Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Keannen
TIM AND I MAINTAIN our secret as we head for home. Only as we sit on our respective tour buses does it hit me how similar this is to when we were kids. Back then, we also snuck around trying not to get caught. The reasons are different, but not that different. As teenagers, we snuck around because Tim was ashamed. I was already out, but he kept saying he couldn’t follow me. Not yet, not yet, always not yet. Tim still isn’t out, not even to his bandmates, and I don’t want to face the scrutiny and questions, the implications that I’m doing more than messing around and having fun, and so we remain trapped in “not yet.”
Things feel more normal as soon as I’m back on a tour bus. When we leave Chicago, I sit on the bus and stare idly out the window, not texting, not thinking about Tim, eager to get home and go back to a life that’s a lot less glamorous, but which makes a lot more sense. With no more shows to play, everyone occupies themselves however they can during the long hours of driving. Jacob works on music, scribbling in his notebook all day. Levi mostly plays some handheld video game system that chirps annoying noises at us all day long. Shawn strums idly at his guitar, while Dan reads in his bunk. It’s boring as hell, but we’re all attempting to let go of the high of being briefly famous and not think about whether or not the tour achieved what our management hoped it would. Is this Baptism Emperor’s break? We probably won’t know until we’re back, and there’s nothing else we can do about it. The shows are over. Either those crowds liked us or they didn’t.
I keep myself busy by screwing around on my phone, but there’s only so much social media someone can stand in a day. Besides, most of the stuff about Baptism Emperor also includes The Ten Hours. Any images I find of us playing also includes images of them, and I really don’t need to zoom in on pictures of Tim drumming while I’m trying to think about anything other than him.
“Hey,” Jacob says, interrupting some truly rockstar-like brooding on the couch in the front of the bus.
He lifts my feet like a toll arm and sets himself under them, letting them rest in his lap.
“Whatcha up to?” he asks.
I shrug. “Nothing. Bored. ”
It’s our second day of clambering toward home, and somehow hours of empty road have become even less interesting than they were yesterday.
“Yeah, same,” Jacob says.
So then why the hell are you bothering me? I don’t ask. But seriously, why is he? If he wants to talk, there are better options, yet here he is scooting closer and lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Huh? Yes.”
Dread knots in the pit of my stomach. Why is he poking at this? I can’t possibly have given anything away by sitting around on my phone for two days. Maybe Tim went crying to his bandmates and they reached out to nice, cheerful, friendly Jacob, who I have no doubt has all their phone numbers already.
“You disappeared last night,” Jacob says. “No one saw you. Levi said you didn’t come back until morning.”
“So? Can a guy get laid?”
Jacob flushes, and I have to roll my eyes. As though he won’t be up to his neck in whatever he wants as soon as we blow up.
He gathers himself before pressing me more. “You’re usually a little more, like, triumphant after that sort of thing.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Triumphant?”
“You know, all swaggering and proud of yourself. ”
“I promise you, I’m plenty proud of myself.” After Tim left, I definitely didn’t think I’d be the one to take that V-card, especially like this.
“Well, it barely seems like it, and that’s kind of weird. Everyone has noticed.”
“Everyone. You guys back there talking about my dick all day?”
The flush deepens. “No. Jeez, can we worry about you?”
I shrug a shoulder. “If you have to, but I’d prefer you didn’t. I’m fine.”
Jacob huffs. “Fine, but if you decide you want to admit that something happened, I’m here and I’ll listen…” Jacob mutters an addition under his breath: “Even if you’re kind of an ass.”
I snort a laugh as he slips out from under my legs and slinks off. The second he’s gone, the smirk drops off my lips, however. Did Tim tell someone? I don’t think he’d do that, but how does Jacob know otherwise? I can’t be that off. My leaving a bar to get laid shouldn’t have seemed unusual to him or the rest of the band, so what’s prompting him to come talk to me about it?
I groan and flop back on the couch, staring at the ugly ceiling of the bus. Did something happen? Yes, yes, it did. Tim happened. Tim fucking happened to my life — again — and it’s starting to hit me that this is a lot more than I bargained for. Somewhere along the way, it slipped out of my control. Maybe it was that time we snuck into this bus to mess around against this very couch. Maybe it was when I overheard that phone call between him and his parents and allowed myself to experience a moment of sympathy for the guy. Maybe it was that night in Chicago.
Maybe it was all of it.
Maybe this has been slipping away from me from the very start.
The truth stays lodged somewhere in my throat, and I’m too scared to pry it loose. I told him this wasn’t serious, and I meant it. How could this be serious? He’s the ex who left me high and dry without so much as a DM for eight years. He didn’t care back then, not at all, so why should I believe he cares now?
It’s been eight years.
Eight years. That’s not nothing. That’s a lot of time. Enough time for someone to change, even someone I’ve hated for all that time.
No. No way. I shake my head at myself. I can’t let down that protective barrier of resentment. I learned the hard way that that’s how you get hurt. If you keep up your walls, if you hold onto that anger instead of letting it go, no one can get close enough to hurt you ever again.
