20. Zak
The next four stops of their tour made up Hell Week. Back-to-back shows in Oklahoma City and Little Rock, with one day of travel in between two more back-to-back shows in New Orleans and Birmingham.
By the time they made it through Jacksonville and down to Ft. Lauderdale, Zak was officially disoriented from waking up in a different bed every day. Shit, every eight hours. It took her a few minutes during Snickerdoodle’s morning walk just to process where she was.
Spring was setting in everywhere, but Florida stood apart from the rest. The hot, humid air was a smack in the face when she and Chase stepped outside, and it wasn’t doing any favors for her naturally frizzy hair, either. Of course, all the salt and moisture did nothing to his hair but further define its loose curl.
All those negative emotions she used to direct toward Chase made sense now. If she didn’t love him, she’d be left with no choice but to hate how perfect he was.
They made three stops. First, the nearest newsstand, so Zak could pick up a copy of Billboard Magazine, but in order to do that, she had to pass over all the neighboring music periodicals—three of which had Izzy and Chase as their cover stories:
Amped’s Breakout Stars Get Hot and Heavy Backstage
From Rivalry to Romance: Get the Scoop on Hockey Heartthrob Chase Payton and his Rock Roll Goddess.
“Lovers” vs. “Missing Link”—The Concert The Couple Sweeping the Nation. PLUS! Find Out Which Songs Rock’s Newest Leads Wrote for Each Other
So far, Zak had done her best not to entertain any of that junk, but the last one got her. She slapped a copy of Street Beat on top of her routine buy at the counter.
“Just those two,” she said, pulling out her wallet, “Thanks.”
The shop owner, instantly making the connection, grabbed a camera off his desk and asked her if she would take a picture of him with Chase—then asked Chase, “So, what are you famous for?” to which Chase aptly answered, “It’s complicated.”
“I’m tempted to make you carry the other one,” Chase said as he rolled up both magazines and tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans. It was way too hot for pants, but in his words, “A limp is less noticeable than a metal limb.”
“Come on. You’re not curious, Hockey Heartthrob?”
“Not in the slightest.”
She grabbed the thin, grayscale tabloid and read it aloud as they walked to stops two and three: the beachside smoothie shack, and the beach itself. “‘Over the past few weeks, we’ve all watched the epic rock star love story unfolding between Saint of Spades frontman and former NHL all-star, Chase Payton, and the sexiest bombshell to hit the metal scene, the lead singer of Amped Season 1’s winning band, Abstraction, Izzy Sartori. The two have been caught sharing steamy moments during intermission—’”
“We were just sitting on a fucking couch,” Chase interrupted. “Talking about how bad the oatmeal was at the breakfast bar.”
“‘—sightseeing while on tour promoting their debut albums—’”
“Following directives from Tribute Records.”
“‘—and partying together after shows—’”
“With their bands,” he added. “Including Saint of Spades’ smokin’ hot lead guitarist, Zak Parker.”
“Oo, you’re good. Even if you are an ass-kisser. Maybe you can get a side gig writing these.”
“Sure. It’s half pretending-you-know-everything and the other half buzzy adjectives.”
Zak carried on reading to find that, sure enough, the article had cited Chase’s in-concert intros to “The River” as evidence it had been written for Izzy. Speculating that their relationship had begun privately on the show before becoming public knowledge. Titillating of an idea as that was, if the producers of Amped had caught wind of an affair between two contestants of opposing finalist bands, they would’ve milked that shit for all the drama it was worth.
The article went so far as to claim that Abstraction’s album-titled song on Track 3 was a nod to Chase, though “Lovers” had been one of the first songs Izzy had performed during the competition and the lyrics were clearly about getting cheated on.
And that was only the beginning. The wild theories continued down a bulleted list that Zak perused as her mouth drifted shut.
She wadded the paper in her fist and threw it in the trash can after they ordered coffee to-go from the smoothie shack.
