Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Inside, our DRIVER SALVATORE’S seat is empty, but the front lounge is awash in soft purple, lit by small dotted lights that line the bus’s ceiling.
I round the corner and, to my shock, find Halloran there, reclining in the leather lounger.
He sets whatever book he was reading aside.
“You’re back early,” he murmurs, voice velvety and low like he hasn’t spoken in hours. “Everything fine?”
Oh, jeez. Those words. That concern directed at me. I’m a goner.
“Mhm.” I nod. “What are you doing out here?”
His face is half cast in shadow so I can’t quite tell if he’s smirking or scowling. “How do you mean?”
“You usually stay in your bedroom.”
“A perpetual dweller of bus enclaves.”
“Your words, not mine.”
He chuckles, sitting up. “I don’t go to many large social gatherings…or small ones, really.”
I move slowly as if trying not to spook a wild animal, and lean against the table directly across from him. His eyes are aligned perfectly with the hem of my itty-bitty denim skirt. “Let me guess—big fan of the Irish goodbye?”
“Is that like a French exit?”
My lips twitch. An American saying, I guess. “It means leaving a party without saying goodbye to anyone.”
“Ah,” he says gently. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find me at a party in the first place.”
“So when everyone comes back, will you retreat into your Batcave? What do you even do in there all night?”
“Depends which hour we’re talkin’.”
When my eyes bulge he laughs to himself. “That’s terrible. I’m only kidding. I read some, write music…I dunno, try and fail to catch up on sleep.”
The following silence is dotted by the whoosh of passing cars and buzz of the violet LED lights. The lounge smells of fresh tea, which I spot piping steam into the air to Halloran’s left.
“Where is everyone?”
“Salvatore is off tonight on account of us not leavin’ till tomorrow afternoon. Rest of the lads are out, I’d guess. Thought you would be, too.”
I am not fighting to swallow a squeal of he thought about me?
I am not fifteen years old. I am also not going to tell him I meant all the groupies from the green room, rather than the band.
Belatedly, I realize perhaps he was telling me to scram.
I blanch. “Oh! My bad. I can go back to the casino.” I move for the bus doors.
“No—no,” he says, sitting up. “That’s not what I— Stay, if you want.” He waggles his book at me. “I won’t bother you.”
I squint at the reading material. “Homer?”
“You know him?”
I shake my head.
“Ancient Greek poet. He wrote the Odyssey .”
Well-read as suspected. “I knew you were secretly a classics professor.”
“Hey,” he chides softly. “Don’t mock. It’s easier to read books I’ve read many times when I’m on the road. My brain stops working after a few cities.”
“So you always stay in and read? You never go out with your band?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Aren’t they your buds?”
Halloran rubs his long fingers over his jaw. “They’re my colleagues. Other than Conor. He’s like a brother I can’t seem to move away from. So no, yeah, the rest of ’em…they’re grand. Known ’em for years, but…no, they aren’t my mates.”
“Do you…” I search for the right words. “Have friends?”
Those definitely were not the right words. It’s such a rude thing to say I could smack myself with his book.
But his mouth only pulls up at one side. “Back in Ireland, yeah. My best mate’s having a baby in a month.”
“Oh, Halloran. You’ll miss it? For the tour?”
“Tom, please,” he says with a wince. “Nobody in my life calls me Halloran. But yeah. I’ll miss the birth of my godson. Pretty shite, isn’t it?”
My heart twists for him. “You get homesick?”
“Ill with it. You?”
I’m instantly transported back to Cherry Grove, the floorboards of my house creaking underfoot.
That warm Southern sunshine freckling my fair skin.
Kids bicycling into town, sitting on handlebars and standing barefoot on pedals.
But the silence hits me, too. The stagnant quiet of my hometown.
Our simple grocery store—the only one for miles.
All the dreams there, laid to rest. “Yes and no,” I admit, and it’s like sacrilege.
“There’s a great amount of loss in that feeling, isn’t there?”
I nod, my heart constricting with guilt. “I can’t believe you couldn’t take a few days off from the tour to meet your godson.”
“Jen’s no softie, in case you hadn’t noticed. Schedule’s all her doing.”
“She’s definitely intense.”
“In her defense, she’s under a terrible amount of pressure. The label’s told her if I don’t sign my next contract, it’ll be her head.”
My eyes grow wide in the dim light. No wonder I got the impression Halloran was her meal ticket. “You don’t want to do another album?”
He seems to ponder this for a minute before deciding on “I’m not sure. I’d like to go home to County Kerry…Get back to myself for a while.”
