Chapter 23.
TJ
When the final notes of the final song fill the pavilion, I swear they float in the air like a beautiful flock with no desire to land.
No one wants the music to end. It’s too soon.
No amount of it will be enough. We’re all in this emotionally-rich moment together, and I think we all know that when it ends, we’ll never have it back.
But it has to end whether we’re ready for it to or not.
Austin stands on the edge of the stage, chest rising and falling, Glorious still in his hands, looking like he just bust through a wall and came out on the other side with a smile over his face.
Maybe he did just that.
Everything is super loud all around me. Applause. Screaming. Arms in the air. But all I feel inside is peace.
Something’s different. Like, seriously different. More than just with Austin Love and Chase Holt becoming one person in front of my eyes. Singing from his heart. Hat off, taking with it the shadow that always covers his face. Everything on the stage.
There’s no going back now.
Not for any of us.
And it’s the best feeling I’ve ever experienced.
With this concert, Austin has gone and turned our “incident” at the Korean BBQ place to the intentional date it was supposed to be. He turned our hotel meet-ups from shameful, secret acts into necessary precautions we had to take to protect ourselves.
He pushed away the scandal and replaced it with a love story.
Our story.
And no one can take that away from us.
Awareness of everything starts flooding back in.
The noise. All the cheering. Someone grabs my hand and I realize it’s my mom.
She’s got tears all over her face. I give her a hug, and we stand like that in the crowd for ages.
When I look back up at the stage, I lose sight of Austin and let go of my mom, glancing around for him in half a panic. Where’d he go?
Then suddenly he’s right in front of me.
As if the crowd just gave birth to him.
Didn’t they kind of do just that tonight?
“You okay?” he asks like he didn’t just set fire to the universe.
I let out this breath that feels like it’s been stuck in my lungs since he first took that stage. “Are you?”
His answer is to grab me and lift me straight off the ground, spinning me around, and for a second, I’m convinced he’s helping my body find its soul again, like it floated out of me when he was up on that stage and hasn’t touched the ground since.
I guess the evidence is that when he sets me back down, I’m laughing and feel like myself again—more like myself than I’ve probably ever been.
Somehow, somewhere between that hug and the first round of drinks, the night turns into something else entirely.
The house is filled from the front foyer to the guest wing with everyone who made tonight happen.
There’s laughter in the air. And utter disbelief.
Everyone’s got a story of how they were called in to help last minute.
Cole and Noah had some last-second freak out with the stream, for a moment fearing it wouldn’t even lift off the ground.
Something occurred with the sound between the third and fourth songs that was swiftly fixed by my dad, who was aware of an issue with the pavilion’s system after its last use.
Malcolm’s boyfriend Samuel is apparently a Chase Holt fan and kept singing through the songs he knew, causing Malcolm to laugh.
Austin, having been working with so many of these people all day, already knows everyone by name and needs no help from me to get introduced.
Maybe I’ll save introductions for the Fourth when the whole town convenes in this house to stuff themselves silly with barbecue and watch stuff explode in the sky later.
I don’t know when the heck she arrived or if she’s been here all day and I miraculously didn’t notice, but when Austin is gone to the restroom, Nadine appears before me with a cocktail in hand and, batting her enormous eyelashes, says, “Darlin’, I’m not here to start somethin’, but I’m just gonna say oh my God, my ovaries—that man’s songs does somethin’ to you, does somethin’ deep, deep down to you.
I’m pregnant now. From his voice. I am so happy for you, TJ—ugh, you’re cute as a button, you’re so dang cute—and I just think you and this Chase boy are the most adorable, the most precious, the most of every dang most I can think of, and …
I think I need another drink right about now and would ya like one? ”
She’s already several in.
I’ve only had one and lightweight-me says that’s enough.
I’m handling her just fine, but a quick-footed Jimmy appears to rescue me anyway, directing his mother’s attention elsewhere while shooting a wink over his shoulder at me.
I’ll be seeing them and the rest of the Strongs on the Fourth anyway.
