Time After Time || Chris Cornell

39. Drown Me In Your Thirsty Veins

Seattle Washington, November 4 1990

(Andi is 20, Chris is 26)

ANDI: "Ok, Mrs. Cornell, here is your prescription and you are all set," one of the girls behind the counter at the pharmacy says as she hands me a little bag.

"Thank you," I smile as I take the bag from her. I swear it's still crazy to me to hear people call me 'Mrs. Cornell'. It almost sounds surreal in a sense.

In the few weeks that we have been officially husband and wife, we have been practically inseparable - well we always were before of course but even more so now, though I'm not counting the times when I slip of course. The next morning after I came back, Chris took me to city hall so that we could actually make our marriage official and even though I hated myself for slipping and missing the whole entire thing, Chris told me that my future self came back to marry him at the ceremony, which confused me at first, but at least I was able to be there, even if it was my future self. Then to celebrate, we went back to the tattoo artist that originally did my ring tattoo and had him finish it. Chris still keeps my wedding band and engagement ring around his silver chain necklace, never taking it off.

I haven't slipped since the wedding but my neurologist decided to up my dose of Lorazepam anyways. No one knows why I slipped at the wedding. I've been taking exactly what is prescribed to me like clockwork but for some reason, it just happened, and it wasn't like my normal time slips either. The dizziness was overwhelming. It just felt different. Anyways... hopefully these pills will help.

As I head out the doors looking down at my prescription, I flip my curls out of my face to see Chris leaning against his baby blue Ford pick-up in his leather jacket, a plain black knit sweater, black jeans with the cuffs rolled up over his red Doc Martens, taking a drag from his cigarette while he squints his eyes from the rising smoke. His beard is perfectly trimmed and his curls that are down passed his shoulders, gently sway in the cool November breeze while he waits for me. Seems like he's always waiting for me.

"Hey beautiful," He says sweetly exhaling a cloud of smoke.

"Hi," I smile back as I walk up to him, lifting myself up a little to press my lips to his. I give him a few quick kisses but then he just grabs me by the nape of my neck and presses his lips harder to mine making me giggle against him.

"You ready?" He says when I pull away from him.

"As I'll ever be," I say and he chuckles giving me one last quick kiss and then moving to open the passenger side door for me. He helps me in, then closes the door and heads around to his side and climbs in. I immediately take over the task of finding some tunes, popping in a cassette with Guns N' Roses blasting through the speakers. Chris glances over at me with a smirk as he butts out the last of his cigarette.

"What can I say, I love Slash ok?" I smile and give him a shrug. He laughs and gives me a sweet smirk again. He then turns his attention to the steering wheel, pulling out away from the curb and we take off down the streets of downtown Seattle.

We are heading up north to London Bridge Studios for Chris to do some recording with Jeff, Stone, Matt and Mike McCready. Chris's grandfather has a cabin near the studio, so we decided to use it for a place to stay which will also give us some much needed alone time in between recording.

Over the summer, Chris had been working on some songs in the wake of Andy's passing and Jeff was the one who had suggested that he record the songs, in sort of a tribute to Andy. Since there were also a few other songs that Chris had written that sort of didn't really fit the esthetic of Soundgarden, he thought of maybe putting them all on an album. One last time to say goodbye you could say.