Wesley
I stayed longer than I should have over Thanksgiving and needed to get on the road back to Nashville. But Hudson and Avery’s absence was even more pronounced than usual over the holiday, and I hated leaving knowing the house would be empty.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything from the store?
I could run out real quick,” I offered as I stuck my head into the turkey and mashed potato stuffed fridge.
Mom had made her regular amount of food, and I’d set the table for four instead of two.
After five years with them, it was a habit.
“I know you have leftovers, but you’ll get sick of them. ”
The night before, I’d come downstairs to see her looking absently out the window. I knew she was thinking about Hudson. Things would never be the same. Part of her was buried in the cold earth with him.
She shooed me from the fridge and closed the door. “I can take care of myself just fine. You’re letting the cold air out.”
“I’m here. Let me help with what you need,” I insisted. I just wanted someone to tell me how to fix things. Last time, I had Avery and music. This time, music only made me think about how Avery was gone, and I had no idea how to find her.
Mom sighed and shuffled out of the kitchen. Moments later, she returned with a faded slip of notebook paper in her hand.
“What you can do is call and make sure our girl is okay. I don’t know if it still works. Freshman year, Hudson gave me his home number.” Her voice cracked. “If the family hasn’t moved, it might be the same.”
It didn’t matter that she was trying to manage my expectations, I ran for the phone.
Avery picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”
I could have cried at the sound of her voice. That’s what a month without her had done to me. “Ave.”
“Wes.” Her voice quivered in disbelief. “How?”
“Don’t underestimate me when it comes to finding you,” I told her. “Permanent, remember?”
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, Ivy and Nolan weren’t all too thrilled when they discovered my tattoo.”
“How are you?”
“I mean, the house is big. School is fine, hard, but I have less than a year left, so it’s not like that matters. It’s a good distraction, though.” Her voice was distant, only emphasizing the miles between us.
“Tell me all about it when I visit.”
“You can’t.”
“You’re not allowed to have friends over?”
She hesitated. “They’re gone a lot of the time. But you have shows like every night.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”
Still, she was surprised when I showed up in the middle of December.
Fool’s Gambit had finished a marathon of back to back shows in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Philly.
It was just past one in the morning, and I’d come straight from our show at the Bowery in Manhattan.
The moment I was off stage, I was running to my rental car to make the drive to Hartford.
I was finally going to see my best friend and I wouldn’t waste a minute I could be spending with her.
I slowed, pulling up to the closed wrought iron gates. My windshield wipers swished as they cleared the rapidly falling snow that had already blanketed the ground. I took a moment to appreciate the imposing estate peeking out over a tree line.
“You didn’t mention you lived in a castle,” I said, into the keypad intercom at the gate.
Avery’s voice crackled through the speaker. “God. They wish. And didn’t I tell you it was big?”
There was a buzz and the gates swung open, my heartbeat seemed to quicken as my tires cut through the snow.
Trees stabbed up into the sky on either side, turning the winding drive into a claustrophobic corridor.
When I caught sight of her standing at the top of the steps wrapped in a pink robe, she reminded me of spring.
A flower pushing through the snow. Defiantly out of place.
She rushed to my car, snow fluffing up around her as she made a trail.
I cut the engine, closed the remaining distance, and wrapped her in my arms. She buried her face in the crook of my neck.
I doubted I smelled good. Along with the shredded shirt and snug jeans I’d worn onstage, I was sporting a layer of dried sweat from the three-hour drive. But that didn’t seem to matter.
I wanted to tell her that it would be fine now. That everything would be okay. But I didn’t know if that was the truth.
“You didn’t have to come. You had a show, and you have one tomorrow. Or, I guess, today,” she said when we pulled away.
I threw on a nonchalant smile as I retrieved a duffle bag from the backseat. “I was heading toward Boston anyway.”
I followed her up the steps and inside. I took in the grand stairway and gold-framed art along the walls.
I could have stared forever, but Avery was moving so I followed her into the type of kitchen with lots of ovens and a cluster of industrial metal countertops I assumed only existed at the back of restaurants.
“Have you eaten since the show?” she asked.
My stomach answered with a gurgle. Her lips split into a smile. It had been too long since I’d seen it. The breath is knocked out of my lungs at the sight. No, that wasn’t right. It felt like my lungs were screaming for oxygen and I was finally able to breathe again.
“How are the shows going?” she asked, collecting sandwich supplies for PB&Js. It was odd seeing her easily navigate this space when she so obviously didn’t belong there, like we’d stepped into some alternate universe.
I’m a mess without you. We all miss you. You should be there with us and not stuck here. The thoughts raced through my head but I settled on. “Good.”
