Day 3 Newark, DE
MAX
WHERE THE FUCK am I?
I lie on my back, staring up at the high ceiling crisscrossed with pipes and wires as I take stock of my body and my surroundings.
My tongue feels like it’s made of felt, but that’s not necessarily unusual.
My head is — hmm, not bad, considering how much I had to drink last night.
I sit up slowly, and the room pitches slightly, but it’s manageable. I’m going to be okay.
Beside me, Sam’s spot on the dirty mattress is empty.
No, I didn’t have sex last night, thank you very much.
Linoleum said she just wanted to make out, and I’m not an asshole, so that’s what we did.
I think the party broke up around 2 AM, and then the people who live here wandered off to various bunks and cubbies in the lofted space.
Roxie and Blake and Sam and I were shown to this little curtained-off area with two bare mattresses on the floor.
I don’t mind sharing with Sam, because we’ve been having sleepovers since we were kids.
I curl up next to him and I feel like we’re eight years old again, flipping through my sister’s copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark under the covers and scaring the everliving shit out of ourselves.
I look over at Roxie and Blake. Blake is still asleep, his arm draped around Roxie’s waist, his face buried in her neck.
But Roxie cocks an eyebrow at me, then puts a finger to her lips.
I nod and stand up, finding my jeans in the corner and pulling them back on, then glancing at my watch. Just a little after 10 AM.
It’s not hard to figure out where Sam went once I step out from behind the curtains.
It’s a big open space, and I spot him over by the kitchenette in the corner, sitting at a rickety kitchen table in front of an enormous pile of potatoes.
Behind him, Linoleum is at the stove, stirring something in a large pot.
“What’s going on here?” I plop into the chair next to Sam. His hair is standing up every which way, and he’s wearing an oversized black T-shirt that I’m pretty sure is mine.
“Making stuff for Food Not Bombs,” Sam explains. “Lena was just telling me —”
Lena. LENA. I’m a fucking dumbass.
“We do Food Not Bombs at 12:30 every Sunday,” Lino — Lena explains, glancing over her shoulder at me. “We make the food here, and then we bring it to the community center down the street.”
“Oh, that’s cool. Can I help?” I ask. Sam hands me a knife, and I grab a potato to peel.
“Where are you guys headed next?” Lena asks, sprinkling some spices into her pot.
“Delaware for the next two days,” I explain. “Newark, and then Wilmington.”
“I didn’t know there were that many punks in Delaware,” Lena muses. “I don’t think I know anybody up there.”
“Max’s sister got us the gigs,” Sam chimes in. “She thinks we need to learn to play to different audiences, like to bars and clubs sometimes too, and it just worked out that she got us these two shows back to back.”
Lena turns to look at us. “Sounds like she has a lot of opinions.”
“Yeah, she used to tour herself, so she knows a lot of people.” I toss my peeled potato into the bowl and pick up another. “For a couple of years, she was sort of everywhere. Sage Finley? But she toured as Sage Justice.”
“Oh, I actually saw one of her shows a few years ago! She’s good.” Lena narrows her eyes, studying me. “You kinda look like her, actually, now that I think about it.”
I shrug. “Yeah, you know — genetics and all that.”
Lena turns back to her pot, and I duck my head over my work. It’s funny how these things go sometimes, how Drunk Max can think anything and everything is a good idea, but in the morning, Sober Max can see what’s real. Lena isn’t into me any more than I’m into her, but for one night, we connected.
But now that I’m back in the real world?
The real world is — well, the real world is Sam, who’s studying me carefully out of the corner of his eye.
When he realizes I’ve caught him, his eyes drop to the potato in his hands.
But I reach out underneath the table, brushing his ankle with my toes, and when he looks up quickly, I wink and he grins.
It can be fun meeting new people. But I always come back to what’s important.
ROXIE
Max is definitely gonna fucking kill us all.
