Jean Haus - With the Band

I nod, brushing my nose against his, then he lets go of my neck, settles back onto the pillow, and picks up his book.

I start clicking through pictures. Low music and snippets of conversation vibrate from the front of the bus but not loud enough to drown out the occasional turn of a page. I get back to typing again.

My little cave has become a place of contentment.

I wake up in the middle of the night to the rhythm of the bus moving and a tightly muscled body holding me. Gazing into the darkness, I recall falling asleep on the bus while the guys were stuck in interview after interview in Kansas City. Apparently, Sam skipped his bunk and came right to me.

For a nanosecond, I wonder what the guys thought of that.

Then Sam’s warm breath rushes over my cheek, and I realize I don’t give a shit.

I wrap my arms around the ones holding me and fall back asleep.

“So what magazine is your dream job?” Sam asks, bumping his elbow into mine as we stare out the window, gawking at the mountains on our way to Salt Lake City. After that, it’s back to California, where the tour had started before Luminescent Juliet even joined up, for the last concert in Fresno. “ Vibe ? Alternative Press ? Or Rolling Stone ?

I break my gaze from the view of endless mountains—the part of Michigan where we grew up is pretty much flat—to look at him kneeling next to me on the couch. “Any of those would be awesome. I mean, maybe if I land a job and build a big enough reputation to be picky, I’d probably go for something like Alternative Press, but with the way the Internet is screwing journalists at the moment, I’m not sure being picky will ever be an option.”

“Ah, the joys of technology,” he says, then grins. “I knew you’d give the Press special treatment, punk fan that you are.”

I roll my eyes. “What about you?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“What do you plan on doing with that English degree?”

“Maybe add a teaching certificate? Maybe write?” He gives me a pointed look. “Maybe edit you?”

Edit me? Please! I return his pointed look.

“Maybe I won’t need my degree.” He glances out the window. “Maybe I’m going to ‘Beverly Hills,’ ” he sings, his pitch perfectly matching the song by Weezer.

“Is that what you want?”

“To play music? Write songs? And party until I’m fifty? Stop cutting lawns from April to October? Hell yeah.”

“Party until you’re fifty? Okay. I didn’t know Keith Richards Jr. was the type to run to the back of the bus to snuggle instead of hanging in the green room to party.” He laughs but my expression turns hard. “Unless you haven’t given that shit up.”

The lines of his expression smooth out as he becomes serious. “I didn’t lie to you, Peyton. I would never lie to you about that. I’ve been clean since that night.” He shakes his head as my features soften. “And you’re right, it’s not about the partying. But just like you, I love music, and I dream of being able to make it my real career. To be able to write songs and play onstage for years . . .”

I gesture behind us to the bus. At this point, it’s starting to feel like a well-furnished prison on wheels. If it weren’t for him, I’d be pulling my hair out by now. “What about living like this?”

“Sometimes,” he says, shrugging, “you have to take the good with the bad. If the good is that freaking good.”

It’s obvious he loves to perform and play. It was obvious when I watched him in the Bottle Rockets. But songwriting? It’s kind of established that Romeo is the band’s songbird. I stare at Sam’s stunning profile against the almost equally stunning backdrop of mountains. “Exactly how many songs have you written?”

He turns slowly to look at me. “Well . . . um, I’ve helped Romeo a bit with the melodies, so maybe about twenty percent there, but more than half of the album’s lyrics are mine.”

“Why?” I ask, knowing he’ll understand that I’m asking why he’d hide his contribution.

He turns back to the scenery. “Like ‘Trace,’ most of them are personal. I don’t like the idea of people getting a peek into my soul.”

I’m thinking I’m going to have to figure out some more Luminescent Juliet lyrics when an awful thought occurs to me. “Are any about me?” My tone sounds pathetically fraught.

His lips twist into a frown.

“Sam?”

He glances out the window while I try to stay patient. He finally says, “There’s one.”

My teeth clench and grind until I let out a deep breath. “How bad is it? How bitchy am I painted? How—I mean I get it, I hurt you and you had every right to speak the truth, but . . .” My mind starts flipping through songs. None of them are about a heartless bitch. But I haven’t dissected all the lyrics yet.

“Hey,” he says, as his knuckle lifts my chin, “it’s not that bad. Really not bad at all. I wrote it remembering the sweet girl who’d filled my thoughts and spent time talking and joking around with me. Not the girl—”

“Who left you in the barn without a glance,” I say, finishing for him. “I’m sor—”

His fingers cover my mouth as he shakes his head. “No more sorry. You were right. The past is the past.” He scoots toward me, his knees sliding across the leather. “We’re here now. I want to live in the now, and let the past go.” His hands cup my face. “You were my first, and now you’re mine.”

Am I? When we’re intimate, there’s no doubt. Outside our passion, things aren’t as clear. I search his steady gaze, and drown a bit in the bright blue sea of it. Okay, fine. I am his. I rub a thumb over his bottom lip. “You’re mine too.”

He smiles softly and leans forward.

The swish of the curtain opening has Sam pausing.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Gabe says. “Lunch is served. Hot lunch. As in Gabe’s simmered steak and potatoes. The Crock-Pot with the battery inverter thing worked like a fucking charm.”

Sam’s gaze stays on me while he tells Gabe, “Great. We’ll be there in a second.”

“One last smooch?” Gabe says with a laugh, walking away.

“Several,” Sam says, reaching for my face so he can kiss me thoroughly. Standing, he grabs my hand. “One and a half more days, and we’re off this damn bus.”

“Wait,” I say, pulling him back. He looks down at me. I bite my lip, then ask, “When you said I was your first, what did you mean?”

A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “You were the first girl I ever slept with.”

I blink at him. “Really?”

He sits down. “Seth was the playboy.” He points to the book on the table. “I was the geek. We didn’t do the band thing for real until senior year, and, well, I wasn’t used to the attention.” He adds with a frown, “Yet.”

“You were my first too,” I blurt.

He cocks his head. “You and Seth?”

I shake my head a bit too violently. “No, never.”

“But he said . . .”

My gaze turns glaring.

“Yeah, well, it never mattered even when I thought that you two—” He slaps his forehead. “Fuck. How did I not know that you were a virgin?”

He looks so unhappy with himself, I reach for his hands. “Maybe because you were a virgin too?”

“Still,” he says, wincing.

“And we were kind of lost in the moment and drunk. I mean, we didn’t even use a condom.”

His hands tighten on mine. “I would have stood by you if you were pregnant. Seth falling off the deep end or not.”

“I know. I knew it then,” I say, realizing that I did. Sam would have been there for me.

He nods, but his eyes are troubled.

Probably because I’m slowly seeing the past through a different, more mature lens, my emotions are as troubled as his gaze.