Page 120 of Dirty Like Zane
Now, it was like my priorities had totally flipped upside-down.
Instead of me spending my days holed away in my hotel room or the Lady Bus or some random cafe, where I hoped I wouldn’t run into Zane, I found myself materializing outside his hotel room or his bus, or in the hotel lobby, waiting to spend the day withhim.
He didn’tcomplain.
The first time it happened was a couple days after we’d flown back from Vancouver together, while we were in Chicago. Bright and early, I was waiting in front of the hotel with a Rolls-Royce Phantom stretch limo, laptop and coffee in hand, ready to start the day—with Zane—when the band members started rolling out of thehotel.
To everyone’s surprise, the car, which was a step up from your standard luxury sedan, was for Zane and Zane only. Well, and me and Shady. Zane had been clean for just over three weeks, and by three weeks, the doctors had expected the worst of his withdrawal symptoms tosubside.
Subside, theyhad.
It was a major accomplishment, and I thought we could celebrate. I was proud of him and I wanted him to knowit.
That day, I’d accompanied the band to a photo shoot, and all of us had lunchtogether.
From that day on, I went pretty much everywhere withZane.
I’d hang out behind the scenes or at a nearby café, working on my laptop and phone while he did his thing, or I’d run errands, and when he was done we’d meet up. We’d eat meals together or with the rest of the band or withShady.
We even hit the gym together sometimes. I’d do a yoga class while he lifted weights with Dylan or Jesse and Jude, and Shady smoked outside; big and burly as he was, Shady wasn’t much for workingout.
Or we’d sit in the back of the car or in his tour bus together and work, side-by-side. He’d write lyrics in his notebook. I’d make phonecalls.
Sometimes we’d enjoy longsilences.
Sometimes we’dtalk.
And when we did… we talked about a lot ofshit.
He told me, at length, about a ton of shit he’d done over the years that he wasn’t proud of. A whole laundry list of his self-proclaimed faults and fuck-ups, that he wanted me toknow.
I listened, but honestly, it didn’t make me think any less of him. Partly because I pretty much knew all that shit about him already, and partly because I thought it was incredibly brave of him to tell me. That instead of chasing me down and trying to win me over, he was just being real. He was opening up to me in a way he never really hadbefore.
I already knew most of his dark shit, but not because he’d actually talked to me aboutit.
More because I’d been a reluctantwitness.
I figured he was scared that it all might scare me away. But actually, it just made me feel closer to him—that he chose to trust me with all these things he felt so badabout.
He also told me how hard it had been giving up pot, that it wasn’t as easy as he’d probably made it look. That he still craved it, that he still had some difficult nights and moments he wanted to break right down and smokeup.
Just like he sometimes still wanted to take adrink.
It was pretty brave of him to tell me this, too, because I was pretty sure it scared the shit out of him to admit it tome.
Zane had never wanted me to see his weaknesses; I knew that about him by now. He didn’t want me to decide that he was a failure; that he was going to fail at this, that he couldn’t do it—and give up onhim.
So we talked about that,too.
We talked about pretty mucheverything.
Everything except ourrelationship.
It wasn’t a point of contention between us. It was a nonissue, actually; something we’d finally been able to call a bit of a truce on and put aside, fornow.
We didn’t need to fight about it or even discuss it. We knew it was there, waiting to be dealt with, when we were bothready.
For now, we were getting along. Things were good between us. We weren’t together, but we werecopacetic.
