Chapter Sixteen
Ah, fuck. I’m crying again.
As the van pulls into the no-parking zone outside my apartment, the familiar prickle starts behind my eyes. The side door of the sleeper van slides open before it’s fully parked, and my best friends since my awkward preteen years pile out of it.
Tyler reaches me first, because of course he does.
His puppy energy cannot be contained, and he immediately gloms onto me in what I think is meant to be a hug but is more like a koala clinging to a tree (me).
Brooklyn and Charlie are next, and that’s when the tears really begin to fall.
Charlie, who I’ve known since diapers and every single day of my life since, who I should definitely call more often.
Brooklyn, who couldn’t be less like me but is somehow my other half.
Drew bounds out of the passenger seat, wrapping his long arms around us all.
Finally parked, Reid slides out of the driver’s seat, moseying over to reluctantly join our exuberant reunion.
“Are you crying?” he asks, mortified on my behalf.
“I know.” I sniffle. “It’s disgusting.”
“She does like us,” Drew declares triumphantly.
“Shut up,” I say around the lump in my throat, laughing.
“We missed you, too,” Charlie says. I think he’s rubbing my back comfortingly, but I’m not entirely sure whose limbs are whose in this six-person bear hug.
If I weren’t already crying, this hug would’ve squeezed it out of me, my insides as gooey as a marshmallow.
I can’t wipe the dopey grin off my face.
This lot is terrible for my reputation as being cool and unbothered.
“Okay,” I say, shaking my hair out of my face as Brooklyn wipes away my tears.
“Let’s unload before Mr. Fluff and Fold gets mad at us.
” I’m still scarred from him chastising me the day I moved in, even though our mutual landlord said I could park in the loading zone.
Glancing over my shoulder to the laundromat, I can already feel him eyeballing our illegally parked van, its doors flung open wide in my friends’ haste to greet me.
Surely he’s impressed by how efficiently we unload. If the whole alt-band-stardom thing doesn’t work out for Post Humorous, they’d have a killer career as movers. The Tetris of their tiny van trunk is a work of art.
Reid disappears to find somewhere to park the van, and I grab his stuff, trailing behind my friends as they bitch the entire three flights of stairs up to my place.
“What is this, a Mayan temple?” Tyler screeches from the front of the line.
“Knew I shouldn’t have skipped leg day,” Drew moans.
“Carry me, Sloane,” Brooklyn whines.
“For fuck’s sake,” I say, pushing past them once we reach the landing to unlock my door. “I’m renaming the group chat from Buncha Punks to Buncha Divas.”
“Accurate,” Charlie murmurs under his breath with a secret smile just for me, easing Reid’s bag from my grasp as he passes by.
My apartment isn’t fancy. It always smells faintly of pho broth, which I consider a feature, not a bug.
Most of my furnishings are roadside finds that I pilfered in college.
None of it looks like me, each piece selected because it felt like something my friends would pick, and thus they’re always with me, even when we’re on opposite sides of the country.
My multicolored fabric desk at the bay window is Brooklyn.
The crystal floor lamp that casts rainbows on my walls every morning is Tyler.
The worn trunk that I use as a coffee table is Charlie.
The industrial barstools are Reid. And the slightly shabby, chaotically patterned but incredibly comfortable couch is Drew.
“First order of business,” Tyler calls, uncharacteristically solemn.
I still as all their gazes fall on me. “What?”
“You and Dax—”
“Y’all fucking again or what?”
“Jesus,” Brooklyn says, chastising them. “Let the girl breathe.” Then, to me, “But seriously. Dish.”
Never mind. They’re all the garbage can. Every single one of them.
“Leave it to y’all to make sure we fail the Bechdel test not five minutes in,” Reid grumbles from the doorway.
“Says the guy who started the bet,” Tyler counters with a pointed arch of his brows.
Reid smirks, sinking onto the couch and sticking a joint in his mouth. He pauses with the lighter held to the tip, and I motion for him to go ahead, walking over to open the bay windows.
“And what bet would that be?” I say prudishly.
“What base you two got up to in your—” Drew strikes a Marilyn Monroe pose: knees bent, one hand in his hair, the other holding down his imaginary white dress. “Interviews,” he finishes with a dramatic toss of his head, voice breathy.
“Haven’t even stepped up to the plate,” I say matter-of-factly.
