52. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
Dim lighting illuminates the front lounge of the tour bus as it rolls along a highway to Amarillo.
We start our week-long stretch in Texas tomorrow.
Shoulders ache. Legs ache. My whole body feels like it’s been run through a meat grinder.
We’ve been on tour over a month, and no amount of hours on the treadmill could have prepared me for the physical fatigue.
Mentally…I am a machine.
Not tired in the slightest. And okay, maybe I have Adderall to thank for that, but I am thankful. My body might hurt, but my energy levels haven’t fluctuated. I’m putting on adrenaline-fueled shows that our fans deserve. That’s all that matters to me.
My feet are kicked up on the couch, and I set aside my vocal steamer. It still hurts to swallow. I try to ignore the discomfort in my throat by texting Charlie.
TOM CARRAWAY
Did you like the show tonight?
CHARLIE KEATING
Watching you almost concuss yourself was a joy.
TOM CARRAWAY
Must be why you’ve already been to four shows.
I was shocked when Charlie came to see us play in Arizona, but then the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
He’s been traveling way less this year, and his two-day stint in Rotterdam must have given him a travel bug.
Coming to my shows is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Travel and see his favorite sibling.
My bigger worry is that my meltdown on the phone with him last week—over the whole Harriet’s-mom thing—worried the shit out of him. I overreacted. Definitely should have kept my cool.
Beckett took the reins and told Ben about Harriet’s mom, and all went well.
It was fine. Ben didn’t run away.
Goes to show what I know about OCD.
Out of concern for her safety, Ben filled Harriet in on what happened, and she’s been spending more nights at our apartment—I’ve heard. Phoenix had a phone call with her after she texted him a five-paragraph apology for dealing with her mom.
I did not receive the same apology text, by the way. Not that I needed one any more than Phoenix did. Their call lasted an hour and not ten seconds, so I’m guessing they’ve upgraded their friendship beyond concert-going friends.
I send another quick text.
TOM CARRAWAY
Admit it. I’m your favorite sibling besides Beckett.
CHARLIE KEATING
Keep bumping your head and you will be filled with endless delusions.
I’ll see you in Dallas.
I’m smiling. Because yeah, having Charlie come out to my shows does make me feel good. I just sincerely hope he isn’t doing it because he thinks I’m unstable.
I am very stable.
The most stable of all my brothers.
Phoenix enters the front lounge, clutching his cell, and he stops near the microwave when he notices me. He’s spent the past couple of hours in the back, talking to his brother on the phone. It seemed serious, so I gave him some privacy.
By the pinched look on his face, I don’t think he expected me to be awake.
The bus comes to a jerky stop at a light, and Phoenix grabs the top cabinet above me. Shirtless, his abs and bicep flex to brace himself from falling on me.
His nose flares as he stares down. Why do I find that insanely hot? I’m literally seconds from grabbing his waist when the intensity in his eyes freezes me. Oh…he’s pissed. “You’re still up?” he questions. “We can work on the album tomorrow.”
“Dude, I haven’t even had time to think about that tonight.
” Or any night. “Sheela sent me more video requests for socials.” Our publicist has been ramping up the media asks—which means more work on our end.
It’s a good thing. We struggled to get this kind of attention at the beginning of the tour, and seeing these requests pile up is exciting.
Also, incredibly time consuming, but very exciting.
“You can do that in the morning,” Phoenix tells me.
“There’s no time. We have that tour bus walkthrough with a YouTube channel tomorrow morning, and Teen Vogue are flying someone out to do a live interview before the show.”
Phoenix shakes his head like I’m being unreasonable. But I’m not the one who put our schedule together, and somehow, I will find time to start writing the second album. I have to.
“Even if I didn’t have work to do, I’m not tired,” I tell him. “I just keeping thinking about the show last night. It’s playing in my head on a loop. Is that not happening for you?”
Phoenix drops his arms off the cabinet. “Yeah. It is. It was…” He starts to smile, but the bus jerks again, and this time he crashes on top of me.
His knee hits a tender bruise on my thigh. “Fuck,” I curse.
Phoenix lifts off me a little, but his gaze beelines to my body. “You hurt?”
“Yeah, you broke every bone in my body. Some might think you hate my guts.” I scoot over so he has room on the couch, but he ends up sitting down and just pulling my legs on his lap anyway.
“The only thing I currently hate about you is your newfound love of staying up until four a.m. Despise it, actually.”
I shrug. “Can you blame me? Tonight was mentally stimulating. Like a shot of pure epinephrine. Phoenix, they were singing ‘Bruit Préféré.’ They learned the lyrics to a French song.” It blew me away. It’s still shaking me to my core.
