Chapter 21
Keith knew that his room was silent, but it didn’t feel that way.
He just needed a little break from the party, but it seemed like the party had come along with him, his ears still whooshing and thumping from the loud music and all the screaming, as if he were lying on the bottom of the ocean instead of flat on his back on his bed.
His phone vibrated, and Keith flipped it over on the bed. Steffani had finally written back, or rather, it seemed like she’d responded hours ago, but the message had just arrived.
Having a good time? Seems like nice weather.
Tell Scotty I love him. An image popped up, still loading, and Keith watched the little pizza pie of data fill in until the picture emerged.
It was Madison, sitting at the kitchen table, smiling at her mother.
Another message appeared—Maybe there’s another cruise after, just to chill.
His heart sank. She didn’t want him home.
Keith understood; it was easier when he was away.
He couldn’t do anything embarrassing, he couldn’t say the wrong thing, his sadness couldn’t make her sad.
Keith started to write back but remembered it was the middle of the night, so he put the phone back down.
He thought about texting Sarah to thank her, but she’d probably gone to bed, and he wanted to respect her boundaries.
He hoped she didn’t mind what had happened earlier.
It was so hard to tell now where the line was between human empathy and being a creep.
Keith thought about the woman from the morning, the one dressed like Madonna.
They’d met Madonna a few times, gawky teenagers gaping at her cone-shaped bras.
She’d been small and strong, as if I don’t give a fuck what you think about me could become a person.
It had been a long time since someone had actually looked at him like a human being on the cruise.
This woman—a stranger!—actually seemed like she would have waited to hear his answer.
To her question, to any question. The only questions Steffani ever asked were knives.
Are you seriously going to wear that? Why would you think that I would want that?
Now all Keith did was worry that he was going to say the wrong thing, so mostly he kept his mouth shut, which she also didn’t like.
It was so hard to explain. With Corey and Shawn, their egos were visible from space.
Equal but opposite. They had never left any room for doubt, pushing, pushing, pushing every day to take up as much room as possible.
Corey called it ambition, but Keith wasn’t sure.
What if Keith had it right, and the rest of them didn’t?
What if it was acceptable to understand that their highest highs were behind them and to relax into whatever this was?
That was what he’d been trying to do with Steffani—radical acceptance.
It was so hard to know when enough was enough or when what he wanted was too much.
Was it possible to be grateful and miserable at the same time?
He was trying to figure it out, life, but no one would let him, no one but Dr. Robert.
Everyone was worried about their own stake, their own bank accounts, their own consequences.
Being in therapy somehow didn’t help the people around you, even though it felt like it should.
He clicked on the television, which was set to the Boy Talk station.
Bobby was a pack rat, Shawn too, and between the two of them, they had everything.
It was Scotty and Corey at the moment, being interviewed in the late ’80s, a peppy young VJ next to them holding a gigantic microphone.
Corey had been so little. It was hard to remember that they were the same person, really, the sweet, annoying kid who had followed them all around, who’d been left behind when they went to parties with girls, and the man Corey was now.
The rest of them had had a little bit of life before fame, a first taste of teenage rebellion, but not Corey.
He was a kid, and then he was a kid onstage.
There was no before. Keith and Terrence had both worked at the pet store in their town, stocking shelves and feeding mice to the snakes.
Shawn and Scotty had bagged groceries. Corey hadn’t even been in a school play.
No wonder he’d run at life at full speed.
It had probably felt good to quit the band in which you were the baby, the ultimate power move.
Another reason for Keith to be jealous of Corey, that he’d been the one to explode their lives.
It would have ended eventually regardless.
Success wasn’t the kind of thing that lasted forever, not even in a fantasy.
Not for a boy band. It had felt as final as death.
None of them had understood, how long life was, how much would change.
They all still lived in Jersey then, each with their own mansions, like so many princes of their own little countries.
They’d retreated to lick their wounds in underfurnished rooms in their too-big houses, the rest of their lives empty and stretching out in front of them.
Shawn was making sure everyone loved him the most even then, driving from Keith’s house to Corey’s house in his red Porsche, as if no one would notice that he was always the most important connection, even if the whole thing had fallen apart.
Everyone knew that in a breakup, you had to pick a side.
The phone buzzed again, and Keith grabbed it.
He wanted it to be Stef, writing in real time, writing in the middle of the night to say that she missed him, but it wasn’t.
Get your ass down here, Shawn had written.
It was only two more days. Keith rolled onto his side and pushed himself upright. He could make it two more days.