"How is she?"
"Well hello to you, too!"
Dave scrubbed his hand down his face and sighed in annoyance, spitting back a sarcastic reply. "Hi, Hawkins. How are you? Having a lovely vacation?"
"Don't get snippy with me, man," Taylor snapped back. "She's fine. Napping."
"Still?"
"Again."
"Are you fucking drugging her?" Dave dropped his head the second he said the words, regretting them immediately before adding a rueful, "Sorry." A long pause followed in which Dave checked his screen to make sure Taylor hadn't hung up on him.
"You done, man?" Taylor finally muttered. "Got it all out of your system?"
Dave rolled his eyes and shoved himself off the couch, the last bits of his pride preventing him from answering the question. "How are the kids?"
He listened to Taylor rattle off all the fun the kids were having at the beach as he stalked through the halls of 606 towards the warehouse. Josh was there somewhere as well, he hadn't left Dave's side in almost two weeks.
"... they're asking about you, though," Taylor finally finished just as the heavy fire proof door slammed shut behind Dave.
"I can be there in three hours, Hawkins. Just waiting for permission," he wasn't able to say the last few words without the irritation in his voice, but his patience was gone. Long gone.
Leaving for Oregon went on as planned, with only a few differences. First, Liz had gone directly to the airport from the hospital, insisting she had everything she needed at the beach house so there was no need to pack. Second, Dave's spot on the plane had been filled by Taylor, which had been difficult to explain to the kids but the addition of Shane, Annabelle and Everleigh to the crew along with Dave and Allison's promise to meet up with them later in the week appeased them enough to get them on the plane with smiles on their faces.
"Couple days, Disco. She'll be ready then."
"You said that two days ago," he muttered as he knelt in front of a large stack of drum equipment.
"Did I?"
"Don't fuck with me, Hawkins," he was deadly serious now, he had been teetering on the edge of a meltdown for days. "Has she had any more contractions?"
"One or two this morning," Taylor admitted quietly. "Her blood pressure looks good through."
The thought of Taylor gently waking Liz every few hours to strap a monitor to her arm felt like a knife in his chest. They probably whispered to each other through the dark while waiting for the machine to read, while he gently held her arm to put on and take off the cuff. Dave could just hear her quiet, 'Thank you, T,' as she rolled over in that big bed and went back to sleep. And that would happen several times a night. Taylor would slip into her room to work the machine and record the numbers, then sneak back to his own room without waking anyone else. Unless they cut out a few steps and decided to just sleep in the same bed...
He tried to clear the downward spiral of thoughts from his head while managing a tight, "Good."
"Yeah. What are you doing? I heard the warehouse door slam."
"Inventory."
"Don't touch any of my shit, man. I have a system in there."
"Yeah, sure," Dave grunted and grabbed a box of cymbals marked with a thick black marker, Taylor.
"I'm serious, man. I need to know where my shit is when Wiley and I-" he stopped suddenly and Dave frowned at the sound of the phone being pressed against a shoulder along with a second, muffled voice. Her voice. Then Taylor again, "Hey, I gotta go."
"What? No! Let me talk to her! ...Taylor! Taylor!"
The disconnect chime was the only reply, sending a bolt of fury through his chest. He wound his arm back to launch his phone across the metal and concrete warehouse only to feel a large hand fall on his wrist.
"Don't," Josh warned as gently as he could. "She's gonna call eventually and you can't fucking talk to her on smashed pieces of plastic."
He was right, of course, and that was why Dave had called him in a panic as he left the hospital that night.
"They're sending her away without me," he gasped in a terrified string of confused words, "She said she needs time away. She's gonna-"
"Don't even say it," Josh said soothingly. "Where are you? I'm on my way."
And they had camped out at 606 ever since, jamming well into the night, every night, while sharing bourbon and memories. Then Josh had the idea to sober up just enough to head east, out into the desert where they could 'get right with the powers that be'.
Dave didn't know what those powers were, but he had some rather therapeutic ideas rolling around in his head and the desert was the perfect place for them.
Dave Catching had let them borrow the Cutlass for the occasion and once the trunk was full of the required boxes, overnight bags, a couple guitars and quality tequila, they peeled out of 606's parking lot and headed for the desert.
