The Mixtape

“Do you have a charger?”

“No. I have an iPhone, not an Android.”

Of course she did. Not that it was her fault. I put myself in this position, being a complete dumbass. I bet my manager and publicist were having meltdowns.

I massaged my temples, hoping the medicine would kick in sooner rather than later. “Listen, about last night, and, well, us . . .” I looked up toward her, and she had the blankest stare as she waited for me to continue. “Did we . . . ?”

She nodded. “Did we what?”

“You know.”

“I know what?”

“You know,” I urged. “Did we have sex?”

“What? No! Of course not!” she whisper-shouted again, slightly closing the bedroom door so her daughter wouldn’t hear too much. The way she grew flustered made me feel like an idiot.

“We didn’t?”

“Trust me, you weren’t in any shape to perform any kind of act like that. Plus, I’m not going to take advantage of a person who’s that messed up. Plus plus, my biggest concern was to get you to stop peeing in my houseplant.”

I peed in her houseplant? Way to be a drunk idiot, Oliver. “If we didn’t sleep together, then why am I at your house?”

“Like I said, you got wasted at the bar I work at, and the paparazzi crashed in and tried to bombard you. I was your only saving grace to get you out of that place after you got your butt kicked by the Incredible Hulk for being a smart-ass.”

“I was a smart-ass?”

“You told a guy you could screw his girlfriend better than he could.”

So, I was the complete opposite of myself. Wonderful. Sober Oliver could hardly gather his thoughts to form a sentence. Drunk Oliver had enough courage to get into a bar fight.

I narrowed my already swollen eyes as I tried to piece everything together, and still, it all blurred over. I stood up and scratched the back of my neck. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“As long as you don’t go peeing in my plant again, sure. First door on your left. And eat the doughnut. You need to soak up some of that poison you took in.” She definitely was a mother. She walked out of the room and shouted, “Reese! Shoes, now!”

The moment I reached the bathroom, I closed the door behind me, turned on the faucet, and splashed water against my face. Tyler was going to give me hell for missing the performance. I should’ve played the show last night. No, I never should’ve agreed to performing the damn thing in the first place. It was all too much, all too soon, but I thought it might help me to get out there and face the reality that Alex was gone.

You fucking idiot. You should’ve just performed.

All I remembered from the night before was sitting back there in the dressing room trying to get up enough nerve to walk out on the stage and perform songs I’d been performing for the past ten-plus years. All I had to do was get out of my own head, but I wasn’t good at that shit. My thoughts swallowed me whole every time I was sober, and like an idiot, I hadn’t had a drink that evening. I thought I could perform sober, like Alex.

Alex never walked onto that stage with a drop of liquor in his system. He didn’t need anything else to get him going. His preshow tradition was meditation and prayer—that’s all. No vodka, no whiskey, no temporary fix. Alex spent most of his life grounded. I was the opposite of my brother. I spent my whole life trying to float away as my anxiety spun me around at full speed.

Last night I tried to be more like my brother. I sat in my dressing room with nothing but a ceiling fan running. I needed to have complete silence, except for the sounds of the blades running around in circles. That was how Alex did it. That was how he prepped before a show. I tried to pray, but I felt as if no one was listening. I tried to meditate, but my mind was too loud.

How had Alex done it? How did he silence his mind when mine was always so loud?

As the ceiling fan spun above me that night, and my heart kept racing, I gripped the heart-shaped piece sitting around my neck. When I was younger, I thought it was kind of a dumb thing, but the older I got, the more I missed my parents and their gentleness when I was in a harsh, harsh world.

I didn’t get home to Texas nearly enough to visit my parents, so every time I held that necklace close to my chest, I thought of them both and their love.

Though, that night before the show, without the whiskey, without Alex, my thoughts were eating me alive. I hated thinking so much. I hated the silence. Sometimes my mind got so dark I wondered why I was even still breathing.