Something About Sam

Chapter 23

Part Two

Sam

I keep having these dreams. I'm lying on a beach. The sand is a dark yellow and rocks curl under my fingers. I don't think I've ever been here before, but still, it looks familiar. Water starts lapping at my ankles, but I don't move. I close my eyes and will it to come closer, to take me under. But it doesn't. And then there are hands on my body and everything inside me turns to mush and each cell of my skin is on fire and my necklace is being tugged and my neck is being kissed and all I want to do is put my hands on him too, but my body is anchored to the sand and I don't move a muscle. But it's okay. Because this isn't about me, it's about him. He's touching me everywhere, like he can't remember exactly what I look like. His fingers curl around my calves and slide with the water towards my knees. I haven't opened my eyes at all but I know it's him because he's the only person who can obliterate me with their presence, with their touch.

He never says anything in the dreams. Sometimes I'll open my eyes and see the dip of his shoulder blade as he sucks on my neck. I'll see the top of his blonde head as he takes the chain of my necklace in between his lips and pulls.

I wake up to the sound of my phone vibrating against the nightstand of the hotel room I'm staying in. I'm in Colorado. I check the phone, and it's my alarm going off. It's four in the afternoon. I've been asleep since 12. I nap a lot, recently. It's the only way I can see Taite, considering I won't answer a single one of his calls, texts, or his sister's pleas to talk to him. It's not that I don't want to talk to him. It's that I do, so badly. But I know the second I hear his voice and it's calling me dude, like he used to, instead of love, which he picked up from me, I know I won't be able to stand and I won't be able to sing and I won't be able to be myself.

It all sounds dramatic, I know.

But that's what The One does to you, when he leaves. He rips up your insides and tears you apart cell by cell until you're a shell of yourself that can only be patched up with the words "Take me back, Sam." Or better yet, "I'm so in love with you I can't breathe," because that's exactly how I feel every day.

My mom doesn't get it. It's been a few weeks since The Call and she isn't sympathetic towards me anymore. The first week, I was a mess. She cradled my head as we fell asleep in the king sized bed meant just for me. She wiped my constant stream of tears and told me everything was going to be fine. But then I wouldn't go to rehearsals. And then the dreams started, so I was asleep more than I was awake. And I wouldn't go see the therapist she asked me to see.

I played every show, but there was something missing from me. It was like I was a stunt double, up on stage, and everyone in the audience knew. I wasn't myself. Articles were being written. Reviews were horrible. Sales plummeted.

Lena knocked on my dressing room door before one show in Washington. I was alone, having refused a hair and makeup team. I was sitting in front of a mirror, staring at myself.

"Sam?" Lena pulled up a stool and sat next to me. "Feeling okay?"

"I'm feeling fine," I told her. It was my go-to response to everyone's inquires about my mental state.

She sighed. "You're not okay, Sam. And I know you're upset, but the show, frankly, is turning into a piece of shit. You have no energy. You can barely even lift a mic to your lips. You look like the stage is the last place on earth you'd want to be."

I didn't answer her or look at her. Until she grabbed the hand that had been sitting in my lap and placed two pills in them. "Take these. Xanax. I know you won't see a therapist, so I'm the next best thing. You'll feel better, Sam. Trust me."

And I did. Loads better. I felt like I was singing on a cloud. I felt like I was walking on nothing but clouds. And when I closed my eyes I was on that beach with Taite and he was kissing me and telling me everything I wanted to hear.

After the show, Lena smiled secretly and slipped me a bottle of the pills. "I knew it would do the trick," she told me with a wink. My mom had cried she was so happy to see me 'alive' on stage again. I was just happy that she wasn't looking at me like I was see-through.

Like they tend to do, things escalated.

I was with one of Lena's friends at a bar. Since that night she gave me the pills, I had taken two every four hours like it was Advil. It kept me in a state of functioning sanity, and my mind only drifted to Taite every few minutes. He used to never leave my mind.

The friend of Lena's had cocaine. I was already doped up from pills—more than my regular dosage—soI wasn't smart enough to say no.

I didn't think of Taite at all that night. Instead, I wrote 3 new songs. I called DJs and producers and rappers and invited them to my shows. To perform with me. Me, who was an acoustic singer-songwriter who had never even liked rap music.

Management didn't allow me to sing any new songs since it was the Something About Sam tour. But that didn't mean I couldn't change them. DJs laid tracks behind my lyrics and turned everything real I've ever written to crap. I loved it. It felt new, like I was someone else. When I could manage, I would sing covers of other people's songs. It was like I was reinventing myself through these rose colored glasses Lena had given me. 

I wasn't Sam Ford. Not really, anyway.