OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-ten.

JULY 15th, 1998, LOS ANGELES, CA

            IT WAS GETTING late. The sun was disappearing in the sky, its light growing weaker through the set of blinds that shaded Reagan's office window. She should have been home by now, but she wasn't. She was holed up in her office, staring emptily across it at the collection of framed posters she'd hung on the wall.

Normally, she would have never willingly stayed at work so late, especially when Gracie was home on her summer break. But Dave was also home, and if Dave was home spending time with Gracie, then Reagan felt less bad about hiding herself away like a coward.

The date on the calendar was bothering her. It was the fifteenth — the due date for the baby.

The weight of that loss had changed her. She'd been functioning on a steadily ticking countdown since she'd gotten pregnant in October, waiting patiently for all the things that Dave had promised. If things had gone as planned, they would have probably been at the hospital on that night, celebrating the birth of their second child.

Dave would be taking his hiatus from the Foo Fighters and Reagan would be dizzy with the happiness that she'd so intensely yearned for over the last three years.

Her life as it was now was a bleak contrast to all that she'd planned.

Sometimes, she told herself that if she could shake off the funk she'd that slipped into in January, things would be okay. If she could process the grief of what she'd endured and if she could accept who she'd married and the problems that came along with that decision, she would be fine.

Reagan had accepted that another baby wasn't going to fix the crux of her problems with Dave. It might have served as a temporary band-aid, which perhaps they both could have still used, but it was out of the question. Not only was she against trying for another baby, but she hadn't let Dave touch her since the miscarriage.

When she looked in the mirror, all she saw was the caricature of someone who'd gotten really good at lying her ass off. Not only had she lied to the people around her, but she'd lied to herself.

She was still depressed over that past January, but the real reason for her altered change in personality had more to do with the fact that she'd never have Dave exactly the way she wanted him.

It was the same old tug of war that she'd played between her brain and heart since she'd met him. Always torn between wanting what she'd originally envisioned with the love of her life, but also not wanting to tear apart his deepest aspirations.

Reagan understood now what Richard had been getting at the day after Gracie had been born and he'd visited her in the hospital. She'd been too young to grasp how tumultuous it was, being married to a person who was never there. And if he was there, all she could think about was the next time that he'd be gone, usually for longer than the amount of time that he spent by her side.

All of her thoughts felt poisonous. They seeped like black sludge in her brain, snatching all the light out of her life that she'd once revered. The only thing that had kept Reagan tethered to some fragment of a happy reality was Gracie. Only her daughter had managed to do that.

Reagan's eyes flickered to the phone on her desk. It hadn't rang, but she wasn't at all surprised. Dave had gotten used to the cold shoulder she was giving him awhile ago. It had all started right after he'd left again, right after she'd forced him out of the house and back on tour, after losing the baby.

She'd began to ignore his calls and slowly, she had stopped calling him back. If she did happen to pick up, Dave told her it was like 'pulling teeth' trying to get her to talk to him. When he had finally made it home just four days earlier for a brief break before the last shows of August, she'd resisted his attempts to hug and kiss her.