“You already know it’s all bullshit,” Chase said, searching her eyes as they waited by the pick-up counter. “But are you okay?”
“Me?” She folded her hand, wrapped with Snickerdoodle’s leash, under her opposite elbow as the dog finally settled down. “That had nothing to do with me.”
“Maybe not in the headlines. But if the roles were reversed, I can’t say I’d love seeing people write that stuff about you and some other guy.”
“That’s not it.” She shook her head. “I think I just finally get why you’ve been so opposed to all this.”
She thought maybe they could have fun making fun of it, but eventually, the laughs dried up and left her with the realization that this wasn’t some abstract concept they’d be rid of after the tour.
The full weight of why Chase hated going through with the PR stunt so much smacked her over the head like cargo flying from the bed of a truck on the interstate. There was more to it than principles or petty jealousy. People were actually invested in Chase and Izzy. No matter how fabricated the relationship was, it would follow him in print and online forever.
He swung an arm over Zak’s shoulders before he presumably remembered he couldn’t, and pocketed both hands instead. Though there were no cars in the parking lot, they still hadn’t made it through the morning without Chase getting recognized. Albeit, by a non-fan, with an up-close mugshot of him sitting right in front of the guy.
“Fame is amazing,” he said. “But being famous sucks.”
They picked up their caffeine fix at the window and kicked off their shoes to walk through the dunes.
Past the hills of sand and beach grass, they reached an unencumbered view of the ocean. The calm waves were accompanied by a lulling gust. It was early enough on a weekday that there was no one around, so Zak unclipped the dog’s leash to let her run wild in the bubbling surf. Chase spread a hotel towel over the sand, and they sat down to finally enjoy what was surprisingly the best coffee she’d had on the road.
“Alright, let’s see it.” She motioned for Chase to open the April 11th edition of the only news publication she cared about and turn to the only section she cared about—The Hot 100.
Her stomach tossed as he flipped to the chart. Her eyes blazed across the page. But like the past three issues she’d left at the bottom of waste bins across the South, Saint of Spades was nowhere to be found in the Artists column.
She finally breathed out, her chest and hopes sinking at once. “Well, at least Dallas will be happy to see that Madonna is still up there.”
It seemed with every passing year there were fewer rock names left on the list by December. While Zak knew it would be difficult for her beloved genre to compete with the strengthening surge of electronically produced crap, it did give her pause to think that Trevor had been right about anything. Especially when it came to his concerns about the long-term success of her band.
They were entering the industry at the tail end of a tide.
Rock fans would always exist in some capacity, but would there be enough of them? Saint of Spades’ contract with Tribute only lasted through the year. When that was over, would it be another fight to retain rights over their music? An ongoing cycle, where they continually lost creative agency and gave up more of their shares to the insatiable beast at the top?
Chase tossed the magazine aside. “It’s only been a month.”
“Yeah, I know.” She laid back on her elbows and looked up at the pale coral sky. “I just thought after seeing that first check…”
“As you should. There are a lot of people out there listening to Missing Link, and I’m not surprised. Because you wrote it.”
The advance had been enough to clear her present financial concerns, but it wasn’t a guarantee for the future. Holding this first payment in her hands, though, had been the first concrete assurance that she would never worry about paying her bills again.
And, on the frivolous side, that she would never walk out of another music store without a new guitar.
Even if the sales weren’t enough to grant Saint of Spades a spot on the Top 100, they were enough to afford Zak the ability to make music for a living, and that was all that mattered. Album aside, the funds generated from the Lovers tour would be plenty for the whole band to live luxuriously as they worked on their sophomore LP. Attendance had been such a success, and public reviews were so raving, that Tribute had already tacked on an additional five dates with a strong likelihood of more to come.
“I’m so proud of you,” Chase said, the sound of his voice joining the ambient song created by the ocean breeze. The papery rustle of palm fronds, the sizzle of water through sand as waves receded from the shore, and the whistle of wind through the cracks in the boardwalk.
