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“God, I miss you,” I said.
There was a long pause, where all I could hear was her sniffling and my heart cracking in two. “This is harder than I thought,” she said.
“Why’d you think it’d be easy?” I asked.
“I never thought for one second it would be easy to be apart from you all summer. Never. But I thought if I told myself you were living your dream, it would take away some of the sting of your absence.”
I wanted to reach through the phone and touch her face. Wipe her tears away. Fucking hold her sweet hand. Anything to make this all better.
“We have to get by another week, then we’ll be together, right?”
She sniffled again. “Right.”
Tali was meeting up with the tour in Virginia and we were going to drive in my old beater to Maryland and Pennsylvania together, grabbing hotel rooms instead of cramming into my tour bus. It was three nights—all she could take off from work and classes—but I was living for those three nights.
And as much as I hated that she was sad, part of me needed to hear her like this. To know she was missing me the way I was missing her. ’Cause the chemicals I’d put in my body coupled with feeling like shit for two days after was only amplifying the doubts I’d been letting invade my brain.
“Talk to me, Tali. Tell me what you’ve been doing while I’ve been missing you.”
“First of all, if you think I’m not missing you, then you’re going to be surprised when I knock you over from how hard I’m going to throw myself at you when I see you.”
The dull ache in my head was worth it for the laugh she pulled out of me. “Not a chance I won’t catch you.”
“I’m more interested in whatyou’vebeen doing,” she said.
“Ahhh...it’s both incredible and horrific. I’m performing, sharing my music, and the people who come...maybe half are in it for the music. The other half are here to get lit and spend the day outside partying. I mean, I’m sure they pay attention to the bigger bands, but they, like, play Frisbee while we’re on stage, you know?”
“But the half who are there for music…”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, because she got it. “The half who are here for the music are all in. We’ve sold a shit ton of CDs, and after we get off the stage, I spend maybe an hour or so talking to people from the audience.”
“You’re doing it, Jude. You’ve just got to hang in there until the Frisbee people can’t ignore you. It’s coming.”
Frustrated as hell I couldn’t have her in my arms, I pounded the bunk above me with my fist. “I love the hell out of you, baby. You just...god, you say the shit I need to hear.”
“I love the hell out of you too. And I’m not blowing smoke. You know me, I’d tell you if you sucked.”
She had me smiling again. “Yeah, I know you would.”
She let out another long sigh. “So, I think I’m going to keep living with Tino in the fall. He charmed my parents into thinking he’s an upstanding citizen, so I don’t think they’ll take much convincing. What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to be a minute walk from my house. As long as Tino doesn’t give me shit about sneaking into your bedroom, I’m cool with it.”
“He won’t. He’s completely cut out the partying. Now all he does it float around his pool, and we watch movies at night when I get off work. He’s like this new, mellow version of himself.”
“Have you been seeing a lot of Ben?” He’d kinda dropped out of my life. I’d called him a couple times but hadn’t heard back. I felt bad, leaving him in an empty house while the rest of us were out on tour, but there was no avoiding it.
“He’s been hanging out with us most nights. He’s doing the counselor thing at a summer camp during the day, and I don’t know, he must get really tired, because by the time I see him, he’s usually a little slurry.”
I sat up, knocking my head in the process. “You think he’s on something?”
“Maybe? But he’s functioning, and he seems happy. I could just be imagining things.”
“Tell him to call me, okay? Or email or smoke signal.”
She let out a short laugh. “I’ll tell him. Maybe we can all call you tonight.”
I groaned. “Tonight we’re going to be driving. Which means at least fifteen assholes crammed on this bus. Loud assholes.”
