Heroes...And The Rest Of Us.

It's been two weeks since the wedding and we're all settled in our house. My gift from Adam was two dogs from the shelter, a female golden retriever named Mabel, she's about two years old and all but attached to my hip surgically. And Simba, who's a mixed breed, he's a year older than Mabel and is very protective of Adam and I. He's white with black and brown patches covering his body.

Currently, I'm sitting at my desk in the guest bedroom, drawing. Mabel is laying at my feet, and Simba is laying in the doorway watching Adam who is in the living room on his phone. I can hear him talking, presumably to Brad or Neil about coming over to rehearse some new material they've been working on. We set the basement up as a rehearsal area/studio, and the guys have been plugging away at a new album so they can go back on the road this summer and fall. Adam pokes his head in the room, he's still on the phone.

"Hey babe. Are you going to be around tonight? Janin wants to come over with Neil so she's not alone at their house." He says.

"Yeah, I'm not going anywhere. Where's Roo?"

"Neil's moms place."

"Oh, OK. Yeah, tell her to come over."

"Yeah, man. Tell her to come." He says into the phone, leaving the room again.

I go back to drawing. I'm sketching an angel in black and white. She's naked, sitting with her legs bent in front of her, covering any exposed area's. Adam comes back in the room and looks over my shoulder.

"The guys are coming over in about an hour, except Brad. He's gonna be a little late."

"I see."

"She's pretty. She should have short hair like yours though." He says about my drawing. He walks away, into the walk-in closet where some of his guitars are. I write in big cursive letters under the angels body. 'Dear Adam, I'm not an angel.' I fold the paper in half and hand it to him when he comes back out of the closet. He opens it and smirks to himself, taking a pencil out of the jar on my desk, he holds the drawing against the wall and writes something on it. He replaces the pencil in the jar, folds the paper and hands it back to me before leaving the room with both dogs hot on his heels. I open the paper and read what he wrote.

'Dear Sophie, Neither am I.' It's written in print and looks pretty cool under my pretty script. I draw short hair on the angel and she looks a lot like me when I finish. I tack the drawing up on the corkboard that's hanging above my desk and go to find Adam. He's in the basement with Barry and the dogs when I find him.

"Hey Barry. I didn't hear you come in." I say.

"I came in through the sliding doors down here, rather than walking through the whole house."

"Gotcha. I'm hungry. Are you guys hungry?"

"I could eat." Adam says. Barry nods his head in agreement.

"I dont feel like cooking though, or going out. I wonder if Neil and Janin have eaten yet."

"Here, call and ask if they want a pizza or something. I'll buy." Adam hands me his phone and I call and ask. They agree that pizza sounds good and that they will pick it up on the way over. They arrive about 15 minutes later with three pizza's, and Adam gives Neil some money for them and we eat. Janin and I go upstairs afterwards and make ourselves some drinks while the boys rehearse. We sit on the couch and yak for a while then we go back downstairs to hang out with our men, and Barry.

"Hey babe." Adam says to me when we get downstairs.

"Yeah?"

"Will you run upstairs and grab me the acoustic guitar that has the knick in the top of it? It's in the guest room closet."

"Yeah." I hand Janin my drink and run up the stairs.

"Hey guys! What are my babies doing?" I say to the dogs who are laying on their beds in the living room. Neither of them move. I go into the bedroom and flip the switch for the closet light. It snaps above my head and the bulb goes black.

"Dammit." I say outloud to myself.

I go inside the closet and look at the acoustic guitars, there are three of them. I select one and take it out to the light to look for the knick. When I hold it up I hear something inside the guitar move from one side to the other with a thump. That's weird. I shake the guitar back and forth, whatever it is thumps from side to side. I get a sick feeling in my chest, I have to know what's inside this guitar. I start turning the knobs to loosen the strings. A part of me already knows what I'm going to find, but I'm in denial about it. When I get the strings loose enough, I reach my hand into the hole and feel around until I grasp the object. I pull it out and stare at it in my shaking hand.