She faced him, resting her chin on her shoulder. Trying to recall if anyone had ever been proud of her for anything before. “I’m only doing what I love.”
He combed back the hair that had escaped her ponytail, his eyes bright enough to make her forget that she was no longer looking at the sunlit blue of the Atlantic. “Is that not something to be proud of?”
Their practice time ended at noon. In the outdoor amphitheater, the sun had climbed to its peak. Its rays reflected off the partial cube of metal framework where the lights would be rigged, shooting laser beams of heat at Zak’s skin.
Backstage, the gears turned in her mind as she stood beneath a fan on full blast and toweled off her sweat. Chase’s words were stuck in her head. “I’m not surprised, because you wrote it.” Only, she hadn’t written every song on their setlist.
She had nothing against the covers that had been selected for them tonight, and she knew Chase would crush it on “More Than a Feeling”, but there was no pride for her in redoing what had already been done.
Once the nagging thought had entered her brain, she couldn’t drop it.
“What do you think Trevor would do if we replaced the cover songs with our own songs?” she tossed out hypothetically. It wasn’t technically a part of any paperwork they’d signed. It was more of an expectation than a rule.
“What can he do?” Alex said. “It’s not like he’s here, or like he doesn’t have other things to worry about. He’s overseeing, like, five hundred artists.”
Edge stood beside her, tugging the collar of his shirt to the side to cool the skin where his bass strap had rested. “Which ones were you thinking?”
“Any of them,” she said. “We can try to match the energy of the current setlist, keep it one-to-one.”
It would help with not throwing the lighting team off, but those guys had a laid-back time keeping up with their half of the show anyway. Out of caution to avoid any potential seizure triggers, they kept lighting effects to a minimum. No sudden flashes, only different colors for different song selections, with simple roaming spotlights.
Theatrics had never been their style anyway.
As a fan, Zak’s favorite concert experiences had always been the ones that felt like a conversation between the artist and the audience. She wanted to know the inspiration behind songs, the dynamics of a group. She wanted to buy into the musicians, not just the music, and that was the type of experience she sought to create for their fans, too.
Those stage differences were part of what made Abstraction such a great balance for Saint of Spades as a co-headliner. Izzy lived for the themes, costumes, special effects, and drama, and it complemented her songwriting well.
“There were songs from the show that didn’t make it on the album,” Edge said. He was more of a finding-loopholes than a breaking-rules kind of guy, but that approach had only ever worked in her favor. She provided the crazy thoughts, and he provided the rational justifications. “If that’s where people found out about us, I don’t see how it would be a problem to honor it. Amped and Tribute both fall under the same corporate umbrella anyway.”
“The real question is, who cares what Trevor would do?” Dallas contributed. “By the time he finds out, it’ll be too late, and he’ll be like a million dollars richer.”
“He’s salaried,” said Edge.
“Like I would know what the fuck it’s like being salaried.”
“And you?” she asked Chase. “Do you feel like you remember them well enough?”
He smiled. An, I can’t believe you smile. An, I love you smile. “You just tell me what to sing up there, Parker. And I’ll make it happen.”
The set change had been a secret between the band and the venue’s audio engineers, and though the audience had been none the wiser as they shared out their originals in place of covers, the same did not go for the rest of the team.
Scott, who had not approached Zak after any of the shows so far, was in her face the moment he caught her leaving the hotel lobby.
“I tried knocking at your room earlier.” He stepped into the doorway as soon as she pulled back the handle.
If he thought physical obstruction was going to deter her from slamming the door in his face when he pissed her off, then he hadn’t been paying attention. She sidestepped him and made her exit two doors down instead, but Scott followed.
“I wasn’t in my room earlier.”
“Yeah, I assumed. Since Chase was around.”
Presently, Chase was making a staged appearance with Izzy at the after-party, which Zak could not be happier to miss. It was held outdoors at a tiki bar, and while she loved a good frozen cocktail, she did not fuck with mosquitoes.
