Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
ANDI
The past two weeks without Luke have been so hard.
Every night, when I finally get home, I climb into a cold, empty bed.
After a while of tossing and turning, I pass out from exhaustion.
The only positive aspect is that the three-hour time difference between our time zones lets me sleep later and still talk to Luke for a few minutes while he's in his room.
Mack originally planned to rent a house on the outskirts of town, but that meant they'd have to leave even earlier to get to the gym on time.
It took some serious strong-arming of my stubborn Pop, but I finally convinced him to let me cover their hotel bill so they'd be within walking distance instead.
I didn't tell him I also had personal reasons for insisting on that arrangement.
I wasn't comfortable with the idea of private calls when Pop or Shane were just down the hall at Joe’s facility.
I also knew that once the tour brought us close enough—or gave us more than a day or two of breathing room—I'd go to Luke instead of back to Atlanta.
When that happened, I wanted the space to be ours alone.
"Good morning, my love," I coo when I answer his video call.
"Mmm," he replies sleepily. "It's a good morning now. I miss you, baby."
"I miss you, too. What's on your agenda for today?" I ask, trying to stay as involved in his training as much as I can.
"More alcohol, wild parties, and easy women," he deadpans.
"Don't make me have to come out there and kick someone's ass, Luke," I threaten. "You know I'll do it."
"Whatever it takes to get you out here, babe," he teases me with my smile—the one he reserves only for me. He knows it always gets to me. It's the perfect blend of sweet and sexy, combined with mischief and innocence. It turns me into putty in his hands every time.
"You'd better hide her before I get there, or they'll never find the body."
He openly laughs at this. "You know better than that, Andi. You own my heart and my body." He looks down at his lap and moves the phone so that I'm looking at his crotch along with him. "It doesn't even work without you here. You kept the remote control with you."
"I'm not sure how I should reply to that," I laugh. "Should I be grateful it doesn't work or should I be worried it doesn't work?"
"It'd be easier to explain it to you in person. That way I can demonstrate exactly what I mean." He grins mischievously. "How long will it be before I see you?"
Grabbing the tour schedule and the calendar, I look for the first available break. "Umm, we have several days between stops during Valentine's Day week. Would that work with your schedule?"
"I'll talk to Joe and Mack. Shane and I can probably arrange our schedules so we have our two rest days while you're here. I'm sure Shane would love for Katie to come out, too."
"Let me know when you find out for sure, and I'll book the flights for Katie and me. I'll still be on the East Coast leg of the tour at that time."
"Still leaving tomorrow?" he asks.
"Yes. I have a whole day of packing and making sure my house sitters are all set. It's a long time to be away," I say, my voice relaying my uncertainty.
"It'll be fine, babe. My parents and your friends have it covered."
"It's not that. I trust them. It's just," I pause as I mentally reach through the phone to my lifeline. "Am I going to get out there and make a fool out of myself? I just feel like I'm in way over my head."
"Baby, there's no way you'll make a fool of yourself. You'll show them what an amazing singer you are. Before the end of the tour, you'll be the main act and Sound Bar will open for you," Luke reassures me.
"This is the chance of a lifetime, Andi.
A minuscule percentage of singers get this opportunity.
If you don't give it all you've got, you'll always wonder 'what if,' and you'll always regret it.
If you decide you don't want it after your five-month tour, you don't have to do it again.
If you decide it is everything you want and more, we'll find a way to make it work. "
I can't help but smile at the way he helps me. "You're everything I want and more, Luke."
We blow kisses to each other, declare our love again, and reluctantly hang up so we can both get started. Packing for a five-month tour is a daunting task, and I've been putting it off until the last possible minute.
The center is quiet when I get there.
It should be. It's mid-morning on a Thursday in early January.
The program staff are not due until two, and Mrs. Alvarez is out at a supply meeting until noon.
I have a key, the alarm code, and a list of things I want to check before five months on the road puts Atlanta three thousand miles behind me.
I park, unlock the side entrance, disarm the alarm, and walk through the building the way I always do when I'm alone in it—starting at the back, working forward, making sure everything is where it belongs.
