The Happy Ever After Playlist

by Abby Jimenez

  I scrunched my forehead. “Really? Why?”

  “Publicity.” He leaned on the counter with his arms crossed while he waited for the microwave. “He thinks they might put her on my tour even if my shows are sold out.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. Well, she doesn’t scare me. Just so you know.”

  He smiled and walked over to turn off the TV. “Hey, I got you a gift.”

  I grinned at him. “You did?”

  He opened a cabinet in the kitchen and pulled out a large blue polka-dot gift bag and put it in my lap as he sat down. “I thought you might like this,” he said.

  I reached in and pulled out a small table lamp. It had a gear for the base, a twisted metal neck, and an old scuffed-up curved license plate for the shade.

  “It’s from your car,” he said. “I had Zane get the parts from the junkyard and send it to a guy who makes lamps out of refurbished auto parts. I had to place a rush order to get it before we left, but I really wanted you to have it. I know you liked that car.”

  I beamed. “Jason, this is so thoughtful!”

  I loved it.

  I leaned over and hugged his neck. “Thank you.”

  He pressed his cheek to the side of my head. “We can keep it here until we come back from tour and get a house.”

  I nodded, wiping under my eyes with my thumb. This was Jason. So thoughtful.

  “You ready for breakfast?” I sniffed. “Pancakes or bacon and eggs? Both?”

  He sighed, and his hand went up to rub his forehead. “I’m sorry we can’t go out to eat.”

  He’d been getting recognized. A lot.

  The Wilderness Calls was a blockbuster. Once the movie came out and Saturday Night Live aired, his soundtrack had blown up. The music video for the theme song had over fifty million views as of yesterday, and unlike with his Claymation one, he was in it, front and center.

  At the last minute they gave him the cover of GQ magazine, which didn’t surprise me one bit. The man took a good picture. And Lola’s little tabloid scandal had actually seemed to work to his advantage. His website crashed the day it came out, so I guess the publicity stunt succeeded—even if it did almost ruin our lives.

  Jason liked his fans. He liked signing autographs. He was personable and outgoing. But I don’t think he’d quite expected this level of celebrity. There was no shutting it off.

  He was a neon sign. People took pictures without asking, came up to him at the store and the gas station. Followed him. We had gone out to a late-night dinner a few days ago and we hadn’t had a moment’s peace. And even if he wasn’t being approached, he was being looked at. Stared at.

  On top of all of that, he was super on edge after the Lola thing. He said he felt like he couldn’t protect me with random strangers coming up to us at every turn.

  I climbed into his lap, straddling him, my shirt bunching up around my hips. I wasn’t wearing shorts and my G-string was red. He glanced down and arched an eyebrow.

  “We’ll just have to change the way we live a little,” I said. “Order room service in bed instead of going to restaurants. That kind of thing.” I kissed him and he gave me a weak but grateful smile.

  His head lolled back on the sofa. “What are you doing today?” His hand absently caressed my thigh.

  “I have to go to FedEx and ship out the last of my commissions. Then I need to drop off a few bags at Goodwill and turn the house keys in to the real estate office. I’m stealing your truck.”

  “First she steals my heart, then she steals my truck,” he said tiredly.

  “Technically, I stole your dog first.”

  He chuckled, looking down at me over his nose, not lifting his head from the back of the sofa. “Any chance you might be able to do the girlfriend thing and come watch me rehearse today?”

  I smiled. “Where?”

  “Century City.”

  “I think I can fit that into my day.”

  He beamed, looking truly happy for the first time this morning, and leaned in and kissed me—but he knew my lips too well. He pulled his face back. “What?”

  I let out a sigh. “I just…I got an email—not a bad one,” I said quickly, when I saw the instant worry on his face. “For a painting. A real one. Not Etsy stuff.”

  He beamed. “That’s great! What do they want you to paint?”

  I tucked my hair behind my ear. “It’s a little girl on a swing. And they’re offering me a lot of money for it.”

