Last Night on Tour

Chapter 1

Now—Ellery

Thunder rumbles through her feet, but there’s no storm. Or maybe just a different kind of storm. Cheering travels through the floorboards like a tsunami of sound, a tornado of applause. The steel-and-wood girders supporting the backstage tremble with its force.

The roar of the crowd is deafening, but it isn’t loud enough to drown out the doubt in Ellery’s head.

“Elvie! Elvie! Elvie!” They all want this other version of her. Elvie. Cute, pliant, goes along to get along. They think she belongs to them. Maybe she does.

The only people who wanted the real her are all gone, but she can’t focus on that now. Not when she’s standing in a ring of costumers pulling at her hair and clothes, primping and fluffing and straightening and tightening.

It’s difficult enough getting dressed in this ridiculous outfit without having to struggle her feet into the too-tight glittering stilettos.

Ellery closes her eyes, focusing on her breath.

In, out. She’s done this hundreds of times now.

She can do it again, one last time. After tonight, she has a break. After tonight, she can rest.

If only things will go well, though she doesn’t dare to hope. She’s had enough last-minute surprises to know that she simply has to grin and bear it. She has to, if she wants this—the acclaim, the one-sided adoration. Without this, she has nothing left.

She should simply smile and be Elvie.

“I lengthened the hem like you asked,” her assistant Maria says, nodding at the mid-thigh-length denim skirt that Ellery fights not to tug farther down. Maria circles me, frowning, her black hair streaked with gray up in a messy topknot.

“It’s great. Thanks.” It’s not, but it’s better than nothing. Even another inch will help so she doesn’t show her cooch when she perches on the stool. Not that she had much choice in this costume design—or any decision in the last few whirlwind years.

But that’s her own fault.

This is the last night. Maybe if she repeats it enough, it will crawl beneath her skin, weave into her DNA, and become real. Last night of the tour. She can sleep tonight in her own bed in her own house, for the first time in months.

A lonely pit opens in the middle of her chest and she snaps her head upward, sending artfully curled tendrils of hair flying. Alone. She’s always alone nowadays.

This is what you wanted, the small voice whispers in her ear. Right, yes. Maybe she’s just nervous, last-night-of-tour jitters.

She needs Jasper, her acoustic guitar, her one lifeline, but she can’t get to him in the flurry of makeup brushes and hairspray and journalists holding out their phones to record her and twist her words.

You’ll be all right, El. You can do anything for five minutes.

The voice in her head is ASMR, low and soothing. Her anxiety ratchets down a notch.

“Elvie?” The band manager, Hank, touches her shoulder gently. He’s older than her dad was, with dark brown skin lined with fading tattoos. “We have an issue.”

She maintains her composure despite her mind’s desperate attempts to lose control.

“Of course we do. But hey, tomorrow we all get waffles and champagne for breakfast, right?” That’s good.

Keep it light, keep it easy. Don’t cause trouble.

Trouble got you whisper-labeled as “difficult” and “unemployable.”

Hank smiles. He’s aging well, the fine lines around his eyes softening with wisdom. If only she could write that smile into a song, but there’s the simple, hard truth. She hasn’t written a single lyric in months. It’s impossible to write anything true when she has lost all inspiration.

“It’s Abe. He just called. He’s way too sick to perform tonight.”

Their bassist had looked terrible at sound check, nearly as green as the palm trees lining the road to the theater.

She had attributed it to the afternoon heat.

“Right. Okay.” She keeps her breath even, despite the thumping in her heart matching the downbeat reverberating through the floor.

“So what do we do? I can cover his parts.” Even though it will mean she will play so hard her fingers will be bloody and raw by the end of the night.

She can ice them tomorrow.

If you want this, you need to bleed. You need to earn it. That voice in her head was less ASMR and more drill sergeant, but it had gotten her this far. Further than so many other hopefuls. She had known the price, hadn’t she?

Hank runs a hand through his thick sheaf of gray-black hair. “I called around, and if you’re okay with it, I found someone.”

Oh hell, no. “Someone new?” Was that shrill?

She doesn’t need this. Not when she’s ninety minutes—two hours max—away from a shower, sweatpants, and burning this fucking outfit in effigy.

She’s so close to the limit of her tolerance, she can peek over the over side and see the cliff falling away to the sea. “Do they know my arrangements?”

