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To everyone who has ever felt the dark waters of depression creeping up their legs. You deserve to feel the sun on your face.
The funny thing about sounds is that your mind doesn’t catalog the mundane as if it’s the last time you’ll hear it. It’s easy for us to experience a moment and commit what it looks like and feels like to memory, but it’s the sounds that fade the quickest.
“Riggins. What are you doing here?” I ask, staring at the man I haven’t seen in nearly five years outside of magazines and television. “Coming to see my wife,” he says, and my world shifts on its axis.
“I need you with me. I can’t do it without you, Stell.” “You can do anything you want, Riggs. You don’t need anyone. You’re… you’re you.” “Fine,” he says, correcting, reaching down to where my hand lays on the blanket, grabbing it and twining our fingers together. “I don’t want to do it without you.” A long beat passes as I concentrate on nothing but Riggins’ hand in mine and pray my palms don’t feel sweaty. “I don’t want to do anything without you, little star,”
Recurrent brief depression, my psychiatrist calls it. I call it the waters.
My life is like the ocean. Sometimes, I’m at the top, floating on my back, the sun on my face. Happy, warm. Whole. Other times, I’m in the deepest, dark blue depths, so cold I can’t remember what the sun feels like anymore. I'm numb.
“She’s a free spirit, little star,” I remember him saying. “Just like you; she always comes back to me.” “Just like me,” I had said with a wide smile, a smile he had liked a lot because he kissed me so hard, I thought it was going to bruise.
Gracie, 1 year old in New Mexico, scribbled in all too familiar scrawl on the back that he also left behind. And below that, You’ve still got all my love.
She told me if I skipped college and instead went on tour with Riggins and the boys, I would regret it. He’s going to chew you up and spit you out, Stella Jane, and then what will you have? Nothing. You’re throwing your life away, she said. And she was right. He chewed me up, spit me out, and destroyed me.
“There she is,” he says so low, the words filled with wonder. “There’s my little star. Buried deep under that mask,”
“I’m always Riggs to you. And you’re my little star. Ironic when you’re my goddamn sun, when my entire world revolves around you.”
“Okay,” she whispers, my heart beating out of my chest with the single word. One word, two syllables, and both of our lives are changing forever. I close the gap between us, gently pressing my lips to the lips of my best friend in the entire fucking world, and everything changes in a heartbeat.
“What would I be coming on tour as?” As tends to be our way, I don’t have to ask her to clarify, to ask what she means. “Mine,” I whisper, my hand moving to cup her cheek. “You’d come on tour as mine, Stella. The way you always have been since you were five years old, and you told me I was stupid because I was a boy and boys were inherently stupid.”
But what about if that boy is so wildly in love with you that he can’t breathe when you’re not near? Can you make an exception for him?” Her eyes go wide, her mouth dropping open. “You’re in love with me?” I laugh because I thought it was obvious, thought I was always obvious.
“Please, Stella. Friends,” I say, pleading in my voice. “What?” “If you won’t give me anything else, please give me that. I miss my best friend. It’s like… it’s like I’m missing a part of me for seven years.”
“Friends. We agreed on friends, Riggins,” I remind him in a whisper, even though I don’t feel the warning as deeply as I should. His lips tip up in a smile, the dimple I used to spend my days making silly jokes just to see coming out. “I lied,” he says. I give him a glare, my hand starting to push on his chest, but his arm grips my waist tighter, his face going a bit serious. “Friends don’t kiss like you kissed me last night, Stella.”
“I’m yours. I’m yours, and I’m back, and I’m here to protect you,” he says to the top of my head.
“What does she have to be jealous of?” “That you’re beautiful. That people adore you. That you’re so fucking talented, the entire world knows your work. That you’re in this town not because you’re stuck, but by choice. That you’re you, Stell. Everyone should be jealous of you. Just look at you.”
But even when I feel the wave of my sadness creeping up, if I’m wrapped in him, I know I’ll be okay. It’s always been that way. Just… more lately. More since he became mine.
