I sighed, realizing that the something he needed most was probably to be left alone to process. I nodded at Will and turned away, returning to the rowdy conversation going on with the rest of the guys, pretending I wasn’t watching Max anymore.
My original idea hadn’t been to do individual photo shoots of each of the guys at the zoo, but as I thought about how I wanted the day to go, it sort of worked into my plan. I was also going to take some candid video of the guys around the exhibits, goofing around and doing some male-bonding, but it was my mission to get a few minutes alone with Max to at least acknowledge that he’d had a tough day during our stopover in Montana.
Yes, he was probably going to hate it and resent me even more than he already did, but my gut was telling me it was the right thing to do. No matter how much my brain was telling me not to.
Gut always won over brain.
So I singled them out, one by one, leaving him for last until it was just the two of us. I had been dreading being alone with him since I’d hatched the plan but told myself that if I could get through the excruciatingly painful interview I’d done with him before tour had started, I could handle asking a few pointed questions while getting some stills.
Actually, probably best to get some stills first—there was a very good chance if (when?) I pissed him off by asking too many personal questions, he’d walk away. I needed those pictures, or all the rest that I’d taken of the other guys would be garbage. For it to work, it had to be a series with all the guys, not just most of the guys.
So as Darren wandered off to go join the others at the penguin exhibit, I began by just acting the professional photographer, taking a few stills of Max, biting my tongue when I wanted to tell him to smile.
Girls like broody, I kept telling myself. It’s good for the band. Except maybe I’d be more comfortable if his broodiness didn’t feel so...personally aimed at me.
I got a few shots in, proud of myself when I managed to not comment or even eye-roll when he let out a very long-suffering sigh. He was being a pain—just because I’d posed him to take advantage of the light. I mean, come on, it was just a few pictures, and I was doing my job.
Just for that, I took my time taking a bunch more that I probably didn’t need.
“Thanks, Max,” I said, pulling the camera away from my face and allowing it to hang by the strap around my neck.
Without a word, he turned and started toward the penguins, when I said, “Wait.”
His back stiffened a second before he turned around, crossing his arms over his chest. Wow, it was like he knew. I hated that he could be so intuitive.
My heart pounding, I walked up to him, and he stiffened even more, suddenly looked as cagey as any of the animals around him. “Relax,” I said, approaching him gingerly like he was a cornered raccoon. “I just want to talk to you for a sec.”
He gave me a sidelong look. “About what?”
My fight or flight response almost had me running away. Determined not to be cowed by him, I planted my feet and said, as gently as I possibly could, “I just wanted to check and make sure you’re okay.”
His eyes narrowed at me, and he gave me his standard, canned response: “I’m fine.”
As though it belonged to someone else, someone who wasn’t terrified of the outcome, my hand rose and touched the side of his upper arm. “Max,” I said.
He shrugged away, his gaze dropping toward the ground. “I said I was fine. Are we done here?”
“Max,” I repeated, clearly more stubborn than smart. “I know it had to be hard for you. Going home, I mean.”
His eyes snapped up to mine. “Why? Why do you have to keep at me all the time? Is this fun for you?”
I recoiled at his words. “Are you kidding? You think this is my idea of fun? Feeling like I’m poking at a rabid badger who wants nothing more than to infect me?”
“It must be since you do it so much.”
I tried to think back over the past week; we’d been together pretty much twenty-four seven and I couldn’t come up with any times that I’d ‘poked’ at him. If anything, I’d been doing my best to stay away from him. “You’re deluded,” I said.
He muttered something as he looked down again.
“What’s that?” I snapped, figuring he’d just called me a bitch. Or worse.
“I asked if we were done. I’d like to go.” Which wasn’t at all what it had sounded like, but whatever.
I was about to say yes when I was suddenly overwhelmed with an irrepressible anger. “You know what, Max, no, we’re not done. I asked you if you’re okay because, for some reason that isn’t clear to even me right now, I care. I can plainly see you’re hurting and it makes me sad. I’m not going to apologize for that.”
He just stared at me as I took a few long breaths, trying to settle my pounding heart.
But apparently, I wasn’t done. “You know, maybe it’s time you got your head out of your butt and realized that people care about you. That people don’t want to watch you destroy yourself as you wallow in self-pity.”
“Self-pity?” he bit out through gritted teeth.
I would have crossed my arms, but as I lifted them, I realized the camera was in the way. Instead, I put my hands on my hips, defiantly staring him down. “Yes, I said self-pity. I was speaking English.”
He blew out a loud breath through his nostrils, making me glad he wasn’t a dragon because I’d have been incinerated by now. “You think that’s what this is about?”
I forced myself to stare right into his eyes while I said, “Yes. I think that’s exactly what this is about. Poor Max. You keep blaming yourself for your girlfriend’s death and won’t allow yourself to move on because you think you need to keep beating yourself up for it.”
“I killed her.”
The words weren’t a surprise, but that he’d said it out loud was. “No, you didn’t,” I said, after only a moment’s pause. “It was an accident. Don’t you understand the difference?”
