Chapter 2. #2
I turn to Wily, surprised by his first words since the encore of our show when he mumbled something about a leg cramp. “Huh?” I grunt back. “Rogue?”
“Happened in my first band.” He finished his Pop-Tart, talking to me with his attention still on his phone. “Everything was totally perfect. Rolling along. Vibing. Then our lead singer gets an ego and goes solo, ditched us overnight.”
“I’m not ditchin’ anyone, Wiles.” I’m kinda stunned he’d even suggest that.
“Started with him shoehorning his own songs into the set.” A muscle draws tight in his jaw. “Like you did tonight.”
Ever since this nasty mess with his brother’s divorce, he acts like everyone in his life is about to leave him, too. I guess he was close with his sister-in-law. I shake my head. “Wily, nah, it wasn’t like that. The song … it was just …”
I search for what to call it.
It’s the most honest thing that’s come out of me in years.
And I didn’t struggle over a single note or lyric. Like the song already lived inside me, fully written, merely waiting to be let out. That’s how my music used to happen. Poetry, melody, guitar in my hands, and a bunch of honest ears and faces in front of me.
Is that what I’ve been missing all these years? Honesty?
But it isn’t honesty Ian wants. It’s focus. It’s a wider-reaching rock sound that only edges into the country sound that used to define me—or pigeonhole me, as Ian put it. To the top … “Shouldn’t have sang the song,” I finally conclude. “Wasn’t even rehearsed.”
“Nothing’s wrong with the song,” says Wily, surprising me. He finally looks up from his phone. “Just don’t forget about the rest of us, man. Whatever it is on your mind. What you’re going through. Because I’m not giving up on you. I ain’t Cam.”
“I know.”
He gives me a long look, then lifts a fist toward me.
I bump it with my own. He gets up, crawls into his bunk, yanks his partition curtain shut, and I’m left with his plate of Pop-Tart crumbs.
After taking it to the sink—I’m used to cleaning up around here, call me Daddy Chase—I crouch at the opened mini-fridge with its bright light blinding me in the otherwise dark bus.
Don’t even know what I’m looking at. Or looking for.
“I thought it was great,” comes Raj, his face appearing through the glass fridge door. When I stare back blankly, he clarifies, “Your new tune. Reminded me of the old you. Like, Hate Me era.”
“Everyone keeps sayin’ that,” I mumble half to myself.
“But I wasn’t sure how to back it up,” he admits, as if taking notes of what to improve on in his imaginary snare-and-hi-hat-beating sessions. “Felt more like a solo piece. I kept worrying my percussion was interfering.”
“You were great, Raj. I liked the rhythm.”
“Really?” He smiles to himself, nearly holding back a giggle. The smile vanishes. “But really, it’s important we get things right, especially at this point in the tour. I don’t wanna hold you back at all. I’m just a guest in your world. Lucky to be here.”
Fiona, apparently awake, says, “Take his dick a little deeper, will you?” from under her hat.
Raj leans in to me and whispers, “I heard Laina broke things off with her. Couldn’t handle the long-distance girlfriend-always-on-tour thing. Poor Fiona.”
“I can still hear you,” she mumbles, causing Raj to wince.
I realize what I want isn’t something I can find in this fridge. I shut the door and rise up—so does Raj—and lean back against the counter. “What do you mean it’s important to get things right at this point of the tour?” I ask him quietly.
“Because I know we’re on the edge of a breakthrough,” is his answer, as dryly as if it’s fact.
“Everything is on the line. You’ve established this new rock sound for Chase Holt.
The world hears everything we do—including our mistakes.
I won’t blow any of our opportunities. I know everyone’s eyes are on us.
” He leans in. “I’m gonna be the best drummer you ever had. I won’t let you down.”
Ian’s getting to him. In through Raj’s ear like programming a robot, and out his mouth, that familiar, hypnotizing flow of self-fulfilling optimism I can’t stand.
But it’s also the same optimism that got us where we are. And it’s not like I haven’t done my part in perpetuating Ian’s mantras.
Alleged not-so-country-anymore sellout …
I shudder away the words. “Y’know, Raj …” I start to say.
Then the bus jerks, throwing him into me—I catch him to save him crashing into the wall—and everything is rumbly and fucked up.
“Aw, shoot!” growls Larry our driver from up ahead.
“Ah, hang tight, hang tight. Shoot.” The rumble continues.
Fiona has sat up, annoyed. When the bus finally lurches to a stop, Larry sighs.
“This cursed damned night. Sorry, folks. Bleepin’ tire. ”
Wily pokes his head out of his bunk, rubbing his eyes. Raj, still caught awkwardly in my arms, winces at Wily over my shoulder and whispers, “Flat.”