“But you were born to do this. Your talent, your voice, your brain…”
“That’s kind.” Even in the soft purple glow, I can tell he’s flushed. “I’d never stop writing songs. Makin’ music…I don’t think I could. I’ve been singin’ since I was eight years old. I just don’t know if this way of doin’ it is for me.”
“The crowds. The press. The demon-spawn morning show hosts.”
“Sure, that. And I miss the anonymity. The solitude of home.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” I joke. “You’re too gifted. It’s your duty to share your work with the world.”
His gaze is earnest. “You think so highly of me, but you barely know me, Clementine.”
“I think I’m a pretty good judge of character.”
“I’m missing a great deal in the lives of those I care about. What kind of person leaves their family behind to pursue fame and money?”
“I did,” I admit.
That stops him in his tracks. Halloran waits patiently for me to say more. I realize he’s the kind of person who will never push. I can just tell—if I changed the subject he wouldn’t hammer me about it. I decide I’m going to work on that quality myself.
“My mom is sick. She has this incurable, chronic illness called fibromyalgia. I’ve never left her before.”
He looks stricken. “I’m sorry.”
“I took this job because the money will help her afford a clinical trial for a new medication that could change her quality of life. But knowing she’s back home without me for two months…I feel guilty about it every day.”
“You can’t berate yourself like that,” he says. “You’re doing this for her.”
“And for me.” Another admission that feels like treason.
“I don’t think I knew it when I said yes, but each night, on that stage…
I’m living some kind of dream. I’m terrified of how much I’ll miss singing like this when it’s all over.
What you’re doing—watching your life’s work come to fruition.
Seeing the faces of all those you’re forever changing with your music. That’s meaningful, Tom.”
“I appreciate you saying that. Sometimes it can feel shameful almost, to have reached this level…or to revel in it. I try to keep the success separate from myself, but then it can be hard to reconcile what I’m even doin’ here.”
“But you’re bringing people so much joy.
” I don’t know why I want so strongly to convince him of this.
Maybe because he can and I can’t. “The thing you were born to do happens to also change the lives of others. That exchange—that…phenomenon that occurs—when you share yourself with every single one of those people in the crowd…it’s rare and fleeting and so, so precious. ”
The look on Halloran’s face is somewhere between stunned and touched. “You don’t speak like that about love, but you do about music?”
I swallow around an awkward lump in my throat. “Certain music. Yeah.”
Halloran nods to himself, allowing his eyes to roam across the lounge. They sweep over the hallway of bunks and land on the closed door to his suite. I feel a sudden pang of abject horror.
I lower my voice. “Is she sleeping in there?”
I have never seen anyone look more bewildered than Halloran does right now. “Is who sleeping in there? ”
Don’t make me say it. I steel myself. “The blonde,” I answer him as if I’m very, very chill. A wingwoman. A guy’s girl. “From the greenroom.”
“I cannot even picture whoever it is you’re referencin’.”
The sheer relief that is felt in every corner of my body should be worrisome. I’m suddenly made of helium—I could float into the night skies on this sensation alone.
All I say is “Never mind.”
But Halloran shakes his head as if somehow I should have known better.
“What?” I press. “You don’t date?”
I wish I hadn’t asked. I feel like Joe Jennings.
But he doesn’t seem bothered now that the question is coming from me. “I don’t not date. I don’t sleep with the women who come to my shows, if that’s what you mean.”
“I see.” But curiosity’s got me by the throat. “So what does ‘dating’ Tom Halloran look like, then?”
He smirks down at his hands, wrapped softly around the epic poem. It’s like it was shrunk in the wash, so dwarfed by his grasp. “I could show you.”
My mind stalls. Scatters and reconfigures. Sharper and blurrier all at once. Before I can say anything he laughs lightly and stands from the lounge seat, tossing the book behind him. “Nothing too exciting.”
He is so goddamn tall his head nearly scrapes the top of the bus. Cloaked in violet shadow he strolls toward me like some kind of mythical folk-rock Jesus. Suddenly, I’m all too aware of my dumb denim miniskirt and bare thighs. I feel like a Bratz doll.
“A pint,” he continues, pressing one hand into the other. “A burger, too, if it’s going well.”
“Shared fries?” I ask. My voice squeaks out like a cartoon mouse.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Of course. Shared fries.”
I take a step closer. Bold. I am being way too bold. But his absinthe eyes are glowing in the soft light, and I’m drawn to them like a drunk. “Then what?”