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“You’re hilarious. You’re living vicariously through me when you’re madly in love with a gorgeous woman who cooks you gourmet meals every night and makes you laugh until you cry regularly?”
She had the decency to look sheepish. “Is that the life you would want if you were given the choice?”
My answer was immediate. “No. That’syourlife. Mine is always going to center around music. Boys are on the side.”
“As long as you’re happy.” She gave me a long look, as if she was trying to peer inside to check my current level of happiness. If happiness was tabulated the way video games kept track of how much life a character had, mine would currently be half-full—I wasn’t a pessimist.
I was no Nina. I didn’t brim with contentment, but I didn’t know many people who did. Being half-full was something of an accomplishment.
“I’ll be happy once I get to Amsterdam and see with my own two eyes that everything is going the way it should.”
“Don’t you have people in charge of all the tour stuff?” she asked.
I laughed; what a silly question. “You keep acting like we just met today. Obviously there is a tour manager. Her name is Michaela. She’s amazing. Our sound engineer, Hector, could do his job with his eyes closed. Our lighting technician, Sam, has electricity running through his blood.”
“So, in other words, you don’t have anything to be stressed about?”
Ha! Hilarious. We were about to go on a whirlwind six-week tour all over Europe. Clearly there wasnothingfor me to worry about or over think or twist and turn in my head a thousand times.
“I’m not stressed, per se. And I do trust our crew implicitly, or they wouldn’t be our crew. But they’remyband, you know? I have to make sure everything is right for them. Once I get there and see all the cogs turning, I’ll be able to breathe.”
Nina twisted her engagement ring again. “And then you’ll come back here and manage my wedding for me?”
Grinning, I pulled her in for a one-armed hug. “I’ll manage the hell out of your wedding. There has never been such an organized maid of honor. I’ll put all other maids of honor to shame.”
Starting from her first girlfriend, Heather, Nina dated a string of Very Bad Women. It seemed to be her type. If there was a Very Bad Woman, Nina was there, giving out her phone number and turning a blind eye to her Very Bad Behavior.
Naturally, I’d been leery of Lydia at first. It took me time to agree to sit down for dinner with her. And that one dinner wasallit took for me to like her. The irony of the entire situation was Nina had been unsure of her—probablybecauseLydia didn’t treat her like shit.
First loves, they’ll fuck you up until the end of time if you let them.
Or, in Nina’s case, until she met a woman so warm and patient, who loved her without restraint or strings, the tether to her past snapped, freeing her.
Nina stayed for a while longer,until we mostly demolished my cheese and bread. Before she left, she made me promise to send her a postcard. I wouldn’t have much time for sightseeing, but a postcard I could handle. She had a whole collection from the places I’d been over the last decade working with musicians.
Once I was alone again, I turned on some music—I was just as obsessed with Jack White as I’d been a million years ago, but now, I was more of a Raconteurs girl than strictly White Stripes—and got out my checklist.
Everything was in order. A modicum of calm came over me from the rows of ticked boxes. The only thing out of place was my old White Stripes shirt Nina must have thrown in when I wasn’t looking—I hadn’t worn it since college, so she must’ve dug it out of the bottom of my drawer. I didn’t leave it wadded up, but I also couldn’t bring myself to put it away in my dresser. Once I’d rolled it, I found a spot for it, snug between my jeans and yoga pants.
I closed my suitcase and zipped it up. In a little more than twenty-four hours, I’d be in Amsterdam, and I was so ready to get back on the road. I flopped on my bed, closed my eyes, and sang along with Jack White. “Steady as she goes…”
