Chapter 174 Heartbreak sucks

Chapter 174 Heartbreak sucks
CALUM
The thick smell of smoke clogs the air. I pull out the joint between my teeth and puffs of smoke escape my lips and nose. My eyes water as the choking smell of weed invades the studio. It will take a while for me to get used to smoking this much. Not like it helps, it only dulls the pain for a few hours. 

Heartbreak sucks.

A door opens somewhere behind me. It has to be one of my nosy bandmates, and I’m proved right when someone snatches the blunt from my hand and stomps it on the floor. I glare at their foot, my gaze trailing up to the face of a very unimpressed Sam.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Sam says.

“Who says?” 

“I do. It’s my fucking house,” he mutters. 

I almost roll my eyes. He shouldn’t invite me over then if he will police my behaviour.

Stopping behind me, he places a hand on my shoulder. The door opens, but I don’t bother to check the new intruder. This is probably another intervention. They think I’m heartbroken. Well, they’re not wrong. 

“Man, I don’t know what happened to you in London but you need to snap out of this before it leads to something else,” he says.

I tip my head over the chair to meet Sam’s gaze. “Something like what, Samuel?” 

Weed should be legal everywhere, it can be good for heartbreak; it numbs the pain. Sam sighs. The memory hangs over us. We never talk about my spiral down the rabbit hole when I started those drugs. This time is different. I won’t get addicted. I only do it because it keeps me from thinking. I pat my pockets and hand over the blunts to him. There are three wraps. He frowns at them.

“You can have them,” I say.

“Jesus,” Sam groans. He walks over to the trashcan and dumps the joint inside. “You need to stop doing this to yourself, Cal.” 

“What the hell happened?” Lucas asks. I’m not sure when he appeared but he needs to fuck off, both of them. They are blowing this out of proportion. It’s just weed. “And Sam is right, you need to stop smoking this shit. I don’t care what you think it does.” 

He pushes away from the wall and stops by my chair. Sam moves to the left, leaving me in the middle. Do I tell them I have more at home? If I do, it will sound like I’m addicted but I swear, I’m not. I only smoke at least twice a day. Once in the morning when my thoughts are the loudest. Then at night when I’m reminded of the loneliness. But sometimes, the urge comes during the day, when I need to make a new song or sound.

“What happened in London?” Lucas asks.

“She moved on. End of story.” I grab the headset and pull it over my head. Pushing one of the buttons on the recorder on the table, I say, “Quick question. If smoking doesn’t affect my singing, why is it a problem?” 

“It could affect your health,” says a third voice. I shoot to my feet and whip around to face her. The headset drops to my feet.

I lied. 

I fucking lied to myself. I thought we could move past that and be a normal family. My head spins from the sudden wave of anger and hunger that erupt over me. I palm my face, willing myself to calm down or breathe. That’s the thing with smoking, it gets me super hungry. I’m famished.

Mum dares to take a step forward. “You spend more of your time smoking than you do with your friend or the music. It’s bad.” 

I scoff. My finger points in her direction. If she was closer, I may have pierced it right through her chest or eyes, or anywhere that will leave a permanent scar so she knows not to meddle or mess with my life again.

“You, of all people, don’t get to tell me what to do, Mum,” I say with a sneer. I need to act my age, but I’m pissed and fucking tired of having to let things slide. She has moved on but I can’t. I will never be able to do so. I take a menacing step towards her but she holds her ground. “Or should I say, Dani?” 

As the question leaves my lips, I groan and run my hands over my face. I’m letting her get to me. I can’t let her get to me. I don’t care. Females ain’t shit. Maybe not all, but some. And she’s wrong. I’ve been working on the music. I’ve just not been interested in teaming up for a project right now.

“Leave us,” Mum says. She sends a pleading look to the boys. “Please. Give us a minute.” 

I shake my head. “Na, Dani. Nope. No one is leaving. If you want to leave, go ahead. In fact, if anyone should leave, it’s Dani.” 

If Mum wasn’t working for the label, we wouldn’t even speak or see each other. The doors of my house are permanently closed to her. A resigned sigh escapes her. I stride back to my seat and plonk down into it.

Tremors travel up my arms as I bend to pick the headset. I don’t know if it’s hunger or nerves. A door shuts. I pull the headset over my ears and hit the play button on the table equipment. The lyrics to the song I’ve been practising plays in my ear. I nod to the beat. I’m not a music producer but heartbreak gave me some insights. God, I sound stupid. But that’s how it is with her. I always get some inspiration around Cathy.

“Well, that was harsh,” someone says. Lucas. I tap a key on the recorder and the sound takes over the studio. As expected, it silences them until I hear, “Shit. It’s fire.” 

