I wondered. But I didn’t see her sneaking off with anyone new.
Anyway, it was none of my business. My business was her music, and I was proud of that—Ryan was no longer shying away from the new stuff. She leaned into the pop, the rock, the alternative. She and I developed some really excellent instrumentals with Celine and Wilder, just really deep, soulful stuff. One of my favorite riffs of all time is still that magic Wilder worked during “Flowers on the Sill.”
Soon we had enough drafts for another album. It was a new era.
Mari
It took me a long time to break the news to my parents that I’d dropped out of UCLA. Well—not dropped out. I was able to work out a deal with my counselor that I could continue to work toward my degree through online classes. Because who was she to argue that working onthe marketing team of one of the fastest-growing stars wasn’t a good career move?
I served my time; I started as a marketing assistant and went through the proper professional development. But traveling with the Madcap team and navigating an international campaign was the best experience I could have asked for.
And I mean, I was traveling the world with my best friend. Ryan, Wilder, and I would hit the streets after rehearsals and working hours and find food, go to museums, just be tourists. It was really freeing for Ryan, I think—sure, there were people who recognized her, but it was nothing like the US. Especially if she had a hat or sunglasses on. Asia and Europe were the final frontier of her fame.
I still wondered if there was something going on between her and Wilder. It was more in how theydidn’tlook at each other than how theydid, like they were always trying not to be obvious.
There was one night in Berlin when the three of us went for a walk near the Berliner Dom after a rehearsal. We went through the park, and it was just stunning—cold and crisp, but a beautiful night with crocuses just starting to come up and birds in the fountains. There was a cart selling pretzels, and I said I’d get some for us.
When I paid and turned around, I saw that Ryan and Wilder were standing with their backs to me, facing the cathedral. They were looking at each other. But they were standing too far apart. It’s such a weird thing to remember, but I thought to myself,That’s farther apart than normal friends would stand. Why are they keeping that distance from each other?
I don’t know. Maybe I was reading into it. When I brought it up to Ryan, as casually as I could, she looked at me like she didn’t know what I was talking about.
Elyse James,author
While Ryan was touring across Europe, I was grinding away at my job as a staff photographer for theLos Angeles Timesand missing my brother.
I had followed him out to LA, in fact, even though I was older and should have been the one to go first. But all those Pittsburgh shows and vinyl records in McKees Rocks got their tenterhooks in him, and he and a friend took a van out west as soon as they could leave town.
I followed him a few months later. My photography gig wasn’t taking off like I’d hoped, but it did land me a photojournalism job with theLA Times, and I jumped at the chance. I wanted to tell stories. To meet new people other than the ones I’d grown up with.
I remember calling Wilder about my plans. “I won’t be in your way,” I said, worried he’d think I was hovering. “You just made the sunlight sound so nice.”
“In my way?” he asked, always kinder than I gave him credit for. “You’d better hope I’m not inyours! I have, like, twenty different places I want to take you to already.”
He followed through. We met up most weeks, and Wilder took me to see the Route 66 sign, the Warner Brothers studio, Topanga Canyon.
I had coworkers I was friendly with, but Wilder was the one I felt closest to.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he told me once. “It’s easy to get swept up in ... I don’t know. All of it. Everyone’s so ‘West Coast’ out here, and it’s nice to have people around to keep you grounded.”
“Same goes for you,” I said. He’d always been like that—an idealist, getting so excited by one plan or another that he jumped into things feetfirst. I let him believe I was there to be a big sister.
But the truth was that he was one of my only friends.
Plus, I was feeling protective of my brother. He’d gone from bumming around the LA music scene to getting hired by a major music act in the span of a month, and on top of that unlikely timeline, he’d met someone.
He was coy about it. He talked about her all the time without saying her name, only that she worked in operations on these live shows; I had my suspicions but came to refer to her as “the Mystery Girl” when he and I would meet up for ramen every Wednesday night.
I watched him flourish and trusted him and hoped he was taking care of himself.
It wasn’t until I was flipping through a copy ofVogueon my lunch break and stopped dead in my tracks that I knew.
There was a picture of my brother, in a splashy centerfold shoot of a live show in Paris, gazing at Ryan Holding as he played his guitar opposite her, neck taut, fingers in motion, close enough for the two of them to be in one portrait frame.
And she gazed back, caught in the heat of performance, looking directly into his eyes with an adoration that would be unmistakable to any professional photographer.
My brother, Wilder James.
Seventeen