“There isn’t one; the end result is the same.”
I suppose he had a point, but there was a more important one to be made. “You think she’d want you wallowing in guilt for the rest of your life? You think she’d like that you’ve made the choice to stop living because her life ended—in an accident that’s been proven to not be your fault? I don’t think so.”
He stepped closer, getting right into my bubble, his face inches from mine as he glowered down at me. “Don’t you think for one second that you can speak for her. You didn’t know her. You could never know what she would have wanted.”
I swallowed as I leaned back to look up into his face. “So tell me.”
“What?”
I stepped back to get him out of my bubble but didn’t take my eyes off his. “Tell me what she was like. What kind of girl she was.”
It was obvious he hadn’t expected that. Conflict and pain washed over his face, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. A deep, raw one that wasn’t often exposed. I actually thought he was going to open up to me then, but suddenly, the vulnerability was gone, replaced by his regular broodiness. “No.”
That he’d shut himself down suddenly made me even angrier. Didn’t he understand I was trying to help him?
“Well, no matter what she was like, I doubt she would have wanted you to be acting like this, months after the accident. Do you really think she’s up in Heaven or wherever, happy that you’re torturing yourself? Happy that you’re a jerk who does nothing but feel sorry for himself and push people away?”
He opened his mouth, but I talked over him, not giving him the chance to disagree with me.
“Because I swear to God, Max, if that’s what you think she’s doing or what she would want—if you really believe that? She was a crap girlfriend. No good girlfriend would ever want someone they love to suffer or torture themselves that way.”
The second the words were out of my mouth, I
realized I’d gone too far. I’d let my anger get the better of me. Max’s widening eyes confirmed it.
Damn.
I reached out for his arm, his entire body quivering, probably from anger. “Max, I didn’t mean...” He pulled out of my grasp. “Max...”
He shook his head and turned, but I grabbed his arm again from behind. I tried to swing him toward me, but he wasn’t budging.
I spoke to his back. “I didn’t mean that she was a bad girlfriend. That’s not what I meant to say; I just don’t think she would want you doing this to yourself.”
When he finally spoke, his voice was even, calm. Well, actually, it was more like sad and resigned. Tired. Which was somehow worse than angry. “Go back to your phone and your tweeting, Sandy. I’m not interested in you telling me what she’d want, okay?”
That hurt. But I reminded myself it wasn’t about me. Not really.
I took a breath and willed my voice not to waver or break, but my throat felt so tight all of a sudden. “I care, Max. Just...don’t forget that, okay? No matter what happens. I’m not asking because of the band or because I want to tweet it or make it a story. I’m asking because I care. Just me. That’s all.”
And then I did what felt like the hardest thing; I let him go.
On the Road
After the Boise gig, we quickly got on the road for the long drive to Seattle. The energy on the bus was high because not only would the guys be playing a concert, but we were picking up Chris, who’d finally been pronounced one hundred percent, health-wise. That meant the end (maybe?) of Will’s stint as band member, which was bittersweet; everyone was excited to see Chris on tour, but I didn’t think anyone wanted to say goodbye to Will.
I was sitting at the table beside the kitchenette, after posting some video of the guys at the zoo. I was busy crafting some social media posts for the next day, as I thought about how the makeup of the band was about to change. That made me realize I would have to post the ‘spirit animal’ shots right away before Chris replaced Will. Or maybe I could get some shots of Chris separately and swap them out in the series. Good thing I’d taken a lot of extra photos at the zoo, especially since I didn’t really know Chris well enough to pick his perfect animal twin yet, so it was good to have a variety to choose from.
The guys were playing video games up front, mostly keeping it down because some people were already in their bunks. For good measure, I had my headphones on but had stopped working when I’d gotten a text from Ted, asking about my day.
Thinking about the stuff with Max and how I didn’t want to get into it, I was evasive at first. But then realized he was probably just making conversation, asking about the show, so I went on to tell him how good it had been. He didn’t need to know I’d been busy through most of it and had only caught the first few songs before I returned to the bus to cut video and put together the spirit animal series photos.
You seem distracted, Ted sent. His point was proven when it took me several minutes to notice his text—I’d gone back to working on the laptop the second after I’d responded to his first message.
I sighed. He was right that I was distracted. I was also tired and not in the mood to flirt; there was not a drop of wittiness in me. But since he’d gone out of his way to send me a text after his long day, I felt like I should at least pretend to be into it.
Clearly, I wasn’t doing a good job. Even though I assured him all was good and that my distraction was simply due to working and thinking forward to tomorrow’s gig in Seattle, he soon claimed he was tired and signed off.
It was sort of a relief, to be honest. A part of me—the one that really liked him—hoped I hadn’t ruined things for us, especially since I’d be seeing him in two days and we’d been building up to that meeting. But the rest of me, the part that was still so out of sorts after what had happened with Max, was finding it hard to work up the energy to do more than phone it in.
