Remember Me This Way Read online

  Shaking my head, I push the depressing thought out of my brain and soak up the sun, chatting about random things with Amberlie as we lounge. And I don’t talk about the guys at all.

  The next two days pass much the same way. Amberlie doesn’t bring up the guys, and I know she’s waiting for me to say something first. We go to the Fairmount Spa for one of the days and eat at Steak 44 for dinner, where I have the most amazing steak and lobster dish. It’s a little surreal to me that I can actually afford to buy a meal like that by myself after a whole life of never having any of my own money.

  I manage not to break down until the third day. We’re sitting by the pool again when the radio station announces that Tanner Crosby from the Sound of Us has just released a solo single for the first time ever.

  I drop the frozen margarita in my hand and only faintly register that its getting all over my beach bag.

  You’ve seen the worst in me, and baby it’s all true,

  But even the worst of me, only belongs to you.

  Hearts break every day, and mine’s in pieces now too,

  Tell me all your secrets and I’ll hide them away,

  Remember that night on the beach, and all the words you didn’t say.

  My chance has come and gone, but I just want you to know,

  That there’s nothing I won’t do to pay back the heart I owe.

  I’m crying on my chair as the song goes on. And I hear him. I hear his promises. And I hear how much he wants my forgiveness.

  And I just know then, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else. And even if it makes me look like a fool.

  He loves me. He loved me on the beach that night when we were teenagers, and he’s loved me every day since. He loves me in a way that doesn’t go away… in a way that couldn’t go away. And although I have a lot of questions about what happened with that girl...I’m still certain of one thing.

  I love him too.

  Somehow, more than I had yesterday or the day before that. Less than I would tomorrow for sure. In this moment, I realize that my love for Tanner had miraculously only grown during our time apart, and it was stronger than my doubt. If Tanner was lost, I would find him. If he was broken, I would fix him. I would always find a way to fix him, no matter what it took. There was no other alternative that was acceptable to me.

  There never was with a love like ours.

  Giving up just wasn’t an option. Not anymore. Not without giving up on him. I saw Tanner for who he was. I loved him for the boy he was when I met him, the man he was, the man he wanted to be, and the man he would become.

  I was all in. We would get through this. There was no other option.

  I turn and see that Amberlie is patiently waiting and everything that has happened bursts out of me. I talk for hours, and she just listens. And when I’m done, I’m exhausted. But I feel free.

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” I finally ask.

  And she smiles at me, her eyes a bit watery. “I think that the man who wrote that song is crazy in love with you. I know that the boy that man used to be sure was. And I think that maybe you always take a chance on a love like that. Even if it’s a risk.”

  I hug her, because I need someone who believes in me right now. Who believes in us.

  With that resolution in my mind, I get up and walk back to our room to get my phone. Picking it up, I hurriedly call him. I’m not surprised when he doesn’t answer and his voicemail picks up.

  "Hey," I begin, talking to the machine. "It's me. I mean you know it's me… What am I saying..." I take a deep breath.

  "I've done a lot of thinking about what happened. About you and me. About us. And I’ve come to a realization. I don't believe you. I don't believe that you were with that girl. I don't believe that you would do that to me... do that to us. Even though I know the proof was right in front of me, Tanner...I know your heart. And I just don't believe your heart could do that to mine. I'm not sure why you're trying to push me away. And I'm trying to give you space, even though I'm not sure I should. But I just wanted you to know that I'll wait for you. I'll wait for you to get past whatever demons you're fighting right now because I know that I can’t do this for you, I can't fight them for you. You have to do that by yourself, even as much as I want to do it for you.”

  “But you're in my veins, Tanner. You've lived inside of me since the moment I met you, I'm not gonna push you out now.”

  “So, what I'm trying to say to you is that I’ll always love you. And I'll be here waiting for you when you decide to come back to me." I take a deep breath. "You're still my good thing."

  I run through the story of us in my head. It seems like a lifetime. They introduced me to love, a concept so deep and expansive I couldn’t image it. The pure, unadulterated emotion is an experience, a journey that comes along with loving them. Joy, awe, desire and passion, so much intense passion, is all part of the adventure. And so is the pain that sometimes comes with something like that.

  My life before them was obscure. I’d never really started living until we met, I’d never really had the courage to. And I want the chance to have my happily-ever-after with them more than anything.

  “I don’t have a heart to give,” Tanner once said to me. But clearly, it wasn’t true. He didn’t know it at the time, but his heart was full of love, and he gave it to me. They all did. And maybe I gave mine unwillingly at first, a protection against past hurts, but with time and patience, I became theirs. The truth of who we are together is woven indelibly between their hearts and mine. We belong to each other, mind, body and soul. There are no other people on this earth who understand me and know without a doubt exactly what I need to be whole. They offer me the perfect balance of self-discovery and forgiveness.

  I need them.

  I pick up the phone and call Jesse.

  It’s time for me to make things right.

  .

  24

  Tanner

  In rehab they taught you to be honest, or at least they tried their best to do that. The first couple of times I went, it hadn’t stuck. But this time, it did.

