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“I already got some,” Brit said. “I talked to Brad, and he’s on board with the idea. I started with Denver’s drink. You guys can text me a list of stuff you need.”
I grinned at her. “Oh, we’ll text you. Prepare to get lots of texts.”
Brit looked at me warily. “Why am I wondering what I’ve gotten myself into?”
NINETEEN
Brit
By the time we left Colorado, I was a pro.
I could get just about anything done in any hotel, anywhere. I knew to map out twenty-four-hour drugstores, Walmarts, and the best takeout places before we arrived in a new city. I knew who to tip, and how much, to get laundry done quickly at a hotel. I knew the rhythm of show days, of travel days, and of down days. I knew the importance of water. I knew how to order food for four cranky rock stars stuck on a bus.
I knew that Denver’s stomach was giving him trouble—which usually happened on tour—and that he wasn’t sleeping. I knew that Stone hated to eat fish and had lost his phone charger cable three times. I knew that Neal owned a vintage leather jacket that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, and also needed a special leather treatment that I’d hunted down in Phoenix, finally finding a jar of it for twenty-one dollars.
The Road Kings weren’t divas. In fact, they were pretty easy to please. I’d seen plenty of divas during my years in L.A., people who expected ridiculous luxury at the snap of their fingers, people who saw their employees as pieces of furniture instead of as humans.
Whenever I picked up food for Denver, he looked amazed, as if I was a magician. And Neal hadn’t asked me to find the leather treatment; I’d done it on my own, and when I told him to hand over the jacket, he’d done so while apologizing profusely, as if he’d offended me somehow. I was starting to get the idea that in their previous decade of touring, the budget had been a lot lower than it was now, and these guys were accustomed to roughing it.
And I didn’t mind doing any of it. Because now I’d seen them play.
I’d watched both of the L.A. shows from backstage, and I got it now. The devoted fan base, the excitement, the reverence that people had on their faces whenever Axel came into The Corner. Listening to the Road Kings piped through a speaker in a coffee shop was one thing, but the full experience of a live show was completely different. I’d seen a taste of it in Axel’s basement, but that paled compared to seeing them onstage, whipping up a crowd. The songs sounded completely different—alive somehow, created anew each night, raw and energetic.
The four of them played effortlessly off of each other, even after so long apart, improvising and one-upping each other, catching each other’s grooves. Denver was otherworldly, his voice raw with emotion, his presence onstage a mix of anger and pain and riveting sex. The crowds were insane for it. I knew now why everyone said there was nothing on earth like a Road Kings show.
After L.A., I didn’t go to the shows anymore. The intensity was exhausting, and my anxiety hadn’t magically disappeared. As I sank into the crazy rhythm of being on tour, I felt like part of my job was to be the well-rested one, the person who was on an even keel so the others had the freedom to be tired. I could run three or four errands early each morning before the guys woke up, because I’d gone to bed early the night before. While the guys were draining themselves onstage, I had a few hours to plan for the next city.
Axel and I had our own routine. He’d text me when he was awake, and we’d meet up for coffee and some food. Sometimes he followed me around as I ran errands. Other times we went sightseeing. Still other times he’d laze around in his hotel room, do yoga, or do a run on the hotel treadmill while I called him every hour. I was as in tune with Axel’s moods as I was with my own. Most travel days, we rode the bus together, playingEmerald Quest.
I got to see San Diego, Phoenix, Denver—the city, not the singer. I got to try the local restaurants. I got to hang out with rock stars. And Axel was right—it was fun. Even in L.A., I didn’t think about Pierre. The tour made him get smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror, his toxic bullshit something that had happened a long time ago. I could feel myself moving on.
I talked to Aunt Ellen every other day over FaceTime, and I did a weekly session with my therapist the same way. Otherwise, my real life disappeared, like it had been a dream.
Most of the time, I didn’t think about kissing Axel at Christmas, what it had felt like to have him pressed against me, saying dirty things in my ear. I didn’t get tempted. He flirted sometimes, but he never pressed. We had an agreement, and he’d told the truth when he’d said this tour would have no groupies. He could have picked up a woman at any moment—they all could have—but he didn’t. In a weird, platonic way, he was all mine. I thought about him more and more often as I lay alone in bed at night, but I was handling it. We were on an even keel.
Then he got naked, and it all went out the window.
* * *
I thought,at first, that he must be drunk, or even high. Maybe the whole band was on something. My stomach dropped, and every part of me went on high alert.
It was four o’clock in the morning. The band had played Denver—the city, not the singer—last night, and we were due to play in Wichita the next night, which meant an overnight bus trip. I had found, oddly, that I could sleep pretty well in a bunk on a moving bus. But I woke up in the darkness to the feeling that the bus had stopped.
I poked my head out, blinking. Maybe the driver needed a bathroom break, or maybe we were at an all-night truck stop. But there were no lights outside the bus windows, only darkness. The door of the bus was open, the warm night air wafting in. And from outside, I heard Carlos say, “Holy fuck, he’s actually gonna do it.”
Careful not to wake Brad or Stephanie, I slid out of my bunk and put on a bathrobe over my sleep shorts and sleep tee.
“There he goes,” Carlos said, and I heard the other bus driver, Paul, cackling with laughter, the sound muffled as if he’d put his hands over his mouth to try and stay quiet.
Fully awake now, I walked to the doorway in my bare feet. I descended to the first step. “What’s going on?” I whispered.
Both men whirled, startled, and then they exchanged a glance, their eyes wide in the way of children—especially boys—all over the world, in every era of history. It was a look that said,Oh shit, I think someone’s in trouble.
I glanced over to the band’s bus, which was parked next to this one. I saw three shadows standing outside it, and I recognized them instantly. Stone, Denver, and Neal. No Axel.
A trickle of alarm moved down my spine. “What is goingon?” I hissed again, more forcefully this time. I didn’t like this furtive scene, standing around in darkness in the middle of the night. It was too secretive, and Axel was missing. This had to be something bad.
“Nothing?” Carlos said the word as a question, trying it out. It didn’t go well.
