Shawn grins and asks, “What about going on tour?”
We leave in two months, and that daily countdown has kept me up at night ever since he told the guys and me about the tour last week—but not because I’m nervous about performing in big cities for four weeks, which I kind of am, but because I’m nervous about where I’m going to sleep once I’m on the bus. I lie under my warm covers at night wondering if Shawn will be in a bunk above me, below me, across from me . . . I wonder if he’s a night owl or an early riser. I wonder what he wears to bed—if he wears anything at all. I wonder if he’ll bring girls on the bus after shows, and then I imagine myself being the one who shares his covers. We haven’t even left yet, but I’m already fighting the imminent urge to crawl into his bunk, straddle his hips, and—
“Nah,” I say with a shake of my head to clear my thoughts. Shawn eyes me curiously, and I ask, “Are you?”
“A little,” he confesses, and my eyebrow lifts.
“Really? You still get nervous?”
“Not really about performing . . . more just about everything else. If the crowd is going to be good, if the equipment is going to work, if we’re going to be on time—”
“So basically everything you can’t control,” I say, and he smiles at my assessment.
“Pretty much.”
“It must be hell working with a bunch of rock stars.”
“You have no idea. But record execs would be worse.”
“Really?”
“You’ll see. The music industry is one giant cannibal, especially big labels. Like Mosh Records—they’ve been after us for years. But they want you to look a part and play a part and be this part, and the whole time, they’re just eating you alive.”
“Awesome,” I say, and Shawn shrugs.
“That’s why we’re not with them.”
“Even though we could be . . . ”
“Even though we could be.”
I wonder how many offers Shawn has gotten, and which labels they’ve been from, but instead of asking about any of that, I coil my hands around my ice-cold toes again, and say, “What do you think I should wear to Mayhem on Saturday?” Even though I know I don’t have to look a part or play a part or be a part like Shawn just said . . . I kind of want to, at least for our first show, and these shredded hand-me-down jeans I’m wearing just aren’t going to cut it.
“Something warm,” he teases, and I lift my eyes to find him smiling at the way I’m holding my feet.
I sneer at him, he grins at me, and I say, “Maybe I can get Dee to make me something.”
Dee is making a name for herself by designing shirts for the band’s website, but maybe she could do a cute dress or something . . . something Leti would approve of.
“You’ve talked to her?”
“A few days ago at Starbucks.” Whatever happened between her and Joel . . . it left the girl empty. She wasn’t the spirited, catty chick who swung open the door at Mayhem the day of my audition and basically told me to get lost. She’s as broken as Joel, only with better fashion sense.
Shawn sighs and pulls a knee up, balancing an elbow on it and scratching his hand through his hair. “How was she?”
“Hanging in there, just like Joel,” I say, obeying what I’m guessing is some kind of inner girl code by telling the truth without really telling it. The comparison alone says enough, because Joel is the same sort of shell. He goes through the motions—shows up at practices, hits his marks, forces a laugh when everyone else laughs—but even someone like me, who hadn’t really known him before, can tell his light his out. The one that lit for her.
Shawn sighs and looks out over the big yard behind the old woman’s house, and I’m content to watch him think. It’s like watching the northern lights, a breathtaking phenomenon that not many people get to see. Guys like my brothers can simply space out, think about nothing, but not Shawn or even Adam. It’s a songwriter thing, a constant introspection, and it’s why the band’s songs resonate with so many people. It’s why they’ve always resonated with me. And now, watching Shawn climb inside himself, I wonder if I’m witnessing the lyrics of our next hit being drafted, if this is what that looks like.
“I used to wish they’d stay apart,” he says. “Now, I wish they’d just get back together.”
“Why?”
“I think they need each other.” Shawn glances over at me, like he just realized he’s talking to another person instead of himself, and then he lets out a breath and stares back over the yard again. “I don’t think they needed each other before, but . . . I don’t know. It’s like none of us ever realized he was half a person until she came around. Not even him.”