by Neve Wilder
Les kicked his suitcase up the stairs and finally registered me sitting there on the couch. “What’s up, Mr. Goody Two-shoes?”
I pointed at the table across the aisle impassively, used to his alcohol-fueled declarations. “Made you some coffee.”
I caught it, just barely: surprise darted through his eyes a second before they darkened with suspicion. “Aren’t you a sweetheart.” His voice was a tool like a Swiss Army knife, and he’d long ago figured out how to twist it just so into my side for maximum effect.
“Anything for you, darling.” I kept my tone light as I set my coffee down and strummed a few chords on my guitar, looking for an appropriate song to capture the moment. I settled on The Replacements’ drunkard’s lament, “Here Comes A Regular.”
He snorted as I played, kicked his suitcase again, then stumbled past it to reach for the coffee I’d made him. As I watched, he brought the mug almost gingerly to his lips, giving me a big fake smile and taking the tiniest of sips before he turned and dumped the rest into the sink, then dropped the mug in after, letting it clatter noisily as Jimmy started up the bus. He lurched backward and disappeared behind the curtains to the bunks as the roadies piled through the door.
To say Les could be a real asshole when he was drunk was putting it mildly.
I set my guitar aside and sighed as I got up to clear his suitcase out of the aisle.
No one would be the wiser tonight, though. The house lights would go down, and we’d come out onstage together. Les would give me that wild grin, the one that could suck a person in like a vortex, that pulled at everything you were and made you want to give anything to him. And that was just his warm-up, because when he turned to the crowd, they’d get the full wattage like a switch flicked on, and they’d eat it up. They’d surge forward for it. The girls would take their shirts off for it, and the guys would line up backstage for it after the show. For just a second more of its warmth directed personally at them, people would do a fucking lot. I’d seen it countless times, and I’d fallen for it once.
And that was where our label was wrong, no matter what they tried to tell me when he wasn’t listening. Les was the secret ingredient, the X factor, and I needed him because I wasn’t ever going back to slinging suds in dive bars, scraping together tips for rent, and busking on street corners.
So I had to fucking make this work.
After spending so much time together on tour, do you guys hang out during downtime back in Nashville?
Evan: I had to file a restraining order last week just to stop Les from hanging out in the tree next to my house, peering through my windows.
Les: I was looking for evidence that you’re not actually an android. Still haven’t found any.
Evan: We don’t really get much downtime, honestly.
Chapter 7
I came to nine hours later, mummified by the sheet on my bunk and drenched in sweat. After unsticking my phone from where it had gotten wedged against the side of my ribs, I held it in front of my eyes until the blur in them cleared and the numbers swam into focus. Two hours until showtime. Shit.
My head pounded like an out-of-control kick drum, and my stomach was a sour, empty wasteland. I’d missed the fat stack of pancakes. Hell, I’d missed the day. When I pulled back the curtain on the bunk, twilight greeted me, along with a view of the empty parking lot outside the bus. Familiar scenery. It used to be more exciting. It used to be a prelude, like an appetizer to the night. I’d get pumped up imagining the lot as it filled up with cars crowded with fans who’d paid money—good money—to listen to the words that came from my head. Today I looked out the window and just saw an empty parking lot I didn’t remember arriving at.
I shot a text to Blink, our front-of-house engineer, telling him to get his ass to the bus. He arrived ten minutes later, slipping inside soundlessly. He was a compact force of nature and could fix any sound glitch in the blink of an eye. Hence, Blink.
“Fuck, dude,” he said when I slid out of the bunk and pooled in the center aisle of the bus at his feet. “You may be beyond my capabilities.”
“That’s bush league, Blink. Gimme something that’ll make opening my eyes less like medieval torture.” I gazed up at him with my best rendition of puppy dog eyes.
“Could whip out my cock,” he suggested.
I managed some raspy, dry-throated laughter that hurt. “I need a pick-me-up, not something that makes we want to gouge my eyes out.”
