Chapter Eleven
This Must Be the Place
River’s only regret about asking Jem to stay came early in the mornings, when Jem’s alarm went off and River wasn’t ready to human.
Fortunately for both of them, Jem was not a snooze-button abuser. He silenced the alarm so quickly River barely woke up.
But one morning he heard the splash of water, not in the bathroom, but in the heated pool in the backyard.
Are you fucking kidding me right now, River thought. Was Jem trying to turn him into a morning person? Because it would absolutely work and he was mad about it.
Oh well. He could go back to sleep after Jem left for work.
He dragged his ass out of bed and pulled on a hoodie so he didn’t freeze his balls off perving on his boyfriend at ass o’clock in the morning.
The source of the noise quickly became apparent. As good as he looked without a shirt, Jem was not a natural swimmer—too much splashing, rhythm not quite smooth. But he was also clearly enjoying himself as he did a clumsy backstroke through the water.
After a minute he noticed River watching him and stood up, water cascading down his body as he flicked his hair back. “Hey. Sorry, did I wake you?”
Parts of me, River thought wildly. His mouth didn’t want to make coherent noises, so he grunted an affirmative.
“Normally I’d jog, but I hate it and this is better on my knees. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh no, by all means. Spare your knees.” Whoops. River’s sass woke up before everything else. Well, almost everything.
Jem grinned at him.
Nope. River was not prepared to deal with this yet. “I’m going back to bed.”
Jem’s laughter followed him into the house.
When River woke up for real, there was a note on the bed next to him, just like there’d been every day since Jem’s extended sleepover began: Breakfast in the fridge. Remember to eat it!!! Home around 5. – xox Jem
The first day it happened, River half didn’t believe it, but when he entered the kitchen, the coffee pot was halfway full.
River poured himself a mug and figured maybe he hadn’t hallucinated the note, and when he opened the fridge to get the milk, sure enough, there was a plastic-covered plate and a tall smoothie cup.
For a moment River couldn’t do anything but stare at them. But he couldn’t just leave the food uneaten. That would be rude.
The cuteness factor hadn’t worn off yet this morning either. He peeled back the plastic and found today’s offering—a tasty-looking breakfast sandwich—which he was still eating when Grace let herself inside.
“Rise and shine, flat-ass!” she called out. “Time for exercise.”
River winced. “Jeez, not so loud, woman. Do you know what time it is?”
A moment later she entered the kitchen in full uniform—brown hair up in her usual high ponytail, loose pink T-shirt, cropped yoga pants, and teal sneakers. She looked at him like he’d grown another head. “You’re awake.”
River scarfed down another bite of breakfast sandwich. It would’ve been better if he put it in the microwave. “Mmm,” he agreed.
“You’re eating,” she said with what River felt was an unnecessary amount of disbelief.
He washed down the last bite of sandwich with a glug of smoothie. “I do that sometimes.”
“Not in my experience,” she muttered.
Then her eyes caught on the note River had brought with him from the bedroom, and she snatched it up and read it. Understanding dawned way too quickly. “River Wild, are you telling me I’ve been trying to get you to eat more regularly for two years and the secret was I’m not a cute enough boy?”
River sputtered. “That’s not the only reason!” He scrambled for another excuse. “I mean, did you make your breakfasts with a side of love?”
Grace eyed him up and down and said, “Did you make love with your breakfast?”
Rude. “No,” River said with a dramatic sigh. “He left when I was still in bed.”
She giggled. “All right, well, sorry to touch on a sore subject. But let’s get a move on with the exercise, then, hmm? Take your mind off your heartbreak. Give you another outlet for all that unspent energy.”
Technically, Grace was part of River’s therapy program.
His misspent youth had left him with a few lingering quirks, the inability to recognize hunger cues being one of them.
She was sort of a catch-all—a trainer, nutritionist, and therapist in one, with the bonus that she’d been part of the same cult he had, for a few years, as an adult.
Exercise for its own sake had been discouraged as an unproductive use of time when one could be working for the benefit of the church instead—cleaning it, tending the gardens, picking up a side job cutting grass so the proceeds could go to the tithing.
The only running and playing River had done as a child had been in gym class and recess, which he’d enjoyed at first and then dreaded as his peers who were allowed to have normal childhoods surpassed him in speed and stamina.