Last time this happened to a tour bus of ours, it was a bus we rented from some cheap company our first year of touring.
Feels damned near nostalgic standing roadside again at fuck-it-o’clock, watching the 24/7 industrial tire service work their miracles on the edge of whatever Texas freeway we’re on.
Some of the crew still awake came out of their bus, parked behind us.
Dee’s chatting with Fiona. Ian’s pacing by the road on his phone.
Wily’s trying not to fall over as he stands in place, blinking.
I’m trying not to see this as a sign.
Like something in my life needs to be rammed off track before I continue on this sellout road into my future.
Like something’s wrong.
I stare up at the stars as if looking for the answer.
It’s amazing how many are visible out here.
Something about long, quiet roads far away from any known city, out in the middle of who-knows, when the night sky’s so dark every star flashes like glitter, so close you swear you could catch them in your eyelashes.
“Do you meet with fans in secret?” asks Raj, still next to me.
I flinch out of my thoughts. “What?”
“Sorry, nothing, I’m prying.” He looks off, pretending to have lost interest. Doesn’t last long. “It’s just when I came to get you …”
I forgot Raj was the one who was sent to fetch me before the show. He likely saw the guy I was talking to. Or rather: listening to. “Nah, not a fan. He didn’t even know who I was.”
“Oh, wow, really? Some rando, then?”
“No idea.”
That just further confuses him. “Then … who was he …?”
I’m not sure I can answer that myself. “Nobody,” I finally say, frowning at the stars. Raj nods, taking my answer for truth right away and poking no further. I’ve come to like that about him, his calm, trusting demeanor.
It’s just that kind of mind that’s so easily moldable by Ian.
“Success ain’t everything,” I let out suddenly, perhaps what I was trying to say on the bus before the tire went caput.
I peel my eyes from the night sky to find Raj looking back at me.
“Don’t let … them … get into your head about perfection, threatening you not to make a mistake …
That’s where the good stuff happens. When you fuck up.
Take a risk. Sprinkle in something unexpected.
When you don’t plan so dang much. That’s the special sauce, Raj.
Don’t hold yourself back because you think you’re doin’ me any favors. ”
“I … I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
I mean Ian isn’t god, and you should just follow the beat of your own drum—but that’s a tad on the nose to say to an actual drummer, and the last thing I need to do is villainize Ian to our newest member.
Besides, Ian isn’t wrong; every single thing we do right now is on the world stage for everyone to dissect.
Who we date. What we sing. Our social medias.
Even some improvised tune no one’s heard before, thrust into the opening of the concert because I let some guy get into my head.
“Just don’t let my success be what moves those hands of yours, alright?
Move them because of that passion inside you.
That passion is the only thing that matters. ”
Raj stares blankly back at me.
I catch Ian’s gaze across the dirt, phone still slapped to his ear.
He acknowledges me with a tired nod. I nod back.
Then he returns to whoever he’s got up at this hour.
Probably his wife Hailey. The two got married around the time my career started kicking off five or so years ago, but it’s been hot and cold with them for the past three, and I can’t help feeling my career and its associated stresses are directly to blame.
Sure, success is nice, touring keeps people employed, and we all make money. But at what cost?
We’re on the road again. I’m in the bedroom in the back of the bus.
Most of it is used to store personal belongings of the others, and I never shut the door, wanting the band to feel welcome to it, even the bed—I always hated feeling like the pampered leader.
But no one ever wants it, so I’m always in it anyway.
Glorious, my ever loyal guitar, rests next to me on the sheets like a lover, and that’s not far off.
I’ve written so many damned songs on it in bed, it just became a thing that I started sleeping with him next to me.
I strum a gentle E flat major. Then a G minor. I smirk to myself and scribble in my notepad. Fiona was right. She always is.
Then I think about the secret sauce behind the song.
The guy who somehow managed to unravel all my insecurities in a way no one in my band or crew has ever dared to.
Calling into question my authenticity as an artist without even knowing my music.
Each time his words seep in, I feel just as indignant as I do fascinated.
That whole encounter is an unfinished story—as unfinished as this song my brain and guitar-troubling fingers can’t work out.
I can’t hope to sleep a wink, no matter how smooth our ride with the new tire, no matter the bed.
I even snuck past the bunks and ate some cereal out of my favorite smiley mug and still can’t find peace.
Wily and Fiona are snoring away. Raj, too, except for the snoring.
Other than the driver, I’m the only asshole on the bus still awake with my phone out under the sheets.
I’m looking up the next ten stops on the tour.
All of them here in Texas. And in the dead center of those cities, like a speck of dust I could accidentally wipe right off the map with a flick of my hand, is a town I have never once in my life heard of before—at least, not until tonight.
“Spruce,” I mumble, reading its name while rubbing a thumb over my lips, bothered.