Page 10 of Anything But Lonely

As I close the door to my apartment behind me, sitting in the silence of the space, feeling the stillness of the air, numbness wraps itself around me like a heavy blanket—like an old friend—smothering every spark before it can catch.

My feet carry me to my bed, my body sinking into the mattress, falling into a darkness I know all too well.

One where nothing matters.

One I wish I could stay in forever.

CHAPTER 6

MATEO

“Paris?” Eddie echoes, his brows lifted in surprise. He pulls the drumsticks he always keeps in his back pocket, twirling one between his fingers.

I blow out a breath. “Yeah. Fucking Paris.”

We’re in the greenroom, backstage at tonight’s show in Nashville. Our opening band, Sugarcoated Lies, is on now, the muted sound of the last song of their setlist filling the air around us.

“Is her husband going with her?” Silas asks from where he sits on the couch across from me.

I nod. “The company he works for has a branch in Paris, so he’ll be able to work while they’re out there.”

After Talia dropped the bomb of her photography agency moving to Paris, it took a good five minutes for me to say a word. Millions of questions ran through my head, trying to make sense of the logistics of her moving to Paris and me still with just under eight months left of this tour, and how the hell we’ll make this work for Crew.

Once I remembered how to string together enough words to make a sentence, she explained that even though the agency is now based in Paris, she won’t have to be out there permanently, and that helped settle some of my anxiety about what the fuck we were going to do.

“When is she moving?” Theo, our guitarist, asks between mouthfuls of the miscellaneous snacks the venue left out for us.

“The sooner she goes, the sooner she can get everything settled out there and come back to run the agency from Milwaukee,” I explain. “So the agency booked her a flight for next week.”

“Damn,” Eddie says, running a hand through his hair. “And how long does she need to be out there?”

I twist the silver rings on my finger, my leg bouncing a mile a minute with the nervous energy I’ve had since last night. “At least a year.”

“A year?” Theo and Silas say at the same time, and I let my body fall back into my chair, pressing my palms into my eyes until I see stars.

Last night at Lenny’s, Talia had explained that part of her agreement with the current owner was that she wanted to be based in Milwaukee, so the compromise is a year cramming in as much training as possible as they prepare the agency for the transition of leadership.

“What about Crew?” Eddie says, asking the question that caused all of my anxiety in the first place.

“Is he going with her?” Theo asks, coming over to sit down on the couch next to Silas, a bag of chips in his lap.

When Talia said she didn’t know how she was going to find childcare for Crew in Paris, I immediately told her that she didn’t have to worry about it. Talia has spent years being the one who makes our custody arrangement work with my weeks on the road, so I don’t go more than a few days without seeing Crew.

I owe everything to her.

When my parents died and I became Mia’s guardian at eighteen, I had to grow up quickly. Love and relationships felt so trivial when I was the one helping my eight-year-old sister with her homework and dropping her off at school. Between being her guardian and managing night classes to get a computer science degree, I didn’t have time to date.

It wasn’t until she was much older that I even considered it.

And that’s when I met Talia.

Meeting her, falling in love with her, was like a breath of fresh air after feeling like I was taking in smoke for years.

And while somewhere along the way we got comfortable—having followed the steps you’re supposed to until we realized that it had been years since we felt that spark we did almost a decade earlier—I would do it all over again.

Because now, instead of marriage and a wife, I have a lifelong friend and my son.

She’s been the most amazing co-parent for years, and I figured it was my turn to support her. It’s the least I can do—give her this year where she can focus on her career and know Crew is taken care of. We can FaceTime and do visits whenever we can. I’ll figure it out—she doesn’t have to worry. I told her that adamantly. So many times that I started to believe it myself.