“Yeah?” I murmur. My head bobs. I catch an image of me on the glass window. My eyes are red from smoking. I finished recording the song today. The weed may have helped to get the rest of the lyrics out of me. 

“I like it,” Lucas says. His foot drums on the floor. We will need a producer to work on it, but it sounds nice. Scott can take care of the technicalities. “Do we get to come in?” 

“No?” I reply. Lucas laughs. “I don’t know yet.” 

“Were you really crying in the backseat of a cab?” Sam asks out of the blues. Shit. I put that there. I turn off the music. Sam storms towards me and hits the play button. I stare at the ground, wishing it would open up. “How much of this song is real? Crying in the backseat of a London cab. Grown men cry.” They do. Maybe not actual tears, but they do. They also feel. I know because I felt everything. I still do. “What happened?”

I press a finger to my forehead. I need to eat. “I said it already, Sam, she moved on.” 

“How do you know she moved on?” Lucas speaks out this time. I throw the headset on the table, and my fingers tangle in my hair. I hate it when they are being serious. He stops the music. “Did you even talk to her?” 

“I didn’t need to. I saw enough.” 

They both groan. I know what I saw. “She was with her kid. That’s why she had that username. Mama Mace. Mace is her kid.”  

“I don’t know man,” Lucas murmurs. My hands run over my hair. My gaze drops to the floor. I’m tired of this topic. “Cal, what if it was her sister’s kid or something?” 

I laugh. “Cathy is an only child.”

“What if she was babysitting?” Sam asks. 

“Do you honestly believe what you just said?” I reply. 

His lips draw into a thin line, and his hands mess up his hair. Lucas looks defeated beside him. “Not really. But it’s a possibility.” 

“Why would someone like Cathy want to babysit?” I throw back at Sam. He crosses his arms and rotates one shoulder. “She must be a busy person. If she’s holding a kid, then it has to be hers. And if she has a kid, then she has a man. Or had, I don’t know. But I saw her with her boyfriend.”

“Maybe he’s just a friend.”

They are clutching at straws to make me feel better and I do not wish to be babied. It has been two months. We all need to get over her. We won’t always end up with the people we love, sadly, I’m in that minority. 

“It’s not a friend. They were hugging.” Sam opens his mouth but I beat him to it. “It was the same guy from the pub. He was all over her. He helped with the baby. They hugged. They smiled at each other. It was intimate and...” My voice lowers. I tug on the hem of my shirt. I think I might just cry now. “...I felt like an intruder watching them. So yeah, she moved on. I will too.”  

Sam’s tired green eyes peer into mine, wanting me to give this another shot. But I’m not setting myself up for another heartbreak to prove them wrong. Lucas is more relenting. He drags a chair closer to me and turns on the music. My voice floats into the air, and I pretend the lyric isn’t about heartbreak and loss of the only girl I ever loved. Probably the only girl I’ll ever love in this lifetime.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lucas whispers. 

“I don’t know,” I reply honestly. I stopped knowing. “But I’ll figure it out. Eventually.” 

He pats my shoulder to show his support. It has been weeks, but it feels like yesterday since I saw her hugging another man. I push those painful memories back. I only need them when it’s time to write a new song. 

Sam leaves the room. Lucas sighs. “I think you should release this one alone,” he says. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he replies. He curls a finger around a piece of his hair, then lets it bounce back to its original state. I run my hands through mine. It has started growing out again. “It will be weird and impersonal if two of us were singing about your pain.” 

“We’ll have to run it by Scott first,” I reply. 

“He will most likely agree. It’s about the money, right?” And satisfying the fans. But I nod. Lucas jumps to his feet and claps my back. “You know we’ll be going to London?” 

I know. 

I dread it. 

But on the bright side, after our Europe tour, we don’t have another for the rest of this year. Lucas says something and I strain my ears to pick out his words. He laughs when he notices. 

“I said,” he starts again. “For what it’s worth, I hope you two get a chance to talk. To get closure and be able to properly move on. Why did she never try to reach out to you?” Because Mum sent her those emails. But they don’t need to know this part. “Cathy let you go and you seem to be the only one making any efforts. Why’s that the case? I don’t know how love works but if I love someone, I’m not letting them go that easy.”  

“You don’t understand,” I reply in Cathy’s defence. But I don’t sound as convincing. She had the tickets. She had the money. Why didn’t she fly over to confront me? The questions leave a bitter taste in my mouth. “You don’t understand, Lucas. You don’t.” 

“What I do understand is that you two have a lot to say to each other and you can start by telling her you lost your memories,” he says. “She can’t be mad at that. It was not your fault you got into an accident, Calum.” 

But it’s mine. If I had stood my ground, refused the relationship, none of this would have happened.