Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“I’m not big on it, either,” she said. “Although I will admit to occasionally buying a Powerball ticket if the prize is really huge. I don’t know why—it’s not like I dream of being a billionaire or anything like that.
I just get weirdly superstitious about the idea of passing up such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. ”
“And yet you’re sitting on a Powerball ticket every day,” he said. “And you never cash in.”
He said it gently, with no particular sting, but she felt his words like a kick to the solar plexus nonetheless.
He had a point, of course. She’d always imagined that she’d spun the wheel and lost big, and so the last thing she wanted to do was spin the wheel again.
But it was beginning to seem more and more that she’d built that belief on a faulty premise to start with.
Not only did she not have to fear the wheel, but she wasn’t sure that she had lost on the first go-around.
At least, not as devastatingly as she’d always thought.
Steve and Frankie had both moved away to check out other machines, and John took the opportunity to reach over and give her thigh a quick squeeze.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to get on your case.”
But she realized that maybe that was exactly what she’d needed, all this time.
She needed someone who cared enough about her to look at her life and not see what she wanted them to see, a woman living the dream of coasting on money and accomplishments from a decade ago.
She wanted someone who cared enough to help her face the future but without making her feel terrible about all the ways she’d fucked up her past. She thought about that one woman she’d dated, the inspirational life hack-y quotes she was always throwing at Micah, and wondered why that had never felt like encouragement so much as impatience.
She realized it was because she’d never felt like that woman cared about her as a person, so much as about her résumé for when she was being introduced at dinner parties.
“I appreciate you getting on my case,” she said, smiling over at him. “Get on my case all you want.”
He looked over at her, and for a moment their eyes hooked on each other, like there was an invisible string that wouldn’t let them glance away.
She could tell John was getting tired, the slight shadow under his eyes, the way his eyelashes drooped a bit at the corners.
But she also knew that he wasn’t going to call this night before she would, like they both knew they were on borrowed time and they were trying to make as much of it as they could.
Then something flashed on his screen, and he glanced back. “Holy shit,” he said. “It was all about the diamonds.”
Frankie had wandered back over to them, and they let out a whoop when they saw John’s screen. “Dude, you just doubled that voucher.”
“I have to cash out, right?” John said. “I’m up too much. I can’t keep going.”
“I don’t know,” Frankie said. “You’re on a lucky streak.”
But he’d already closed out, getting up from the machine. “A real man makes his own luck,” he said.
Frankie stirred the cocktail in their hand with the little umbrella that had been added to the rim. “A Titanic reference, John, really? You’re the one who said those were off-limits.”
“What can I say?” John grinned at both of them, but Micah swore there was an extra hitch at the corner of his mouth when his gaze slid over to hers. “Things change.”
—
When John came back, Steve and Frankie had moved on to take pictures with a group of Nightshifters fans who had clearly just come from the dance party, still clad in their full costumes.
John leaned over Micah at her machine, resting his chin on her shoulder, nuzzling into her neck and taking a big inhale before he pressed a quick kiss to the spot.
It unlocked that memory she’d been thinking of earlier on the beach, that It’s going to be okay .
They’d been scheduled to play a Battle of the Bands that was a huge deal for them.
Up until that point, ElectricOh! had only played some house parties, a coffee shop that offered an open mic night and was ill-equipped for a full five-piece band to play, a few thrilling shows at a local punk record store that John thought was the pinnacle of cool.
But when they’d seen an advertisement for a statewide Battle of the Bands showcase, they’d thought, why not, worth a try.
They were still in the faking it stage of making it and hadn’t been prepared for what would happen if they actually got selected to play.
There was a real stage, not just a small DIY riser that shook if you turned your amp up too loud.
There were actual people in the audience, and not just family or friends or kids who wanted an excuse to get out of the house and drink and make out and didn’t particularly care what music was on in the background.
Micah had never really suffered from stage fright before—if anything she felt more comfortable while she was performing than anywhere else. But she’d felt it that day.
She’d been waiting in the wings, chewing on her thumbnail, trying not to give in to that roller-coaster feeling when she saw the band slotted before them play their last notes and take their bows, heading offstage.
