Trials (Rock Bottom) Read online

  Rock Bottom #2

  Trials

  Sarah Biermann

  Edited by Meagan Burgad

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1- Losing Him

  Chapter 2- The Internship

  Chapter 3- Suspect

  Chapter 4- Visitor

  Chapter 5- Clean

  Chapter 6- The Truth

  Chapter 7- History

  Chapter 8- Backtracking

  Chapter 9- Identity

  Chapter 10- Dinner

  Chapter 11- Sing Me to Heaven

  Chapter 12- The Tape

  Chapter 13- Being Happy

  Chapter 14- My Decision

  Chapter 15- Jonathan

  Epilogue

  An Excerpt From After Life

  Acknowledgements

  Excerpt From Chance Lost

  Prologue

  To say that school was exhausting today would be an understatement. School is getting harder and harder each year that passes. Now in my third year, I’m extremely happy I got the break I did over this past summer. I managed to get out of my first and second years at Harvard Law with my usual, steady 4.0. It was the hardest 4.0 that I’ve ever earned but I’m proud to say I was able to pull through.

  That’s not to say I didn’t make enormous sacrifices to achieve my school success. But I guess sometimes you have to choose between two really amazing things to reach your ultimate goals and dreams. Doesn’t make it suck less.

  I shudder as the memory of last fall crosses my mind. I overlap my arms over my stomach as I walk up the stairs to my beautiful Boston townhome. The air is starting to get chilly already, even though it’s still early September. I remember when I moved here a little over two years ago how surprised I was at the sudden cold that occurred when August turned into September. Although the seasons here tend to be predictably the same, many things have changed over these two years.

  I put the key in my door, turning it in the lock and pushing the door open. I shut it behind me and lock it, reminding myself that next time I go out I should probably take a jacket. I throw my things down by the door in my hallway and kick off my professional-yet-uncomfortable shoes. I roll my eyes at the state of my hallway, seeing his shoes lying all over the place and a sweater discarded in the corner. I really have to talk to that man about cleaning up after himself.

  I smile despite my annoyance, my heart warming just thinking about him. The past four months have been going really well since he’s moved in and I think we’re happy together. Things seem to be progressing in a steady, good direction. There’s really never any stress that occurs between us- everything is pretty easy.

  I pick up the mail that’s lying on the kitchen table, flipping through the envelopes. Me, him, him, him, him, me, him, him… Christ, that man gets a lot of mail. Business, business, business! He never slows down.

  I hear the water to our shower stop and the curtain scrape against the metal bar. I start walking down the hall and pause to lean on the wall across from the bathroom door. A few moments later the door swings open and I get a full glimpse of my gorgeous boyfriend in only a towel. His muscular chest, his handsome face, and a wide smile greet me. I love the way he looks at me, like I am the only reason that smile is ever on his face.

  “Hey Dylan, baby,” he says, walking across the hall to me. He gives me a long, seductive kiss. I smile underneath his lips and run my fingers through his hair.

  I pull away, giving him an appraising look. “Hey, Scott, baby. Go put some clothes on before you get in trouble.”

  Chapter 1- Losing Him

  After breaking away from Scott I walk over and plop down on the couch in the living room. I stretch, trying to push away my sleepiness and listen to Scott rummaging through the drawers in our bedroom. I turn on the TV and flip through the program guide.

  I focus intently on each show appearing in front of me. I try to never let my mind wander anymore. It’s just too painful. If I concentrate hard enough on menial tasks, the memories don’t harm me. It’s easier when I’m studying for school or in classes, it’s when I have free time, time to think, when it can get dangerous.

  I hear Scott’s footsteps coming down the hallway. “What are you watching?” he asks, sitting beside me on the couch by my feet. He pats my legs lovingly.

  “I don’t know, I can’t find anything,” I complain, sighing. I give up and turn the guide off and allow whatever channel it was on before flash onto the screen. I turn to smile at Scott, figuring conversation with him would distract me better than the television anyway.

  Before I’m able to ask Scott how his day has been, I overhear a woman talking on TV. “Although the bad boy recluse rocker hasn’t been seen much in the public eye, Jeremy Ma…”

  I pick up the remote with amazing speed and shut the television off. I close my eyes for a moment.

  Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are…

  I take a few moments to sing the song in its entirety in my head. I open my eyes slowly and turn to look cautiously at Scott. He’s smiling warmly at me. He obviously knows exactly what’s going on, but he almost always ignores it when he notices, and I’m grateful for that.

  It’s pretty much been that way since I lost him almost a year ago. When we first broke up, I guess I didn’t believe it was really over between us. I thought of it as more of a break, honestly. Time for us to get our shit together and then come back to each other. That’s how it was for me anyway.

  But I guess he didn’t love me like I thought he did.

  Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you…

  I stare at Scott, smiling, while I sing Happy Birthday to myself in my head. Scott gives me a sympathetic smile and rubs my legs.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Hell no. Talk about what? I’m fine. Just fine. Don’t fucking stare at me like I’m nuts.

