Parachute by Frick24x
Story Notes:

Updated: FIVE NEW CHAPTERS UPDATED 5.20.

 

So, here we go again. I'm back. This story has been finished for quite some time, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to post it. Some of you may remember this story from its beginning -- Running on Empty -- but I changed the title and the female lead's name, added some chapters in the middle, and actually finished it. 

I'll be posting this story as I read and edit the chapters for quality. 

Please tell me if you like it and in the meantime--follow me on Twitter: @PerfectlyAwry

As a side note - I love Leighanne, and I adore her and Brian's real relationship. However, this is FICTION. Writing about real life wouldn't be nearly as fun for either of us.

Chapter 1 by Frick24x
Author's Notes:

Again, this is a story that has been posted here before, HOWEVER, it wasn't complete. I have made some changes and finished the story, so I'll be posting it here.

Let me know what you think! 

Find me on Twitter = @PerfectlyAwry

 

Chapter 1

It’s the screaming; the constant, overbearing wailing of the woman who is supposed to love and cherish me--of the woman who I am supposed to love and cherish-- until death do us part. It's never-ending. It's nauseating. It follows me from room to room as I try to escape the noise and continues as I climb the stairs two at a time and pull my already-packed suitcases out of the closet and throw them onto the bed.

So, you're not even going to try to fix this? You're just going to leave and ignore everything that I've been saying to you all afternoon?” Leighanne, my wife of almost ten years, yells to the back of my head.

Still in silence, I unzip my suitcase to make sure that I have everything that I need. Technically, I'm not running away. I'm supposed to leave for a worldwide tour with my singing group, the Backstreet Boys, tomorrow, but after a day like today—or rather after a year like the year my wife and I have been having—I figure that it can't hurt to leave a day early.

Brian!” Leighanne continues to scream. “Say something! Say anything! You can't just leave and expect everything to work itself out. Life doesn't work that way!”

I inhale deeply and hold the air deep in my lungs. I don't want to say the words that are on the tip of my tongue. I don't want to make the possibilities--of this marriage being over, of my not even wanting to try anymore, of my simply wanting silence--into reality.

So, that's it,” Leighanne lets out a shaky breath as she tries to hold back her tears. “You're going to just leave. You're going to skip away to Europe or Asia or where ever you're going to play with your friends while I'm here waiting until you miss me enough or get sick of the sausage fest and call me to meet you. Is that right?”

A small chuckle escapes my lips, and then another until I am doubled over in laughter with salty tears running down my cheeks. I don't know if the tears are because of the nonsensical hilarity of the situation or if they are because of the gut-wrenching pain of knowing that the one thing in my life that was never supposed to end is really over. When I start to sob uncontrollably, I know that it's because of the latter.

After it seems like I haven't looked at her in ages, I finally turn to Leighanne with tear-streaked cheeks. Her lips are pursed and she's shaking her head slowly from side to side, choking back her own tears. She's not a stupid woman. She knows what I'm thinking, partly because she knows me better than anyone else and partly because my thoughts are mirroring her own and she doesn't want me to say the words. Leighanne, like myself, doesn't want to hear them out loud. She doesn't want to make the situation that we are facing into reality.

I lick my trembling bottom lip slowly and exhale.

“I can't do this anymore,” I whisper in a harsh, raspy tone. “I can't fight like this. I can't stand the misery and the tears and the complete lack of everything that a marriage is supposed to be about. I can’t do it.”

Stop it. Stop it right now,” Leighanne growls through clenched teeth. She grabs the tops of my arms and gives me a small shake like you would a misbehaving five-year-old. “This was not a part of the plan, Brian. You are not giving up! WE are not giving up. We belong together. Do you hear me?”

I nod because I do hear her, but then I shake my head because at this point I just don't think that I agree anymore.

 Without saying another word, I drag my suitcases off of the bed. They land on the floor with a thump, and I pull the handles out until they click into place. I step around Leighanne and pull my suitcases down the stairs.

Leighanne is one step behind me. She now has tears streaming down her face.

“Wait,” she pants as she chases after me into the foyer. “Wait.”

Facing the front door, I close my eyes and shake my head. I don’t want to look at her; I don’t want to see the pain that I’ve caused.

“I have to go,” I say, more for my own benefit than for hers.

