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“Tanner?”
He didn’t speak. Instead, he closed the distance between us, tentatively wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me into him. Burying his face into my hair, he drew a long, deep breath. “Yes. Of course, it’s a yes. Thank you for trusting me again and for coming back,” he murmured, so no one else could hear.
I turned my head so my lips ghosted the shell of his ear. “You’re worth coming back for, Tanner.”
Tanner
You’reworthcomingbackfor. I played that single sentence over and over, confused about what it was doing to my head and heart. I was actually glad I’d found a psychotherapist I really liked. Doctor Levi Carling was a specialist in addiction and childhood trauma. I wasn’t a therapist, but I guessed my issues as an adult came from the bitch that was my mother, and I needed to deal with all that history. He was based in Scotland, but was willing to work with me virtually while I was on tour. He thought we should start with twice-weekly sessions while I got used to dealing with life sober and I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t want to risk slipping or sucking face with Emmy again as a way to cope. I think it shocked everyone when I told them I was struggling with sobriety and that I was going to get some help. The insomnia and headaches I could endure, but the rawness and overwhelming feelings that slammed into me out of nowhere were more complicated.
The old me would have drunk more and partied harder, but my overdose had scared me more than I wanted to admit, and I knew I was close to losing it all. My band, my friends, my life. It was time to stop letting my past dictate my future, and this felt like the first step. And there were her words again…you’re worth coming back for.
We had all climbed onto one of the tour buses—the band, Addi, Rylee, Emmy, and security—for our meeting before we left. The plan was to drive across Europe for three months and then fly to the US and fly-drive across the different states. It was going to be long, intense, and pretty cooped up on these buses, but we’d been touring for most of our time in the band, so we were all used to it.
Addi ran through the itinerary for the next few weeks. She gave everyone their bus allocations. Security on one. Addi, Rylee, and Frankie on another, without anysmelly boys,apparently. Me and the twins were on this bus, which was the biggest. These tour buses were pretty pimped up. Ours had four double bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, and lounge/dining area. We would stay in hotels along the way as well, but this would be home for the next three months.
“What about me?” Emmy asked.
“Shit, Ems. I planned the allocations before I knew you were coming back. We have one of two choices. We can switch buses with the boys and all move here, or you can share with the boys. I mean, the twins are house trained, although I’m not sure about Tanner.”
“Cheeky cow,” I fired back.
“Aren’t we all loaded and ready to go? I’m not delaying you all and making you switch buses. I’ll stay here with the boys. I’m sure they’ll behave, and if not, I’ll sleep on your bus on the sofa, Addi.”
She stared at Emmy, a look of concern shadowing her face. “You sure, Em? I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable or unsafe in any way.”
Emmy smiled. “I trust all of you, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” She spoke to us all, but I couldn’t help but notice that her eyes were fixed on me. I swallowed down the emotion that was lumped in my throat and looked away, so she couldn’t see how much her words affected me.
“Right, everyone unpack, grab a coffee, get settled in. We leave in an hour. It’s a few hours until we get to the Eurotunnel and then we’ll be in France before you know it,” Addi announced.
“Frankie. Why don’t you come sit with us here until we get to the tunnel? Emmy suggested. “It would be great to talk to you all together about your friendship growing up. What do you say?”
“Let me go unpack and then I’ll come back. Tanner, I hope you’re planning on cooking for us, ’cause I’m starving, bro,” Frankie laughed out as she bounced off the bus.
“I’m on it, sis,” I yelled after her, unable to hide the smile from my face.
Chapter 10
Emmy
Twohourslater,we’reon the road, the five of us huddled around the table, my digital recorder sitting in the middle.
“I’m not joking, Mav was there, singing into an empty toilet roll, in his tiny pants and nothing else, pretending he wasPrince. I think I knew then that we needed to start a band, or he would end up as a drag act in Vegas.”
“Fuck off, Gray,” Mav replied, laughing so hard he could hardly speak.
“And when did you get your first paid gig?” I asked.
“Oh, that was prom when the boys were sixteen and I was fourteen. We’d been trying to get a proper gig for a while, but people were uneasy about letting kids in the line-up and we weren’t allowed to play in bars. We finally persuaded our school to let us play. I think they gave us like £50. It was a disaster. Tanner had so much hairspray on his fringe it’s a wonder we didn’t all go up in flames. I was so nervous that I threw up in a bin before going on stage. Gray played in the wrong key for the entire set and Mav was so busy winking at the girls that he only managed about twenty notes the whole night. But the crowd was happy to watch people they knew up on stage, and they didn’t seem to care. We played awful covers while teenagers danced awkwardly. It nearly put us off music forever. But it also helped us. It pushed us to realize that we didn’t want to be a cover band. We wanted our own sound and our own lyrics, so the boys started writing themselves.” Frankie smiled at the memory.
“God, it was so bad, wasn’t it? We were so young and inexperienced, but we had fun,” Tanner added with a wink, and they all laughed.
I didn’t want to lose the focus from Frankie, because I knew how invisible she felt. “Frankie, you said the boys wrote. Do you not write songs or melodies?” She glared at me, seemingly embarrassed.
“I do, but no one wants to hear them. It’s fine. They’re probably not great.”
“What? Sis, are you writing?” Gray asked, pinching his brows together as he waited for her reply.
“Yeap. For years. I just didn’t think you’d want to read them. You’re all the writers. I just play the drums.”