  “No, baby. Everything is great!” I get up, walking over to the kitchen. I open the fridge and look into it, taking a mental inventory of everything inside of it, trying to keep my mind busy.

  My therapist, who has been working with me since he and I decided to split a year and a half ago, says that it’s not healthy for me to repress my grief. She keeps trying to get me to talk about it, but honestly there isn’t much to talk about. I don’t see how it’s going to help.

  I have no idea what drove him to cut off contact with me completely. Although Jeremy and I ultimately broke off our relationship, we were still passionately in love. I only left him because of his drug issues and I wanted him to get help and to prove he could stay clean. We talked on a regular basis.

  There was nothing in our last phone conversation that would have made me think he would stop speaking to me. Even after analyzing the conversation over and over in my head, I can’t figure it out. It was two days before Theresa’s wedding and he was calming my fears about making my toast at the rehearsal dinner. He listened to me rattle off my speech…we had a normal conversation…he said he loved me and told me good night…

  And then the day after the wedding, I had tried to text him. I kept getting messages back that they weren’t going through. So I tried to call him only to find out his phone had been disconnected. Panicked, I tried to email him, and immediately got a response that his e-mail had been shut down. I then tried to contact Rich, Jeremy’s body guard who I had become close with over our relationship. His cell phone and email had also been changed. And his personal Facebook and Rich’s Facebook were down. I was so desperate I went over to his place even though I knew he was on tour. The girl that answered the door told me the home had been sold.

  I haven’t heard from him in ten months. No goodbye. No explanation. It’s like we never existed


  I squeeze the door handle to the fridge so hard that my hand is becoming numb. I start breathing a little faster.

  “Dylan, are you okay?” Scott asks.

  “I’m fine. Just trying to find something to eat.”

  I’m usually better about trying to hide my emotions. Not thinking about him. But, when I hear something about him on the TV, the radio… it makes all the memories come rushing back.

  The first few weeks after I hadn’t heard from him I lived in denial. I thought he would call me eventually. I didn’t actually think he would leave me like that. If there was one thing in life I didn’t doubt, it was that he loved me. He had gone through so much. WE had gone through so much together. Watching him detox from heroin and alcohol was one of the worst moments of my life. But it had brought us closer together. At least I thought it had. But after I started seeing things in the paper about him having wild parties at his new house all night…and that he hadn’t been seen in public in weeks and won’t do interviews or perform…

  Well, I suppose drugs are just more important to him.

  I sit down on the floor by the still open refrigerator. I’m shaking from the cold now, but it doesn’t occur to me to shut the door with everything that’s running through my mind. I hear footsteps behind me, and a soft hand go over mine on the door. Scott pushes the door shut and unclenches my hand from around the handle. He wraps his arms around me and I lean into his chest.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” he says, softly. “I’m sorry.”

  I’m still shaking in his arms.

  Mary had a little lamb…

  “I’m okay,” I say, unconvincingly. I realize I must be hurting Scott by acting this way. It makes me feel guilty. Scott was more than supportive to me when he abandoned me. I don’t know what I would have done without Scott, especially since Theresa was wrapped up in her blissfully happy world. It was during those six months of pure hell, six months of Scott never leaving my side, that I began to fall in love with him. I had known him almost a year and a half before I fell in love with him. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Our love is like a flower: it grew slowly and bloomed into something beautiful. It wasn’t like I was driving along the highway at a hundred miles an hour and drove into a brick wall, hitting hard and completely unexpectedly- leaving me in pain. And I do love Scott, very much. In the way I love Jeremy? No. Not even close. I don’t think that would even be possible. But maybe that amount of love is unhealthy.

  Being with Scott is nice. We get along well. We get great grades in school and enjoy being with each other. It’s so- easy. Uncomplicated. When he moved in, it was like he had always belonged here with me.

  The first time we made love was like that, too. No nerves, no pretenses, no expectations. Just calm, straight love making. No strip teasing, beer licking, fucking…

  I stand up, wriggling out of Scott’s arms. I put a smile on my face and chase the thoughts away by mentally making a list of all the homework I need to have done by tomorrow. “Well, I guess we better get started on our homework,” I say to Scott.

  I walk over to the kitchen table and open my laptop, opening my internet browser so I can log on to my school’s website. Harvard is really pushing their professors to become more online focused, so most of my homework is online. My head is always buried in my laptop. I’m probably going to wear it out before I can afford a new one.

  Scott sits down at the table across from me and starts going through his pile of mail. I stand from the table before I can look at my browser and walk over to make some coffee. My addiction to coffee has increased exponentially since the breakup, as implausible as that sounds. I thought I was addicted to caffeine before I lost him, but now I can’t get enough of the stuff. I need it, I need to stay awake, to keep the nightmares away.

  I hear Scott ripping open envelopes as I prepare the coffee maker. After a few minutes, he clears his throat.

  I turn around to him, “What?”

  “Um…” he says, quietly. “Can I have the address to that law office? I got the bill for your books here…”

  Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

  “Look it up in the address book on the desk,” I respond, my face stoic. Scott nods and puts the bill aside, continuing to go through the mail.