It's a little, round, celaphane wrapped, package of pills. I recognize the pills to be the same ones that Adam was taking in Chicago. It appears that there are about twenty or so pills in the package. I grab the guitar and half run, half walk back down to the basement. I slam the door open when I get to the bottom of the steps. Everyone stares at me like I'm insane, but I don't care. I'm staring at Adam, who looks like he knows that he's been caught.

"Sophie, you have to let me explain this, please. I promise, I'm not taking those. I-" I cut him off.

"Don't you fucking lie to me!" I scream and haul off, tossing the pills as hard as I can at his head. He ducks and they miss him. I take the guitar with both hands and start to smash it against the wall. Neil and Barry come over to me and grab me. Neil wraps his arms around me, and Barry takes the guitar from me. Janin just stares, slack jawed. Adam is ringing his hands through his hair like he can't believe this is happening. Neil pushes me down to my knees with his arms still around me. I'm screaming and crying hysterically.

"How fucking could you, Adam?! How long have you been doing this? Were you fucking high at our wedding?" I scream.

"Fuck no! Babe, I promise you. I'm not on anything."

"You're lying!"

"Shh, try and calm down a little sweetheart." Neil says in my ear quietly.

"I dont want to fucking calm down, Neil!" Adam slides his back down the wall so he's sitting against it, watching Neil and I. I try to escape Neil's grasp and crawl to where Adam's sitting, but he's holding me too tight. I see something flicker in Adam's eyes when he see's this.

"Get the fuck off of her!" He stands up again. "All of you! Get the fuck out of my house. I need to be alone with my fucking wife."

"I don't think that you two should be alone right now, let's just calm down and talk about this." Neil says.

"Get the fuck out Neil! Now!" He screams. I'm still crying, and I'm fucking pissed, but all I want to do is get to Adam, and be with him. Everyone finally leaves, I'm on the floor crying. Adam is standing over me, trying to collect himself. He comes down on his knees next to me and rubs a hand on my back.

"Will you let me try and explain myself?" He asks. I nod and he sit's against the wall again, and I sit in between his legs on my knees.

"I got those when I was on tour, at one of the shows. I dont really know how it even happened, just one minute I was fine, and the next I had those in my hands."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to be mad at me."

"So you kept it from me? You hid them in your guitar, for what? Safe keeping? In case I make you mad one day?" I yell.

"No! I just- I don't know. I can't do this right now, I have to get out of here." He stands up and I start pulling his clothes, trying to make him stay.

"No, you can't leave! Adam please, I'm sorry. I wont yell anymore, please stay!" I beg. He pulls away from me pretty easily and goes up the stairs. I chase after him, calling his name. He grabs a coat the walks to the front door.

"Sophie, I'll be back. Please don't try to follow me." He says, shutting the door behind him in my face. I sing down against it, crying. I sit there for a while and then I go back downstairs. I grab the package of pills and the bottle of vodka that Janin and I had been drinking from and take it all upstairs.

I sit against the bar the that seperates the kitchen from the living room and the dining room, and take a swig from the bottle. I pick at the plastic that's covering the pills, it's actually a sandwich baggie that's been tied around itself to form a ball. I unwrap it and take some of the pills out of the bag, moving then between my fingers. Why would someone do that to themselves? Do these things really make everything better?

I put my hand to my mouth and swallow the pills with a drink of vodka. I start crying almost immediately after I take them. I take another one and crunch it in my teeth like Adam told me he used to when he was really bad. I feel faint, so I take another drink. My head is spinning, literally. I lay down on the floor, and pass out.

I can barely hear my dogs barking and someone saying my name. I open my eyes and Brad's face come swimming into my line of vision. No one must have called to tell him that rehearsal was canceled. He's tapping the side of my face lightly with his hand.

"Stay with me Sophie." He says.

"Brad." I whisper.

"Where's Adam? How many of those pill's did you take?"

"I don't know." I reach up and touch his face. He grabs my wrist and put's my arm around his neck.