  “My name is Tanner, and I’m an addict,” I announce to the room, hating the way the words taste as they come out of my mouth. They don’t know I’m a big rockstar, they’re all here because they’re messed up just like me. We all just want to get better.

  It’s weird to tell my story to these people, the whole story, not just the pieces I told Ariana on the beach that night. In previous stays, I sat in my chair, kept my mouth shut, and did my time. I hadn’t cared to get better. I was just trying to fulfill my label’s mandate and get on with my life.

  It took another week after Ariana left of abusing my body before I decided to come here.

  I woke up on the floor, soaking wet from a bucket of water Jesse had poured all over me, bleeding because at some point in the night, my blacked-out self decided to try and end my pain with pieces of a broken beer bottle. I had been lucky that I didn’t even need stitches, thanks to how drunk I was.

  After making sure that I was alive, Jesse left, and I stayed on that floor for two days, sicker than I’d ever been, thanks to the withdrawal symptoms from quitting my steady supply of drugs cold turkey.

  And that was the day that I decided that I either needed to die, or I needed to find a way to get better. Because this wasn’t really living, whatever I was doing.

  But even then, I checked myself out of rehab after a week and gotten drunk as soon as I saw a picture of Ari in the tabloids with Clark, the article speculating that they were now dating.

  I immediately checked myself back in, still hungover. And this time, I stayed.

  It had been three months now, and there were days where everything seemed insurmountable, like I was just a sum of all the mistakes that I had made.

  But there were other days I kind of liked myself, and all I could hope was that Ari would like me again too.

  “You have some guests,” Dahlia, one of the nurses, tells me as she comes to the d
oor of my room. I ignore the way her eyes devour me. I don’t care about how any other woman looks at me, I just want Ariana to look at me.

  I know who’s waiting for me as I walk down the hall. Part of my therapy is righting the wrongs that I’ve done to people. And I’m sure there’s a long list of them. But the fact that I’m an asshole means that I only really care about saying sorry to three of them. And two of them are here today.

  Jesse and Jensen are my family. And I’ve hurt them over and over again. And yet, they’ve always stayed. It’s more than I deserve.

  I think I'm prepared for when I see them. I've been obsessing over what I was going to say for the last month. But my mind's blank when they actually come into view. And I'm suddenly afraid this is where they tell me that they're done with me, because who would want to put up with someone like me after so long?

  But Jesse stands when he sees me, a big grin on his face as he stalks across the room and pulls me into a back-thumping hug. "It's good to see you, Tan," he says, and as he pulls away, his eyes look suspiciously wet.

  Jensen's hanging back, his hands in his pockets. I've said some of the worst things to him, and I've rarely said sorry. That he's here at all is a surprise.

  "Hey," I say, awkwardly waving my hand. Which makes Jensen's mouth twitch, because I'm rarely awkward.

  "Let's go into one of the visitor rooms so we don't have everyone watching us," Jesse says, gesturing behind us at the room that's starting to fill up as news that the Sound of Us is here.

  Separately we can-for the most part-go unnoticed as long as we aren’t walking around LA, but all together, we're kind of hard to miss.

  We walk into the small room. It's just a table and a few chairs with a small window on one wall. The silence is deafening, and I know that I need to say something, but after all my planning, I'm not sure now that I'll have anything that's adequate for the things I've done.

  "I'm sorry," slips out of my mouth and Jesse smiles patiently. Jensen looks non-plussed though.

  "You know, she barely talked to us for months," he says, looking away from me to out of the window. "She texted us, maybe a phone call here and there, but other than that, it was radio silence. I had to get my updates through Clark."

  "But she's talking to you now?" I ask. I didn't expect to be able to get to talk about Ariana right away, if at all. And now that he's opened the gates, I'm desperate.

  "She called us a few weeks back. And she sounded different. More at peace," Jensen explains, still not looking at me.

  "Have you seen her? How's her tour going?" The words come rushing out, and this isn't how I wanted the conversation to go but I can't stop.

  "Yeah, we've seen her. She's perfect. Sad, but perfect," says Jesse quietly, his eyes out of focus as if he's seeing her in his mind right now. "She misses you."

  Jensen stands up and walks to the window abruptly. "I just want you to know that if she hadn't come back to us, I would have never forgiven you," he announces.

  "I know. I would have deserved that," I respond to him.

  He looks at me surprised.

  I shrug my shoulders. "Honestly, the fact that you guys are here is more than I deserve. I've been messed up for a long time. And I just wanted to tell you a little bit about why."

  Jesse straightens in his seat, and after a long minute, Jensen comes back to the table and sits down.

  And then I proceed to tell my brothers -for the first time-what was going on when we were growing up, and what's been in my head since.

  Jesse looks sick after I've finished, and Jensen looks guilt-ridden.

  "Why the fuck didn't you tell us?" he finally says.

  "You were already going through enough, and Jesse had his hands full trying to take care of our asses. It's stupid, but I just didn't feel like I could say anything. The only person who knew some of it was Ari, and I made her promise to never say anything."

