11. The Proper Footwear
IAN
I woke up in full panic mode. Archer was screaming, and I had to get to him.
I hadn’t meant to wake Nicky, but my hand had gotten tangled in her hair. When I rolled off the sofa to face the threat, I must have clenched my fist.
“Ow!” she cried.
I couldn’t stop to apologize, even though the white-blonde strands between my fingers horrified me. “Arch?” I shouted. “Brother?”
He was on his knees in the front part of the bus. He looked up at me, despair in every line.
“Ian! Oh my god!”
Mal appeared behind me, full bedhead on display. His heavy hand came onto my shoulder as he tried to push past me to get to the threat. “What?” he shouted. “What’s going on?”
Nicky squirmed between us and went to her knees before Archer. She put a hand to his cheek. “What happened? Is it Charlotte?”
“Yes!” Archer howled.
My heart stopped. I searched the bus frantically for the puppy and saw a long tail sticking out from under the kitchen table. Two anxious eyes watched me from the shadows. She was alive, at least.
“Look!” Archer held up his hands, the brown mass in them finally resolving into the shape of a boot.
Archer’s boot.
Archer’s favorite concert boot.
Which was now sporting a fashion-forward hole in the toe.
“That bad, bad dog!” Archer shrieked. “She ate my boot!”
“Archer,” Nicky said as Mal and I relaxed. “No, Archer. She’s a puppy. It’s only a boot.”
I could have told her that wasn’t going to go over well. He looked at her, anguish in his eyes. “These are the boots I wore when we won that first talent show. I wear them in our videos. I always wear these boots onstage. They’re part of my look. Don’t you understand, honey?”
She might not have heard the rising anger in his voice, but I did. I stepped forward and took him by his elbow.
“Okay, man. Get up.”
Archer resisted, but Mal got under the other arm, and together we boosted Archer into the banquette. Charlotte slunk out from under the table and crawled to Nicky.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to go shopping when we get to Miami.”
“Miami! You think I can duplicate these boots in Miami?”
If he’d been calmer, I would have pointed out to Archer that his boots weren’t sacred objects. They could be replaced. “You have no choice, Arch,” I said as softly as I could.
He thumped back on the bench, defeated. Nicky called forward to Ken and asked for a pit stop because, as she said, “It’s been almost eight hours since this puppy had a walk, right, my good girl?”
I looked around me, surprised. The sun was blazing over the highway. Short shadows. Was it midday?
Had I slept again?
I had. A long sleep.
I turned away so Archer would be spared my delight—and my fucked-up grin.
God, I felt good.
Archer was still in mourning when we pulled into the rest stop, but I nudged Mal. “We’re going to kill it in Miami,” I said, sure of our future.
“Not if he’s a wreck.” Mal threw a thumb over his shoulder at the sad sack in the kitchen.
“We’ll figure it out.”
In the end, it was Nicky who solved the problem. We were back on the road, clean, refreshed, and with empty canine and human bladders, when she got a calculating look on her face.
“Boots would be wrong for Miami anyway,” she said, watching Archer.
“Not these boots,” he started in again, but she cut him off.
“For Miami,” she said sternly, “you need a great pair of sandals. And white pants. In fact, you should be entirely in white.”
Archer looked up. “All in white? Too much glare for the cameras.”
“They can adjust,” she said shortly. “Yeah. You should dress in white. Always in white. Not, like, a uniform, but like you’re the”—she blushed at her thought but pushed through anyway—“angel. Descended from heaven.”
“Angel? That’s not too girly?”
“Not that kind of angel.” Nicky was totally confident, and it was affecting Archer. He sat up and gave her his full attention. “More like an archangel. A flaming-sword kind of angel.”
“A flaming sword,” he repeated, his eyes going distant. “All in white.”
“Absolutely.”
“We need to go shopping,” Archer said, and Mal and I exchanged a nod of relief. But Nicky wasn’t finished. She turned to me and pointed a finger at the swivel chair. “Ian, sit. Sit down.”
“’Scuse me?”