Like yeah, switching drivers is good in theory. We’re gonna be covering hundreds of miles in the next three weeks and everybody needs a break. But hey, maybe we shouldn’t have trusted the worst driver with one of the worst fucking godforsaken stretches of road in this godforsaken fucking country.
Sometimes I wonder why I stick with these two.
They’re a lot of fucking work, and other bands are always trying to poach me, because everybody needs a drummer.
But I dunno. Sam and Max respect me, and they never try to get with me, probably for obvious reasons.
They may be a couple of asshats, but they’re nice to Blake.
And the three of us sound good together.
At least Sam is in a better mood today. He’s riding shotgun next to Max, and he’s not screaming his head off, even though we’re weaving in and out of traffic like the van is a stock car.
Instead, the two of them are bantering back and forth about some shit I can’t quite hear because Max has decided that blasting the same Rancid album over and over is a substitute for having a personality.
Max somehow avoids plowing into a semi as he shoots out onto the bridge over the Susquehanna, high winds buffeting us on both sides. I don’t know how far over the limit we’re going, but the van is shuddering in protest.
Beside me, Blake sits up suddenly, craning his neck as he looks out the window.
I give him a little shove. “What’s with you?”
“Oh, I always love crossing this bridge,” he replies. “The view is stunning.”
Sigh. I’m the only person in this van with any sense of self-preservation — or any other fucking sense, for that matter.
MAX
“Yeah — yeah, I know — I mean, would that be such a bad thing? — um, okay —”
Sam is leaning against the wall outside the club, talking on his cell phone. He’s turned away from me, but his shoulders are hunched up to his ears, which has to mean that he’s talking to one of his parents.
In some ways, I guess I’ve always had it easy, because nobody in my family ever thought I would amount to anything, so if I wake up in the morning and manage to spell my own name, I’m already beating their expectations.
Sam, though? His parents pile a mountain of shit on him.
He’s a bit older than his siblings — Nathan is fifteen, and Jenna and Corey are thirteen.
So he’s always been kind of a third parent and built-in babysitter.
But when he came out, his parents made him keep it a secret from the kids, so everything is all sorts of fucked up.
I walk around Sam and lean against the wall opposite him, so that he can see me. He locks eyes with me, but he purses his lips, a frown line appearing between his eyebrows.
“Do you want me to talk to him? — No, of course I won’t say anything about that — I’ll just —”
I make imaginary puppets with my hands, mouthing bla bla bla, and Sam grins, looking down at the ground.
“Okay, I’ll call him later, Mom — you too — Bye.”
He closes his phone with a sigh and slips it into his pocket.
“What was that all about?” I ask.
“Oh, you know —” Sam rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “Corey doesn’t want to go to baseball camp this summer for some reason.
So my mom wants me to call him and remind him that getting a sports scholarship is his best chance for going to college.
But she couldn’t help asking me if he’s doing this because he’s ‘like me’. You know, gotta stick the knife in.”
“That’s so shitty.” I reach for his hand, and he lets me squeeze his fingers. “She’d be lucky if he turned out like you.”
“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”
“Because you’re the best person I know,” I reply simply, and I mean it.
Sam groans, resting his back against the brick wall. “Why do you always know the right thing to say?”
“Sold my soul to a witch,” I shrug. “Oh, and I’ve known you my whole life. Come on, don’t let it ruin your night.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He gives me a sad smile. “Come on, let’s go play some music.”
SAM
“Oh my goooood, a real bed.” Max tosses his duffel bag into the corner and pitches facefirst onto the mattress, and I can’t help cracking up as I lie down beside him.
“You know, it is way too early in the tour to be sick of sleeping on the floor.”
Max turns his head just enough to fix one eye on me. “Shut up, you.”
“Well, I for one am going to spend some time in the shower by myself and take a break from you three smelly boys.” Roxie stretches her arms over her head, then puts her bag on the bed she’s sharing with Blake, beginning to rummage through it. “That water better be hot enough to take my skin off.”
