Chapter Seventeen #3
River took out his phone, realized he still had Jem’s number blocked, unblocked it, and hit Call; that went straight to voicemail. Whatever emergency Jem was attending to, he wasn’t talking to anyone, apparently.
River paced dramatically in the tiny lobby for a moment—Mrs. Henderson, on her way to the elevator, smiled and waved and he felt like an idiot—and then got back in the car.
Tomorrow was the Flat Tires’ last-ever concert. He’d be with the band all day, and probably all night after that. And if he had to wait that long to sort things out with Jem, he would lose whatever was left of his mind.
“You okay, boss?”
River twisted the fidget spinner. After a moment he said, “Yeah. Take me to Seventh Circle, please? I need to run an errand.”
Sorting that out took the remainder of the day and all of River’s focus.
By seven that night, he was debating taking up chain smoking again to get his nerves to chill the fuck out.
Jem hadn’t answered his text, and River finally twigged that Ivy had probably gone into labor.
Was Jem in the room for that? Tori could be kind of spastic; maybe she was getting her fingers crushed while Jem caught the baby.
Anyway, River couldn’t know for sure, but he tried to make himself believe Jem only had his phone off to avoid the wrath of the lady pushing his biological child out of her vagina.
At ten past, someone knocked on his door and he almost jumped out of his skin. He tripped over his own feet in his haste to open it, and then tried to school his face into not showing his obvious disappointment when he saw Eric and Ward.
“Lara said we should feed you dinner,” Eric said as he pushed past River into the house.
“She also suggested sleeping pills.”
For fuck’s sake. River had changed the gate code last week; he knew the opener in the Subaru didn’t work anymore. He’d gotten his hopes up for no reason.
It helped, though, having Eric and Ward around. Ironically, focusing on the imminent end of their time as bandmates helped soothe the nervous energy that had been pumping through him since the Bean.
River still put away four slices of angry Hawaiian pizza without thinking about it just because he needed something to do with his hands.
The three of them stayed up late in the living room, watching shitty TV and eating cold pizza like they’d done when the band had just formed.
When Eric started falling asleep on the couch, River poked him and sent him off to his mom’s room so he didn’t fuck himself up before the show.
Ward took the throw blanket and the sofa.
River went to bed alone, wishing he had Jem next to him, but at least the promise of tomorrow made sleep come easily.
“He’s not coming.”
Amanda didn’t look up from her phone screen. “For the thirtieth time: you do not know that.”
“Well, where is he, then?”
“I don’t know. This is LA. He’s probably driving around the block looking for parking. Or there’s a protest against big oil in front of the arena. Or someone mistook him for a member of a boy band and he’s signing autographs.”
River blanched. “Amanda!”
“Nothing against boy bands! But he does kind of have the hair, you know?”
Oh God, he really did. River could never unknow this. For the rest of his life, he’d have to live with the fact that he’d fallen in love with a man who had teen-heartthrob hair.
That crisis momentarily took over brain space from the other crisis, where Jem was fifteen minutes late and River wanted to cry about it.
River couldn’t cry before a performance. It would fuck with his voice. Sure, he only sang backing vocals for the Flat Tires, but he didn’t want to fuck up their last-ever concert.
The rational part of his brain—the one that sounded like Amanda—pointed out that he’d sprung this plan on Jem last-minute, by courier.
Jem could have had conflicting plans. He might have had to shuffle some things around.
Especially if he’d gotten a job for the summer.
River didn’t know how else he could have managed to scrape together the money to replay him.
River hoped a loan shark hadn’t broken his kneecaps or something.
That was the other thing—he had to believe Jem meant what he’d said in the note.
River hadn’t forgotten what that kind of money meant to regular people.
So probably he was just having trouble, like, rearranging his life so that he could drop everything and meet River at the arena VIP area two and a half hours before the show was supposed to start.
Right?
Finally the walkie-talkie on the dresser crackled. “Got a visitor here for River Wild.”
River’s pulse spiked so quickly he got lightheaded and had to lean against the wall.
Amanda picked up the walkie-talkie. “Thanks. I’ll come get him.”
She stopped to pat River’s shoulder on her way out. “It’s going to be fine.”
Right. Totally. He smiled at her. “Yeah?”
