Page 15 of Flames and Flowers
Matt
There are people who drift in and out of your life and make no waves. Make no damn difference. Others set fire to everything you ever knew and leave a smoldering mess in their wake.
Ashley did that to me.
Then Danica planted flowers in the ashes, where I had to see them every day from the corners of my eyes, like a promise that was just out of reach.
I wasn’t sure which was worse, the flames or the flowers.
Three months after Ash told me that we needed to cool it, I came home from the road when the Dirty tour ended. A year-and-a-half of my life on tour with one of the biggest touring bands in the world, and I had a mere two weeks off to try to get my feet on the ground, try to remember where everything went in my apartment, how to live in the real world.
Then I went into the studio with my new band.
The Players.
I hadn’t seen Ash or Danica since they left the tour. There were no quick trips home to see them on my days off, and they didn’t come to see me.
There were no romantic letters or flirtatious texts or hints at visits, or anything at all that suggested the months we’d been apart had been hard for Ash. Just a few brief, overly professional phone calls from him; like he was reminding me we were in a band, and that band was getting together to work, soon. And he was just checking to make sure I was stillinthe band.
Plus a few phone calls from Danica; short and sweet phone calls in which she told me she missed me, I told her I missed her, and the worlds of things we didn’t say filled the vast universe of silence between us.
And then suddenly we were reunited, and once again, I was with them every day.
It wasn’t easy for me to walk through the door of Little Black Hole studio that first day, hug my new band members and put a smile on my face.
I was angry with Ash.
I hadn’t been angry with him the entire three months we’d been apart or anything, but when I thought about seeing him, and the fact that he hadn’t even missed me after he pushed me away… yeah, I was angry.
But anger was a weird thing. Mostly, it was cover. A prickly shield to hide all the other shit you were feeling.
The real shit.
I knew that. But I let myself be angry, because I figured the more I let myself be angry, the sooner I’d get past it. And the sooner I’d get past all the shit that was underneath the anger. I’d felt it creeping up as soon as I saw them both again.
Rejection.
Abandonment.
Pain that was all too familiar.
At least the anger gave me something to hold onto; structure and a phantom shape to the emptiness of feeling cast aside, when they were still together.
They had each other.
Ash showed up each day for the band. But each night, he went home with her.
And Danica kept showing up, too. For him. For all of us. Bringing flowers, literally, into the studio. Redecorating. Bringing us lunch and snacks and love, like she had so much to spare she could just sprinkle it around, like seeds, in case any took root. In case anyone needed some. She was a gardener, sowing happiness from the deep well of joy that overflowed her soul.
Because she was loved. She had Ashley’s love.
I could’ve had someone, too. And I did. Frequently.
Briefly.
I just couldn’t havethem.
I didn’t have anything like love in my bed.
