Chapter Seven
John had never felt more trapped in his life.
He hadn’t been on a cruise before, and he’d already decided he didn’t like it.
It had been cool when the ship had pulled away from the port and everyone had rushed to the sides, waving and cheering.
But now he was very conscious of the fact that the ship was moving .
And worse than that, he was conscious of the fact that there’d be no getting off it, at least not until they reached the private Bahamian island owned by the cruise company that was their only excursion stop.
He clapped for the last of the Nightshifters cast as they took their seats, already scanning around to see if Bobbi was there and would notice if he left or not.
His gaze snagged on Micah, who was standing with her arms crossed, her expression neutral as she watched the panel.
Micah’s short-sleeved shirt bared most of her arms, and he could see more of her tattoos, although there were others he couldn’t see but knew were there.
The peony she’d gotten to cap one shoulder, the delicate word etched on the inside of one wrist. She still had a lot of open real estate on her arms, though, and that surprised him—somehow he assumed she would’ve filled all that by now.
From what he could see, she didn’t appear to have any new tattoos.
But of course there were a lot of different places to get tattoos that he wouldn’t necessarily be able to see.
“We knew we had something very special from the first table read,” Tatiana was saying on the stage. “And look at all of you now! Obviously we were right.”
A huge cheer from the crowd, who were pressing forward, as if wanting to get even a couple inches closer while the cast answered presubmitted questions about the show.
John had never gone into music for the adulation—if anything, it had often made him feel uncomfortable, having people look up at him like that while he was onstage.
But he couldn’t deny that there was something powerful about seeing a whole group of people so united over a shared love of one single thing.
Everyone here loved a television show so much that they would save up thousands of dollars, take time off work, and subject themselves to these winds and seas just for this moment where they were all in it together.
It made him miss it, for a second—being in a successful band.
Being part of something that could give people that.
He nudged Steve next to him. “Hey,” he said, gesturing toward where Micah and Frankie were standing. “Should we?”
They crossed over to join their bandmates, excluding Ryder. John had no idea where Ryder was or why he wasn’t at the panel, but he didn’t particularly care. Micah glanced up at him, her eyes still hidden behind those sunglasses, the slight parting of her lips the only sign of surprise.
iteration. That was the word tattooed in lowercase script on the inside of her left wrist. She’d never fully explained to him what it meant, but he’d never asked. He felt like he’d lost any right to ask her about her tattoos after he’d let her down when she got her first one.
“Where’s Ryder?” he asked now, which was not what he’d meant his opening gambit to be at all, and which he regretted the moment the words were out of his mouth.
Her mouth tightened. “I don’t know.”
“He was supposed to introduce me to Tatiana,” Steve said.
“Something tells me you’ll have ample opportunity,” Frankie said dryly. “Not like we have many places to go. Where did you get the drinks?”
“There’s a bar over there,” Steve said, pointing his drink toward the pool on the other side of the ship. “But there’s also people in yellow shirts who’ll take your order. This one is something with Breeze in the name. It’s good as hell.”
Steve took another slurping drink up his straw, as if making his point.
“What’s yours?” Micah asked John.
“Try it,” he said, tilting his cup toward her.
He didn’t know what had made him say that, either, any more than what had made him ask about Ryder.
He felt like his head was all turned around, the sway of the ship making him a little unsteady.
They’d shared drinks all the time, picked food off each other’s plates, borrowed each other’s razors when it came time to shave.
Once this had been an instinct, to offer her some of his own drink, but he couldn’t say that was what was going on anymore.
She took the cup from him, and he wished he could see her eyes as she brought it to her mouth, taking a tentative sip.
“Fruit punch,” she said. She had a subtle line of red above her upper lip now, where the drink had stained her skin.
“Felt right for the occasion.”
“So you still don’t drink?”
He shook his head slowly. “I said I never would,” he said. “And I never have.”
Only Micah could guess what that promise to himself meant.
They might have shared everything as kids, but he’d never wanted the full ugliness of his home life to touch her.
It was the one part of himself he’d kept deeply tucked away, powerless to prevent her getting a sense of the broad strokes but not wanting her to have all the details.
Well. One of the parts.
The ship shifted under their feet, to the point where even the actors sitting on the stage had to brace themselves against their chairs, laughing nervously at the weather, one of them losing a hat that went flying off into the crowd.
Next to him, Micah stumbled, still holding on to his fruit punch, and John grasped her by the arms just as the rest of the contents of the cup sloshed all over his shirt.