“Have a good time, sweetie,” Blake murmurs. Somehow, he already has a book out, some sort of cyberpunk thing that I’m sure is very political, and he’s propped up against the headboard, his legs stretched out in front of him.
We usually try not to stay in motel rooms if we can help it.
Whenever possible, we stay with friends or family to keep costs down, or if we play a house show, we work sleeping arrangements into the deal.
But every once in a while, all of those options run dry, and in that case, we look for the cheapest motel we can find, and then the four of us pile into the same room.
In the morning, Max and I peel ourselves out of bed early and go out for a long breakfast to give Roxie and Blake a chance to fuck, and then we get back in the van to head on to the next location.
That’s the situation tonight. We’re in Delaware, in a budget motel just off 95 somewhere between Newark and Wilmington.
The show tonight went pretty well, I guess.
The crowd seemed a little older and a little more sedate than what we usually get.
They listened politely and danced a bit, and since the show was at a club, we got paid a little more than we usually do.
But I dunno. I think I like the DIY shows better, no matter what Sage says about our musical development or whatever.
By the time Roxie gets out of the shower and we all have a chance to cycle through the bathroom (I’m last), it’s well after midnight. When I slip under the covers, Max is already curled up on his side, his eyes half-closed, but when he sees me, he grins sleepily.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey, yourself.” I mirror him, lying down and tucking my arm underneath the pillow, the covers pulled up to my shoulders.
When our eyes meet, there’s an odd frisson, something I don’t want to think about too deeply, so I clear my throat, searching for something to say.
“Um — what did you think of the show tonight?”
He stifles a yawn before he answers. “Crowd could have been bigger. Or louder. You sounded fucking amazing, though. Looked pretty good, too.”
“You’re crazy,” I laugh, and I know I’m blushing. Good thing the lights in the room are so low.
“Mmm, can’t be crazy if it’s true.” The words are slow, poured like molasses into his pillow, and when I glance over at him, his eyes are already closed. So I let him drift, and soon the room is filled with the gentle breathing of my three friends, all of them slipping away after a long day.
But here I am, blinking in the darkness, my nerves still sparking as if I had jammed my fingers into a power outlet on the way to bed.
I know exactly why. Half the time, Max doesn’t wear a shirt to bed, and tonight is one of those nights.
He’s just a foot away from me, and when no one is looking at me, I can’t help looking at him, tracing the lines of his face, the breadth of his chest, finely dusted with hair.
He’s so animated during the day, so full of life, always moving, always ready to crack another joke, to catch my eye, his own sparkling as if he knows the most outrageous secret.
But when he sleeps, all of that falls away, and he’s so delicate, so —
Thank fucking God he can’t hear my thoughts.
But I know he’s asleep, that I’m alone in the dark, that no one is looking at me.
And so I let my mind slide down a familiar path, into a different world.
A world where I can close the gap between us, sliding my hand up his bare chest. A world where I can press my lips to his, where I can hook my fingers around the back of his neck, where I can kiss him until he wakes up in my arms and smiles, rolling me onto my back and pinning me to the mattress.
A world where he wants this as much as I do, where he slips inside me, where nothing matters but him and me and the breath between us and everything we’ve been and everything we could possibly be and I need him, I need him so much that I could scream —
I’m hard. Hard enough to cut glass. I squirm on the mattress, rubbing my thighs together.
It would be so easy to get some relief. To fold the covers back, to pull up my shirt and lie on my back and shove my hands into my boxers and —
I want it so bad. I want it so bad that my teeth ache.
But I can’t.
What if he woke up? What if he woke up and saw me and it wasn’t like my fantasy?
What if he took one look at me and realized that I’ve been lying to him, that I’ve been holding on to all these feelings for so long, that I’ve been letting him prance half-naked in front of me and sleep in my bed when all I’ve been wanting is —
I’m shaking, my whole body coated in sweat. Carefully, I turn over, rolling up into a ball, willing myself to breathe.
This has to fucking stop.