The supply closet. The program rooms. The activity floor.
I'm almost at my office when I see it.
The center's main calendar—the large whiteboard mounted on the wall beside the administrative corridor, the one that shows the full program schedule for the coming months—has been changed.
Not erased. Changed.
Someone has carefully altered the notation for the center's upcoming federal funding review. The date has been moved three weeks earlier than it actually is, written in a hand that's close enough to Mrs. Alvarez's that you'd have to know her handwriting well to catch the difference.
Someone has carefully altered the notation for the center's upcoming federal funding review. The correct date has been replaced with a different one, written in a hand that's close enough to Mrs. Alvarez's that you'd have to know her handwriting well to catch the difference.
The date written there is 9/4/11.
September fourth. Fifteen years ago.
I stand in the corridor and look at it.
I know our funding review date. Moving it on the calendar means anyone who relies on that board—program staff, board members, the communications team—would show up unprepared.
Would miss the actual deadline. Would give the board reviewing our funding structure a clean, documented reason to question our organizational competence.
It's not dramatic. It's not a threat anyone could point to in court.
It's the machine, leaving its fingerprints on my calendar.
I take a photograph. I call Mrs. Alvarez, who confirms she didn't touch the calendar this week. I correct the date. I call Bill, who tells me to document everything and reminds me that this is what the early phase looks like—small, precise, deniable.
"The point isn't the calendar," he says. "The point is that they were inside your building, and you didn't know until you walked in."
After I hang up, I stand in the activity room for a moment.
The mural. The homework tables. The door that faces the street.
Five months is a long time to be away from this.
I check the rest of the building twice. Nothing else has been touched.
I reset the alarm with a new code. I call the building's security company and schedule an immediate camera upgrade.
Then I drive home, and I finish packing for the tour.
Luke texted while I was at the center.
Everything okay?
He knows my schedule. He knows I was going to stop by before leaving. He reads my absence in the timing of my silence the way he reads everything—before I have to explain it.
Yes. Tell you tonight. Go train.
Andi.
I mean it. Go. I'm fine.
A pause. I can picture him standing in the gym, phone in hand, making the calculation.
Tonight.
Tonight. I love you.
I love you, baby. Be safe on the road.
I put the phone in my pocket, and I finish packing.
The tour is waiting. The machine is waiting. Both of them will still be there when I get back.
Procrastination will be the death of me one of these days... if I don't put it off.
Hauling my suitcases out of storage, I unzip them and spread them out across my bed.
Our show dates are so close together that it would be hard to make a stop to shop for clothes along the way.
I’m finding it impossible to plan for everything I may need—casual clothes, dressy clothes, pajamas, and toiletries.
Over the last several weeks of rehearsals, the women in Fireflies have become the unexpected bright spot in an otherwise complicated December.
Cami Hale, their lead singer, attached herself to me somewhere around the third joint rehearsal with the easy confidence of someone who has decided you're going to be friends and sees no reason to waste time getting there.
She's been in this industry long enough to have lost the parts that weren't real and kept the parts that were, and what's left is someone who says exactly what she means and means exactly what she says.
She picks up on the second ring.
"Tell me you're not calling to back out," she says.
"I'm calling because I have a logistical question that I should probably already know the answer to."
"Ask."
"The buses. How many, and what's the configuration? Because I just looked at the tour schedule and did the math on how long we're on the road, and I'm trying to figure out how to pack for that in a way that doesn't require me to rent a storage unit."
Cami laughs—not at me, just the easy laugh of someone who has done this before. "Okay. So. Six buses total. Crew gets one, which is the rough deal, but that's how it goes. Sound Bar has two. Fireflies has two. You and Katelyn share the sixth."
I absorb this.
"Just me and Katelyn."
"Just you and Katelyn." She gives that a second to sink in fully.
"Don't read into it. It's a logistics decision, not a statement.
The bus has two bedrooms, two and a half baths, a full kitchen, and a slider.
You'll have more space than you think. And you won't be on it all the time—when we're doing long stretches, everyone migrates. "