Chapter 7 #2
“Thank you,” he whispered. I ignored the way his words caught in his throat – if I thought about it, I’d start spiralling.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, hoping I sounded steadier than I felt. I let him go, had to let him go. “Want to try some of that vegan pizza? I bet it’s shit.”
He laughed at that and gestured that I should lead the way.
I started heading in the direction of the pizza stand, catching a glimpse of Abbey’s stunned face.
Her carefully shaped brows were practically at her hairline.
It was clear she’d seen us, had fully witnessed that weird, vulnerable moment between us.
Yeah, we were going to have to have a conversation about that.
I knew she wouldn’t bring it up in front of everyone, but I could practically see the questions bouncing around in her head.
I pushed down the dread that was bubbling in my stomach at the thought of coming out to someone else, again, and helped myself to a few slices of pizza.
It was actually pretty good, feelings of impending doom notwithstanding.
◆◆◆
Between our first festival in New Zealand and the second, Sebastian picked up a ukulele for Sara.
I had no idea where he got it, but she was over the moon the second she saw it.
I didn’t know much about ukuleles myself, but Sebastian had learned to play a few years back and liked the sound.
I tried to focus as he explained to me that ukuleles came in a bunch of different sizes, so he’d gotten the smallest one for Sara, and really it was a great instrument for her to start out with because as she grew, she could move up to the next size.
But it was so hard to concentrate on what he was saying when he was smiling so brightly, holding out a pastel pink ukulele with carefully painted daisies on the body that he’d picked up specifically for my little girl, knowing she’d love it.
Sara had always liked music and had been showing a real interest since she started seeing bands play live.
He was absolutely right; she was going to lose her mind over that ukulele.
Realizing that he knew Sara so well already, that he cared about what she liked and what she was into, made my heart ache in a way that wasn’t totally unpleasant.
“Wow, Sebastian, you didn’t have to…” I let the words die in my throat and he waved them away, his polished nails glinting in the sun.
“I know, I know, but I saw it in a music shop window and I couldn’t resist. Where is she, can we go give it to her now?”
“Yeah, of course. I think her and Abbey are at the ball pit.”
The festival we were playing that day had a massive ball pit set up in the artist’s area.
I wasn’t entirely sure of the logic behind it – lots of musicians on the circuit had kids but it was still pretty uncommon to see them backstage at a festival.
Most musicians waited until their kids were a little older to bring them out on the road, but then most musicians had a wife who was willing to stay home with the kids.
Sara had been dying to go play in the ball pit but I made Abbey promise that they’d go early, knowing full well that as the bands on the bill got their sets out the way and started drinking, that ball pit was highly likely to be compromised in the grossest ways.
I didn’t pity the poor soul who was going to have to clean it up.
Sebastian and I headed over together. He talked most of the way, one hand waving while the other held tightly to Sara’s ukulele.
Burning Bright had gone shopping on their day off (hence the ukulele) and he’d found a pair of boots in a vintage store that he was very, very excited about.
I couldn’t help but sneak glances at him as we walked along – he was always his most captivating when he was talking about something he was passionate about, be that instruments or fashion or the song he was working on.
His energy was infectious, radiating out of him, so by the time we got to the ball pit I was smiling too.
“Hey guys!” Abbey greeted us with a grin and a wave before turning to help Sara clamber out of the ball pit.
They’d clearly spent a bit of time with Karlie, because Sara had a rainbow butterfly painted across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She leapt into my arms with an excited giggle but made sure to lean over to sling a skinny arm around Sebastian’s neck in a little hug.
“You’re back!” She beamed at him as I settled her on my hip so they could talk. “What did you do yesterday?”
“I went shopping,” he told her, grinning back. “I got this for you.”
He handed her the ukulele, keeping a hold of the bottom until she could wrap a small hand around the neck. I watched, heart melting, as she held it up to look at the daisies. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates.
“For me?” She repeated, her voice trembling with disbelief. “Really?”
“Yeah! It’s all yours. Do you like it?”