It was suddenly more important that I patch things up with Max than flirt with Ted.
When I realized I’d just created an Instagram post that made absolutely no sense, it was time to call it a day. I saved my work to be fixed tomorrow and closed the laptop, thinking maybe I’d join the guys up front for a bit of decompression before heading to bed. Killing a few zombies worked way better than counting sheep.
It came as a complete shock that when I tugged off my headphones and looked up, there was no one left—I was completely alone in the front of the bus. I glanced over to the kitchenette beside me, where almost always there was a guy standing with his head in the fridge, only to find it abandoned.
When had they all gone to bed? How had I not noticed? Had I said good night to them?
“Huh,” I said aloud, twisting my neck to look down the aisle toward the back of the bus, where the office was dark and empty. Slivers of light were coming out from Will’s and Andy’s bunks, but the rest were dark.
I was about to text Ted to apologize since it was suddenly very obvious that I was even more distracted than I’d thought. But as I opened up the text window between us, I really didn’t want to get into a conversation, so I left it.
Probably best to just go to bed. I was about to get into my bunk, when I looked up toward the front of the bus and out through the windshield at the dark road, lit only by the swath of the bus’s headlights.
I was reminded I wasn’t the only person still vertical. I made my way up to the captain’s chair. “Hey Gary, I’m last one up—can I get you anything?”
He dragged his eyes away from the road to smile up at me for a second. “Hey, Sandy. I’d love a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing. Right back.” I went back to the kitchenette, grabbed a glass and the pitcher from the fridge, filling it up about three-quarters of the way before returning to the front of the bus and placing it in Gary’s cup holder. I was going to say good night and leave him but instead dropped into the big, passenger seat, the leather chair letting out a ‘wiffff’ as I did. I let out a sigh of my own, causing Gary to glance at me again.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, swiveling the chair side to side as I looked out at the road.
“You know,” Gary said in his low voice. “They say that bus drivers are like the bartenders of band tours.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means that we’re great at listening to problems—I’m a captive audience. Not to mention that I’m happy for the company.”
“I don’t have any problems,” I assured him. Because, yeah, wasn’t going there.
“Okay,” he said like he believed me.
Ugh. Why did he believe me?
I looked out at the road again, watching the yellow line that ran down the center of the road alongside the bus. My tired eyes were mesmerized by the race that neither the line nor the bus would ever win.
After several long moments, when I started to feel hypnotized by the road, I shook my head, bringing my focus back inside the coach. “So,” I said, looking over my shoulder to make sure it was still just the two of us. We were alone, but I hesitated, not having any idea where to start. Or if I wanted to.
“So,” he echoed, reaching for his glass.
“It would be so much easier if you could read my mind,” I said.
He chuckled at that. “I can’t read your mind, but maybe I can guess what’s bugging you,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” I challenged; there was no way he’d know what it was about. He was going to think it was about a crush on one of the guys or maybe even the troubles that Nessa’d been having between Andy and all the social media junk around her. As the impromptu media person for the band, that fell in my corner. “Go right ahead.”
“It’s about Max.”
Seriously? First guess? I deflated in the big captain’s chair, sliding my feet out of my slippers and pulling my knees up to my chest, wrapping my a
rms around them.
He chuckled again. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to be so smug about it, Gary.”
“I’ve been at this a long time,” he said, the amusement draining out of his voice. “But it’s not about being smug or wanting to be right. Tell me what’s got you down.”
I sighed again. “I...it’s weird. It’s like everything I say or do is wrong.”
“I doubt that’s the case,” he said, reaching to put his cup back in the holder. “You can’t do and say everything wrong. No one can mess up one hundred percent of the time. It’s statistically impossible.”
I gave him a withering look, even though his eyes were still on the road. “Are you trying to make me feel better? Like, is that seriously supposed to help?”
He shrugged and gave me a coy grin. “Yes, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Why don’t you tell me what you think you’re doing wrong?”
“All I did was try to ask Max how he’s doing. And then when that blew up in my face, I told him that I care about him.”
That earned me a surprised look.
“No, not like that,” I assured him, glad it was dim at the front of the bus because, for some unknown reason, my face was heating up. “I wasn’t hitting on him or anything, just...you know, that I care. Like humans are supposed to for each other.”
“Maybe...” Gary said and then didn’t finish.
“Maybe what?”
He shrugged. “Going home was hard for him. He’s probably feeling pretty raw...”
“Raw, that’s the word Tony used.”
Gary nodded. “Maybe it’s just too much for him right now. He needs to work through it. He’s the kind of guy who takes time to process things—he’s not impulsive. Don’t take it personally if he’s not receptive to your gestures, as well-intentioned as they may be.”
Well, it was hard not to take it personally when he freaked out and walked away from me.
I picked at a rough spot on my nail (so much for that mani) and looked out the windshield, watching the yellow line racing along the road, watching it wobble along every so often, not quite straight.
The Rosewoods Rock & Roll Box Set Page 49