The ragtop was down and the radio was up, but none of it made Dave feel any better. The 210 freeway reminded him of the first day he had spent with Liz, trying to be discreet as he stared at her through the mirrors of his bike. He wondered if he had fallen in love with her that day, or if it was the night before. He was unquestionably infatuated with her from the moment she wandered through the green room doors on Paul's arm, but he couldn't quite place the moment he really fell for her.
"They're just growing pains, man."
He abandoned his thoughts and looked over at Josh as he tried to decipher his words. "What?"
"Every relationship has growing pains."
"We're married, dude."
"Yeah for what, twenty minutes now?" Josh quipped, smiling at himself in the rearview mirror. "The natural progression of things doesn't give a shit about government paperwork. Ignore all the labels and you're smack in the middle of a normal, natural rough spot."
"A normal rough spot is bitching at each other over leaving dishes in the sink. Not being asked to take time apart because I stress her out enough to induce labor."
Josh chuckled a bit at that and waited until they had passed a rather loud semi truck before replying, "You and Elizabeth are probably the least normal couple I've ever had the immense pleasure of knowing."
Catching, or Catch, along with tequila shots greeted them at the door of Rancho de la Luna. Once those glasses were emptied, they immediately refilled and when the tequila's bite finally wore off, the mezcal came out.
The three of them wandered around the house, laughing and remembering until sun was just starting to pull itself out of high noon, allowing short shadows to cast beside the covered patio Dave and Josh eventually found themselves on.
"You get a new guitar, Dr. G?"
Dave looked up as Catch walked outside with his acoustic guitar in his hand and flinched. He tried to play it off as an itch, but knew he had failed when Catch held the guitar a bit more protectively.
"She's a beaut," Catch said softly as he sunk into a chair and looked over the wear marks on the rosewood body. "Sentimental?"
"Yeah. Birthday gift from my wife."
"Any idea where she scrounged it up?"
His mind briefly flashed to a bank statement he had come across in her office one day as he was looking for their marriage license and almost winced at the numbers he had seen. "She managed to sweet talk it away from a private collector."
Catch's eyebrows disappeared under his hat. "Private collector?"
Dave nodded, his eyes back on the delicate snowflake inlays in the frets. "Clapton's '39 that he played for his Unplugged session."
Josh finished off his mezcal and reached back for the bottle as he chuckled, "Tell him the whole story, Dr. G."
"She uh...," Dave sat forward, eager to talk about Liz in any capacity, but the knot in his throat tightened and he had to pause before the tears beat his words to the surface. Catch and Josh both noticed and shifted forward in support, giving him just enough space to work through it while letting him know they were there. He cleared his throat and gratefully took the guitar when Catch gently set it in his lap, giving him the strength to go on.
"We had just sort of started dating," he managed, wanting to drag the story out just so he could talk about her, "and she was in London for work and I was in LA. The time difference was fucking brutal and it had been like three days since we had actually talked, you know? We were texting and shit, but just to talk to her was like..."
"I know," Catch offered with a smile when he started to struggle again. "She charmed the hell out of the table at your birthday, man. McJunkins even liked her and he doesn't like anybody."
He smiled at that, the familiar feeling of pride swimming alongside how badly he missed her. "She called me one night - totally hammered - to tell me that she thought Clapton's Unplugged was better than Nirvana's."
Josh burst out laughing when Catch's jaw dropped. "Ballsy little thing, isn't she?"
"Yeah, man," Dave felt himself relax into a smile as he strummed the guitar. "She's not afraid of much, that's for sure."
The next few hours were spent in the same way, Josh and Catch listening to Dave talk about Liz. It wasn't therapy, but it felt like it, even with the bottle of tequila on the table between them running dry sooner than they had expected. The bottle of mezcal had just met the same fate when an unfamiliar car crunched up the gravel driveway. Catch seemed unconcerned and set off to greet the visitors while Josh pulled himself upright into a full body stretch.
"Ready to blast some shit out of the sky?"
Dave nodded through draining his drink and made sure his guitar was stowed somewhere safe before following Josh out into the desert.
They were silent as they walked, comfortably listening to the dirt beneath their shoes and the hum of the insects in the scrub around them until Josh finally muttered, "So did you fuck her?"
