“Right.” He paused, and I looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue. “That night”—he swallowed hard as he struggled not to let the emotions of that time take over—“I stole my mom’s car. Shit, that sounds bad. I drove to my girlfriend’s house and she wasn’t home. That was normal. Her mother seemed shocked to see me, though. It was odd. I always loved her mother, and we were close when they lived down the road from me. That day, something was different.” He shook his head. “It was probably all in my head—I was pretty fucked up about what had happened. So I tried her cell phone and after three tries, she finally answered. She told me she was doing her homework while her mom cooked dinner.”

“Oh, no,” I said as I realized she had lied to him on the worst day of his life. I closed my eyes as if preparing for a physical blow. I didn’t want to see his heart break in his eyes as he told the rest of the story. His warm hand slid over mine, and I opened my eyes.

“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” He sat back, his hand sliding off mine. We picked up our shots that had been dropped off while he was talking.

“To friends.” He held out his shot glass, and I bumped mine against his, causing some of the alcohol to splash over our fingers. We drank it down as a hard-rock song came on the jukebox. We both glanced over in that direction as another patron rounded the bar and took a seat on his stool.

“Enough of that sappy shit. I drink to forget, not remember.”

Eric and I just looked at each other and laughed. I took a drink of my soda and looked up at Eric, waiting for him to continue.

He gripped the back of his neck in his hand as he rolled his head from side to side. His eye was purpling and I could only imagine the lump that was forming from his head slamming the floor. As much as I loved Tucker, in that moment all I saw was Jax, and it terrified me.

“You okay?”

“One of my headaches. It’s no big deal.”

“Why do you get them?”

“That’s another story. We still haven’t finished this one. So, as I sat outside of her house in my mother’s old station wagon, knowing damn well she wasn’t inside, my sadness was replaced with anger. I drove around town checking out all the local hangouts. I knew she had mentioned her friend getting a brand-new Jetta, so I kept an eye out. I saw a candy-apple red Jetta parked outside of Tommy’s Pizza. I walked up to the front of the building and I wasn’t even mad that she had lied. Shit, I lied sometimes, too. We were kids, but I really needed her.” He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “As I walked in front of the large window in the front of the building I saw her inside with some guy kissing his way down her neck.”

“I’m so sorry.” My hand flew over my mouth.

“Not as sorry as she was. I grabbed one of those stupid decorative bricks from the little garden under the window and threw it as hard as I could. As soon as it left my fingers I knew I had fucked up. I cried as I drove out of there as fast as possible, like I could somehow turn back time. I wasn’t that great of a driver, though, and I didn’t see a stop sign. I wrecked . . . hard. I didn’t hit anyone else, luckily, but I had a pretty severe concussion and spent a few weeks in the hospital.” He looked up at the ceiling before looking back at me. “I lost my brother, I lost my girl, I couldn’t get my license. I got put on probation for the window and driving without a license, Coach kicked me off the team. My parents were pissed. They didn’t know how to deal with my brother’s death, and I became the perfect scapegoat, the ideal punching bag. The rest is rock-and-roll history.”

“Geez. That’s why you have the headaches?”

“No. Like I said, another story.”

I shook my head as I sat back in my seat. “But, what does that have to do with Tucker?”

“I gave up on football, of course, after I was kicked off the team. I began to play my drums more and more. It was a good release for anger, and I wasn’t allowed to leave my house. My parents couldn’t wait for me to turn eighteen. They wanted me out of the fucking house so bad.” He signaled the bartender, and my stomach churned.

“I can’t.”

“Two beers,” he called out and ran his hand over his head. “So, long story just a little longer.” He smirked. “I auditioned for Damaged. It was a cool group of guys, and I felt like I finally belonged somewhere, ya know?”

I did know. The band had become my family, and now they had been taken away from me just as they had from him. We fell silent for a moment.

“It was amazing to have people who understood you. I loved it. I gave everything to the band. But one day, she walked back into my life.”

I was sitting on the edge of my chair now, completely lost in his sad story and wondering how it had anything to do with Tucker.