“Do it. Sit here. You’re too tall for me to reach up.”
I telegraphed my confusion to the guys, but they couldn’t help me. I sat and winced away when she reached out to brush my hair from my face.
“No, stay still. This scar—it bugs the hell out of you, doesn’t it?” Her pinching fingers held my jaw in place and, unhappily, I let her do it.
“You might not have noticed,” I growled, “but it’s a pretty hellacious scar.”
She nodded, her eyes calculating. She traced the scar with a gentle finger. “From inside your hairline, around the eye, down the cheek, and almost to the jaw. Damn. It’s big.”
Nothing I loved more than being studied. “It severed a nerve in my cheek. I can’t smile with half my mouth.” As if that needed to be explained.
“But you can sing. You can talk. Eat. All that stuff. It didn’t get your mouth or your nose or your eyes or your eyebrows.”
“Listing the places it didn’t get doesn’t do much to help the places it did get.”
She dismissed my words. “You don’t play easy listening.”
I scoffed. We certainly didn’t.
“You don’t play kids’ songs.”
We all huffed.
“You play rock.”
“Hard rock,” Mal agreed.
“Then why are you hiding this scar?” Her voice was implacable. She still held my jaw but turned to Archer and then Mal. “Have you ever seen anything more rock ’n’ roll than this scar?”
We all blinked at her. “Well,” Mal said, and then had nothing to follow it up with.
“You need to shave your skull, Ian.” My jaw would have fallen open if she hadn’t been holding it. “Not a clean shave. Leave a little stubble. Maybe a rattail? No, take it down to a full buzz cut. You should always face the camera. You’ve got to lean into this.”
Archer was grinning, and I felt a burst of betrayal. “No!” I said.
“Yes.” She was undeterred. “We’ll have that hair guy in bus seven do it.”
“I like it,” Mal said slowly.
I growled at him.
“And you should dress in black. He’s the archangel, and you’re death. In fact, you need a guitar shaped like a scythe.”
Mal was confused. “What’s a scythe?”
Nicky swiped the air with straight arms. “You know. The Grim Reaper’s, um, sickle. Right? For harvesting wheat? Or souls?” She turned back to me. “Can you get one?”
Could I get a new guitar? I was so far off balance that I couldn’t think right.
“What about me?” Mal said eagerly. “Do I wear all gray? Stay between the darkness and the light?”
Nicky finally let go of me to stand back and consider Mal.
“Purple,” she said after a moment’s thought. “You’re judgment. You keep the beat. You wear a rich, regal purple, which looks so good with brown hair anyway. Yeah. You guys all need a more Aftermath-y look, you know? Build your brand by refining your look. I mean, don’t always wear the same thing, but stick to mostly white, mostly black, and mostly purple shades. Except you.” She turned to me again. “Always black for you.”
Archer was on his feet. “And always white for me! I love that. I look great in white!”
“Yes, you do,” Nicky confirmed, but he didn’t need her approval.
Mal was no help. He was rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. “More Aftermath-y,” he said. “This is exactly what we need. A look.”
Archer had forgotten that he was mad at Charlotte and was cradling the dog again. “You’re going to get hair all over my white clothes, aren’t you, baby?”
Nicky finally looked around and saw that I was in shock.
“Can you do it?” she asked quietly.
In that one question, I saw she understood. I was going to have to come out of hiding. Grotesque scar and all.
Ever since Finn and I had taken that stupid ride down a shale-covered slope, my injury had defined me. My hair was long in the hopes that it could hide the scar. I didn’t smile or grin. I turned away so people wouldn’t have to see.
Now I was supposed to turn into the light. To be exposed.
Could I do it?
In a moment, the two options flashed behind my eyes: Keep the long hair, the scar, the belief that I was too horrible to be seen. Along that path lay union contracts and building generators and my father’s smug “I told you so.”
Or shave it off. Expose the truth. Own it. Risk the horror. Ride the wave. Take Aftermath higher. Maybe as high as the concert last night.
Maybe further.
“I’ll do it,” I said.