“I love it, thank you so much!” Her bottom lip started to quiver and Sebastian glanced at me, clearly alarmed by her reaction.
“She’s a happy crier,” I explained in a hushed whisper as Sara pressed the body of the ukulele to her face.
“Oh thank God,” Sebastian smiled, pushing one of her little blonde braids behind her ear so it wouldn’t get caught in the strings. “Hey Sara, I can show you how to play it if you want.”
That got her attention.
“Right now? Can we? Daddy, Daddy, can we?”
“Well that’s up to Sebastian,” I replied, putting her down. She slung the strap of the ukulele over her head and it was easily one of my proudest moments as a parent.
“Of course we can. Let’s go sit over there.” He held out a hand to her and she took it, practically bouncing out of her shoes as he led her over to a bench where they could sit and practice.
“I don’t approve of buying a kid’s love at all, but that was smooth as hell.”
Abbey’s voice startled me a little bit. I’d been so wrapped up in Sebastian and Sara and their unbelievable cuteness that I’d kind of forgotten Abbey was there at all. She snapped her bubble gum loudly as I crossed my arms – The Conversation was coming.
“Well he’s gotta spend those millions somehow,” I replied with a shrug. “They’ve really bonded.”
“You’re telling me, she talks about him non-stop. I mean, I knew he had this sort of unnatural level of charm that works on pretty much everyone but I didn’t realize it worked on kids as well,” Abbey kept her voice light, breezy, but I could feel her eyes on me.
“Although it worked on you back when you were way angrier than you are now, so maybe it’s not a stretch that kids love him too.”
And there it was. I sighed, rolling my eyes as I looked at her. She stared right back, one of her eyebrows quirked in that way I’d learned meant she knew something but not everything. At least not yet.
“Ask what you want to ask, Abbey.”
“You were fucking, weren’t you?”
“Jesus Abbey, warn a guy!” I hissed, glancing around to make sure no one heard her. Luckily, most of the other people milling around the backstage area were still at catering, playing or doing press. The ball pit was pretty much deserted.
“Is that a yes?” She pressed, wrapping her deceptively strong hands around my arms so she could tug them down. “We’re not having this conversation with your body language so closed off, come on now.”
“Who told you?”
“No one,” she answered, holding up both hands in a laughable imitation of a Scout’s honor. “But I know you, Max. And I have eyes. The chemistry between you two is off the freaking scale.”
“I failed chemistry,” I murmured in a weak attempt to derail the conversation. Abbey glared at me, making it quite clear my attempts at humor weren’t going to work on her .
“What happened between you two? At first I thought maybe you’d had a whole friends-with-benefits situation but that wouldn’t explain why you were both so pissed off with each other after.
I mean, calling you friends would’ve been a stretch.
But now here you are, making heart eyes at him while he’s teaching your daughter how to play her first instrument so I know something went down. Something major.”
“You’re not wrong,” I admitted, ducking my head so I could hide behind my hair a little bit. I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck, trying to drive away the prickle of unease that had settled there.
“You know that your sexuality – whatever it is – doesn’t bother me in the slightest, right? I don’t have anything near a problem with you being bi, or pan, or…”
“Gay,” I cut her off, needing to say it. Like ripping off a band aid, it was best just to do it all at once. “I’m gay, Abbey.”
“Alright,” she nodded, squeezing my arm. “Cool. Good to know. Hey, now when I need to whine about how annoying men are, you can be empathetic.”
“I don’t think I need to be gay to know men can be shitty,” I reminded her, smiling in spite of myself .
I’d always known that Abbey wouldn’t mind if I was gay, but it’s hard to accept other people are going to be fine with it when you’re not 100% fine with it yourself.
Hell, I had only come out to Shep and my bandmates recently, and I trusted them with my life.
It seemed stupid that I knew they’d drag me from a burning building but doubted they’d accept I was attracted to men, but anxiety is a mindfuck – it doesn’t make sense, 9 times out of 10.
“So…you weren’t out back then, huh?” She asked, looking over at Sebastian and Sara. They were having a great time. Sebastian was re-arranging Sara’s fingers into a C chord.