“Harsh, dude.” And he sounded like he meant it. “What’re you thinking? I wouldn’t go hard.” He fidgeted and searched through his pockets while I considered.
“Probably just the Never Better.”
Blink nodded, his fingers darted through the pockets of his jacket and cargo shorts, plucking out pills. The guy had a tool or a combination for everything. And he named all of them. The Never Better was his best hangover cure that wouldn’t leave a person with another harsh comedown: a combination of a joint and B vitamins followed half an hour later with a thin rail of Adderall. All were acceptably within the limits of the no-hard-drugs rule.
He fired up the joint immediately and passed it over to me. My stomach unclenched after the first deep inhale, like it knew relief was on the way. Then, he assembled the B vitamins, dumping them in my left hand. He turned to the counter, popping the Adderall into a tiny baggie and crushing it with the side of a coffee mug. “Remember, half an—”
“Hour, I know. I’ll be right as rain.”
“That one’s definitely not for you today.”
We chuckled. The last time I’d asked him for a ‘Right as Rain,’ I’d ended up at a twenty-four-hour rave in the Arizona desert dancing until the sun came up before crashing for two days straight.
“How about an Act Together,” a low voice said over Blink’s shoulder. “Can you get one of those?”
Blink shot a look over his shoulder at Evan, letting out some tentative laughter. They didn’t get along as well as they used to. Evan thought Blink enabled me. Which… was not entirely untrue. But he was also one of the best sound guys out there, and he’d been with us from the start. And besides, in a week’s time, I’d be cut off in the cabin with plenty of time to detox my body and get my act together. So why rush it?
“Fresh out of those, dude,” Blink said.
“No shit.” Evan thumbed at the door. “They need you out there. Something’s off with the amps.”
Blink frowned and tossed the baggie to me as he jetted. Then it was just me, Evan, and the whole big awkward world of unsaid dangling between us. I hated that it was like this more often than not lately. I hated knowing it was probably my fault. And I hated the fact that I couldn’t seem to fix it, mostly because I wasn’t sure what exactly needed fixing.
I waited for a lecture or some serious side eye, but Evan only uncapped the water bottle he was carrying and took a few backward steps to drop onto the couch while I pinched out the joint and tucked it in my pocket for later.
I must have looked pretty pitiful, because with a sigh and another long look, he handed me his bottle of water. I tossed the vitamins into the back of my throat and washed them down before handing the water back.
He studied the set list for the night, then set it aside and rubbed at the fine blond stubble on the side of his face. “You ever come up with anything last night? That bit you had the other afternoon was good, about the canyons.”
“Yeah?” It was pathetic how even the smallest praise from him streamed through my body like sunlight.
He nodded, but I couldn’t read much more from his expression aside from a general wariness. “Seemed worth expanding on.” He was talking about a verse I’d come up with the other day. One I should’ve worked on last night. Hell, maybe I had. I couldn’t remember what I’d written last night. I couldn’t remember getting on the damn bus.
I must have said that aloud because Evan pulled a face at me.
“You didn’t get on the bus. Mars dumped you inside. Then you basically told me to fuck off
and threw the coffee I made you in the sink. Mug and all.”
I’d become mostly immune to shame, though I knew if ever there was a moment I should feel it, it was then. I was too hungover to muster it, though. “Sorry,” I said lamely. It was an empty apology, and he knew it.
There was a flash of something moving across his features, and I couldn’t tell if it was concern or pain, or closer to disappointment, but it landed on me like a weight and settled heavily in my stomach, undoing the calming effects of the weed.