  They don't look surprised that Ari knew. We've all given her the darkest parts of us from the beginning.

  "So those scars were from your dad?" asks Jesse, hoarsely.

  I nod, and he beats on the table with a fist. "Fuck. I feel like an idiot."

  "No, you just fell for the narrative that I gave you guys. Which is what I wanted then. But I've come to learn the hard way how bad secrets are for me. And I'm done with them." My voice gets choked up. "And I just want you to know that I'm sorry for being such a stupid fuck all these years. And never getting help. And I just want you to know that I didn't sleep with that girl. I didn't even touch her. I couldn't."

  Jesse nods knowingly. "I didn't think you had."

  Jensen's head is lowered, and his shoulders are tense. When they start to shake, I realize that he's crying. Jensen Reid is crying.

  And then we're all kind of crying, and it's actually a little bit embarrassing and wonderful all at the same time.

  There's a knock on the door, and of course, Dahlia is on the other side. "Your hour is up," she says, and I nod, trying to hide the fact that I've been crying. Technically, I could just ask them to extend the hour visitation rule for me, but I'm determined to do everything right this stay, which means following all the stupid rules to the letter.

  We all stand up and get ahold of ourselves before walking out.

  And it's amazing how much better I feel, and how much better they look. My problems have been a burden on all of us for as long as I can remember, and I know that we're all feeling hopeful that this can be the turning point.

  But something tells me that even if I ever fell again, my brothers would still be by my side.

  When they're about to leave, Jensen suddenly turns around and looks at me. "Check your voicemail," he says, and I look at him confused.

  "Just do it, man."

  And I nod, all of a sudden itching to go to the office and get my phone that I've been living without since I got here.

  I watch as they disappear from sight before I head to the office. "Hey, can I have my phone for a minute?" I charmingly ask the front desk woman, Lucille I think is her name.

  "You know you only get five minutes with it," she says, trying to sound hard, but she's blushing. I nod as I take it from her and power it on. I haven't checked it out once since I got here.

  The phone immediately alerts me that I have about 3000 new texts and missed calls, but I head to my voicemail, knowing immediately what Jensen wanted me to look for.

  My heart skips a beat as I see the one message from Ariana dated a few months back. My hand is shaking as I press on the message and then put it up to my ear.

  Her voice washes over me, and it feels like I'm having a fucking heart attack as she speaks.

  "But you're in my veins, Tanner. You've lived inside of me since the moment I met you, I'm not gonna push you out now.

  So, what I'm trying to say to you is that I’ll always love you. And I'll be here waiting for you when you decide to come back to me. You're still my good thing."

  And I smile as I press on the message to listen again. Because somehow, I know everything is going be okay.

  I'm going to give Ariana her happily-ever-after, even if it's the last thing I do.

  25

  Now

  Ariana

  It’s the last night of my tour. Clark’s already talking about wanting me to go on a bigger one in a few months, but I can’t think ahead that far, not with everything that’s going on. Jesse and Jensen have both flown in, and so have Amberlie and her husband. Four of my favorite people in the world are laughing and joking with each other as I look over the set list one more time.

  It was my biggest show by far, opening for Tyler Rowe, a pop singer that was almost as big as the Sound of Us. Apparently, he actually opened up for them at one point and was pretty good friends with the band, so he had been hanging around for most of the day as well. I laughed to myself thinking about how Tyler tried flirting with Amberlie at first and how fast Teddy swooped in.

  It made my heart happy to see my friends so happy. Or at lea
st, as happy as my heart could feel with the empty hole that was Tanner.

  He never answered my voicemail. It had been three months, and I wondered if I would ever stop obsessing about how he was doing. All my talk about finding myself, becoming my own person… I had come to a realization over the last three months that I wasn't me without Jesse, Tanner, and Jensen, all of them.

  And it was the same for them.

  Somehow along the way, we became permanently connected. We were written in each other's hearts, in our very DNA. And I didn't know if there was enough time in the world to change me back if Tanner never returned.

  "I'm starting to get jealous about how much time you spend pining over Tanner," a voice whispers in my ear. The velvet quality of Jensen's voice washes over me, and I savor his warmth as he pulls me into him. "That asshole’s fucking lucky to have you," he says, but there’s no real heat in his voice. I know Jensen misses Tanner and is worried about him almost as much as I am.

  Jesse joins us a minute later.

  "You totally did that on purpose," he scoffs at Jensen with a disgusted look on his face.

  I quirk an eyebrow at Jensen who looks wickedly delighted by Jesse's reaction.

  "How else was I going to get a second with our girl?” he says with a grin.

  I see Jesse’s mouth twitch like he wants to smile, but he’s trying to hold it back.

  "What did he do?" I say with a laugh, still surprised that I’m able to laugh again.

  "One of Tyler’s groupies wasn't getting the message that Jensen was sending that she needed to back off. So asshole over here sicced her on me so he could get some alone time with you."

  I can’t help but giggle, but at the same time, think how surreal this easiness between the three of us is. I wasn't worried about other women, I wasn't worried about them leaving me. It was like our pieces finally clicked into place.