She loved roller coasters, but still she always felt the same panic when she reached the top of a long, slow summit that she knew preceded a big drop.
Wait. Stop. I want off. I can’t do this.
She felt that way then, the sudden urge to turn to the rest of the band and say Sorry. Maybe next year.
But John had come up behind her, his hand brushing her waist, a ghost of a touch she could still feel. He’d rested his chin on her shoulder, and then he’d said It’s going to be okay , like he knew those simple words were all she needed to hear.
And maybe they were. They hadn’t won the Battle of the Bands, and yet it had been what landed them their record deal, and then the rest was history.
Someone had immediately taken over John’s slot machine, so he leaned on the back of her chair instead, watching her play a few more rounds. When she ran out of money, she looked up at him to smile.
“We can’t all be so lucky, I guess,” she said.
“That’s why I doubled mine,” he said. “So it’d be covered.”
“Oh, is that why you did it. What foresight.”
“I’m not about to let my date lose big,” he said. “Not very chivalrous on my part.”
“You would’ve kept going until you won the giant stuffed bear, wouldn’t you,” she asked, thinking back to the time they’d gone to a carnival and she’d had to pull him away from a darts game she knew was rigged. That rare competitive streak had come out, even then.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Forty-eight dollars later, I would’ve shown them who was in charge.”
They’d had a few people approach them for pictures and autographs, and there had been a time when Micah had been playing and a small crowd had gathered to watch, but she was grateful that for the most part people had been very respectful and given them some space.
And when she did have encounters with anyone, they were all positive—just an excited fan who wanted to talk about what a particular song meant to them, sometimes even deeper cuts on the album that Micah was surprised to hear them mention.
She’d feared this cruise for a number of reasons, one of which had been the crowds, but they’d turned out not to be so bad.
“Can I ask you a question?” John asked, and she tilted her head back to look up at him. Her stomach got that roller-coaster flip, wondering what it could even be.
“Okay.”
“What’s the deal with the bracelets?” he asked. “You don’t wear any. And there were so many, they couldn’t just be for you to wear?”
It took a second for Micah to remember what he was even talking about, and then she almost wished she hadn’t, because it made her flash back to that terrible, awkward moment when they’d first boarded the ship, when the guitar case had opened and spilled bracelets everywhere.
She’d wondered then what John had thought of her, and she couldn’t be surprised that obviously he’d still been thinking about those bracelets even days later.
“Do you remember that trend, where everyone was making friendship bracelets all the time?”
His brow crinkled. “I think so,” he said, but she could tell he didn’t. He looked at her, his expression clearing. “No, sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She huffed a laugh. Sometimes she forgot just how offline John was, and maybe his internet circles wouldn’t have intersected with this anyway.
“The point is, I bought a kit and I started making them, too—just for fun at first. I don’t know, it was something to do.
I would listen to podcasts and make twenty, thirty bracelets at a time. ”
“Jesus,” he said. “Running your own sweatshop.”
“It made me feel good to make something. Even though I knew they were kind of pointless, because what would I even do with that many bracelets? And then when I found out we would be doing this cruise, I thought, okay, maybe this is my opportunity. I could give them away to people on the ship or something. The ones I made for myself had random Elvis song titles on them— don’t laugh, it’s just what I could think of—but I started making ones that said Youre Electric or If Only or Nightshifters or ElectricOh .
No exclamation point, because my kit didn’t have one, and I tried to scratch off part of the I to make my own but it didn’t look right. ”
“I’m sure people would still be excited to get a bracelet,” John said. “Even without the exclamation point. You should give them away, that sounds like a great idea.”
“It’d be awkward,” she said. “What would I do, just walk around with my case, stopping people to open it up and present my wares? It’s stupid.”
John looked over to where Steve and Frankie were still standing by the entrance to the casino, talking with the same group of people they’d been taking pictures with before.
Micah envied how easily they seemed to move through the crowds on the ship—even with things not being nearly as bad as she feared, Micah still found it a little nerve-racking, the idea of just being out among everyone.
“All right,” John said finally. “New new idea. Follow me.”