“Les,” he said, that same expression taking hold and etching deep into his face. It was earnest and so raw it hurt to look at. For a second, I thought I’d finally done it: he was going to give me the big fuck off and leave me behind. He could do it. He was the more talented of us, the more ambitious, the more versatile. The more everything, really. The things he could do with a guitar and his voice didn’t just make people dance. It was breath and movement. His music was alive in a way that endlessly fascinated me, like he’d peeled the notes from his soul or the collective consciousness, somewhere deep and primal where everything resonated in harmony together behind the cloud of iPhones and universal disconnect and self-created loneliness. He didn’t think his lyrics were as good as mine, but he was wrong. And besides, music without lyrics was still music, but lyrics without music were just words.
The way he’d said my name right then, it sounded like some kind of confession he didn’t want to make. I braced myself. Rip the fucking Band-Aid off, already, I thought. My jaw tightened as he studied my face. Then, he exhaled loudly through his nose and passed the set list over to me. “You think this looks all right?”
I studied him a beat longer, until he blinked and looked away and it was evident he wasn’t going to say anything else, then I glanced at the song order he’d written down. It was one we’d done before, but this was Cleveland, and Cleveland loved some of our B-sides and bonus tracks from the first album. I touched the tip of my tongue to the point of my canine, thinking. “We should skip ‘Blunder,’ ‘Siren,’ and ‘You Expect,’ and do ‘Disorder,’ ‘You Were Mine’ and ummm…”
“‘Chanteuse’?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, warming to the idea and relieved to have moved on to a language we rarely had trouble conversing in. “Good call.”
“I think so. End with ‘I’m Leaving You,’ still, and encore with ‘Blue’?”
My stomach clenched up again, the way it did every time someone mentioned that damn song, but especially when it was Evan. “We kind of have to,” I mumbled. “Remind people that at least one thing they like came out of that last album. Keep them from giving up on us.”
“They’re not going to give up on us,” Evan said, but even he didn’t sound convinced.
By the time the house lights went down that night, my hands were steady again. The buzz of the crowd settled into an anticipatory lull that lasted a span of seconds, and then burst with applause that swelled and surrounded us. The venue was new to us and smaller, maybe five hundred people at most, but I could tell just from the applause ricocheting off the walls that the acoustics were stellar.
“You good?” Evan had to speak up to be heard over the rowdy crowd. He had his guitar slung across his back and raked a hand through his hair one last time to make sure it was settled. I licked my parched lips, nodded, and grinned. “Never better.”
He wanted to frown—I could see a line trying to etch itself between his brows—but, like me, he still got high off a crowd, and he ended up quirking a quick smile back. “Good. Let’s do it.”
Jared, our instrument tech, handed me my guitar, and we walked onstage. Cheers and catcalls rushed us like a wave breaking against the shoreline, engulfing us in a cocoon of wild energy. It had amplitude and emotion and was as addictive as anything I’d ever put into my body. It was energy exchange back and forth, an intimate conversation on another level between my soul and the hundreds in the crowd before us. I loved the feeling of connection, and I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of this moment. And I’d never get tired of sharing it with the man beside me. I hoped Evan was right about the fans not giving up on us. But more than that, I hoped Evan didn’t give up on me.
Chapter 8
Six months ago
I was drunk. Not outright hammered, not glaze-eyed blitzed, but definitely drunk. A few tequila shots and a lot of beer cartwheeled through my veins. Also known as a recipe for a class B hangover. Better than class A, which would have me out for a day. A class B just made for a shitty morning. Unless I slept through it. I didn’t care, though. Evan was drunk, too, and after being holed up in the cabin for so long, I enjoyed watching him cut loose. He wasn’t out of control or like a different person or anything. He was still Evan Porter—a guy born with his skin wrapping him just a little too tightly, an ounce more tension in his spine than most people had. He relaxed when he was playing or on stage. And also when he drank—which he didn’t do to excess often.
