Home. The word that haunts me. More than ever before in my life, I feel as if I don’t know where home is. Adding to my turmoil, I don’t know where she considers home at this point. I’d like to believe that she means Nashville, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.
“Awesome,” I respond, trying to mask the thoughts threatening to kill the high I’m riding. “Look, I’ll try to give you a call again later, but I really need to get back out there. I love you, baby.”
“Love you, too, Cowboy,” she giggles. I can hear the girls in the background giving her a hard time. “We’re going to be heading back to Aaron’s soon, so if I don’t answer, call me in the morning.”
Shit, I almost forgot to tell her. “Hey, about tomorrow morning. I’ll have to get you the info, but apparently I’m going to be doing some sort of webcast from the radio station down here. I don’t know what time or anything, but it’d be awesome if you were watching.” If we have to be apart, maybe it’ll make shit a bit easier on me to know that she’s at least in the cyber-audience. Yeah, I’m a lovesick fool, but I don’t really care. Lea’s worth any amount of ribbing I wind up taking from the guys.
“Of course! Just text me and call when you’re on your way in tomorrow morning, okay?”
We say goodbye and I give myself a once-over in the mirror. By now, they will have let the VIP ticket holders into the green room and I don’t want to look like shit. Gabe’s waiting for me outside the bathroom, a fresh t-shirt in hand. “Thought you might want this,” he says, glancing at the cell phone still in my hand. “Man, you’ve got it bad for that girl, don’t you?”
“Shut up, Parker,” I retort, punching him in the shoulder.
“Naw, man. I get it. I’ll be sneaking off to call April as soon as your punk ass gets back inside. Pete couldn’t find you after your little meeting, so he sent me to track you down.”
There aren’t many people in the VIP room right now. Most of them are still out front listening to Missy perform, but a few have already filtered into the room, likely wanting to beat the crowd later. I’ve listened to some of Missy’s songs online, but this is the first time I’ve heard her live. The most striking thing is how much her sound on stage resembles her recorded tracks. It’s refreshing, because too many artists are excellent with the help of creative mixing, but can’t give the fans a show worthy of the ticket price. I feel bad for ever thinking that Missy might be relying more on her good looks and personality than her talent.
“Hey, great show,” I congratulate her when she walks backstage, handing her a bottle of cold water. She looks just about as worn out as I did when I came off the stage, a sweaty, unattractive mess thanks to the stage lights. And even though she’s drenched, she’s still fucking adorable in that girl-next-door way.
Missy wraps her arms around me, telling me that she watched my set. I look around, hoping no one starts thinking that we’re an item. I know I’m hyper-sensitive, but the last fucking thing I need is Gabe making a comment to April and having it get back to Lea that Missy’s been hanging all over me.
“I have to go and do some meet-and-greet thing with the fans. You wanna come with?” she asks, leading me by the hand to the back of the room, where a small screen is set up to give her some privacy while she changes.
“Uh, yeah,” I respond, wondering if that’s okay. “Maybe I should ask Pete, first.” I’m confused about how all of this is supposed to work. If there are fans that paid to have access to us back here, won’t they get upset if we both disappear? I look around, noticing that there really aren’t all that many people walking through the door. “What about the VIPs?”
“He’ll be fine. Come on, it’ll be good for you. And the VIP group had their time earlier. Anyone who’s back there now is likely trying to get some extra time…or other things, if you know what I mean. Trust me, it’s not where we want to be,” she laughs, leading me through the room. Gabe calls out to me, nodding when I let him know where I’m going.
The crowd cheers when Missy walks through the door to the merchandise table. I stand back, watching as she greets every one of her fans, taking pictures and thanking them for coming out tonight. A few people notice me and ask for my autograph as well. My fucking autograph. How cool is that? We wind up sitting by the merch area until the very last fan has gone through the line before heading back out to the bus. It’s after one in the morning and I have to be up in four hours.
**
The next week and a half is more of the same. We’ve had one night off and I’m starting to feel the effects of our rigorous schedule. Twice, Pete’s had to tell the buses to leave without me so I could do my radio appearances. I hate them, but understand that they’re a necessary evil. One morning when I was particularly surly, I asked Pete why we can’t do like most artists and call this shit in. He informed me that phone interviews are great for an established artist, but for a rookie, it’s all about greasing palms and making people fall in love with me. Tonight, I made it to the club where we’re playing with a whopping ninety minutes to relax before going on stage.
“Hey, Colby,” Missy says, bounding up to me from the back door of the club. “I hope you don’t mind, but I stood in for you during sound check.” She’s always doing little shit to help me out. She’s cute and sweet and everything a guy who doesn’t have a girl back home could possibly want. I’m starting to wonder if I should say something to her. I glance down at my watch, wishing for a few minutes to clear my head. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking about Lea. I want to give her a call, but I’m not sure if she’s busy studying tonight.” If she’s at the library, she’ll have her phone shut off. I know it wouldn’t make sense to some people, but if that were the case, I’d rather not even try calling rather than get her voicemail. Plus, I figure mentioning Lea, again, will help remind Missy that I’m not on the market. She hasn’t come right out and hit on me, but sometimes I get this feeling that she’s flirting and it makes me uncomfortable.