"I'm gonna try to take you into the bedroom OK?" I nod. My head feels heavy. He picks me up and carries me in a threshold to the bedroom. I hear him call for the dogs to follow us. He lays me down on Adam's side of the bed and picks up Mabel and sets her down next to me. Simba goes around the end of the bed and hops up and lays down on my feet, keeping lookout.

"I'm gonna call Adam, OK? Dont puke on the dog."

I shut my eyes and lightly stroke the top of Mabels head. I hear Brad standing in the foyer talking to Adam on the phone.

"Look, I don't know what happened here with your wife tonight, but I need to know how many pills were in this bag." I wish I could hear Adam's voice on the phone, but I can't. I'm drifting in and out of conciousnous. Brad walks into the kitchen and I can hear him pour the pills out of the baggie onto the kitchen counter.

"Four." I hear him say into the phone before I pass out again.

When I wake up again, it's dark in the house. The dogs are no longer in bed with me, I cant see where they went. I can't hear anything in the house. I look around the room with my eyes only, I see Adam sitting in the chair that usually sits in front of the computer. He's facing the window, off in his own little world. I don't think he know's that I'm awake yet.

"Adam." I whisper. He looks up, startled.

"Hey."

"Are you OK? Are you drunk?"

"No."

"Come here." I say. I move over to my side of the bed. He gets up and crawls in next to me with his clothes on. He touches the side of my face.

"I'm so sorry, Sophie. I shouldn't have left."

"We have to talk about the pills, Adam."

"Look, I wasn't high during the wedding. I never even took one of those pills. I put them in the guitar when I was on the road. I honestly forgot about them after that. I promise."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I would never do that to you again."

"I shouldn't have taken those pills. I just thought that, I could make everything better."

"You could have killed yourself, babe. I dont know what I would have done if something happened to you. Especially if I had something to do with it."

"How many did I take?"

"Four. I wanted to take you to the hospital when I got home, but Brad said that we both would have been arrested."

"I'm so sorry."

"Just promise me that you won't ever do that to me again."

"I promise." We lay together for a minute before talking again.

"Neil was pissed tonight." He says.

"So was Brad, Barry probably was too, but he wouldn't really show it."

"I'll have to talk to them about it."

"Where did you go tonight?"

"The beach. Down by where we had the ceremony."

"What did you do?"

"Smoked a lot of cigarettes and thought about you, and I tried to remember where or why I got those pills."

"You dont remember?"

"It was after you left, backstage. But I don't remember what show. I put them in the guitar on the bus the next morning and never thought about it again."

"Did anyone else know?"

"I dont think so. If they did, they didnt say anything." I take a deep breath in and out.

"I had a dream right before you came home. I'd had the dream before, when you were on tour with Shaun."

"What was it about? The drugs?"

"No, there was another woman. You guys were laughing at me." He sighs.

"I would never cheat on you. Women don't even cross my mind out there anymore."

"I know, I wasnt ever worried about that, but it was like when I had the dream it was distracting me from thinking about the drugs, like I knew something was happening, but I was in denial about it. Because I was never worried about you cheating on me."

"I don't even remember paying for them. It was all just a blur, I guess."

"We're OK, babe. We're here. We made it. This isnt the last time that we'll be tested like this, it never is. This stuff makes us stronger."

We fall asleep and wake up the next morning with the dogs in our bed. I get up and take them outside, still wearing my clothes from the day before. Adam starts the coffee machine and then goes out the back patio doors to stand on the deck. The back of our house is built into the hill, so the main floor of our house looks like the second floor from the back of the house, and the basement looks like the main floor. We have a deck built on the side of the house that looks out throught the woods to the lake subdivision.

I bring the dogs in, pour two cups of coffee and take them all out to the deck. Adam is looking over the railing at the lake that sits beyond the subdivision. He comes over to me and hugs me for a minute.

"I lied." He says.

"Oh boy, what now?"

"About this all being worth you waiting for me."

"It was."