I liked seeing him cut loose in any way, shape, or form. How the corners of his mouth went a little lax, and when he smiled there’d be a crooked wobble in it that drove me crazy. I wasn’t the only one. Any time a pap captured it, our fan page went crazy posting about it. It was something of a rarity. If I saw it between the pages of one of the tabloids, I always tried to guess what it was that caused it. There were times I knew it was me. A pic of him coming out of Ralph’s with his cell to his ear—I was on the other end of that call telling him about the jackhead roadie who’d clogged up the tour bus toilet. Evan had thought it was hilarious that I was so worked up because I was usually pretty laid-back about everything. But getting hit by a wall cloud of someone else’s shit stench when I opened the door of the bus, knowing we were about to settle in for a ten-hour haul, pissed me off. So I was ranting in the phone about Rick’s traitor asshole and how he was banned not only from Taco Bell, but from stepping more than five feet into our bus until he’d detoxed his colon.
After spending half the night barhopping, we ended up taking two waitresses back to the cabin. Evan didn’t seem as interested in Mandy as I was in Ella, but he’d been a good sport about it. We hung out on the back porch for a while playing drinking games and doing a dumb version of karaoke, even though my fingers were getting numb to the point where they slipped over the strings and had trouble holding a note. When we needed another round, I dragged Ella inside with me into the kitchen where I pushed her up against the fridge and kissed her. I’d been stuck in a cabin for days, and she was cute and horny and we’d been flirting all night, so making good on it was overdue.
At some point, I registered a faucet running, which was weird because we hadn’t moved from in front of the fridge. I had my hand in Ella’s panties, and she was moaning with her eyes screwed shut when I turned my head to the side and caught Evan at the sink, filling a water glass as he stared out the kitchen window. I guess he’d gotten used to ignoring me.
“What happened to Mandy?”
Ella cracked her eyelids open as I spoke, registering Evan’s presence with a sharp intake of breath.
Evan shrugged. “She had to work early tomorrow.”
“So? Since when does that preclude slipping a chick the D?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to slip her the D.” He tipped the glass up to his lips, swallowing the water all in one go, then refilled it.
“Why the fuck not?” She’d clearly been into Evan.
Evan paused with his glass midway through its arc to his mouth. “If you’re going to keep interrogating me, you think you could take your hand out of her drawers?”
“Drawers,” Ella echoed with a snicker, as if she didn’t have the same Southern twang. “That’s so cute.”
But I complied, sliding my hand free and wiggling my fingers at him.
He rolled his eyes and shook his head with something close to exasperation, then addressed Ella. “This guy’s a barbarian. You like that?”
“I don’t hate it,” she purred, one shoulder rising and falling. She had
on some kind of slouchy knit dress that exposed her shoulder and bladelike collarbones with the motion. It was careless and sexy and part of her whole allure, but I found my attention riveted to Evan again as his gaze swept her figure and then swerved toward me. After her reply, he seemed uncertain of what to say next. Guess he’d been expecting her to say something different.
“Do a shot with us,” she said, and extended her hand to him.
Warmth began to spread through my stomach, because it was quickly apparent to me exactly what Ella was aiming for. And holy shit was I into it. Evan’s mysterious sex life was like the lost gospels to my promiscuous Bible. You couldn’t turn a page in the tabloids without running into one of my sexual exploits. Evan, on the other hand, was hardly ever mentioned. He had girlfriends off and on, but I had no idea what went on behind closed doors. He kept a low profile and didn’t talk about it, not even with me.
So I didn’t know how he was going to handle this incredibly obvious overture, but I expected an immediate shutdown and prompt retreat.
Imagine the jolt of sheer, electrifying surprise that zipped through me when he reached out, took her hand, and let her reel him into our little enclave by the fridge.
“One shot.”
Name one thing you can’t stand.
Evan: Losing a sock. It drives me crazy.
Les: Really? That’s it? Out of the multitude of options of shitty occurrences, a lost sock is the first thing you thought of?
Evan: What can I say? Why do you think I’m wearing flip-flops right now? It’s on my mind.
Les: I know where that sock is.
Evan: No… No you fucking didn’t. I shouldn’t even be surprised by that. You know what? You can keep it. I’ll even give you the other so you’ll have a matched set. That’s so wrong.