Dave knew the conversation was coming. It was the sole reason for this little trip, but he still wasn't prepared for it. Josh adjusted the box on his shoulder and stopped short.
"Dude, did you fuck Calliope?"
This time he was ready for it, though he was frustrated that a simple, honest answer was proving so fucking difficult. "Nope."
They stared each other down for a long moment until Dave cracked with a flat, "You don't believe me, do you."
Josh's platinum tooth glinted sharply in the bright sun as his grin formed. "Nah, I believe you, man. I do. I'm just bummed out that you think no one else will."
"... Believe me?"
Josh shrugged a bit and hoisted the heavy box back onto his shoulder so they could continue walking. "Between that floozy's mouth and your shitty poker face, the truth was all we were gonna get."
The silence returned as Dave considered his words, thankful that they were walking so he could do so. It wasn't until they reached their destination at the edge of an old quarry and started to set up their things that he finally started to believe himself. He had lied so many times in the past that reality had blurred and although he knew he hadn't slept with Calliope while married to Liz, it would be her word against his own if he loudly denied it, making him look like a fool.
He busied himself with loading the bolt action rifle while Josh sorted the box of intended targets. It wasn't until the first target was flung skyward and picked off by Dave's aim that Josh spoke again.
"So what happened?"
"She said she had something important to show me," Dave muttered as he roughly reloaded the rifle, conscious of the anger simmering in his chest. "So she came to the studio and-"
Josh suddenly tossed another target in the air, but Dave took it out easily, glaring at it as the remnants clattered to the hard earth with a crash. They continued on like that, Josh throwing the targets at random intervals while Dave tried to focus on both aiming, firing and explaining one of the biggest mistakes he'd ever made in his life.
Calliope had made herself at home in his office, smugly relaxing in his office chair with her platform heels on his desk as she texted him the photos one by one, each of them tearing him to shreds as they materialized on his phone screen. He had been so heartbroken and hurt that he had absentmindedly let Calliope perch on his knee, he had even set his hand on her lower back when she started to wobble a bit, but her aggressive kiss had caught him completely off guard. In the middle of it, and yes he admitted that he had kissed her back, his phone had been pried from his hand and then tossed onto the coffee table, the last tie to Liz yanked away.
As he aimed the gun, he could still feel her breath on his neck and her weight on his hips, her fingers prying apart the button of his jeans... and he could still hear her startled cry when he lifted her off his lap to cast her aside. The sights on the gun shook when he remembered his office door slamming shut behind him as he fled to his truck. The only thing on his mind in that moment was confronting his wife and his best friend, that was all that mattered. Fuck everything and everyone else. And now, out there in the middle of the desert, he was mortified, ashamed, angry that he had so easily fallen for Calliope's insane hoax, mostly because Liz was so afraid that he would.
He pulled the trigger and missed, crumpling to the dirt just as another one of Taylor's cymbal crashed down several yards away.
*
"Thanks, T."
"Yup," his breath on her shoulder made her jump a little, but she smiled when he combed her hair out of her face with his fingers. "I'll be back in a couple hours."
Liz struggled to roll herself and her huge belly over in bed as he put the blood pressure machine back in her nightstand drawer and listened as he tiptoed out of the room. The blue light on her phone blinked to let her know she had a message and she checked over her shoulder before sliding the phone across the sheet toward her.
The long line of messages broke her heart all over again. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she read through them for what felt like the millionth time.
I love you
I miss you
I love you
This song reminds me of you
Stevie misses you
I miss you
I love you...
She hadn't replied to any of them, worried it would open the floodgates and she would run back to him sooner than she should. But, she always answered when he called so he could talk to the kids. Only then would she speak to him and only a little,though it was long enough to hear the pain in his voice and she wondered if he could hear it in her's too.
'I love you so much, Elizabeth,' he'd always say as they were about to hang up and she'd furtively look around to make sure Taylor wasn't around before replying, 'I love you, too.'
Frustrated by the tears soaking her pillow, she clumsily pushed herself upright and swiped at her phone. It only rang twice before she was met with what sounded like fabric being shuffled together and a sleepy, slurred, "Hello?"