Page 12 of Anything But Lonely

“Does that mean the little man will be at the next show?” Liam asks, gathering the attention of the rest of the guys.

“Crew’s coming to Atlanta?” Eddie asks, his tone a little concerned.

“Yeah, Tal is meeting us there before she flies out,” I answer. Turning to Liam and the other Sugarcoated Lies kids. “Crew will be traveling with us for the rest of the tour.”

“Damn, that kid is cooler than me,” Asher, the Sugarcoated Lies drummer, says, and the other guys echo similar sentiments.

Just like Silas, these twenty-somethings don’t have kids, meaning they don’t realize tour life isn't just venues and setlists when there’s a four-year-old joining us. It's avoiding meltdowns, navigating picky eating, and figuring out how to do bedtime when it’s at the same time I’m supposed to be on stage.

A dry laugh escapes my throat, and it takes a lot of effort to appear nonchalant.

“Are you going to have a babysitter or someone with him?” Liam asks just as someone from our crew knocks on our door, giving us a ten-minute countdown until it’s time for us to go on, and my body immediately goes into autopilot.

The air shifts—charged in a way that only happens before I go on stage. It’s like the edges of my vision blur, and I can only focus on getting into the right mindset. I feel the drum of my pulse go steady, opening and closing my fists to allow the tension in my body to settle.

The Sugarcoated Lies guys wish us luck as we leave the green room, but I barely hear it over the buzz of the backstage light and the distant noise of the crowd. I inhale deeply, unbothered by the hushed, hurried voices of the crew as Eddie, Theo, Silas, and I head to the stage.

Rolling my shoulders, I taste the faint nerves in the back of my throat before swallowing them down as I take one more deep breath, the lights on stage going down and the crowd going wild.

I feel the confidence I only ever get onstage click into place, and it’s like nothing else matters.

And at this moment, aside from Crew sleeping soundly in his bed, nothing else does.

CHAPTER 7

EMERSON

I don’t know how long I’ve been in bed.

Could be hours. Could be days.

Not only do I not know, but I don’t really care.

My stomach cramps, but I don’t even register the hunger—just the idea of it, muted and irrelevant, like background noise coming from a different room.

Nothing lands the way it’s supposed to.

Nothing matters.

Not the slivers of light coming in through the closed blinds, not the weight of the blanket pulled over me, not the low hum of Cross My Heart’s latest album that’s been playing on a loop over the speaker on my nightstand since I woke up the first time and the silence was too loud.

Not even the sound of my phone buzzing somewhere in the bed.

I’m surprised it still has a charge.

There’s a list somewhere in the back of my mind—things to do, messages to answer, aspects of my daily life that should matter enough to feel urgent.

A task as simple as drinking a sip of water or brushing my teeth.

Those tasks should matter.

But this version of myself, the one expected to participate in the day, is buried underneath the numbness—like novocaine shooting right through my veins, completely paralyzing me beneath this hopeless fog.

I should get up. That thought arrives, complete and correct, but it dissolves. As quickly as it does every time it’s crossed my mind.

There’s no resistance. Just a complete absence of motivation.

My phone keeps buzzing, more than it has since I first got into bed after Rumi sent me home, but it’s like it belongs to someone else.