“You really miss her, huh?” Missy says, leaning against the wall next to me. I look over at her and don’t see even a trace of jealousy. Maybe I have shit all wrong. “You know, it does get easier. Never easy, I won’t lie and say it doesn’t suck to be on the road when the people you love are back home, but it won’t always be this hard.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s just… shit, how do I say this without sounding like a weak punk?” I stare at the sun dipping below the horizon. I’m not used to it being almost eighty degrees at the beginning of December. “She’s in Wisconsin, finishing up the school semester and I’m out here. I promised myself I wouldn’t ask her to move to Nashville, but it’s getting hard to keep that promise. I want her there, where I feel like I’m at home. Fuck, I’m not making any sense.”
“No, I think I get it,” she assures me, placing her delicate hand on my forearm. “I feel the same way sometimes. It’s like I don’t feel so far away from my family because I know they’re at home waiting for me. Don’t worry, you two will figure it out.”
Pete pokes his head out the back door of the club, reminding us that we have a packed house waiting for at least one of us to think about singing. We head inside, laughing because we’ve just been scolded like a couple of kids caught skipping class.
Chapter 18
Colby
I’m not sure what’s going on, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with Lea for three days now. No matter how much I tell myself that she’s just busy studying for finals, this completely sucks. She’s supposed to be meeting up with me in Rochester Thursday night, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’ll happen. The weather man is forecasting a huge storm coming down out of Canada and depending on which map they show, the area between Madison and Rochester is either set to get three inches or twelve. Knowing my luck, and the fact that I’m completely jonesing for a Lea fix, the storm will track lower than anticipated and they’ll get two feet of snow.
“Hey, what’s got you about ready to throw your
phone across the bus?” Missy asks, sitting down next to me. The first week, I worried that she was hitting on me, but as it turns out, she’s just a super friendly girl. She’s been all about giving me advice when needed to make life on the road smoother. The tip I seem to be having a hard time following is ‘don’t let anyone see how much you miss home’. According to her, it’s a sign of weakness to let the feelings bubble to the surface and people will do their best to take advantage of that. By people, I’m fairly certain she means the women who risk frostbite every night while trying to look sexy. Sucks for them because there’s only one woman I have eyes for and she could turn me on while wearing a parka. From what I’ve heard, it’d be even worse if I were on tour with an established male artist. Then, we’d also have to contend with women following us from city to city.
“She’s not answering again tonight,” I sigh, scrolling through my call log. The last time I talked to her was Saturday night, and that was only for about five minutes.
“Colby, you’re going to drive yourself insane if you keep freaking when she’s not there every time you call. You said you trust Lea, right?” She knows I do. It’s become my mantra since the night we hit the road. There’s no one I trust more than Lea, but being out here, so far away from her, is starting to fuck with my head. I need Missy to keep reminding me of all the reasons why I love and trust Lea; otherwise, I’m going to go insane before I even get my career off the ground.
“Yeah, I do.” I slump back in my seat, tossing my phone onto the cushion beside me. “It’s just…we swore we’d talk every night and this isn’t normal for her. If we can’t make it work for two weeks, how in the hell are we going to last a full-length tour if I ever get one?”
Missy moves my phone, sitting down next to me. Late at night, when the rest of the guys are sleeping, the two of us spend a lot of time talking about how hard this life is on everyone. She doesn’t try to blow sunshine up my ass or tell me it’ll get easy to be on the road, but she also doesn’t tell me that I need to suck it up. I like that about her.
She curls her feet up at the end of the couch that lines one wall of the bus and I swallow hard. The way she’s sitting makes me think of Lea and the way she curls up on the couch to watch her silly ass television shows or to read a book. Missy reaches for my hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “You’re both young. I know you don’t want to hear it, but this leg of the tour might wind up being a good test for the both of you. The more popular you get, the harder it’s going to be for you to have constant contact with home. You’ll get an itinerary each day and wonder if they forgot to schedule time for you to take a crap because it seems like every minute from the time you wake up until you go to sleep is accounted for. But I think you two are going to be just fine.”
“Thanks, Missy.” I stand ready to go back to my bunk. If I can’t talk to Lea, I might as well try to get some sleep since I have to be up at six in the morning to do some morning show for some podunk radio station in Kansas.
“Any time, Colby.”
**
It’s hard to make a good first impression when the only thing I can think about during an interview is my cell phone buzzing in my pocket. No one calls me this early except for Lea. If it wouldn’t be career suicide, I’d bolt out of this studio just so I can hear her voice.
“You were a relative newcomer to Nashville when you were noticed,” the disc jockey points out, as if I’m not well aware of the fact. “What do you have to say to the whispers that you didn’t have to pay your dues before being given a chance that some people wait years for?”
There’s so little information out there about me, I suppose it’s hard for these assclowns to come up with questions to fill the time, but this is one I’m tempted to ask Pete if he can say is off limits.