“What?” Drew and Tyler scream in tandem. With a groan, they pull out their wallets and throw bills at Charlie, who extends his hand for me to high-five.
“Et tu, Brute?” I say as Brooklyn fishes five dollars from her purse.
“It was wishful thinking.” She sighs, hoisting her bag and kicking the door to my bedroom open to stake her claim.
“Shit,” Tyler says under his breath, lunging for his own bag. He and Charlie collide in my bedroom doorway, fighting to claim the third spot on my bed.
When I last toured with them, Post Humorous’s budget was modest at best. We slept in the van most nights, but when we did splurge on a hotel room, we squeezed the six of us into one room, three to a bed.
To this day, whenever I have trouble sleeping, I stack pillows on either side of me and convince myself we’re all puppy-piled together tour-style.
Tyler’s lanky frame works in his favor, edging out Charlie’s broad shoulders. Tyler slips past, starfishing on my bed. “Dibs!”
Reid kicks off his shoes and stretches out on the couch pointedly.
Drew tackles him immediately, and the way Reid manages to headlock Drew whilst smoking is honestly impressive. Charlie joins the fray, the three of them trying to shove each other off the couch, despite the fact that it’s midafternoon and no one will be going to sleep for a long while yet.
“Don’t break my couch,” I call, the fondness in my voice outweighing the authoritative tone I was going for. It always felt a little fated that as my four brothers grew up and went off to college, I collected more guy friends until I had four, the balance always maintained.
A knock sounds at the door, and I furrow my brow, wandering over. My confusion doubles when I peer through the peephole. Unlocking the dead bolt, I swing the door open.
“Hi,” I say in shock.
Dax’s greeting sticks in his throat as his attention catches over my shoulder. Following his gaze, I spy the latest development of the guys’ battle for couch supremacy. Charlie has Reid’s upper body in a lock, but Reid has Drew’s legs pinned over his head, and Drew is grasping at Charlie.
Turning back to Dax, I smile blandly, like this is completely normal, because for me, this is the most normal I’ve felt in months. Years, really. But still, I find myself blinking twice, pointedly. Save me, I mouth.
Dax’s face lights up. I mouthed the same thing to him three years ago when I was stuck being mansplained to ad nauseam by some drummer.
Dax and I had barely spoken to each other before, but he swooped in with some excuse about someone looking for me.
We talked and walked around the city for hours after that, and somehow I ended up with his sweatshirt, which I still have to this day and may or may not be wearing… right now.
“Speak of the devil,” Tyler calls cheerfully as he reenters the room, spotting Dax.
Dax’s brows draw together in an unspoken question as he meets my gaze.
“Ignore him,” I say with a saccharine smile.
Realizing we have company, Drew, Charlie, and Reid break apart, bounding off the couch to greet Dax like the fangirls they are.
Brooklyn enters the room, closing the still-open front door as the guys corral Dax into my kitchen. “Long time no see, Nakamura,” she calls coolly.
Dax grins, abashed. “Good to see you, too, B.”
Brooklyn bristles slightly. We’re the only ones who call her B, but Dax has heard me call her it enough that it must have infiltrated.
I duck my head to hide my smile. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had all of my favorite people in one place, and it feels really, really fucking good, like a hole I hadn’t known I had filling back up.
Dax extricates himself from the guys, the dimpled grin on his face filling me all the way up to the brim.
“What are you doing here?” I ask under my breath. We haven’t spoken since the shoot two days ago, which I thought would clear my head, but instead I just spent the past two days thinking about how much I hate him for giving me the space I asked for.
Dax holds up a clear CD case, and my eyes go wide.
“Nixed?” I ask, reading his sloppy Sharpie scrawl on the reflective surface.
“That’s what we call it. Just—” He wiggles it between his fingers. He’s nervous. “Text me once you’ve listened to it, and… try not to judge me too hard. I was in a bad place.”
I reach for it, feeling like I’m moving in slow motion.
Pinching the case between my fingers, I meet his gaze for a moment that feels like a lifetime.
What is on this fucking CD? And am I ready to find out?
I’m only now recovering from the shock of them retiring—a secret I have to keep from my friends, though it’s seconds from bursting out of me.
Movement in my periphery catches my attention, and I fix my gaze over Dax’s shoulder, to where Drew is making kissy faces and Tyler is fanning himself like a damsel. I hate them so much.