  I feel bad about still using the money, especially since he left me. But, as Jeremy said when he gave it to me, it’s now in a trust. If I don’t use it the money will literally sit there and do nothing because he can no longer touch it. That seemed ridiculous to me. Plus, the vindictive side of me was almost happy I could spend his money on myself. At least I got something out of that relationship other than an even more fucked up head and a broken heart.

  And at least it’s that much less he has to spend on his drugs.

  Finally, with coffee in my hand, I sit to begin my homework. After I adjust the screen on the computer, I notice some news stories flashing across the browser screen. His name immediately grabs my attention: “Jeremy Mason.”

  I don’t read the rest of the story, I just quickly type in the address to my homework site and hit enter. Why is he in the news so much again, all of a sudden? I used to catch a story here and there, but today it seems like he’s everywhere. I wonder what’s going on. My heart constricts for a moment. He’s not dead, is he? Oh no. Breathe, Dylan.

  I silently type in my name on the login page. I glance up at Scott who is still intently reading his mail. Feeling my eyes on him, he glances up. We hold each other’s eyes for a moment.

  “I’m sorry I keep hurting you,” I say, quietly.

  He gives me a compassionate look. “You’re not hurting me. I was there with you, remember? I know how hurt you were by not being able to have some type of closure. I know I don’t totally understand it, but I know you love me,” he says, smiling warmly at me.

  I smile warmly back. What an incredible man. My heart warms, knowing how lucky I am to have him. “I do love you,” I say, tenderly. I clear my throat. “I just want to ask you…you know I don’t want to hear about…him…but you would tell me if anything really bad…were to happen…”

  That did seem to upset Scott. His eyes and face darken for a moment. He must be wondering what difference it would make to me. Why I would care. My therapist asked me the same thing when I expressed my fear about him dying. Why would it matter to me? He’s not in my life anymore. He left me like I didn’t matter at all to him. He may as well be dead to me.

  But even with all of the horrible things he did to me, I’ll never totally let him go. I know things about him no one else does. Experiencing him, knowing that he’s truly one of God’s miracles- a genius and a prodigy and lovely and sweet and wonderful- the world wouldn’t make sense to me if he wasn’t in it. That’s the best explanation I can give.

  Scott’s face brightens back up. “Of course, Dylan.”

  I nod my head and go back to my homework.

  That’s it; I’m not leaving my house.

  In fact, I’m adamant about it. Ever since I heard his name on the news a few days ago before studying with Scott, he’s been almost everywhere.

  I pull the covers over my head. I know I have class and I know I need to go to school, but I’m scared to leave my house. I wonder what’s made him such big news lately.

  The day after the news incident and subsequent freak-out, I heard two people behind me in line at the college bookstore were talking about him. I sang almost every Billy Joel song that I knew in my head at top speed to avoid listening. Then, later that day, I was walking past a news stand on my way out of the school building and his name was plastered all over every single paper- on the front page in the headlines. I managed to escape them by running as fast as my six-inch heels would let me. Yesterday, I attempted to listen to the radio on the way home, but I couldn’t turn the channel past his name fast enough.

  From the bits and pieces I’ve gathered from my involuntary listening or reading is that he’s still a recluse, he lives somewhere new, an
d that whatever’s going on is “shocking.” And, to top it all off with a big, juicy cherry- it involves a girl. Wonderful.

  So obviously he’s not dead, I think dryly. Which leads me to believe he’s seriously dating someone or is getting married. The press tends to go nuts when he’s involved with a girl in a serious nature. I would know- I was the first girl he was seriously involved with and the press hounded the both of us non-stop. What else could involve shocking news between Jeremy and a woman?

  Unless she’s pregnant.

  UGH! Happy birthday…row, row, row your boat…

  I squeeze my arms around my stomach. Why do I do this to myself?

  I hear my door squeak open and Scott pokes his head in. He sighs, aggravated. “Dylan, we’re going to be late. Get up. This is an important day.”

  I look over at him, and see him trying to give me an annoyed look. After only a few seconds, however, his eyes soften and he smiles at me. He shakes his head and shuts the door, walking down the hallway.

  I sigh. I know it’s an important day so I have to get up. But, I’m not sure how much longer I can go on hearing about him. I definitely don’t know how I’ll react if either one of my fears are proven true- that he’s marrying someone or she’s pregnant. The only thing holding me together is the fact that as of right now, it is just a theory I’ve dreamed up.

  If it was any other school day (and I mean any other day) I would stay in bed and roll up in my covers, especially since this is a Thursday and I somehow managed to not have any classes on Friday. It would have given me a nice, long weekend and kept me away from the news.

  But today is an extremely important day for me to be in school. Today is the day that I discover the destiny of my third and final year at Harvard. Today I would find out if I got one of the coveted internships at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.

  I inhale and exhale slowly as I throw the covers off of me, letting the cold air hit my skin, instantly making me feel more awake. I am a nervous wreck about this internship, on top of everything else I have to deal with. This is my dream; what I’ve always wanted to do. This is what I broke up with Jeremy for in the first place, to ensure I could concentrate in school enough to be worthy of this internship.