Hearing her cry breaks my heart. It always has. I turn around slowly and feel my heart drop to my knees as I see the anguished look on her face.

You can't go. If you leave now, this will never work. We'll never be able to fix this. You'll be gone for months. We won't be able to survive that,” Leighanne wails desperately. “Please, don't go.”

I close my eyes and wipe away the remainder of the tears that are dripping down my cheeks. “Even if I don't leave now, I still have to leave tomorrow. This has been a long time coming. One day isn't going to make the difference.”

Then don't go at all,” Leighanne replies softly, knowing that she’s grasping at invisible straws. “The album didn't even sell that well. You can push the tour back. Just stay with me.”

I clench my jaw. I can't help but to be angry by her suggestion. The worst part about it is that though she knows that I’d never push aside my work obligations, she honestly wants me to simply stay put and fight with her for the entire summer as a masked attempt to mix our completely broken marriage

“I don't know how you could ask me to do that. I can't just call in sick, Leighanne, and I'm not giving up the one thing that has made kept me happy.” I turn around and swing the door opened. Leighanne remains quiet as I pull my suitcases down the path and then load them into the trunk of the car.

As I unlock the driver's side door and pull the handle to let myself in, Leighanne sprints down the cobblestone path. “Stop it. Stop this! Brian, I love you, damn it! Don't you love me anymore?”

I turn toward her slowly and gaze into her glazed, tear-filled blue eyes. I can't make myself say the words. I can't even nod or shake my head, because the truth is, though I know that I love her, I don't know if I am in love with her anymore. I wrap my hand into the silky blond strands of her hair and pull her head close to my own. I kiss her forehead softly and then her cheek as I whisper a final goodbye into her ear.

A fresh set of tears blur my vision as I back my car down the driveway. The tinging of the pebbles that Leighanne throws at my leaving car echoes in my ears. I give a final glance back as I turn the corner just in time to see my wife crumble and fall to the ground. As soon as my car is out of sight of my house, I pull over and I, too, crumble under the weight of heartbreak and failure.

------

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.

Brian sat straight up in bed startled by the sudden buzzing of the alarm clock on the bedside table. Obviously shaken by the tangibility of his nightmare, sweat matted his blond curls to his head and drenched his white t-shirt.

Squinting in the darkness that embodied his surroundings, Brian reached over and turned on the lamp that stood next to the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was then that he realized why he was feeling so uneasy. He was in an unfamiliar hotel room, thousands of miles from home with no real intent ever to go back to the life that he had lived only a few short months earlier. His nightmare felt real, because it was real. It was the secret that had been haunting him throughout the first twelve weeks of the tour. He had left his wife.

Sure, he had only left for the tour a day early and all of his things were still in their rightful places—as far as he knew, anyway—in the home that he had shared with Leighanne in Georgia, but he had more or less made a decision. He wasn't going back to her.

It was agonizing. He tried to make himself change his mind, but he always came to the same conclusion. He couldn't live trapped in a loveless marriage. He wouldn't succumb to the misery that had become the core of his existence.

The first couple of years that he and Leighanne had been married had been great. He was still working pretty steadily. They traveled the world together while Brian made records and Leighanne continued to pursue her acting career. To help her out, Brian made small appearances in a couple of Leighanne's movies, but her career never took off.

It seemed to be fine. Brian had made plenty of money for the both of them and they were perfectly content simply being together. Then, Brian's career slowed down as he and the other Backstreet Boys decided to take a much-needed break. After a year of sitting at home with nothing to do, Brian went back to work recording a Christian album.

As he made contacts in the Christian world, he started to travel again, but this time Leighanne wasn't interested in traveling with him. In fact, she wanted him to give up his music career altogether.

Leighanne had always been pretty level-headed. She understood that Brian's music career was what afforded her the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. For reasons unknown to Brian, however, Leighanne was suddenly insecure about their relationship and they started to fight about the simplest of things.

To his wife’s credit, she tried to talk to Brian about the way that things had changed. A lot of times, rather than dealing with the problems in their marriage, Brian would hole himself up in the studio and find ways to block everything out.