  He pulled me into him by my thighs and smiled. “Of course they are. You’re incredible.”

  I smiled weakly. “I miss creating. Feeling like I’m reaching my full potential. I totally want to do it and I can’t.”

  He wrinkled his forehead. “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll be touring. I can’t paint on a bus.”

  “When do they need it by?”

  “Christmas.”

  “So do it on our break.”

  I shifted on his lap. I hadn’t thought about that. “Five weeks isn’t very long to finish something like this.”

  “Leave a little early,” he said. He leaned in and kissed me. “And I’m glad this came up because there’s another gift in the bag,” he whispered to my lips. “You missed it.”

  I pulled away slightly and looked at him.

  “Go on.”

  I leaned over and picked up the bag again, pulling out the tissue paper. A gift card sat at the bottom.

  It was to an art supply store.

  For a thousand dollars.

  “Jason! This is too much!” I gasped. “I can’t take this!”

  He wrapped his arms around my back and put his lips to my ear. “I just think you’re so sexy when you paint,” he said, trailing kisses down my neck. “And now that there won’t be any more astronaut cats, I figured you might want to go back to painting your own stuff. You’ll need supplies, and I want to support you like you support me.”

  Something hard in his lap was supporting me at the moment.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  He nipped at my lip. “You’re welcome.”

  Then he got up and threw me over his shoulder like a caveman. He slapped my ass and I shrieked, giggling as he turned us for the bedroom.

  Chapter 35

  Sloan

  ♪ Little Black Submarines | The Black Keys

  Fourteen weeks later

  The alarm on Jason’s phone went off. Even Tucker whined from the end of the bed.

  Jason moved next to me to flick on the light and I winced. “It should be illegal to get up before the sun,” I mumbled.

  He laughed a little and propped himself up on his elbow, his hair messy. “How you feeling?”

  “My ears are stuffy.”

  A cool hand was pressed to my cheek, and I closed my eyes. “You don’t feel hot,” he said.

  “I think it’s just allergies or something.” I sniffed. “I’m okay.”

  Jason scooted up on his forearms until he was hovering over me. He gave me one of his amused smiles, which meant my hair was probably crazy.

  “Don’t kiss me,” I said. “I don’t want you getting sick.” If he did, they’d just make him sing through it.

  He grinned and nuzzled into my neck instead.

  “What city are we in?” I asked, yawning.

  He shifted to look at his hand. “Last night was Atlanta. So I’m thinking Memphis?”

  Zane always wrote the city on Jason’s hand before he went onstage so he wouldn’t thank the wrong place.

  “Aww. I’ve always wanted to see Memphis,” I pouted. We’d be gone by tonight.

  “Why don’t you skip sound check and go sightseeing with Jessa?” he asked, looking down on me.

  Jessa was the lead singer of his opening band, Grayscale. She was also very good friends with Lola. I didn’t hold it against her. Jessa was actually pretty nice, and we seemed to have an unspoken agreement that we didn’t discuss Lola, which helped. Zane was super close with Jessa’s personal assistant, Courtney, s
o we all hung out a lot. We always got rooms next to one another so we could go in and out the connecting doors and borrow curling irons and watch TV together.

  I shook my head. “I’m not going sightseeing without you. If we’re not seeing Memphis, we’re not seeing it together.”

  He kissed my forehead and smiled, his blue eyes creasing.

  I put a hand up to his cheek. “I hope our kids get your eyes.”

  His smile got deeper. “And their mother’s artistic talent.” He took my hand and curled it up in his.

  I sighed. “I haven’t done anything talented in a while.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Well, maybe not artistically. But there was that thing you did with your mouth on the bus last week.”

  I gasped and hit him, and he chuckled.

  “You know how I knew you were the girl for me?” he asked, pulling me into him, his forehead to mine. “When I saw you licking that chip bag. I said to myself, ‘That’s her, Jason. She’s the one.’”