“Well, that’s bullshit.” She placed slices of bread on napkins and slathered each side.
I stood straighter. “And how would you know?”
“I’ve been reading articles about your shows. You forgot the lyrics to half a song two nights ago.” The knife in her hand glinted as she pointed it at my chest.
“Can’t get enough of me, can you?” I teased. My fingers locked around her wrist and I directed the blade to my mouth. Avery’s breath caught as my tongue flicked out to catch some of the jelly.
Her mouth popped open into a shocked O before I released my grip.
She swallowed hard, cheeks painted a pretty pink as she pointedly fixed her attention back on the sandwiches and continued her lecture.
“Don’t give yourself too much credit. It’s not like I have better things to do.
Before I got to my new school, I was already known as Hudson Sloane’s secret love child. ”
“Tell me they don’t fucking call you that.” My fists clenched at my side.
She huffed a laugh and looked down at the tattered skin around their nails.
“They asked me if I was. I said yes. I’m not ashamed of it, even if my grandparents are.
I’m pretty sure the only reason they took me in was because of how it would look if they didn’t.
They don’t want me here as much as I don’t want to be here. ”
“Come back with me. Come on tour. That was always going to be the plan, right? Us up on stage. There’s no reason you need to stay.” I wanted to get her out as fast as I could. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She belonged with us—with me.
“What about the fact that I’m seventeen?
And it’s not just that. My grandparents, they’re powerful.
They have connections. If they want something, they get it.
” She flipped the sandwiches closed, jelly leaking from the edges, and held one out for me.
“Whether I like it or not, I’m stuck. Take this. ”
But I had no intention of changing the topic. “Promise me that when you’re eighteen, you’ll join us.”
“I don’t have my guitar, Wes. I haven’t been practicing. It takes everything in me to get through each day. I’m tired.” I saw it in the shadows under her eyes, the ones so much like my mom’s.
Something in my chest cracked. “Don’t let them take this from you.”
“They already have. Can you just take the sandwich and move on?” She thrust it at me as her eyes glistened.
“I’ll drop it, but only if you can look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want this.”
“What’s the point? Lydia reached out and told me she has a deal for me, but I doubt they’ll wait nearly a year for me to sign. I’ll have to wait until I’m eighteen, and you’ll be done with the tour by then.”
“Not necessarily. They’re thinking of extending it.
” Despite my mistakes, we’d been selling out bigger venues.
Everything we dreamed of was there for the taking, but it wouldn’t be worth it if she wasn’t part of it.
“Come on. Play along with me for one second. Say we get a new leg of the tour added, what should I tell them you want in your dressing room? Garrett has been asking for a chess set. Jared has boxes of condoms he never uses.”
She slanted me a look and blew out a sigh before playing along. “I don’t know. A hundred and five teddy bears.”
“Really?” I coughed through laughter.
“Probably not.” A smile teased at the corners of her lips. “I guess I just want to live in a world where having teddy bears in my dressing room is the biggest thing I have to worry about.”
“What else would you want?”
We continued back and forth as we cleaned.
I washed dishes and she dried while we conjured up the future we wanted.
Visiting cities, going out to museums between stops, singing in bars because we felt like it, performing for whoever was there.
She joked, but I tucked it all away in the back of my mind.
The perfect music tour. Some of it was out of reach, but I promised myself that I’d give it to her one day.
After dinner, I went back out to the car. I’d stopped by her house after our call on Thanksgiving, knowing that she didn’t have a chance to collect her things.
“I brought some stuff for you,” I said, setting my duffle on an overstuffed chair in the living room.
“Oh, really?” She flopped onto a couch, watching me as I unzipped my bag and rummaged through it.
“First, this.” I held out the old Discman she’d given me to use on tour, then a set of CD cases. “And these. I’ve been picking out a new one each week. There’s some good stuff in here. You might have heard a few already.” I grabbed one from the top. “I also burned a mix with my favorites.”
“Wes. You didn’t have to,” she started.
“Wait. There’s one more thing.” I couldn’t contain my grin as I ducked into the hall and returned with the best item. “Now you can keep practicing. Don’t let me get better than you.”
She gasped at the sight of the guitar case and rushed to take it from me, hugging it like an old friend. Tears lined her lashes as she set it on the ground and popped open the clasps. Flipping open the lid, she ran her fingers over the strings.
She played for an hour. Color coming back to her cheeks and light flooding her eyes. I could have listened to her forever, but we started to yawn.
We laid curled around each other on the couch listening to the CD I’d made her, tethered together once more by fraying headphones. In her sleep, she cried against my chest. I pulled her closer, trying not to think of how tomorrow I had to let her go.