“Oh my god,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
The liquid was already starting to make the fabric stick to his chest, cold and wet, but he was reluctant to let go of Micah. He could feel the way her skin prickled into gooseflesh under his fingertips, and he gave a slight squeeze, wanting to warm her up.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
She looked up at him, giving a shaky little laugh, but he noticed she didn’t step out of his touch, either. “At least you weren’t wearing white.”
“Very fortuitous.”
Just then, John felt a hand land heavy on his back, and he turned to see Ryder, who’d just arrived and apparently felt moved to greet John with a quasi-bro hug. Something that they’d…probably never done, not even back in high school.
“Hey, guys, sorry I’m late,” Ryder said, as if they’d all been waiting on him. He’d already insinuated himself in the group, and John took a step back, letting his hands drop from Micah. “Miss anything good?”
“These Breeze drinks,” Steve said, brandishing his now-empty cup. “But the bar is open.”
“Your friend Tatiana was looking for you,” Frankie said.
Ryder looked so momentarily eager that John had to hide a smile. “Really?”
Frankie rolled their eyes. “No, not really.”
Ryder flicked his hair out of his eyes with a jerky head movement. “Well, don’t forget we have rehearsal tomorrow morning,” he said. “So no getting drunk tonight. Steve? Did you hear that? You’re cut off.”
“Chill out, man, I’ve only had one of these things,” Steve said.
“And we have bingo after lunch.” Frankie pulled out their phone, maybe checking a schedule they’d saved on there. “So tomorrow’s pretty packed.”
“Don’t look at me,” Ryder said. “It wasn’t my idea to save rehearsal for the boat. We could’ve all been sleeping in or laying out by the pool tomorrow morning.”
John glanced over at Micah, but her face betrayed nothing. He still didn’t totally understand why she’d pushed so hard for no rehearsals, but he supposed her schedule must be busy. For some reason he thought of those bracelets again, tumbling out of her guitar case.
“We have three songs to run through,” John said. “And three hours to do it. We should be fine.”
“Hey, if we nail them down early we can still catch some pool time,” Steve said, and Frankie reached out to rattle his empty cup.
“What was in this?” they asked. “You are cut off. There’s not going to be any time to lounge in the pool tomorrow.”
“Say what you will,” Steve said, “but you and I both know if rehearsal runs long, it won’t be because of me.”
Knowing Steve, that was an innocent statement—meant more as a cocky self-aggrandizement, or more truthfully as a declaration of fact.
Steve had never been the problem. He kept time like he had a metronome ticking in his brain, and even when he’d broken or thrown a stick, he had such a smooth way of grabbing another one without missing a beat that John had suspected he did it on purpose as part of his showmanship.
But Ryder immediately bristled, and John could tell he’d taken Steve’s comment as a dig.
“So I have high standards,” he said. “Sue me. I’m not going to let us stop practicing a song until we have it perfect, and if that requires that we play it until all our fingers fall off, then that’s just the way it’s going to be. ”
Then he glanced at Micah. “Obviously not your fingers. You just have to hold the microphone and look pretty like usual.”
There was no missing the flush of color that rose to Micah’s cheeks at that dig.
“We all have high standards,” John said, his voice low. “You’re not the only—”
“It’s more my arms than my fingers,” Steve put in. “But I’ve been working out, I joined—”
“I never said I was the only ,” Ryder said, “although your word choice is fucking hilarious. Maybe if you spent less time—”
“ Guys ,” Frankie hissed in a tone that suggested they’d said it a few times already. “Guys, seriously. Shut the fuck up.”
Steve had the grace to look chagrined. “Sorry, Frankie, we shouldn’t be arguing. And I didn’t mean—”
Frankie held a finger up to their mouth. “ Shhhh. For real. Argue all you want, just not when they’re starting to talk about season six, okay? I’ve been waiting years to hear this shit.”
Years was a little dramatic for John, but he’d also been curious about that season.
The minute he turned his attention back to the panel, he couldn’t help but notice out of the corner of his eye that Micah had slipped away from the group, disappearing somewhere back into the ship.
He almost followed her. He didn’t care about a fictional murderer of some fictional college girls.
But he also had no real right to go after Micah, no expectation that she would welcome his presence. He rubbed the back of his neck, giving Frankie a smile when he caught them looking at him, and pretended to turn his focus back to the stage.