  I giggled, and he started to tickle me. I shrieked and tried to wriggle away from him, and he laughed. Then his alarm went off again and all the fun abruptly stopped. We both let out a sigh and got up and wandered to the bathroom.

  He handed me my toothbrush and we stood over the sink brushing our teeth in our well-practiced routine. I stared at myself in the mirror. God, I looked like hell. Like I needed to be dipped in a full-body moisturizer or something. I had dark circles under my eyes and I was pale again. Even though most of our hotels had pools and spas, we didn’t have time to use them.

  Maybe we needed to drink more water. I made a mental note to make Jason do that with me—even though he looked great.

  Jason was born for this life. None of the traveling fazed him. Not to mention it was in his contract that he had to do at least an hour at the gym with a personal trainer four times a week. So while I was getting puffy and pale, he was getting toned and hotter than he already was. It was so unfair.

  I let my eyes follow the line of hair down Jason’s six-pack stomach into the waistband of his pajama bottoms. When I looked up, he was smirking at me with his toothbrush in his mouth. He bounced his eyebrows, and I laughed and spit. “Don’t let it get to your head just because you’re still gorgeous despite this marathon we’ve been running.”

  He spit too. “Well, I have to be equal to my beautiful girlfriend, don’t I?” He winked.

  I scoffed. “Yeah, right.” My eyes were bloodshot from coughing. I was bloated and exhausted.

  I did not adjust to change well. I hadn’t known this about myself until change was all I did.

  We’d been on the road three months. And none of it was at all what I’d expected. There was nothing glamorous or vacation-like about anything we were doing.

  Bus, hotel, venue, flight. Radio station, news station, photo shoots, fast food, six hours of sleep, four hours of sleep, back in the bus. Perpetual motion, all the time. It was so constant my body couldn’t catch up.

  The crew got two days off a week—but we didn’t. There was always some sort of media thing they needed Jason doing. He was too afraid to not do it. If he didn’t sell out his concerts, they’d bring in Lola. It was exhausting.

  I’d been fighting this cold for forever. My stomach was a mess too. We were eating nothing but junk—and there really wasn’t much of a choice. Jason’s tour manager had him on such a tight schedule, stopping for anything longer than gas and whatever restaurant was in the adjacent parking lot was all we could manage. We ate at all different hours of the day. Sometimes we had dinner at five before his show, sometimes we didn’t eat until midnight. I was jet-lagged and we weren’t even out of the United States yet.

  I was living for our five-week break. Counting down the days. It was September fourth and we had ten more weeks of this until the time off for the holidays. I hadn’t seen Kristen in months. Jason kept offering to fly her and Josh out, but there was no point. We almost never stayed in the same place for more than two days and the baby wouldn’t do well with all the traveling.

  So the plan was to spend a week in Ely with his family for Thanksgiving, and then a month in California so I could paint and see Kristen and my parents. A month wasn’t a lot of time to pull off the piece that had been commissioned. But I didn’t want to leave him early and honestly, I was so excited to do it I didn’t care if it meant I had to paint fourteen hours a day just to finish it in time.

  I missed painting like a penetrating ache in my soul. I’d never gone this long without doing it in some capacity. Now, over three months without a paintbrush in my hand and I craved it. Not to mention I wanted the work. I’d made a nice chunk of change from the sale of my house. I had my own money to spend—not that Jason would let me. But I wanted a purpose. Something that wasn’t just being Jason’s girlfriend.

  Someone knocked on the door and I put on my robe and went to answer it. This was part of our system now. I got the door and Jason got out of sight in case someone passed by and saw him inside.

  We’d learned to do this the hard way. If someone spotted him in the room, we had to move or we’d have fans or cameras waiting for us when we came out—or worse, knocking and waking us up.

  I opened the door to Zane holding our coffees and the room service guy with the cart standing there at the same time.

  “Hey,” I said, letting them both in.