A squeeze. “Yeah. And then I can stop feeling like a monster for setting you up for heartbreak.”
He’d needed her help to set this plan in motion.
How was River supposed to get someone an early-access backstage pass to his concert at the last minute?
He couldn’t just give Jem a note that said Please allow this man past security, thanks much, River W.
So he’d had Amanda get him the pass, and River had scrawled on the envelope talk tomorrow 5pm?
and then texted Jem to please pick up his mail at the front desk of his building ASAP.
But then today, the clock had ticked over to five, and then five fifteen, and then twenty past, and now it was 5:29 and River’s palms were sweating worse than they had before his ninth-grade talent show.
Someone knocked on the door.
River’s fingers forgot how to work. He took a deep breath and tried to stand up straight. “Come in.”
The door opened and there he was.
A person shouldn’t make River want to touch them so bad, he thought. Jem took a step inside and River had the immediate urge to hug him. He needed to put his hands on Jem’s body and feel his warmth and breathe him in.
But he didn’t do that. He might not get to do that at all. Talking first.
River was going to talk. As soon as his mouth remembered it had a tongue in it.
The door clicked shut.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Jem blurted. His eyes were wide, his cheeks stained red with exertion, like he’d been running.
“A fucking sinkhole opened up in the middle of the road. This town is crazy.” He managed an entire breath before spewing on, “And I’m sorry about—I didn’t tell anyone about your music or the Flat Tires, but I drank too much at the wedding and the next morning I was hungover and I let my stepbrother look through my videos of you because he’s a huge Flat Tires fan and he asked about my lock screen—”
Oh. Oh, Jem had been panicking for at least as long as River. For a few seconds, River relished that fact. And then he felt like an asshole. If he’d given Jem the benefit of the doubt in the first place, he could’ve saved both of them a lot of hurt.
Jem wiped a hand over his face. “I didn’t realize he was going to recognize your song from TikTok and like, out you on the internet—”
“Jem.”
His mouth closed with an audible click.
“Do you—” Want to kiss me as bad as I want to kiss you? “—want to sit down and breathe for a second?”
“I… yes. Okay. Good idea.” Jem dropped weakly into the chair Amanda had vacated.
River took the one kitty-corner and knitted his fingers together to avoid reaching out for him.
And then he frowned, derailed, because there was sweat at Jem’s hairline and he was wearing the jacket River had given him, zipped up to the neck.
In June.
“Why are you wearing a jacket?”
“Oh my God.” Jem put his face in his hands. “I’ll show you, but we have to talk first.”
Considering that the last time River had Jem in a green room, he’d had him in the green room, he couldn’t disagree. However—“Maybe I should ask the questions?”
More color flooded Jem’s cheeks. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“Why did you lie about being at Andrew’s wedding?”
Jem flinched. “Because I’m a fucking asshole.” He lifted a shoulder. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to make it anyway, and I told myself I didn’t want you to feel bad about that, because I knew you would. You’d want to show everyone in South Carolina how great you thought I was.”
River couldn’t deny that he would have absolutely loved the chance to dote on Jem where his asshat father could choke on it. “But?”
“But actually I was just up my own ass and I… part of me wanted to show up and look successful on my own. You know? I got in my head thinking somehow everyone would find out I was your sugar baby.”
Now River was the one who winced. “Ouch.”
“Which was so stupid,” Jem went on as though he couldn’t help himself.
River hadn’t seen him like this since the just let people like things rant.
“Because I hadn’t been there for twenty minutes before I was thinking how much better it would’ve been with you there.
Once Margaret and I were done our wardrobe critique all I wanted was to give you the play-by-play. ”
God damn it. River absolutely wanted the play-by-play. But he had to keep his focus. He only had so much time before the show. “And yesterday? You said you’d wait, but when I came out of the back room, you were gone.”
“Yeah.” Jem rubbed at the back of his neck.
“I wanted to leave a more detailed note, but I couldn’t find a pen—I’d had that envelope just, um, in my pocket, in case.
Anyway. Ivy went into labor, so we had to rush out.
The baby’s doing great!” he added before River could ask.
“But she was eight pounds, so I think Ivy is a little bit mad at me.”
Jesus. “That’s probably fair,” River said faintly.