I’ve dreamed of having people sing my songs back to me. I never imagined they’d learn the one that’s completely in French.
Phoenix is smiling again. Maybe he’s remembering the time-halting moment onstage where I looked over at him and his eyes caught mine with the same visceral surprise and joy hearing the crowd sing our music.
The music we created together.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “That was pretty amazing.”
I plan to show him the videos from tonight some fans already posted. They caught us exchanging that awed look onstage and created a fifteen-second clip. I love that this moment between me and him has been documented and preserved. Our fans are the literal best.
Phoenix checks his watch again, then runs a tense hand through his hair. His other fingers slide up my leg. “Sheela doesn’t know we’re overworked. We need to set boundaries, man. Let’s just email her and tell her we’ll postpone the YouTube thing.”
“Hell no. We’ve just started landing bigger opportunities. We can’t pass things up, dude.”
Real concern sinks his expression. The dark circles under his eyes look more purpled than normal.
“Everything okay with your brother?” I ask, sitting up more against the couch’s armrest. He’d been on the phone for a while.
He nods, then shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s the same shit with Bird. Constantly burning the candle at both ends. He can’t say no.” He slides me a look. “Feels real fucking familiar.”
Yeah, okay. Guilty. I swallow and try not to wince through the throat pain. “Compromise,” I tell him. “You look like shit—”
“Hell of a way to start a negotiation.”
I’m smiling. “It won’t be a negotiation when you agree to the terms.”
His eyes darken. “Which are?”
“We don’t stay up past four a.m. tonight. It’s only three a.m., so if we go take a nap now and clock in three hours, it’ll give us enough time in the morning to get the videos done for Sheela before the bus walkthrough. I’ll set my alarm.”
Phoenix says, “Okay. But you’re sleeping with me in my bunk.”
I don’t think he trusts that I will go to sleep. Which is fair. I can’t really tell if I’d hold myself to the full three hours.
“You just want to rub your dick against my ass,” I say into a smirk.
“You keep telling yourself that, nepo baby.” He stands up and grabs my hand. Phoenix crawls in first. Before I know it, I’m wedged in his bunk, and I have my phone alarm set.
Curtains shroud us in darkness. Phoenix presses close to me, his chin on the top of my head, his arm wrapping around my chest. Being this near always sends a surge of serotonin through my system. Everything calms. It’s so easy to sleep.
When I wake, it is not 6 a.m. I blink a bunch and squint through the glow of my phone. We didn’t change time zones, but it’d make me feel a thousand times better if we were somewhere in Oceania—Australia, New Zealand, the fucking Polynesian islands.
Because what the fuck—it cannot be 10 a.m. in Amarillo, Texas.
There’s only one thing that makes sense. I roll over to see Phoenix is awake and scrolling on his phone. “Did I sleep through my alarm?” I ask, my voice full of morning rasp.
He meets my eyes when he says, “I turned it off so you could sleep.”
I almost can’t breathe through the sudden anger.
“Back lounge,” I growl. “Right fucking now.” I jerk the curtain to the bunk aside and roll out of bed. Crew are already milling about the bus, brewing coffee, and getting ready for the day because it’s TEN in the goddamn morning.
I’m vibrating with ire as I pass Stan, who gives me a wide berth. The back lounge with the U-shaped couch is empty. A true blessing in this already fucked day.
Take three breaths, I coach myself. Take four. Five. No amount of breath training can push down the anger swirling in the pit of my stomach. Not even as Phoenix shuts the door closed.
Phoenix’s eyes are wide in panic. “Tom, if I knew you’d be this upset—”
“You wouldn’t have what?” I cut him off, my throat blistered with anger. “Shut off my alarm. Cost me an entire morning of work. Fucked over this album, the tour, our careers—”
“Hey,” Phoenix growls. “This hasn’t fucked over anything, Tom.”
“You don’t know that,” I choke out, hurt chipping away at my fortitude. Why doesn’t he care about this as much as me? Why does no one fucking care? “That was time I needed to get those videos done. Time you stole from me.”
Phoenix winces into a scowl. “You think I stole from you, fine. But I stole your exhaustion. I stole your fogged, sleepless brain. What I didn’t steal was your fucking career. Because there’s no way in hell one stupid fucking video interview would make or break you.”
“We’ll never know if it could’ve made us into something bigger,” I counter. “Because you didn’t let me.”
He glowers. “I don’t regret what I did. Reverse time, and I’m making the same choice.”