“Is that supposed to be a comment on my relationship?”
“No.” And he had the audacity to sound frustrated as he cut to the point. “What happened?”
Zak dangled the handle to Snickerdoodle’s leash on her index finger. “The dog needed to go out. Don’t know if you’ve ever had one, but they don’t use litter boxes.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
He stepped in front of her.
Looking her father in the eyes made it really fucking difficult to forget they were related, so she hated that he wouldn’t stop making eye contact. It wasn’t in her nature to be the first one to back away from a challenge.
“Funny how you wanted to make amends, and yet, every time you’re talking to me, you’re reprimanding me for making a bad decision.”
“I’m not reprimanding you, Zak. Jesus Christ. I just asked what happened.”
“I don’t see what there is to discuss.” She folded her arms under her chest. Snickerdoodle tugged impatiently at the lead. Not for a desire to continue walking, most likely, but for a desire to jump up on Scott. A person she loved as much as every other person. Zak wished her dog could read the damn room. “We didn’t feel like playing the covers. We’re not a fucking cover band. And if Trevor has a problem with it—”
“I told Trevor it was my idea for you to bring in the other songs from the show,” Scott said. “He’s fine with changing the setlist for the rest of the tour if the audience responded well to it.”
A moment of silence swept over them, soothing her tone into something pitiful by the time she got out, “Why?”
Because I don’t want him to demote me when he finds out that you undermined my authority. You thought I cared about you?
“Because I’m not your enemy here. I’m trying to help you.” He tossed his arms hopelessly at his sides. “Do you think I give a damn about my job with Tribute? I don’t need the money. I could sit on my ass for the rest of my life.”
“So then why don’t you?”
Why don’t you quit, and get the hell away from me?
“For one, staying busy makes it easier to stay clean. Music is the only thing I know, but it’s not like I can be out in the scene anymore playing shows. I can’t trust myself not to let all the drugs and shit take control of me like it used to. Maybe someday, but right now it’s still too new.”
His speech took on more patience, more thoughtfulness, as he realized she wasn’t running away. “And then there’s the work itself. I loved touring, and this is the next best thing. I’d rather be on the road than locked up in a fuckin’ mansion any day of the week. Keeping my head clean. Helping new artists avoid all the fuck-ups I made when I was getting started.”
“Like this fuck-up?”
She couldn’t bring herself to respond to the rest of it. The reminder of how drugs had taken him from her—had been the excuse that kept him from her, complacent and high—was a path she didn’t need to go down.
“This wasn’t a fuck-up,” he said. “The crowd ate that shit up. You’re being true to yourself, and even if nobody out there ever finds out the details of it, they can see it. The energy is different. The energy was different when I was sober, and could remember the words to my own songs well enough to tell people what they meant.”
She nodded slowly. Though she didn’t trust him, she trusted this one word of his. That music was more important to him than any white-collar job. It was the central truth about him she’d held onto, all these years apart.
“Well, I’ll warn you next time,” she conceded, and for once, it sounded conversational instead of confrontational. “But I won’t ask for anybody’s fucking permission.”
“Yeah, I’ve kinda figured that out about you.”
Talking turned to standing, looking at each other without saying anything for longer than seemed appropriate. Zak felt closing remarks biting at the tip of her tongue, razor-sharp. Absolutely anything to continue the pattern of ending every interaction with him on a bitter note to maintain the spike-lined rift in their relationship.
She stayed silent.
Standing gave way to walking, one metered step at a time.
Instead of leaving, he walked with her. Instead of lashing out at him, for some reason, she let him.
“What was the last song you played before the encore? ‘Sunset Strip’?” Scott asked. “I don’t remember that one.”
“We didn’t play it on the show. It’s one we used to play at gigs. I thought we’d try a few different ones to get an idea for the next album.”
“That’s funny, I used to do that when I was touring—”
“I know.” The click of her heeled boots on concrete faded into nothing. Her view of the street turned into a view of her father as she resolved to face her fears. “I got the idea from you.”
