R. Lilley - Lovely Trigger

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t necessarily want to see him every single day.

I knew I should have felt bad about that. I felt bad about not feeling bad. The man adored me.

The first time we made love, I locked myself in the bathroom afterward and sobbed like a baby for three hours, the first time I’d cried in years. I tried not to dwell on the why of it.

He was even understanding about that. He let me have my space and cry it out on my own.

Tristan would have broken down the door, my traitorous mind told me. He would have made it better.

Tristan was too self-involved to ever see your pain, my sensible side told me.

This was the side of myself that had gotten me out of that relationship intact.

Well, intact enough. It was hard to pretend I was okay when the very idea of having sex with my boyfriend again made me hysterical.

Andrew was very understanding. I hadn’t told him much, but he knew that I’d suffered through some trauma in my life and assured me that he had no problem waiting however long it took for me to be ready.

He really was the nicest man. I tried to show him how much I appreciated him.

I cooked him involved and extravagant dinners. He considered himself a foodie.

I bought him thoughtful gifts, because he was a thoughtful man.

I always had my eye out for new music he’d like. He was a bit of a hipster, always looking for something obscure.

I did everything I could with my free time to show him I cared about him, everything that didn’t involve sleeping with him again and tried not to focus on the fact that my boyfriend was far more a friend to me than he’d ever be a lover.

It was in the early fall that Bev went in for a routine exam, and her doctor discovered a hard knot in the side of her left breast.

After a short series of tests, she was diagnosed with malignant breast carcinoma.

Within days, she was forced to undergo a double mastectomy.

The cancer was aggressive, and it was treated aggressively. After a short respite where she recovered from the mastectomy, she began six grueling rounds of chemotherapy, to be followed by five weeks of radiation.

I made it to every single treatment. I drove, flew, worked in the airport, and in the clinic lobby. Whatever it took, I was by her side, keeping her company, showing my support.

I thought I was strong, but Bev showed me what strength was as she fought for her very life.

She clutched my hand with her weakened one, her bald head completely smooth, her body emaciated, but her smile as bright as it’d ever been.

A fresh wave of toxic chemicals coursed through her bloodstream, making her sick, but God willing, saving her life.

All of this, and she was the one that comforted me .

“You think this cancer is a match for me ?” she asked me archly. “Come on now, Danika. You know me better than that. You have to know I’m too stubborn to die before Jerry. Would never happen.”

I laughed, and then I cried, because I was so worried about her that it made me weak .

“I should be the one crying,” Bev told me. “I miss my fucking tits.”

I wiped my eyes. “You should buy some new ones when all of this is over.”

“Um yeah. That’s the first thing I’m doing. Not obnoxious ones, but you can be damn sure they’ll be perky.”

We both laughed long and hard, and that time none of it ended in tears.

Andrew was beyond supportive through it all, sometimes taking the drive with me, or even the flight. Bev liked him; Bev approved. She was comforted by my finally moving on from Tristan.

Less than one year after the cancer was discovered, she was cancer free.

I felt like we’d all been given a new lease on life after that and impulsively, agreed to move in with Andrew.

I knew within a month that it was a mistake. I needed more space.

Good on paper was so suffocating in real life.

TRISTAN

There were only two nights a week where I didn’t have a show, so the guys came to me in Vegas to work on the new album.

There would be no touring. I set that boundary up right away. I enjoyed working with them, and some occasional live shows would be fine, but I’d never go on the road again. Too many triggers for me there.

I made sure they all knew that it had to be a drug free studio, but something, perhaps having two out of five of the original members dying young due to drugs, had gotten us all sober. Kenny and Cory would have the occasional beer, but other than that, we were making a comeback as four sober grownups.

It was bizarre, but good, because if this whole band thing had turned into a trigger for me, I would have had to drop it like a bad habit.

I found, now that I wasn’t getting high while Kenny did the writing that I enjoyed being involved with the entire process, and I began to write lyrics to some of the songs.

I was shit at composing music, but I was as surprised as anybody to find that I had a way with words.

Adair and Dahlia were still going strong, and she and Jack came to listen to us record more often than not.

It was good medicine. We all loved that boy, and he was spoiled with attention by every single member of the band. None of us had failed to see the uncanny resemblance to Dean, and we all felt a bit responsible and saw to it that he had everything he needed.

She and Adair were living together by then, and Jack just adored him. It was a huge relief, to say the least.

We finished recording our second album in half the time the first one had taken us and that was with me working nearly every night in my magic show. We’d all grown up, and the result was a much more finely tuned machine.

I couldn’t quite believe when we got our first number one hit out of the record’s first single, and when a second and a third followed, I was completely floored.

None of us could believe it. It was everything we’d talked about. Kenny, Cory, and I had been daydreaming about this since we were all fourteen, and it had actually worked out for us.

It was a bittersweet time for me. Every time we celebrated another hit, all I could think about was who was missing from the revelry.

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ACCIDENT

DANIKA

It was in the summer that I met the mysterious artist.

I’d gotten a memo that the boss had himself a girlfriend and that he was insisting on giving her a gallery showing. This was told to me rather snidely by the New York gallery manager. I knew she’d had her eye on James for herself, but she’d made an advance on him ages ago, and it couldn’t have been clearer that he just wasn’t interested. Still, I thought, as she told me over the phone about the new development, she must have been holding onto some idea that he’d change his mind. She didn’t say it aloud, but she was clearly more upset about the new girlfriend than she was about the fact that James was going to be sponsoring this mystery woman as some kind of an artist.

I was shocked myself about the girlfriend. I’d known James for years and had never thought I’d see the day he committed to any kind of romantic relationship. From what I’d observed, he was never serious about any of the legions of women he was seen with. Shocked was quickly followed by pleased, as I cared about James as a person, and I figured that if he was doing all of this, he must care for the woman.

Even so, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea, at least not the one that was originally presented to me. A large, lavishly promoted showing, exclusively featuring this woman’s paintings. I knew only the facts as they were presented to me. She worked with acrylics and watercolors, and had an indefinite amount of paintings, and she was without training of any kind.