“We played a gig at this stupid little dive bar. Kind of like this place.” The bartender raised an eyebrow as he sat down our bottles and Eric chuckled. “When she walked in, I couldn’t play. I couldn’t move. I hadn’t stopped loving her. I mean, I hated her, but my heart just wouldn’t let go. When our set ended I was dying. It felt like my heart hadn’t beat since I last saw her that day when she caused it to stop. I waited for the other guys to get off the stage, and as I went to walk down the steps, I watched Tucker wrap his arms around Cadence and kiss her.”

I felt the color drain from my face as I heard her name. I knew Cadence all too well. She had tried her best to break Tucker and me up the night I had found out I was pregnant.

“Tucker stole your girlfriend?”

Eric took a long swig of his beer and set the bottle on the table, spinning it in his fingers.

“Nope. He didn’t know. She had lied to him just as she lied to me. I had no idea it was him in that pizza shop until he told me how long they had been together. She never mentioned it. She acted like we didn’t know each other. That hurt more than the cheating, I think.”

I took a drink from my beer, hoping I could make myself numb enough not to care about Tucker with someone else. My memory flashed to him on the bike with that bitch straddling his lap.

“For the most part I was able to pretend it wasn’t killing me inside, but then one day . . .” He shook his head and closed his eyes. I was worried about his headaches, but I didn’t want to interrupt him. “She decided to come on tour with us. It was so hard watching them together and knowing she was sleeping so close by . . . with him. I knew it wasn’t his fault, but it still ripped me apart. He had been like a brother to me.”

I reached across the table and slid my hand over his, trying to give him the same comfort as he had given me. His fingers wrapped around mine and he stared down at them and smiled.

“It feels good to be able to talk about this.” His fingers unwrapped from mine, and I pulled my hand back, placing it on my bottle.

“Is that why you fight him so much?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to shake the darker mood that had settled over him.

“No. Cadence had been using drugs here and there. I caught her snorting something one night, and I tried to tell Tucker about it. He flipped out on me, saying I was jealous of him, and he saw the way I looked at his girl. His girl. He didn’t want to believe she was doing all this crazy shit. One day my pills went missing and I flipped out. My head was killing me. I tried to tell him it was her, but he didn’t believe me. Not until one day when we found her in a bathroom after a show. She was lying in a heap on the floor, covered in sweat. I thought she was dead.”

“You blame Tucker for what she did?”

“I blame her for her actions . . . but she was a junkie and needed help. He refused to see it. He blamed me, saying I gave her the pills and I was trying to screw up what he had.”

“That doesn’t sound like Tucker,” I said in barely a whisper as I took another drink.

“He got the girl and he let her nearly die. After she finally got the help she needed, he tossed her aside.”

“And you wouldn’t have? She was toxic.” I remembered everything that Tucker had told me about her, trying to find a way to defend him, explain his heartlessness.

“I would have walked through hell and back for her.”

“You can only take so much before you get burned.”

Eric’s eyes met mine as he thought over what I said.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” He took a drink. “I think he is still trying to make it up to himself.”

“How so?”

“He didn’t let you die.”

Suddenly I wondered if Tucker had saved me because he thought it would make up for what happened in the past.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Cass. I just meant he wouldn’t let someone he cared about get hurt again.”

I nodded, but the tears were forming in my eyes and I just wanted to break down.

“Does he know now that you had dated her?”

“Yeah. We got in a fight once and I let it slip. It didn’t make things any better between us.”

“Obviously,” I joked as I looked over his fat lip and bruised eye. He laughed. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Eric’s eyes scanned the room and he pointed to the back left corner with the neck of his bottle. I pushed from the table and walked on wobbly legs to the door. I hadn’t realized how much I had drunk until I stood. The bathroom was a single stall, and I was grateful for a little privacy. I splashed some cold water on my face. This was a lot to absorb. And suddenly, I questioned Tucker’s motives for wanting to help me. For the first time in a long time, I felt like a charity case. It made me sick.

I left the bathroom and pulled a one-dollar bill from my back pocket. Eric was staring down at his bottle, lost in memories.