“Can we grab some dinner? I’m starving,” I tell them when we’re finished.
“Let’s just order pizza and have it delivered to the room. I want to work on our song some more. Try and get something workable down before tomorrow night.” Dallas strides purposefully over to his guitar case and begins packing up.
We’ve been working on this song, the band’s anthem my brother insists we need, for the better part of a year. If I have to go back to that room, where Dallas’s worries are breathing up all the oxygen, I might wither and die. He isn’t verbalizing them, but I can feel his concerns emanating from him, growing more intense every minute as we approach performance time. Maybe it’s a sibling thing.
Gavin must be able to read my thoughts—a terrifying possibility, really—because he steps between my brother and me before I say anything.
“How about we go to that Italian place we passed on the way here? It’s in walking distance. D, you can still get pizza and we can talk about the song without being stuck in that room.”
I watch Dallas, waiting for his response. He rakes a hand through his hair before huffing out a loud breath and looking from me to Gavin and back to me again.
“I’d really just rather work, to be honest.” He looks at each of us in turn again, frowning when he sees the disappointment on my face. “I know I’m being kind of slave driver lately, but I promise I have the band’s best interest at the heart of my madness. Does that make me any less of a pain in the ass?”
I give my brother a gentle shoulder nudge of understanding. I know he means well, and Gavin knows, too. “It’s okay, Dallas. We know that,” I tell him. “It’s just . . . sometimes—”
“Sometimes we throw darts at pictures of you for fun,” Gavin breaks in.
Gavin’s comment makes Dallas laugh out loud. The tension dissipates as if it never existed. This is why we work. Why Leaving Amarillo is still together. I love the music but hate the business side of it. Dallas lives for the business side of it. Meanwhile, Gavin keeps us from murdering each other with our instruments.
And this is why I’m afraid. If our dynamic changes, if I lose the thin white-knuckle hold I have on my feelings for Gavin, it will ruin everything. It will ruin us.
I don’t know who I am without Leaving Amarillo. What’s even more frightening is I don’t know who Dallas or Gav are without it, either. Maybe in another life I’m a bank teller and they’re construction workers or something. But in this life, we are this band. Each of us an integral part of something much bigger than us.
“Y’all go ahead,” Dallas begins as we leave the empty warehouse. “I’ll grab something at the hotel.”
I frown at him. “Dallas—”
“Seriously. I’ve got half a dozen ideas about how to make this song work. I need to get on it before I lose the lyrics in my head.” He opens the back of the van and puts his guitar inside, then reaches for my case. “Promise I’m good. I just want to get on this while it’s fresh.”
Gavin finishes loading his kit and slams the back door. “Dude, it’s fine. We can come on back with you. We’ll order pizza, like you said.”
I sigh, because I know my brother has won and it’s back to the room of doom we go. Between our luggage and equipment and the cot Gavin sleeps on, the overcrowded space is a cramped maze.
“Dixie looks like I just sentenced her to death,” Dallas says with an eye roll in my direction.
I toss him a dirty look. “Or a life sentence in room 306 at the Days Inn, which is pretty much a fate worse than.”
Just as Gavin turns to open the passenger door of the van for me, Dallas stops him. “Seriously. Go. Eat. I kind of need to be alone anyways. This song is kicking my ass and I’m sick and tired of it.”
Gavin arches a brow, but I don’t waste any time.
“You heard the man, Garrison. Let’s go. Feed me.”