Among the worst things about not knowing him throughout her life, was not knowing what he was thinking now based on the expression on his face. The softening of his light wrinkles.
He seemed so young, looking back at her. She knew that she had been the product of a reckless teenage mistake between a drug-dealing surfer and one of his repeat buyers, but as a kid, it had never mattered that her parents were children themselves.
“I always thought I would know if you were at one of my shows.” A staggered pause. “I don’t know why. I guess that wasn’t smart, with how many people there were.”
“I wasn’t.” She had thought about it, whenever the Scott Lee advertisements showed up on billboards and radio announcements around town. But she couldn’t stand in the crowd and pretend to be just another number. What if he had recognized her, and hadn’t wanted her there? “You talked about it on TV. There was this live acoustic segment they aired in ‘87.”
“I didn’t think your mother would’ve let you watch any of that.”
“She didn’t. She wasn’t around much, but that was for the best.”
Zak tried to read his face at the mention of Jaclyn, but didn’t know exactly what she was seeing. Her mother must have been ancient history to him by now. A blip on the timeline of his extravagant life. Theirs had been a tumultuous union, held together by a baby neither of them wanted and a reliance on two incomes to afford Southern California living expenses.
“The two of you don’t talk anymore,” he observed as they continued their walk through the empty parking lot.
“She talks at me through the answering machine sometimes,” Zak said. “But I think that’s on pause until she figures out my new phone number.”
“I knew she wasn’t always in her right mind…” he trailed off in thought. She wondered what he was remembering. Memories that pre-dated any of hers, or ones that coincided with hers. All the times she’d heard them screaming at each other from the flipside of her bedroom door. “Not that I was one to judge back then. I wasn’t either. I hoped she would get help though. For you.”
“She got plenty of help from me. But it doesn’t matter. All her kids are going to remember me the same way I remember you: the one who left.”
“How many?”
“Used to be five, besides me. I think there’s eight now. Hopefully biology will shut that down soon.”
Scott’s eyes widened, but he didn’t comment on the brood his ex-wife had accumulated after he left. “I want you to know that she had nothing to do with it. We had our differences. A lot of them. But I didn’t leave because of her. I didn’t leave because of the fighting, the lying, the cheating. I just wanted you to have a better life than I did. And I thought—me being there all strung-out wasn’t going to do shit to make your life better. But maybe money could.”
Money that afforded Jaclyn’s unemployment. That bought her designer clothing, funded her church tithes, paid for her weddings, and kept her pipe stuffed. Money that never amounted to a larger house for their growing family, because none of it ever made it into a savings account.
If it had been spent on Zak though, would it have mattered? She would’ve grown up in a bigger house, wearing nicer clothes and eating better food, but Chase had all those things growing up, and they hadn’t filled the cracks of his family’s shortcomings. That bigger house still would’ve been empty of the one thing that mattered.
“I just wanted you.” She stopped under a streetlight, testing the word in her mind before she dared to let it cross her lips. “I just wanted my dad. I loved you, and I thought you loved me. I knew Mom didn’t, but I thought you did.”
Goddamnit. She was crying again.
“I never stopped loving you, Zak.” Her name came out of his mouth a terrible, remorseful sound. And that was when she realized he was crying too. “I never stopped missing you. I never stopped writing songs about my little girl, never stopped feeling like the world’s biggest piece of shit for playing them on the road. Building the life that I left you for off all the guilt I carried for doing it.”
“That kind of does make you the world’s biggest piece of shit.” Her voice disintegrated, and then she laughed. Like there was anything funny at all about their predicament.
“Zak?”
His confusion made her laugh harder. Until she was laughing and crying, and could barely breathe from the combination of both as she choked out, “I don’t know why I’m laughing. I think I just don’t know what else to do.”
Scott didn’t smile much. He had hooded eyes, thick brows, and a naturally downturned mouth. The sort of features that made him look serious without effort. He was always smiling in her memories, but she thought that had to be because of the way she’d held the happy ones so close to her heart.
