Chapter Five #2
“We were all really young,” he said now to Asa. He didn’t know why, as much baggage as he might carry around about the way things had ended, he didn’t want Asa to think less of Micah for it. “It was a lot of pressure.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen when our first album came out, nineteen by the time we broke up.”
“Wow,” Asa said. “A whirlwind three years.”
It had been a maelstrom. And John felt like he’d never fully gotten closure on any of it. Maybe it was impossible to believe he ever would.
But Micah had approached him in the parking lot.
She could’ve just jumped into a car and left, but instead she’d chosen to walk over, admonish him for being late, make fun of his T-shirt, take off her shoes and then stand so close to him that he could see where she’d applied her mascara thicker on one eye than the other.
He’d always assumed that she was done with him, that whatever had broken their band had broken them, too. Now he didn’t know what to think.
Just then, he heard the sound of the front door opening and shutting, the clatter of keys being hung up on the wall where they all kept theirs in case someone had to move someone else’s car. It was just past five, which meant it was probably Lauren, home from work.
Asa leaned out John’s doorway, the grin on his face already confirming what John had figured. “Hey,” he called out. “In here. We’re trying to get John ready for this cruise.”
Lauren stepped cautiously into the doorway, clearly not wanting to disrupt anything by coming all the way into John’s room.
She’d only moved in with them last year, and she could still be a little hesitant about asserting herself in any way with the rest of them in the house.
John tried to help her feel comfortable as much as he could by including her in all their traditions and activities, filling her in on any idiosyncrasies of the house he could tell she hadn’t caught on to yet.
But he understood how it could be. It took a lot to feel truly part of a group that had already existed before you.
Asa looped his arm around her waist, pulling her in to kiss her temple. “What do you think?” he asked. “What’s the perfect outfit for a day at sea, playing in a band with an exclamation point in its name, with people you haven’t performed with since you were all in skinny jeans?”
Lauren eyed the clothes that John had spread over his bed, tilting her head while she seemed to consider the question. “I guess I would say…” She bit her lip, and John could tell she was holding back a smile. “You look very nice in black.”
—
In the end, John had more luggage than he’d ever remembered bringing on a single trip.
Back when ElectricOh! were touring, he’d become an expert on packing light, fitting the bare essentials into a single suitcase, rewearing the same outfits over and over again and letting the roadies handle most of the gear.
But now, they had no roadies, and he was petrified he’d forget something important.
If he thought he’d overpacked, he couldn’t wait to see what Micah had brought.
It had been yet another source of contention with Ryder—how many outfit changes she’d always had, all the coverage they’d gotten as people posted roundups of her best tour looks or videos of her showing off her closet on the bus.
To John, it had been a stupid thing to hold against her.
She was the lead singer, after all. Her look was as much a part of the band’s stage show as the images projected behind them or the lights that pulsed to the beat.
But when he saw her, standing over to one side in the area reserved for the artists to board the ship, she didn’t seem to have much with her.
A silver hard-shell suitcase, a single guitar case, and a smaller purse slung over one shoulder.
She was frowning down at something on her phone, and he wished he knew if she was really intent on whatever was on there or if she was faking to look like she had something to do.
There was a time when he would’ve known.
“Hey,” a voice said from behind him, and he turned.
“Hey, Frankie.” It was surprisingly instinctual, his move to hug them, and so that was what he did. “Decent flight?”
“Not too bad,” Frankie said. “Got in super late last night, so just crashed at the hotel and then woke up in time for the driver to get me here.”
Ryder, Frankie, and Micah all still lived in L.A., whereas Steve had moved back to Ohio where they were originally from. John hadn’t seen Steve or Ryder arrive yet, but he assumed they weren’t far off. “Was anyone else on it?”
Frankie glanced pointedly over to Micah, who was still on her phone. “No,” they said. “I assume she caught an earlier one. Have you really not talked to her since—”
“Nope,” John said. She also hadn’t talked to him in all those years, he could point out. It went two ways. But that probably opened up a bunch of stuff best left unsaid, parts of their history that had been wrapped up in the band but separate from it, too. “Are you nervous about playing again?”
Frankie shrugged. “Not really. I’m such a better bassist now than I was then. I swear I used to just follow the root notes and was scared to do anything more innovative than that. So I’m ready to have some fun with it. What about you?”
“Yeah,” John said. “Same.”
He was a better guitarist than he’d been then.
He might not be writing many of his own songs anymore, but he’d played thousands—maybe tens of thousands, he didn’t even know—of other people’s songs.
It had made him learn chord shapes and techniques he might not have otherwise, made him more precise in where he put his fingers and more attuned to different strumming patterns.
Some of ElectricOh!’s first songs seemed almost endearingly simple to him now, clearly the work of kids who wrote around chords that felt natural to their hands and didn’t know all the clever little things you could do with music.
John had felt like he’d put everything he wanted to say into that music, but now he realized how limited his vocabulary had been.
And yet the songs really did say something to him, even now. Maybe more so for their simplicity. That part did make him nervous.
“Should we go over there?” Frankie asked, nodding toward Micah again, and John hesitated. He was just about to say Sure, let’s go , when Steve bounded up toward them, Ryder following close behind.
“The gang’s all here!” Steve said, holding up his phone and snapping a quick picture before John even knew what was happening.
He’d probably been caught midblink. “Can you believe we’re going to be on a ship with Tatiana Rivera?
Do you think we’ll get to hang out with her or will the TV people and music people be separate? ”
Tatiana had been the female star of Nightshifters and was definitely the most famous person on the ship, since her male counterpart had been the only cast member to decline the cruise. John wouldn’t be surprised if they barely breathed the same air as Tatiana Rivera, fellow “talent” or no.