  I breathed in the warm smell of pancakes and bacon as the cart pushed past me into the room. At least I could count on a semi-decent meal when we stayed in a hotel with room service. But even that had lost its luster months ago. All the menus were the same. The same five or six options for every meal at every hotel. I had never thought I’d be bored of room service, but here we were.

  I’d pictured we’d eat at all the signature restaurants in the cities we would visit. Barbecue in Kansas, deep-dish pizza in Chicago, cheesesteaks in Philadelphia. But we didn’t really visit the cities we were in. We drove through them. Sometimes so fast we didn’t even know we’d been there.

  Zane handed me my Starbucks latte and put Jason’s black Sumatra drip next to the TV. She pulled a folder out from under her arm. “Here’s the schedule. They booked him in the six o’clock slot.”

  I groaned. “They couldn’t prerecord it?”

  “Nope. Live. Sorry.”

  Ugh. This meant that instead of any kind of sit-down dinner tonight, he was going to run right from the news station onto the stage. Again.

  I sighed, mopping at my nose with a tissue and scanning the rest of the timeline for the day. After the concert tonight we were making the three-hour drive from Memphis to Nashville for a festival tomorrow. So we’d check into the hotel at 2:00 a.m. Sound check at 8:00. Festival at noon.

  Another crappy schedule.

  Zane seemed to sense my weariness and signed the room service slip for me.

  “You okay?” she asked, after she let the guy out.

  Jason was in the shower. I could hear the water running.

  I rubbed my forehead. “Yeah. I’m just so tired.”

  “Go get your nails done or something. Skip this shit.”

  I looked down at my hands and the chipped polish on my fingers.

  It was funny, because when I was grieving Brandon, I didn’t take care of myself and it was exactly like that now too.

  “Want me to get you somethin’?” she asked.

  Zane was great. She was like our life raft out here. We were so isolated. Jason couldn’t even get off the bus half the time or he’d end up signing autographs. He couldn’t even go into a CVS and pick his own deodorant. Zane did everything for us. Our laundry, our errands.

  “I’m fine,” I said, coughing into my elbow. “Thank you, though.”

  “You just gotta get used to the road,” she said, leaning down to grab the bag of dirty clothes where we always put it by the door. “You’ll be a pro by the next one.”

  I scoffed. “At least I’ll get a few years to recover from the one I’m on.”

  She flung
the bag over her shoulder. “You wish.”

  “Ha. He’s done after Brisbane,” I said, wiping my nose.

  She looked confused. “He gets a three-month break after this one and then he’s back on the road. He didn’t tell you?”

  I blinked at her. “No…”

  “They’ve been sending around the paperwork to the crew to extend their contracts. I just got mine yesterday. Maybe he didn’t know yet.”

  My stomach dropped. “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure. Looks like he’s pretty hot in Tokyo. I hear they’re sending him there and then Brazil, Chile, Panama, Argentina. It’s good. Means he’s big.”

  I completely deflated. Another tour? Three months off and then more of this? “Oh my God…” I breathed.

  Zane patted her leg. “Let’s go, Tuck. Walk time.”

  Tucker jumped off the bed and let Zane leash him. “I’ma bring up some DayQuil. Text me if you want anything else.”

  I let them out and put my back to the door after it shut.

  The disappointment crashed into me like a whole new wave of exhaustion and my eyelid lurched into spasms.

  I didn’t know what I’d expected. I mean, they’d have him doing something when this tour was over. But I’d just thought it would be writing and recording his next album, home, with me, in a house somewhere. It had never even occurred to me that they’d have him do this all over again, right after the last one.

  So was this what it was going to look like? On tour, off tour, and then back again? Forever?

  The water shut off in the shower.

  I took another second to compose myself and went back into the steamy bathroom.

  “Everything all right?” he asked, looking at me as he tied a towel around his waist.

  “Did you know they’re scheduling another tour for you after this one?” I asked.

  He froze. “No. Where’d you hear that?”

  “Zane said they’re renewing the contracts for your crew. That you’re getting three months off and then you’re going back.”

  I saw the tic in his jaw. “What time is it?”