6
ONE WEEK EARLIER
Gerard Wells stood behind a microphone stand with a guitar around his neck on a light-festooned stage before a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.
The roar of the audience broke the barrier created by his in-ear monitor, and he suffered through the discomfort.
Any second, the stage elevator underfoot should’ve descended into a cloud of smoke, allowing him to disappear from the ardent gazes of his fans for one final time.
The encore was done. The final night of brother-band We the Wells’s tour was complete. Hiatus was reachable on the horizon.
Only, the smoke from the machines cleared and the elevator didn’t budge. It gave an unhelpful groan beneath their feet. “Sorry, boys, the lift is malfunctioning. We need you to use the stairs,” said the stage manager, voice coming through their in-ear monitors.
“On our closing night?” Garret, the middle brother and lead singer, moaned back, turning away so the audience didn’t hear.
His shirt had been ripped off to reveal his six-pack, and his ring-clad fingers were still wrapped around the microphone.
He was the diva and resident showman of the group.
Everyone knew it. Even the fans. But they loved him for it.
Gerard tolerated it. You don’t get to choose your family.
“It’s out of our hands. We can’t risk forcing it,” said the stage manager.
“Let’s go,” said Gavin, the oldest brother with the long, wavy hair, beard, and burly body who held it down on background vocals, bass, and the occasional surprise flute solo that drove fans out of their minds.
Gerard was already marching away from the spotlights when Garret said, “Fuck it. Let’s play ‘Fiasco.’”
“‘Fiasco’?!” Lily, their keyboardist, cheered from across the stage. “Hell yeah. I’ve been wanting you guys to add it to the set list all tour. Let’s crush it.”
Everyone but Gerard seemed to like the idea, but three minutes and sixteen seconds more of stage time when he’d already endured ninety-two shows across fourteen countries wasn’t going to kill him. He took his place once more as his brother shouted, “Can y’all stick with us for one more?”
Gerard exhaled sharply and launched into the lyrics of the first verse.
By the time they made it backstage, their extra encore had cost them ten grand in overtime fees from the venue, but nobody in their camp seemed to care.
Cameras had been filming the show for an eventual streaming concert special, and the elevator malfunction added a little drama to an otherwise standard music doc.
Gerard couldn’t wait to shower and skip town solo.
They had promised, when they started the brother band with their sights set on commercial success, they’d take a break after album and tour number three to reevaluate.
In the time since their debut dropped, Gavin had gotten married, Garret had cut a few duets with main pop girls, and Gerard had written a hit or two for lesser-known artists—demos We the Wells didn’t use for their own records for reasons the suits in charge were often cagey about.
Gerard had his suspicions, but he never voiced them for fear of what they might reveal about him.
After doing his “confessional” for the film director, saying things like “The show was electric” and “Our fans are the best in the world” that would play beside the closing credits, Gerard started for the bathroom, but his dad and manager, Gary Wells, boomed into the room with a big entourage, blocking Gerard’s escape.
“Stop what you’re doing and listen to this,” Gary said as the groupies and the journalists and the friends of friends with VIP badges fanned out. Gerard shrunk into the corner where the snacks were and scooped handfuls of Skittles from a bowl.
As Gary read from a ginormous iPad, Gerard sorted the Skittles in his palm by color, only half paying attention.
“Just in from Randi”—Randi was their highfalutin publicist—“and I quote: ‘Word around the award circuit is that many members of the Nomeys saw the boys’ shows over the last three nights and they are basically a lock for Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best Pop Duo / Group Performance.’”
The room broke into boisterous applause.
Several bottles of champagne were loudly uncorked.
This was just the potential for nominations.
Gerard couldn’t bear to know what a true celebration would sound like if their names were read out on the nominations live stream.
His poor ears already rang with the imagined assault.
Popping the Skittles into his mouth color group by color group, he thought that while he hated wearing tuxedos because they’re constrictive and he hated the pop and flash of red carpets, winning a Nomey would be quite the feather in his cap.
After a month and a half off, he could endure the ceremony if it meant taking home a gold-plated metronome for his mantel.
Gary gathered his sons in a different corner away from their adoring mass.
Their mom, Gwen, twittered into the room and joined them.
She was a five-foot-nothing woman with the presence of a six-foot-seven Amazonian warrior.
Everyone parted for her to get through. She was decked out in head-to-toe We the Wells merch, including the branded Jibbitz on her comfy Crocs.
“My babies, always crushing it!” She hugged each of them in turn.
“And you’re going to continue crushing it,” said Gary, tap-tap-tapping away at his buzz-buzz-buzzing phone. “I’m already booking you studio time at Electric Lady for next week.”
“Next week?” Gerard said, finding his voice again for the first time since leaving the stage. “We haven’t even signed the next contract with the label. What about a break? Our hiatus?”
“That was before this!” Gary waved the iPad around with Randi’s email still pulled up. “She thinks we need to get the ball rolling on WTW4 so we can have you perform a new single live at the Nomeys ceremony. Probably a mash-up of songs from All’s Well and whatever new song you guys come up with.”
Gerard nearly spat out the Skittles he was still shoveling into his mouth to get his energy back. “You guys are okay with this?” he asked his brothers, hoping for backup.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Garret asked, always speaking for the group but rarely to the group.
“Gav?” Gerard asked.
His oldest brother ran a hand over his sweaty black hair, which he’d pulled up in a ponytail since exiting the stage. “I think Jen will understand.”
“What about your solo project?” Gerard asked, appealing more to Garret’s ego than Garret himself.
“A major award like this will only boost demand for it. Come on, Ger, what’s your deal?”
His deal was that he needed time to rest, relax, reset.
He might be the only person in the world who looked success in its dewy, beautiful face and actively wanted to turn away from it.
It wasn’t that it scared him. It was that he didn’t like the excess of it.
Many days, he wished to be nothing more than a mind.
If only he could zip off his corporeal form and hang it on a rack like a costume.
If only science could make him a brain floating around in a glass jar of freestanding liquid connected to robot arms programmed to play instruments and document lyrics. That would be bliss.
Whatever this was, it was hell.
And he refused to sit in the fiery trap of his own making any longer.
He’d fantasized about running away forty-one shows ago. He’d started making notes, withdrawing cash, buying nondescript luggage. Innocuous actions. Things he could easily write off as silly whims, totally unactionable plans.
Until that night. That night when, safely back in his hotel suite, he pulled out the nondescript luggage, threw the withdrawn cash into a fanny pack, and paged through his notes with a mind on enacting it all. Leave the wallet. Leave the passport. Leave the hotel without being spotted.
Before he knew it, he was garbed in a baseball cap, a scarf, and a sweater, standing in the grimy underground bus terminal of Port Authority, waiting on a 1 AM bus to take him far, far away.