When I’m in the kitchen getting me and Austin another drink, I witness the guitarist Wily in the middle of telling everyone in the whole kitchen a hilarious story about something totally crazy that happened on the tour bus between Alabama and Georgia.
I must have missed the punchline when everyone explodes into laughter.
From my handful of encounters with the guy, I didn’t take him to be such a charismatic crowd pleaser.
Maybe it takes a drink or two to open him up?
Something in the air tonight is simply magical.
I feel like I’m watching someone else’s far more exciting life and this can’t possibly be my own.
I guess Raj and Fiona have gotten super close, because both of them are all over each other on the guest wing couch laughing it up with beers in hand.
“No, no, really, it was my fault,” insists Raj through his tears of laughter.
“Bitch, you just like takin’ it deep and hard,” she cries back at him, and I may never, ever know the context of that exchange for as long as I live, both of them drunk and in hysterics.
Then a cow moos.
I have no idea how, but it cuts the volume of the room in half. Raj and Fiona go silent. Everyone else in the vicinity seems to take the cue as well, drawing quiet, hushing one another.
It’s Austin’s phone. And it continues to moo.
He sighs by my side, looking down at his phone, as if unsure whether to answer it.
It’s Ian.
“Are you … gonna get that …?” squeaks Raj, nervous.
“Just do it already,” moans Fiona with a roll of her eyes. “If we all just lost our jobs. If the label’s finished. If Ian’s in the hospital now hooked up to life support and still screaming his brains out. Just put us all out of our misery and answer that damned cow.”
Austin gives me a glance, as if it’s my decision somehow.
It totally isn’t. But he looks at me anyway, patient, waiting.
And the phone continues to moo.
I give him an encouraging, supportive squeeze of his arm.
He nods, puts on an eerily pleasant smile, then answers—on speaker. “Mr. Ian. You’re up mighty late. Isn’t it dollhouse hour?”
There’s a long silence.
A very long silence.
Austin glances down at his phone, as if worried he hung up on Ian instead of answering.
He raises the volume of his phone to the max.
All of us wait. All of us hold our breaths.
Even members of the crew hanging around us.
Only the distant murmur of others deeper in the main part of the house can be heard, unaware of this agonizing moment of anticipation.
A deep drawing of breath from the phone.
Ian’s breath.
Then: “You motherfucker.”
Everyone stares blankly at the phone.
Fiona and Raj exchange a look.
Austin tilts his head. “So … I’ll presume your daughter … and her precious ears … are in bed … and dollhouse hour’s over …?”
“You … mother … fucker.”
The overconfident glee in Austin’s eyes is starting to crack. He stiffens up, phone lowering slightly in his grip. The first sign of nerves tighten his face. “Ian,” he starts.
“Yeah. Dollhouse hour’s over.” Ian lets out something that’s half a sigh and half a losing-his-shit laugh. “For good.”
Over.
For good.
Fiona’s gaze drop to her near-empty drink in shock.
Raj hasn’t blinked once. His wide eyes are staring ahead at air molecules, watching his future fall apart.
Everyone’s posture in the room physically breaks.
Austin is the only exception, holding his ground as he grips the phone tightly. He swallows hard.
“Because tonight,” Ian goes on, “it looks like everyone on the whole damned internet’s having Chase Holt hour.”
Fiona and Raj look up, confused.
Austin squints. “Say what now?”
“Every single one of your socials just enjoyed a 650% increase in engagement.” Ian clears his throat. “Not that numbers mean shit to you apparently, but that’s a fucking lot.”
Austin shakes his head. “Uh … good engagement? Bad?”
“Just got off the phone with Irene. What did she just call your stunt, other than a musical mutiny? Oh, right. She called it …” Ian draws in one more deep breath, then sighs.
“… the fastest pivot in a musical artist’s image she’s ever seen in her twenty-odd years at the label.
Drew has been on the phone for the past two hours.
And I …” He lets out a sound that is unmistakably manic laughter.
“I … had to fucking tell him I knew about this to save my ass.”
I just now realize Austin is clutching my hand, squeezing onto it for dear life. “Save your ass?” asks Austin tentatively.