CD dropped today, and you cringe at the dorky picture from 11th grade on the cover, but Leo said it was cool so whatever. You try not to cringe at the fact that some of those songs about Ashley are songs she's never heard…until now. If she listens to it she'll know the truth. If.
You want a break, feel so tired from writing all those songs in rehab and polishing the rest, kicking coke and kicking Toronto. The last time you went back you realized you could never go back. What was there for you before is gone and maybe it's just as well, but it still hurts.
"Take a break, go on a vacation," Leo said and you listen to him, get out of Canada altogether for a break, head to the States. Hadn't even thought to ask him if the CD was stateside.
"Of course, kiddo," Leo says, sounding like your father for a minute, "that's where the big money is. That's where stardom is,"
Stardom. What the fuck? Is that what you even want? It's so hard to tell anymore. That doesn't even matter anymore. Making it big? Some dumb sixteen year old's dream that wasn't yours anymore.
It feels foreign to be in the United States even though it's the same language and in many ways the same culture. There's so many new singers and musicians and groups that no one notices you at all, and you like it that way. Staying in a city in Massachusetts called Worcester because Abby Hoffman was from that city. Drinking again but you are surprised that the drinking age is 21 here, and almost every place cards.
Driving around, the speed limit signs not making sense in miles, you find a back neighborhood bar and manage to order a drink, whiskey on the rocks. Maybe the thick beard stubble made the bartender think you were older.
Sipping the drink, talking to a girl at least two years older than you are, you think she looks a little bit like Ashley.
"Where are you from?" the girl says, drinking something that is bright green with a little red straw. The whiskey relaxes you, mixes with your meds, makes you dizzy.
"Toronto, but I live in Vancouver now," you tell her, and focus on her full red lips, glossy and red with make-up.
"Oh, that's the accent," she says and laughs, mimics how you say "out" and "about" and "sorry" and "tomorrow". Talking and drinking and you end up following this girl to a cheap hotel room, t.v. nailed to the wall, bedspreads that look 40 years old. Feeling nothing for her as you do things to her you wouldn't dare have done with Ashley or even Manny, feeling empty and not proud of yourself as you slink away in the weak morning sunlight.
You hear one of your songs on the radio and it makes you feel funny, because that is not what your voice sounds like to you and that isn't how the song sounded in your head when you recorded it. Disconnected. Only the words make any sort of sense at all, and that's because this is the Ashley song.