“Just tell me what I did. I can fix it, baby. Please.”
I’d been fucking pathetic.
“You can’t,” she’d said a dozen times. “No one can.”
The more I’d pressed, the more she’d closed herself off to me.
“Just come with me,” I’d begged. “We have a show in Fort Worth tomorrow night. Sunday we can go to that museum like you wanted.” I’d never given two fucks about visiting art museums, but I’d suffered through a couple for her. She’d get so excited. While she was looking at paintings I couldn’t make heads or tails of, I’d be watching her. The way her eyes would light up and her mouth would drop open just slightly as she stared in awe at each work.
For a moment, I thought I’d had her. She got that look, the same one she got when she looked at her favorite paintings. Then her expression blanked, her eyes lost their light, and she shook her head.
“I can’t, Dallas. Life on the road is your thing. Not mine.” She wouldn’t even meet my eyes when she said it.
I’d wondered briefly that if maybe I had more money, if the band were more successful, if I could promise her fancy hotels and room service instead of leftover pizza and Cracker Jacks in a van, if that would’ve mattered. But I’d never known her to be materialistic and up until then she’d seemed fine with the lack of luxury accommodations.
But as we said goodbye for the final time, my insecurities took over and I decided that she’d simply gotten tired of my shit and finally lost faith. In the band. In me. In us.
There was always a possibility the band would never take off, never “make it,” so to speak.
I’d had a choice to make.
I could let her down or let her go.
Standing here now, staring at the woman she loves most in the world and half-listening while Dixie details the hell that was Robyn and Belinda’s life that summer, I know I chose wrong.
29 | Robyn
“YOU LATE?”
Dallas’s words echo in my head over and over.
Because I am late. And I am never late. My life runs according to a very set schedule and my body cooperates with this most of the time.
I try to reason it away. I’m stressed. I’ve been traveling a lot. My body is just out of whack.
After hours of hanging decorations and lights and chasing down everything from extension cords to building permits, my feet and lower back ache like I spent the morning beginning my career as a barefoot carrot farmer. To make matters worse, I feel like I’m coming down with something. Something I am hoping and praying has nothing to do with the fact that my monthly visitor from Hell had yet to arrive. The nausea has mostly subsided but a wave blindsides me and while Katie handles the rest of the setup I am in the bathroom, sitting on a closed toilet seat holding a wet paper towel to my neck.
After a few minutes the soggy texture of it against my skin threatens to bring the half a turkey sandwich I had for lunch back up, so I throw it away and lean on the cool marble wall, concentrating on taking deep breaths until I regain my equilibrium. That is, until the scent of the bleach-based cleaner they must use to sanitize the ladies’ room hits my nostrils and nearly doubles me over.