“Are you mine?” “What?” “Are you mine? We haven’t talked about what happened at the bonfire, but Stell, to me, you’re mine now.” “Your…. Your girlfriend?” I ask, my pulse racing again but for a different reason now. It’s been two weeks since the bonfire, and while we’ve had small kisses and held hands and been some new version of us, we haven’t talked about what it meant, and we definitely haven’t done more, despite how much my entire soul wants to. “You’re my everything, Stella. But yeah, for right now, we can call you my girlfriend.”
“Look, a shooting star,” I whisper. “That one. That one could be me. Stella, the bright, shooting star,” I smile into his chest but feel his head shaking above mine. “Never. That would mean you’re running from me. Getting further. I want you to stay put, so I can always find you when I need you.”
“Friendship. Give him your friendship. Even if you can’t ever give him what you both really want ever again, if you're too afraid to get hurt again, we’ll all understand. But you both need each other, even if it’s just as friends. You’re in the same room together, and for the first time in seven years, he’s whole again, Stella. His light is gone when you aren’t around. And I haven’t seen you over the past few years, but I think the same goes for you, too.
He absolutely destroyed me once, and I barely survived. A second time might kill me.
“Destroy me. You’ve done it once before. What’s a little pain with my pleasure?”
“Look at me, Stell,” he says. I do, I am, I have been, but this time, I look at him through the haze of pleasure. Then I see him. Cracked wide open, I see Riggins staring at me. He’s open and honest, and I see it all. The guilt, the fear, the anxiety, the sadness. But I also see the love. It’s like he’s trying to show me why he really came home. It wasn’t the marriage or the town or the music. It was me. It was us. It was because just like me, he has only been half alive for nearly a decade and he’s tired of living without me.
Why a sunflower? Why here? Why no color, why is it wilted, tipping down? But he knows the way he always does. “You were always my sun, Stella. The center of my universe.” Again, I try to open my mouth, to argue, I think, to tell him that wasn’t true, but he keeps talking. “Without you, I couldn’t find the light. But I also knew I let you wilt. I watched you wilt all those months on tour, watching me spiral with no way to pull me out. I kept you in the dark until you couldn’t stand straight anymore. I needed this reminder that I did that to you, that I once had the sun, and I lost it.”
“Sunflowers are amazing, you know,” he says, almost conversationally. “Even when they wilt, their stalk is so strong, they stand straight, like they don’t want anyone to know they’re suffering.” He shrugs like he’s not about to blow my world apart. “Reminds me of you.”
“Give me a chance, Stell, I’ll make sure you get all the sunshine you need to flourish. You’ll never wilt again, not because of me.”
“I lost everything, Stella. You became my whole world on a rainy day in Ashford, and on a rainy day in Vegas, I lost everything. That night in Vegas hasn’t come back, at least not all of it, but some parts did. It kills me every time, knowing I had you, that you gave me everything, and I threw it away. I threw you away.”
“I’m sorry I took your sun away, little star. I’ll never make that mistake again.”
“Because even if you aren’t ready for that again, you’re mine. That means you’re also mine to take care of.”
“I’ll take you any way you’ll give you to me, Stell. That’s what you’re not getting. Sad, happy, scared, I’ll take it so long as you’re also mine.”
“Is it okay if I lay there with you?” he asks. My brow furrows, and I shake my head gently, not in a no, but because it makes no sense. “What?” “The days you can’t leave bed. Can I lay in it with you?”
I’ve learned over the years that I can survive without Riggins, but I can’t live without him.
“Can’t see stars without darkness, Stella.
"Stella—" I try to say, but she cuts me off. "No one has ever loved me more, Riggins. There's always been something, someone above me." "Never again," I whisper into her hair. "I'll always love you more. You've got all my love and more forever."
"
“What is this?” I whisper, looking around. There are sunflowers everywhere. Sunflowers and wildflowers with a small arch at one end. A man I don’t know is wearing a small smile, and I barely notice the photographer snapping shots as my eyes meet the guys, all dressed in shirts and light green ties. I almost laugh when I see how uncomfortable they look, but I can’t when Riggins answers. “Our wedding,” he whispers. “The way it should have always been. In our place, under the stars.”
