Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
To make matters worse, the medication has me packing on the pounds, and they make me too ill to even think of exercise, so on top of everything else, I have become a blob who cries each time I look into the mirror. I’d really like to know who I pissed off to be treated this way for the better part of five years.
I have to hold it together this time around for my friends, though. Sydney was finally willing to leave my side for more than ten minutes, and she had a tour coming up, not to mention the other bullshit that had splattered onto her life from mine.
That was a whole other mess and something she’d beaten in her own spectacular way, but still, I couldn’t help feeling guilty because someone I loved had been hurt by the people who surrounded the man I thought would be mine for life.
These days I didn’t have the will to get out of bed. I just lay there and read all the horrible things being said about me and feeling sorry for myself. Rachel had given up trying to get me to give her my phone; no amount of arguments on her part could tear me away from this new round of trauma-seeking.
I thought that first picture was bad, and the things she revealed about me had only been shared with Ryder, the one person I thought I could trust. But these new posts had gone beyond even my wildest imagination. It was as if someone had set out to destroy me this time around, and I’ve got to say, they were doing a pretty good job of it.
***
*Ryder*
“Mom, I just got your message; what’s up?” I was still a bit out of breath from the last set on stage. I’d gotten into the habit of checking my messages to see if she’d found out anything more about what we’d talked about when I went to her place and also as a way to keep tabs on Elena.
Mom had contacted her the very next day, and the two of them had rekindled the friendship they’d shared when Elena and I were together. I’m still finding it hard to think of us in the past tense, and more so now that I am away from home and no longer getting as high as I used to.
I have to keep my senses about me somewhat in order to perform, except for those first few days at the beginning of the tour when it felt as if I would die if I didn’t take a hit of something I’ve been cutting way back.
The results were twofold because now I had more time to think, though some of my memories weren’t very clear and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I still haven’t been as free as I’d like, so I couldn’t check up on her myself as I would like to, so these calls and texts from Mom were the highlights of my day.
“She’s in the hospital.”
“Who?”
“Elena.” I think my heart stopped, and the world started moving in slow motion while the ground beneath my feet felt unsteady.
“What do you mean? Is she hurt? How bad is she?”
“She’s in the psych ward; at least, that’s what the tabloids are saying. She had some sort of mental breakdown.”
“What? Why?” I had that feeling you get when you have to throw up and crap at the same time, but the body goes into lockdown.
“I don’t know, maybe because your wife and her friends have been terrorizing her for weeks.” This was not the time to address the venom in my mom’s voice when she said the word wife. I’d come to the conclusion pretty much that there was no love lost between those two.
I was still unsure what game Janie was playing by keeping my family away from my home because I figured I could fix that issue once I got back. “Which hospital? Do you know?”
“Some place in Alabama, I don’t remember the name of it, but I can look it up and get back to you.”
“Text it to me as soon as you find it; I’ll be in the air in less than an hour.”
I hung up and went to find my manager, who was probably already on his way to the hotel lining up groupies, which I had no interest in. “Scott!” I called out to him as soon as I saw him in the hallway outside my room door. There was already loud music and sounds of a party coming from inside the room when I brushed past him.
“Hey, what’re you doing? The party’s out there.” He’d followed me into the bedroom of the suite leaving the guests outside. I ignored the two women on the bed, who looked barely a minute over eighteen, as I grabbed my bags and started shoving what I needed into them.