I put my hand up for him to grab, and he steps forward, taking it. As he pulls me up, I feel calluses on his thick fingers. Guitar calluses. I’d bet my career on it.
I pop up closer than expected, and he looks me in the eyes before taking a big step back.
“What about monitor engineers?” I ask before he can walk away.
Is it concerning how much I like needling him?
Maybe I really do need another outlet other than him, but I’m not about to pursue one when poking Patty is so fun.
“Do they ever get enough sleep?”
“No. But they haven’t earned it.”
He waits for me to walk past him before he flicks off the kitchenette light, leaving only the low floor lights that offer just enough illumination to allow people to move around the bus without overhead lighting.
I turn around before I close the door to my suite and catch Patty grabbing a toiletry bag from his bunk bathroom.
“Good night, Patrick O’Shannan.”
“Good night, Lucy Williams.”
I smile and close the door. I take a long, lazy shower and get ready for bed slowly, savoring the quiet after the high-octane day. I braid my hair the way my stylist taught me so it’ll dry in the waves she likes so much.
As I’m brushing my teeth, I leave the brush dangling from my mouth so I can pull on thick slipper socks. Even though the bus is set at my ideal temperature, my hands and feet are always cold. And it’s the act of putting on socks that reminds me I left my boots on the ground in the lounge. And because I wasn’t raised in a barn, I walk out of my suite to put them away.
But when I get there, my boots are gone.
I check under the coffee table, then around the floor, until I spot the backs of them poking out of a cubby near the front of the bus.
Patty must have put them away.
Huh.
I smile as I head back to my suite, rinse out my mouth, and climb into bed.
Patty put my boots away, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I’m not saying they’re all green flags.
But that one is.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PATTY
I’m up before the crack of dawn after a long night of staring at the bottom of the bunk above me. Bleary-eyed, I roll out and quietly make my bed, pulling the comforter tight and crisp, fluffing up my pillow.
It’s nothing fancy, but I’ve come to like a tidy space over the last several years—a far cry from, well, every year before them.
The disregard for cleanliness and order I got from my mom. We’re both “tortured artists” who think passion and art are the highest pursuits of humanity, who acted for too long like caring for others was something for lesser mortals.
The difference between my mom and me, though, is that, while she had a nice singing voice and could play the guitar well enough, I was an actual prodigy. I had perfect pitch at three and was figuring out how to transpose pieces before I could even read. I was eight when my piano teacher told my parents I had progressed beyond anything she could teach me.
“You’re gonna be Momma’s little star, ain’t you, baby?” Momma said when she picked me up from lessons that day. She squeezed my cheeks and let out a happy whoop.
In the key of A.
I have enough memories of her, but I have plenty without her, too. She was a wanderer, leaving to chase a dream every few months, breezing back in weeks or months later like nothing had happened.
