“She always has been. My grandma helped raise me, but she had a stroke when I was in high school and has been in a nursing home ever since.” He trails off, and then shakes himself free of unvoiced thoughts. “Anyway, after that, my mom and I moved, and I started going to school with the guys. I heard they had a band, so I made them listen to me play guitar. One of the guys my mom dated had played, and when he split, he left his guitar behind and I taught myself to play.” Another pause, more silent memories. “Most days, my mom was trashed and belligerent, so I stayed at Adam’s house. Even when he wasn’t home, most nights I slept on his floor just because I never wanted to be at my own house. I drew a lot back then. I got better at playing guitar. And you know what? I was happy. Those were the first years of my life when I felt seriously happy.”
I never wondered about how Joel had grown up, about how he met the guys. I never wondered about him at all. Now, he’s all I can think about, and I want to know everything. I want to know the answers to questions I haven’t even thought of yet.
“Maybe that’s why I don’t have a car or an apartment or anything,” he continues. “I like sleeping on Adam’s couch because that’s what I was doing the first time I ever really felt like I had a family. The guys were my brothers, and their moms bought me clothes and cooked me dinners . . . When I was little, one of my mom’s boyfriends bought me birthday presents one year—he even bought me this awesome Hot Wheels Dragon racetrack I really wanted—but my mom turned around the next week and sold them all for booze money.” Joel sighs, his chest rising and falling beneath me. I rub my hand over his downy-soft T-shirt, and he says, “I guess I just got used to not having anything.”
After a long, long while, I say, “Joel . . . why’d you tell me all that?”
When he doesn’t answer, I think he must be asleep, but then his quiet voice says, “Because I want you to know.” His arms hug me closer, and he adds, “And I’m starting to think that maybe having nothing isn’t such a good thing to get used to.”
Chapter Fourteen
WITHOUT ALL THE people in it, Mayhem looks strangely smaller. The ceiling seems a little higher but the walls appear a whole lot closer, like they’ve recovered from stretching to fit the flood of bodies that pours between them each and every weekend. We’re here on a Saturday, but it’s early afternoon—the line outside won’t start forming for at least a few hours, when this husk of a building is brought back to life with the magic of too-bright lights and too-loud music.
The screech of a floor-cleaner echoes from somewhere behind me.
“Next!” I shout, and Leti leaves the cavernous room to bring in the next auditioner. So far, most of them have been airheaded groupies here for pictures or autographs. I may or may not have lost my temper on one of them and threatened to shove her Sharpie somewhere no one would find it.
There are six of us sitting at a long foldout table facing the stage. Joel is on the left, next to me, Shawn, Adam, Rowan, and Mike. Before the festival, I wouldn’t have felt like I belonged at this table. Now, I can almost believe that I do.
Last Sunday morning, after spending the night wrapped in Joel’s arms, I woke up early, hopped into my shorts, and went downstairs to make a pot of coffee. Shawn was already standing in the kitchen with mussed hair and a steaming mug in his hands.
“You’re up early,” he noted as I poured myself a cup and shoveled into the sugar.
“Couldn’t sleep.” It was a total lie—I could have slept all day. A big part of me wanted to, as long as Joel stayed with me in bed. When he holds me, he doesn’t snore, and I sleep better than I do alone.
“Looked like you were sleeping just fine to me,” Shawn said with a smirk I deftly ignored.
I leaned back against the kitchen counter and blew tendrils of steam away from the lip of my mug. “So how did that conversation about the ‘psycho groupie’ go last night?” I asked. I said it like it didn’t bother me, like nothing could bother me, but Shawn’s grin slipped away.
“Honestly?” he asked, and the steam stopped wafting away from my cup. I held my breath, and Shawn said, “Mike and I told everyone about the time Cody slept with his cousin.”
My jaw nearly dropped. “He did that?”
“No, but if he wants to spread bullshit lies, so can we.” Shawn’s grin came back ten times cockier, and when I laughed, he laughed too.
With his chin now resting heavily on the heel of his palm beside me, he says, “This is a disaster.”
I can’t argue. We all got our hopes up when the last person Leti brought in actually had a guitar with him, but those hopes were soon dashed when the guy revealed he had no idea how to play it and only wanted it signed.
“I’m screening everyone beforehand from now on,” I say, casting a glance over my shoulder at the unmanned bar. The guys made an arrangement with the owner of Mayhem so we could hold auditions here—I wonder how mad he’d be if I deemed this an emergency situation and raided his liquor supply.
“Driver?” Rowan says, stealing my focus from the bottles behind the bar. At the right end of the table, she’s been buried in a textbook and homework, but now all of her attention is on the lanky guy Leti just brought in. His hair is a curly burnt-orange mess; he has something-I-don’t-think-is-a-cigarette tucked behind his ear; and . . . is that a freaking banjo?