“I’m not out now, not really.”
“Who knows?”
“Shep, Mira, Annabelle. You, now. Sebastian, obviously. But, uh, that’s it.”
She let that sink in for a minute, pursing her lips as she thought it over. When she looked at me, there were tears in her eyes.
“Well, I’m honored, Max. Really.”
“Thanks.”
“Sebastian’s always been out though, right?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” I nodded. “His parents are artists, you know? He grew up in New York. I don’t think he was ever really in the closet.”
“Is that why you’re…in, still? Because of your folks?”
“I mean…” I blew out a breath, trying to shrug off the weight of the conversation. “I’m sure it’s part of it. I haven’t really thought about it, much. Or talked about it. Shep and me had a heart to heart about it, before tour started, but…I dunno, Abbey. It just is what it is.”
“Hey, no-one’s saying you need to have all the answers right now. I’m unfortunately bitterly heterosexual myself, but I have enough gay friends to know it’s not the same for everyone. It’s your life, Max. You have to take your time.”
I dragged in a deep breath, so beyond grateful for what she said. She was right, of course. I flung an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in for a hug, holding on maybe a second longer than normal. She patted my back and blew a raspberry against my neck, earning a laugh in the process.
“So what happened with you two? You can’t derail me with an emotional epiphany, Max,” she said when we broke apart, grinning up at me.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I warned her, glancing over at Sebastian. Luckily, he was still engrossed in his ukulele lesson with Sara. “Because I got pretty damn pissed when I thought Sebastian was telling people. I made him promise to keep it a secret.”
“Cross my heart,” she replied, actually crossing her heart before making a locking her lips and throwing away the key motion.
“It started off as a casual thing, blowing off steam on tour,” I began, working the toe of my sneakers into the grass so I had something to focus on. I could feel the blush burning up the back of my neck, soon my cheeks were going to be on fire.
“I’d never been with a guy before and Sebastian was just…so good looking and confident and into me. It’s all a bit of a blur now, to be honest, but it was…”
“Good, huh?”
“It was amazing,” I admitted, keeping my eyes fixed on the ground as I nodded. “He just made it all seem so easy. I got caught up in it, in him. But then the tour started winding down and reality started creeping in.”
“Did he dump you?”
“No,” I shook my head. “God, no. He wanted us to be together, for real. He wanted me to move to New York. Shep, Mira, Annabelle and I were all sharing a shitty apartment in LA, we didn’t really have anything to keep us there back then. And I was so tempted, Abbey, I really wanted to be with him.”
I could feel a lump forming in my throat, each word scraping its way out into the world.
It was an old truth, should’ve been a long-forgotten story, but there was potency in the fact that it had never been told, not really.
Abbey’s eyes were fixed on me, hanging on every word like she just knew she was the first person to really hear the truth about what had happened between Sebastian and I.
“I couldn’t do it,” I confessed on a shaky exhale. “I knew that going to New York and being with him would mean coming out. Everyone would know this thing about me, and I hadn’t even…I hadn’t even said it out loud, before. I just couldn’t do it.
And Sebastian, he didn’t want to be someone’s secret. He didn’t want to hide a relationship from the world. We had a fight, it got ugly and this thing we had…it just broke.”
“Oh Max,” Abbey pulled me into another fierce hug, smoothing my hair while I buried my face in her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” I lied. “It was a long time ago. We’ve both moved on.”
She was frowning when she let me go, looking over at Sebastian as he gave Sara a very enthusiastic round of applause.
My daughter beamed up at him like he hung the moon and he smiled down at her like she was the best person he’d ever met.
I blinked away the tears that were threatening to spill over.
“I love you Max, so I’m not going to call you out on this “we’ve moved on bullshit” right now,” Abbey said, elbowing me gently. “Come on, I need a massive, super sweet, syrupy iced coffee after all this angst. You’re paying.”
“I suppose that’s the least I can do,” I nodded, letting her drag me over to the coffee stall.
“Damn right it is,” she huffed. “Don’t worry, Sebastian and Sara will be just fine.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”