She hadn’t realized how different that made him look, until now, when the corners of his mouth tipped into an unwitting grin at the same time his brows furrowed.
Snickerdoodle let out a bark that bounced off the asphalt and pinballed between the skyscrapers.
“Shh,” Zak said to the dog, still chuckling. “It’s fine, we’re fine.”
But then Snickerdoodle tugged on the lead. So hard, fits of coughing broke up her whimpers. So hard, that the leash slipped from Zak’s hand, and the dog bolted off toward where the buses were parked.
Zak let a storm of curses rip as she ran after her dog. As if there was any way her two slow-moving feet could catch up with Snickerdoodle’s frenzied four. She was vaguely aware of her father sprinting with her, but more aware of the highway only a narrow drainage ditch away and the cars speeding down it at sixty miles per hour. They were whistling, calling her by her name, anything to try to get that dumb, crazy, lovable animal’s attention.
Snickerdoodle darted into the shadows cast by their tour bus, and moments later there was a whistly whine that Zak hoped was a sign of confusion and not injury.
“What’s wrong, cookie-dog?”
She slowed her pace so that she didn’t startle the dog into a run again, but Snickerdoodle wasn’t moving. And neither was the larger shadow, slumped against the side of the bus.
Her heart rate, coming down from the scare and the run, skyrocketed again as she made out Dallas’s face.
His skin was paler than normal. Beside him in the street was a pool of vomit. Above him, a streak of blood down the tour bus beginning at eye level and ending where the side of his head now rested against the undercarriage storage door.
Scott, who got there before Zak did, was on his knees next to her friend. His fingers pressed to Dallas’s wrist.
“Oh, fuck.” She kneeled at his side, reclaiming Snickerdoodle’s lead and tugging the dog off Dallas’s lap. “Fuck. Fuck.”
Fuck, no. I can’t do this again.
“There’s a pulse.” Scott held a hand in front of the other man’s nose. “He’s breathing. He’ll be alright.”
“Not if I kill him when he wakes up,” Zak mumbled.
It was a sorry excuse for a threat when she wasn’t angry. She was looking at him and remembering the way Link had looked when she got home from work. She was wondering whether his headstone would go next to Link’s in Los Angeles, or in his hometown.
Dallas’s eyes slitted open. His lips parted, and something like her name came out before he slipped back into unconsciousness.
“We should get him to the hospital in case he has a concussion, though. He banged his head pretty good there.” Scott stood and held out his hand for Snickerdoodle’s leash—which Zak numbly handed over—before stepping off to the side to place a call for a driver.
She got comfortable on the asphalt, legs crossed, and put her hand over Dallas’s wrist. Keeping count of his pulse, internalizing its rhythm. Between every beat, she heard one of his pacifications.
“I’m only having one.”
“This is my last one.”
“Come on, we’re celebrating!”
“I’m fine, it’s just a buzz.”
“There’s barely any alcohol in this.”
“What’s the harm in trying it?”
“Just once.”
Always just once.
The pressure from her hand seemed to wake him up again because his eyes moved behind his eyelids. A groan rumbled in the back of his throat. “‘mm sorry.”
“Shut up.” Her eyes stung at the dry, bare sound of his voice. She couldn’t listen to him like this.
“I didn’t want to. I won’t—” He scratched the inside of his elbow. “Never again. Can’t keep doing this.”
“You can promise me that when you’re sober,” she said, blocking out her ever-intensifying fear that he never would be.
“Will you believe me then?”
She shook her head as she looked up at the cloudy, starless sky. “I’ll want to.”
Dallas heaved his body off the side of the bus, his thin arms shaking as he pulled himself to her. He collapsed with his head in her lap, curling into a fetal position on the hard, sooty ground. His breathing slowed once more. His eyes blinked shut.
She thought he’d drifted off again, but moments later, his chin trembled against her calf.
“Thank you, Z.”