and we signed a deal. We were…we were young, and we were invincible.” A faint smile crosses his lips before it drops. “That’s what we thought, anyway.”
A shuddering breath leaves him, and he rocks faster. “One night, we finished up our studio session earlier than usual, and we all left, wanting a few minutes of downtime. We couldn’t agree on how a song should sound, and we weren’t getting anywhere. Most people think it’s just walk into the booth, sing a song, and it’s done. There’s a lot that goes into making a single track, and that day, we were all exhausted and frustrated with the sound engineer, the label manager, and Zed, our group manager. Nothing was going to plan. We’d recorded one track, but Vic wasn’t happy with the result, and he said we had to hang it up to rest our vocals. I wanted a hit of something, so I didn’t care one way or the other.
“Mitch and Kas said they wanted to grab some food, but me and Vic wanted to get faded. So we split up and headed to our shithole apartment, while they went with Zed to a restaurant near the studio.” He wraps his arms around hiswaist and lowers his head. “When we got home, me and Vic got stoned. I had some pills, and we had some coke that one of the studio execs gave us. I started in on the pills, tossing them back before we did the coke, chasing a high.” He looks over at me. “This isn’t going to be a pretty story.”
“It’s okay. I’m not judging you.”
He folds his lips in and nods. “Me and Vic did a few lines and shot the shit for a bit. Then he pulled out the shit he got from some fucking guy down the block. ‘Let’s try something different,’ he said, showing me the packet of heroin and the paraphernalia. I shook my head. I never got down with needles. My mom was a heroin addict, among other things, and fucked random dudes to support her and Perry’s habit. I never wanted to do that, even if it was the only substance around that would get me high.”
I have a feeling I know where his story is going, and my heart thumps wildly in my chest. Please God, don’t let it be what I think it is.