“I’d say that I know exactly how blessed I am to have this opportunity. And I suppose I should thank Missy for having to have her tonsils removed, because if not for her unfortunate situation, I would have never been on stage that night,” I say, trying to come across unaffected. “Right now, I’m just working my butt off every day, trying to make sure that those who did take a chance on me don’t regret their decision.”
As I run through the answer Missy helped me craft after the first time I was caught off-guard and a bit insulted by the insinuation that I didn’t have to work for my opening spot on the tour. I can tell the chump sitting across the booth from me is barely listening to what I’m saying. At least we’re equally disinterested in being here.
“Yeah, that was a lucky break. How is Missy, by the way? The two of you seem to be getting along quite well, if the pictures popping up on TMZ are anything to go by.” I look at his laptop and see a picture of Missy and me walking out of a restaurant in Topeka last night. To the average person, it does look like we’re closer than friends, but the truth is that she’d just told me about one time when she almost fell off the stage and we were both laughing our asses off.
“She’s doing well,” I say stiffly. “I can’t think of a better mentor to have for my first tour and she’s become a good friend. I’m looking forward to our break between Christmas and the beginning of the year so I can introduce her to my girlfriend.” Pete is standing outside the booth, his eyes wide as I struggle to keep my anger in check. The moment I mention Lea, although not by name, I can see him shaking his head.
“Ah, yes. That should be an…interesting…meeting. Enough about the women in your life. Why don’t we talk about your first single, “The Road to You” for just a moment?” If I wanted to fuck up my future, it’d be easy to do right about now. I don’t like the way this fucking punk is implying that I’m messing around on Lea. “The lyrics are pretty deep. Is this a personal song for you?”
What a dick! He’s still fishing for information, but this time doing so under the guise of wanting me to talk about my single. Of course it’s a personal song. I give him the canned response about how the lyrics came to me after falling in love with someone who had been in my life for a long time. Rolling my head from side to side, hoping to relieve the building tension as I listen to the prick introduce my song. I know I’m supposed to be grateful to him for giving me airtime, but I’m not. I’d rather be a nobody than to have anyone talk shit about the best thing in my life. Especially when my sanity is already hanging on by a thread.
“Hey, sorry I ruffled your feathers a bit in there,” he says as we head into the hall. “When I didn’t see anything online about you being in a relationship, I guess it was easy to assume the rags were right for once.”
“Don’t worry about it, man. You were just doing your job.” I don’t feel any of the words I’m saying, but I can tell it pleases Pete to hear me accepting the apology. “Thanks for having me here this morning,” I say as we shake hands. A receptionist appears to lead us through the maze of corridors to the front of the building.
“Gotta say kid, you came close to losing your shit in there,” Pete scolds as we walk to the leased truck he’s driving behind the buses. “But I’m proud of you for how you reeled it in. I’d suggest that next time you let it slide. Getting worked up is going to make people think there’s something to hide when we all know there isn’t.”
When we get in the truck, Pete doesn’t immediately say anything and I’m hopeful that this subject is closed.
“And, I feel like I need to remind you, once they know that you about Lea, some of these sites will make it a mission to dig for information about your relationship with her. That’s part of why we’ve tried to steer the interview questions away from anything that could make them want to follow her.” Fuck, I didn’t even think about that.
“Got it,” I respond, wanting nothing more than to close my eyes and sleep until we get back to the bus. I’d love to point out that I’m still unknown to most of the world, but that would only encourage him to keep talking, which seriously interferes with my need for sleep.
I trip over my feet as I climb the three steps into the bus. My phone is blowing up wi
th messages now, most of them from Robby. My best friend back home is beyond pissed.
6:27 Heads up, your girl is PISSED right now. What did you do?
6:35 You know anything about the pictures online? Who’s the cute blonde? Doesn’t matter because I’m sure her name isn’t Lea.
Maybe I should have pulled my phone out then I would have had a heads-up before the DJ asked me about the pictures. Now, I want to pull out my iPad and see what other pictures are floating around.
6:47 Dude, Amanda’s threatening to rip off your balls, so you might want to pick up the phone and call me.
I don’t bother reading the rest of the messages. There’s no way in hell there will be anything I want to see in them.
“Easy there, slick,” Missy laughs, catching my phone when it flies out of my hand. “Are you feeling okay? You’re pale and look like you’re ready to puke.”
“Just fucking peachy,” I grumble. “You been online this morning?”
“No, why?” she asks, sitting across the aisle from me.
“The fucking DJ this morning tried to make it sound like you and me have something going on, and from the text messages my buddy from home sent me this morning, he’s not the only one who thinks that. Apparently, Lea woke him and his girl up this morning, freaking out. How the fuck am I supposed to fix this?” I slam cupboard doors as I try to find something to eat. I’m not even hungry right now, but I have to do something with my hands before I punch a wall or the next person who lips off to me. I’m not sure when I ever felt this close to the edge of losing my temper.
“I’d suggest you start by calling her,” Missy recommends, handing my phone back to me. “I’m not sure if it’ll do any good, but tell her that this happens a lot. If it’ll make her feel better, I’ll talk to her tomorrow night when we get to Rochester, okay?”
Dare to Dream (Truth or Dare #2) Page 15