“Yeah, actually. He said he’s heard everything you’ve ever done.” Hank taps the clipboard with his index finger. “He’s thrilled to be here, if you’re okay with it.”

The information glances off her titanium shell.

What else is she to do? Totter onstage to make a fool of herself without a bassist, or play with someone who half-knows what they’re doing?

She’s met far too many men in this business who let arrogance instead of talent run their careers.

But she has to toe the line and be agreeable.

There’s only one bassist she wants, and there is zero chance he would show.

Not after everything she’d done. “Sure. If you trust him, so do I.”

“Great.” Hank’s shoulders relax, as though he’s relieved.

Tomorrow will be a reprieve. She’ll turn off her phone and pretend her agent Logan and her personal woes don’t exist. Maybe she’ll drive down to Will Rogers State Beach with sunglasses, a book, and an enormous bottle of sunscreen, and relax for the first time in years.

More likely she’ll lie curled in bed under several layers of covers.

Grief yawns like a tiger at the back of her chest, but she quiets it.

“Elvie?” Maria says, breaking her reverie. “It’s time. They’re waiting for you.”

“Okay. I’m ready.” She isn’t. She’s never ready.

She knows the songs, knows the motions to go through, but she is never prepared for the feeling of stepping onto that stage and pouring her heart out to strangers.

Strangers who think they know her, who refer to her as “Elvie,” the carefully cultivated personality that has been created for her.

Strangers who judge, strangers who take her music and make it their own.

She had something of her own, once. Something beautiful and fleeting.

Maria collects Jasper, and Hank flanks her as she leaves the dressing room and makes her way to the stage.

The backstage area is a hive of activity, grips moving equipment and instruments, the opening act sitting in a circle with beers and weed, assistants running back and forth.

Everyone has a purpose here. They’re here for her. The tragic sweetheart of America Sings!

What a fucking joke.

She has no one here she really wants to see, but she nods at everyone.

With Abe out, maybe they should cut back the riff in “Water Teeth.” No, it’s the final night of her first-ever tour.

She’s sold out the Agora in Los Angeles.

She should stick to the rules. The rules have gotten her this far, even though it’s scarred her to follow them.

She teeters in the too-tight heels, but Hank grips her elbow, steadying her. “You okay?” he whispers.

“Of course!” She’s too chipper, but it can’t be helped. She longs for her guitar, Jasper, for the way its weight settles her. As long as she can find the thread of the music, her heart will slow and she will find her calm.

But after dropping Jasper while walking onstage in Milwaukee, she has to trust Maria to tote it to the stage.

She enters the wings, heartbeat throbbing along her scalp. This isn’t new, not anymore. Not since the sound check earlier that day, not since the Vendetta opened for the Lumineers here that one time. Even familiar, it’s more than enough to steal her breath.

The Agora is an LA icon, an open-air amphitheater nestled in the hills among some of the city’s most expensive and exclusive real estate.

With the sunset imminent, with rainbow hues painting the landscape, it’s glorious.

It looks like a place where miracles happen.

A place for serendipity. It’s certainly happened here often enough.

From her new vantage point, the echoes of the crowd stomping their feet and clapping are too much to bear. Too loud, too violent. Like a skyscraper collapsing on top of her.

She adjusts the noise-dampening headphone in her ear. Last night of the tour. An unknown bassist. A postcard-ready LA night. It’s too perfect. It will all fall apart.

At that moment, Maria slips her guitar into her hands and Ellery can breathe again. Jasper’s been with her through everything—every loss, every heartbreak. Jasper understands her, and she knows every polished inch of him.

Her drummer Selene taps her sticks together, keeping the rhythm. Lorraine is on piano, running a progression of notes to amp up the crowd’s enthusiasm.

A thrill twirls up her spine. This is it. The last night of the tour. She can be done after this.

There’s only one change to business as usual, one possible alteration to her plan.

“Hank,” Ellery says as the lead singer of their opening act goes to the mic to introduce her. “You didn’t tell me who the bassist is. Should I know him?”

“Sure.” Hank checks his clipboard, but it takes him too long in the dim light of the wings. He activates the tiny flashlight clipped to the board, but it’s too late.

The Earth has already shifted on its axis; the sky has already turned and illuminated the one person she doesn’t admit she longs for.

What are the odds?