THE BUS LEAVES THE highway long after the sun has dipped below the perfectly flat horizon. We drive down the singular other road and toward the only lights for miles.
The moment the bus parks, I leap up, eager to stretch my legs after two days of busing. This is our last break. After this, we make straight for Seattle.
Off the bus, I stretch in the cool night air. Black, bleak nothingness stretches on and on for miles around me. They really weren’t lying when they said the center of the country is mostly open space. I can’t tell the difference between the sky speckled with stars and the hard, dusty, flat land below it. They merge into a single sheet of gray off in the distance.
The motel is like an oasis among the sea of nothing. The lights on the sign and in some of the windows blaze defiantly. The place is way bigger than you might expect, which is the only thing that allows us to be here. Well, that and the fact we planned ahead so they knew a huge group was about to descend on them.
Everyone’s eager for a real shower and a real bed, and Daphne swiftly returns from the front office and starts handing out keys. I grab mine and Levi’s and beeline it for our room. We’re on the first floor, one of the rooms that’s facing the parking lot. Across from us sits a bar. It looks dreary as hell, the sign flickering and the wooden face unadorned, but it’s better than nothing, and after that conversation with Jacob, I could use a beer.
I head into the room first, claiming the shower before Levi gets a chance. I change into fresh clothes and towel off my hair, feeling fresh for the first time in two days. It’s possible to shower on the bus, but it’s definitely not as good as the real deal.
When Levi gets out of the shower, he catches me stuffing my things in my pockets.
“Are you going out?” he says.
“I was gonna grab a drink at the bar across the street. You wanna come?”
Levi scrunches up his face. “Hell no. That place looks like it’s going to fall down any minute.”
“Which means the beer is cheap.” I give him a wink.
Levi rolls his eyes. “Whatever works for you, man. You aren’t going to eat or anything first?”
“They probably have stuff.”
That should end the conversation. We’ve done the polite pleasantries. He can report to the rest of the guys that I’m once again being an antisocial jerk. But when I turn to leave, he calls out to stop me.
“Hey, are you okay going alone?” he says. “I can join just to keep you company.”
“Of course I’m fine going alone.” Where is this coming from? I go out by myself all the time. None of the guys have ever said anything about it before.
“It’s just, you know, a couple of us were worried about you.”
My stomach twists, but it isn’t merely dread this time. I’ve had more than enough of this shit today. Why is everyone trying to smother me ?
Levi stuffs his hands in his pockets and squirms. He’s not as good at this as Jacob. He’s more of the quiet stoner type, the sort who doesn’t tend to pry into other people’s business, but he’s also the one stuck rooming with me throughout this whole tour. Jacob must have put him up to this.
I huff a sigh. “I’m fine.”
“I know,” Levi says too quickly. “I’m only asking. Cuz, you know, if there was anything that was bothering you, or maybe a person? Um, well, I could listen or whatever.”
Yeah, Levi is nowhere near as good at this as Jacob. I need to figure out where they’re getting these ideas about me needing their help or having something — or someone , he just said — bothering me, but not tonight. I’m tired. I’m fed up with probing questions. I’ve been on a tour bus for two days. All I want is a crappy beer in a crappy bar.
“I’m fine,” I say with too much heat behind it. “You guys need to chill.”
“I’m chill. I was just asking, man.”
“Well, just ask someone else. I didn’t ask for your help, so I don’t need it.”
In fact, I don’t need anyone’s help. I never have. My parents gave up on me when I was fifteen. I’ve figured out life by myself ever since, and it’s more or less gone fine. I’m not going to accept Levi’s pity or Jacob’s prodding after making it this far on my own.
This time, Levi doesn’t stop me when I throw on my leather jacket and pivot toward the door. I stuff my hands in my pockets as I slip out into the night, keeping my head down and refusing to allow anyone else to get in my way with annoying, unnecessary questions. What would I tell them, anyway? I’m fine, I’m just hooking up with my ex from high school and I don’t hate him as much as I’m supposed to.
I scoff at myself even while pounding across the parking lot toward the salvation of the run-down bar. A few more steps and bad lighting and a sticky bar top will welcome me at l—
Arguing stops me in my tracks. I’m between the motel and the bar, frozen in a spot in the parking lot that neither establishment’s lighting reaches. Though the bar lies only steps away, the group of men outside it don’t seem to notice me.
They’re arguing. No, they’re fighting. Or they’re about to fight. Three guys form a semi-circle around a lone target who’s putting up his hands and clearly trying to subdue the situation to no avail. The men advance on their victim, who backs up toward the bar. The light hits his face—
And my blood goes cold.
The lights in the bar illuminate the terror on Tim’s face as three strangers crowd toward him, malice in their every motion.
Something inside me snaps, something that has no words, something that defies logic and reason and eight years of bitterness. I react on pure instinct. I react with my heart.
I charge toward the men, hands already balling into fists.