A couple of years earlier, the Backstreet Boys decided to record another album and go on another tour. They had all missed the success that they had once shared and while it was hard for the men to talk about their feelings for each other, they missed one another as well. For a while things seemed to get better, but that was mostly because Brian and Leighanne didn't see each other for weeks on end. There was no time to fight. Leighanne joined him in the middle of the Never Gone tour and stayed until the end. Almost immediately upon returning home, where there were no appearances to keep, the fighting started again. It was one thing after another until finally they couldn't even look at each other without an unyielding feeling of contempt.

Within a few months of the Never Gone tour ending, the Backstreet Boys started to record their next album. Again, Brian was back and forth to LA, but this time the distance did nothing to help their marital problems. In fact, the fighting only worsened as Leighanne started to believe that Brian’s career was more important to him than she was. At that point, in many ways, she was right. Only because his career was the only stable constant in his life. He didn't know how to fix his marriage, but he knew that he could sing. Naively, Brian believed that he and Leighanne were going through a rough patch and that it would all fix itself. The reality of the situation was that he and Leighanne only continued to grow further and further apart.

When Brian left home three months earlier, he changed his flight to Japan—where the tour was set to kick off—and arrived a day earlier that the rest of the Boys. When he got settled into his hotel room, he finally called home. Leighanne picked up after only one ring.

“I'm glad that you called,” Leighanne whispered hoarsely, her voice scratchy from the hours of crying.

“Yeah,” Brian replied, softly. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He could hear in her voice that she had been crying and he hated that. Her tears were what always brought him back. Now, he was glad that he was across the world. “We need to talk.”

“I've been telling you that for weeks,” Leighanne snapped.

Brian shook his head slowly, though he knew that Leighanne couldn’t see him. Already, he was frustrated and wanted to hang up. “I don't know that now, when our marriage is falling apart, if it's a great time to be confrontational.”

“I'm not trying to be confrontational,” Leighanne replied, her voice wavering, “and don't say that our marriage is falling apart.”

“Okay, then,” Brian responded softly. “What would you call it?”

“We're just going through something, but we love each other and we can make this work,” Leighanne replied as she broke under the pressure. Tears that she didn’t know she had left began to pour from her eyelids. “I know that we can.”

“Leigh, listen,” Brian paused briefly, not knowing how to verbalize his thoughts. He’d had a long flight to think over his decision. When he’d arrived, he’d stopped thinking and started putting plans into motion. “Leigh, I-I talked to our lawyer yesterday and-”

“I’m not signing any divorce papers, Brian! I'm not giving up on us,” Leighanne had snapped without giving Brian the opportunity to finish his sentence.

In Georgia, Leighanne was trembling wildly. She couldn't lose Brian. He was the love of her life, her everything. She wasn't letting him go. Their relationship had been the stuff that fairy tales were made of. Admittedly, the last couple of years had been hard, but not hard enough to throw everything else away.

“I'm not asking you to, but I think that we should separate—for a while, until we can see if there's even anything left to salvage.” Brian didn't mean to be so cold. He was just so tired, exhausted by the years' worth of emotional baggage that he'd had to carry around with him.

“Separated?” Leighanne spat into the phone. “You're across the world, Brian. How much more separated can we get?”

“I'm not going to be across the world forever, Leighanne,” Brian snapped back. “When I get back home, I don't want to have to come back to that house, to those problems. If there's any hope for this marriage at all, we need to work on things at a distance before we can try in the same space.”

“So what? You'll come home from a world tour and sleep in hotel rooms? You'll date other women and expect me to date other men? You want a trial separation to make sure that there's nothing better out there?” Leighanne yelled in response. “Well, let me tell you something, Brian. There IS no one out there better for you than me!”

“This has nothing to do with wanting to see other people!” This conversation was already giving Brian a headache. “I just don't want to be unhappy anymore, and I doubt that you want to be unhappy either! It's just a separation, Leighanne. That's it.”

“Whatever, Brian,” Leighanne snapped angrily. “Whatever you want. If 5,000 miles worth of separation isn't enough for you, then I'll sign your stupid papers, but I'm not going to wait for you to come around forever. Whatever you're going through, fix it before it's too late.”

And then, she hung up. Just like that, Brian and Leighanne were going to be legally separated and they hadn't spoken since.

Brian knew that Leighanne was waiting for him to call, but every time that he picked up the phone to do so, he couldn't bring himself to follow through. Sadly enough, he was hoping that when he finally did call, Leighanne would have followed up on her threat and it would have been too late.

 



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