Grace’s literal job was making exercise enjoyable, which he realized was a tall order. But he needed to be able to keep up with his bandmates on stage, therefore—some kind of workout regimen.
“All right, boss lady,” he acquiesced. “What are we trying today?”
“How do you feel about rock climbing?”
How River felt about rock climbing was ooooooh, especially since it took place indoors in a place with air conditioning.
He could definitely make this part of his regular exercise rotation, which so far included a Peloton obstacle course and Marco Polo pool sessions with Grace.
(Grace called this “healing his inner child.” River wasn’t sure that he had an outer adult, but he appreciated the lengths she went to make stuff fun.)
How River felt about rock climbing after getting home from it was owwwww.
“You can’t just leave me here like this,” he complained from the couch where Grace had deposited him.
She handed him a glass of water and a banana. “Don’t be a baby. Maybe Jem will give you a nice massage when he gets home.”
Yeah, that sounded good. River should shower.
But when he tried to get up, Grace put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “Eat the banana, Casanova. Then you can primp for your man. You have lots of time. Meanwhile I’ll put together some real lunch.”
She gave him the world’s biggest side-eye when he only pushed it around his plate, but she sat down on a chair near him with her own sandwich and addressed the problem in her usual forthright manner. “What are you thinking right now?”
River looked at his plate. “I know I should eat it.” His body didn’t feel hunger, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need to eat.
“But?”
“I don’t know? Eating is boring.”
She nudged him with her toe until he picked up his sandwich and took a bite. It tasted fine. It just didn’t trigger anything in his brain that rewarded him for feeding it, because it didn’t know it was hungry. “But you ate the breakfast Jem made. What were you thinking then?”
That was easy. “Jem would be sad if I didn’t eat it.”
Grace stared at him with the look she got sometimes, when River said something ridiculous and/or trauma-informed and she was trying to work out how to rewire River’s brain to keep him alive better. Finally she said, “Do you think Jem would be happy if you skipped lunch?”
River finished the sandwich. And the banana. He got a second glass of water too.
At the beginning of March, River finally got to speak to Amanda’s producer friend, Briar.
“I’ve got a couple ideas I think could work,” they told him over the phone, “but some of them require specialty instruments. Do you know anyone, or do you want me to invite a session musician for when you come in?”
Right away, River thought of Lara. She’d been touring with the Flat Tires for years and had even earned a couple cowriting credits with the band, and she played more instruments than River, Ward, and Eric combined.
Most importantly, she was brilliant and easygoing, which was basically an impossible combination to find in a place like LA.
“I know someone,” he said. “Let me just see when she’s free.”
Lara answered the phone with, “What’s up, flat-ass?”
River never should’ve let the guys meet Grace. “And here I was going to ask if you wanted to be part of a business project,” he said, put-upon. “I guess I’ll have to find someone who respects me.”
She snorted. “Good luck with that. What’s the project?”
Until now, it hadn’t been real. Talking about it with Jem and Ward and Eric and Amanda was just pie-in-the-sky dreaming; nothing River said or did affected anyone other than himself. Telling Lara looped her in with him.
“I’m working on an album.” There. He’d said it. And then, “Maybe more.”
Maybe she sensed the gravity of it, because instead of teasing, she said, “When do you need me?”
And just like that, the plan went into motion. Too late to back out now.
Wednesday the band practiced at River’s.
Depending on the stage of the tour, practice could mean anything from lying on the floor complaining about how they were getting too old for this, to outright napping, to running through an entire set list and tweaking it as they went.
But the End of the Road Tour was almost over. They’d had their two-month-long break, and now they had a small show in LA this week followed by seven more weeks of touring the East Coast. Their last show would be at LA’s Staples Center. And then it’d be done.
So they were a little rusty, but they had the time to knock it off, or they would if Eric and Ward could stop ragging on River for two minutes.
“He left you breakfast. Twice!”
He’d left breakfast every morning, but they didn’t need to know that. River kept his mouth shut.
“You kept the little notes.” Eric held them aloft like proof. “This is fucking precious. Did you actually eat the food? Tell me you ate the food.”
That, however, he couldn’t let pass uncontested. “Of course I ate the food, I’m not a monster.” River wanted to snatch the notes out of Eric’s hand, but he didn’t want to risk ripping them. “Will you give those back?”