Epilogue – Brad – Two months later
Ican’t believe I’m here. Our usual family restaurant with my two best girls with me. Hell, even our regular server Lauren is back. It’s just like old times.
Chaos Fuel just got back from our very successful tour of the southwest, and this is the first we’re seeing Charlie since our return. Tess has been bouncing off the walls, anxious to see her since we got into town last night. The video calls with all of us while we were on the road just weren’t enough. A simple dinner together, with movies to make fun of on tap for later sounds like the perfect way to reunite after being apart.
“Well, if it isn’t the cutest couple in the world,” Lauren says to me and Tess, then gives Charlie a wink. And that just earned her a huge tip.
“Yup,” Charlie crows, very proud of herself for orchestrating the entire thing. To be fair, I don’t know if we’d be here today without her running interference for us. “We’re on a date. Well, they are.”
Tess blushes and says to Lauren, “It’s not a date…”
“What are you talking about?” I say, pulling her closer next to me. “Every time I’m with you it’s a date.” I nuzzle my face into her neck, making her squeal with laughter, and hopefully embarrassing her even more. She hates it when I do this in public. At least she says she does. I know she secretly loves it. And honestly, I can’t help it.
Both Charlie and Lauren laugh at my antics, and I know my work here is done.
We catch up on all things Charlie, and what hell she’s been raising while we were gone. Apparently, her younger brother, August, has taken to following her around incessantly. This is also, apparently, very inconvenient for her.
“I mean, I’ll be in my room by myself reading, and he just storms in without knocking. Bugging me constantly.” She huffs loudly and crosses her arms over her chest, obviously put out about the whole thing.
“But he’s your little brother. He just wants to spend time with you,” Tess coos with sympathy. “You guys were apart for a long time. He probably missed you terribly.”
Charlie lifts a shoulder as if she doesn’t care, but I can see a lip twitch in satisfaction. The she devil. She loves the attention from August, I’m sure. I’m also pretty sure she loves this attention too.
Oh, to be a kid again, when all you wanted was attention. What a wild world I’m in now I have that attention as the singer in a kind of popular band, all I seek is the privacy of moments like this with the people I care about. I am not the same person I was a decade ago. And thank God for that.
My life has changed so much. Especially since meeting Tess. She’s changed my world for the better. Things that used to matter, stupid shit – like my past, don’t mean a damn thing anymore. What matters is now.
This.
Thisis what matters.
Yes, my music, the band, my career, they’re all important, but if they were taken away tomorrow, I could probably move on. So long as I had Tess by my side, I would be fine.
Wewould be fine.
The strangest thing is that I’m enjoying the music more now. For a while, it was getting to be a drag…a chore…a fucking job, and I was starting to resent everything about it.
Somehow, I’ve been set free to be creative again, and writing with Dakota is fucking off the charts. We’ve become some sort of dynamic duo of songwriting, and I love it.
He’s still got his dark moments. We all do. But he works through it, and we all support him as best as we can.
Tess has indeed changed my life, and in turn, it’s changed everyone’s lives for the better. And it’s not just our public image that’s improved since she came along, though, admittedly, that’s huge. The whole Sierra and Gina things were eventually found out to be bullshit as she predicted, and everything blew over like she said they would. And nobody from my past has fucked with us since. I doubt anyone will now.
Everythinghas gotten better.
Touring and being on the road are still a grind, but we’ve all clicked in a way that Chaos Fuel never has before.
We’ve leveled up.
Fuck. Maybe we’ve just grown up.
Well…It’s about fucking time.
THE END