“I met her at a party in the Hills a few years ago,” Ryder said with a smirk. “I’ll introduce you.”
“Sweet,” Steve said. “I just want a picture. So I can show my kids when they’re old enough to be impressed by it.
You know? Like look at Dad with a real-life celebrity!
Tyler would be more impressed if this was a Disney cruise and I got a picture with Donald Duck, to be honest, but what are you going to do. ”
Frankie gave Steve an indulgent smile. “Not Mickey?”
“It’s the way Donald talks,” Steve said, before doing an eerily pitch-perfect impression. “He loves it.”
This time when John glanced over to Micah, she was looking right at their group, although she tried to look away fast enough that it wasn’t obvious. Which, of course, only made it that much more obvious. John started to head over there, but Ryder cut him off at the pass.
“I have some things to discuss with Micah before we head out,” he said. “Watch my stuff?”
He was already walking off before John had a chance to answer.
Micah looked up as Ryder approached, and John tried to figure out how she felt about seeing him, but her expression stayed neutral as he said something to her and she shrugged one shoulder, saying something in response.
This time it was John caught staring as Micah’s gaze shifted over to their group.
But unlike her, he didn’t look away, didn’t try to pretend he hadn’t been watching them.
“That should give the fan sites something to overanalyze for the next two years,” Frankie said, and John turned back.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He knew what Frankie meant. He just had a masochistic need to hear them say it.
“Oh, you know. They’ve dredged up every grainy picture of the two of them together they could possibly find.
That one of them all cozy backstage at that festival.
The one of her feeding him a Cheeto. The ones where they zoomed in and swore she was wearing a ring with his initials on it on her left hand. ”
It had been a Cool Ranch Dorito, technically.
And the ring had been a twisty kind of design, given to Micah by her younger sister.
But yes, John remembered all the analysis when people were trying to figure out if it was confirmed that they were dating.
He just assumed all of that had stopped, sometime around when he realized he no longer got the record label’s annual holiday card in the mail anymore.
“You’re really not online, are you?” Frankie asked.
“Not particularly,” John said.
“Bless you,” Frankie said. “You might be the last one left.”
The conversation between Ryder and Micah actually looked like it was getting a little heated, to the point where John wondered if maybe they should intervene.
Although they were in a cordoned-off area, they were still visible to part of the line of cruisers that had started snaking around the port, and several had their phones up like Frankie had predicted.
But aside from the optics or exposure, it was impossible to ignore that Micah’s body language got increasingly uncomfortable the longer Ryder kept talking at her.
She’d already tried to interrupt him several times, a pink color rising to her cheeks, no longer as cool and collected as she’d been when he went over there in the first place.
But then an announcement over the loudspeaker made Micah jump, and a woman’s cheerful voice told everyone they could start moving toward the gangway.
Ryder broke away from Micah with a few last angry words, grabbing his stuff from John’s feet without looking at anyone else in the band.
He was already halfway to the ship by the time Frankie let out a huffed laugh.
“Well, okay,” they said. “This should be fun.”
Frankie and Steve started making their own way toward the ship, but John had to try to gather his stuff, shifting his duffel bag to one shoulder so he could sling one of his gig bags over the other.
He’d finally gotten it all under control just in time to fall in step behind Micah, who picked up her guitar case and started walking.
She only made it a few feet before the latches on the case seemed to give way, the top buckling out, suspended for a second that seemed to stretch forever as John tried to react in time.
He bent down, trying to catch the guitar before it tumbled out of the case and landed on the concrete with the sickening thunk and buzz of vibrating strings that John had heard too many times.
But instead of a guitar, out poured…bracelets?
There were so many of them. Hundreds, maybe thousands.
Little colorful beaded circles that just kept spilling and spilling out of the open guitar case, John already kneeling on the ground to catch them, his own guitar lopsided on his back, but not sure what to do now.
They slipped through his fingers like sand, and he snagged one that caught on his palm.
Just Because , it said in beaded letters, surrounded by a pattern of pink, blue, and white, some silver stars bracketing the words.
Micah was crouching down next to John now, shoveling the bracelets back into the case.
“What are—” he started to say, and she snatched the bracelet off his hand.
The action caused her fingertips to tickle his palm, like when they’d done fake readings for each other back when they were kids.
They’d always ended with the prediction that your house would have a pool, and then you’d have to snatch your hand away fast, before the other person spit in it.
Only once Micah hadn’t been fast enough, and John had straight-up landed a dime-sized pool of spit right in the center of her hand.
He’d felt terrible about it, but she’d just laughed, making him shake her hand.
Now we’re blood brothers , she’d said. Spit brothers. Whatever.
“I’ve got it,” she said now, and then, when he tried to pick up a few more bracelets to put in the case, “I’ve got it.”
He wasn’t going to leave her to clean them up all by herself, so he continued scooping them up and putting them in the guitar case, figuring if he worked fast and without talking she couldn’t say anything about it.
He glanced at her once, trying to see her face, but part of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail and covered her like a curtain.
When they’d finally picked up the last of the bracelets, John closed the case, double-checking that both latches were secure before handing it to Micah.
“Thanks,” she said grudgingly.
Some of that hair was stuck to her cheek, and he had the strongest urge to reach out and brush it away, to tuck it behind her ear.
But of course he had no right to do that kind of thing anymore.
Instead he just shifted his own stuff back into his hands, trying to get a grip on everything, and gestured for her to go ahead.
“After you,” he said.