by Caisey Quinn
Her grins over at me as we back out of my driveway. “Anything for you, gorgeous.”
“My hero,” I say with an eye roll. “So tell me about this RV.”
Jaggerd rakes his hair out of his eyes with one grease-stained hand. “Oh, you know. Standard American Coach. Kitchenette, bedroom, small bathroom. It was nice back when they first bought it, but it’s aged a bit. I checked around online. Might be able to get more like seventy-five for it these days.”
“I can’t believe they never sold it.”
Jaggerd gives me a strange look. I suspect he wants to ask what’s going on with the band—the one that I so easily chose over him. But thankfully he doesn’t.
“They put their life savings into that thing. Touring the world in it was their dream. Dreams aren’t exactly easy to give up on or let go of. You of all people should know this.”
The sentiment reminds me why I was so eager to see the RV. My dream no longer seems possible. Soon what once was my band will be touring without me and I’ll be . . . on my own, I suppose.
I’ve submitted the life insurance policies and caught the house payment up to date. Papa had prepaid for everything from the funeral to his burial site beside Nana and his headstone. Soon after Gavin and my brother left I realized there wasn’t as much to handle as I’d thought. But I still didn’t know if I was ready to go back on the road, and I definitely couldn’t go where the people making the decisions affecting the band’s future didn’t want me.
Dallas called to say the audition went well and that they should know something soon about whether or not they’d be joining the tour. I’m happy for them. I am. But a part of me is still that girl, still sitting on the side of the riverbank wishing she’d jumped. Still sitting in the audience wishing she hadn’t sat out the encore. I can’t change the past. But I don’t have to put my future on hold.
After making meat loaf and eating leftovers for the third night in a row and crying all over Nana’s piano, I decide it is time to get out of the house.
Out of town maybe.
“And tell me again why I can’t tell anyone about this?” Jaggerd looks nervous when we pull behind his father’s auto garage in the center of town.
“Because,” I say climbing out of the car and grabbing my bag from the backseat, “Dallas has enough to worry about right now without adding me to it.”
I follow Jag over to the oversized bay where the RV is parked. He unlocks the door and rolls it upward. The RV sits there in its massive glory. I don’t know what I expected but I didn’t think it would be in such pristine condition. I vaguely remember Jag saying he took it out and cleaned it up from time to time.
“Thank you. For taking such good care of it.”
“Your granddad was a good guy. And I’d like to think that you and I are still friends.”
“Of course we are,” I say absently, running my hand along the side of the vehicle.
“Dixie, this isn’t just something you can drive off in. You should really have a Class A or B for—”
“Relax. I just want to look at it, Jag.” For now, that is. He opens the door and I follow him in. “Besides, I have my Class B. I got it when we were thinking about getting a larger van to tour in.”
Jag steps aside and allows me to tour the home on wheels my grandparents considered the key to fulfilling their dreams.
When I move to the driver’s seat, I see it. The map.
Unfolding it, a sense of holding something close to them clogs my throat with emotion. Various states and cities are circled across it with a few names of antique malls and monuments scrawled here and there.
When Dallas and Gavin left, I felt lost, with no direction and no idea what was next. I’ve felt that way ever since. Sitting in the leather captain’s seat of the RV, the knowledge that I might never get to live my dream almost overwhelms me. But it doesn’t.
Because even though I might not to get to live my dream, I can still fulfill theirs.
The lights of the nearly empty interstate guide me like a jet down the runway. As big as this RV is, I feel like a 747 about to take off. Turning down the radio, I glance at my map one more time.
Eleven states, almost two dozen cities, and several little-known landmarks, here I come. I grab the hand of the girl on the riverbank, pull the young woman from the audience, and bring them both along with me. We aren’t sitting out anymore. We aren’t standing still any longer.
As I approach the NOW LEAVING AMARILLO sign, my heart flutters in my chest and I begin to hum a song that used to signal the close of every show.
Nana used to say that every ending is really a new beginning—we just don’t know it yet.
She was right.
Epilogue
Gavin
“WHO HAS YOUR BACK, GAVIN? WHO’S LOOKING OUT FOR YOU? Tell me. Tell me who holds you up when you start to fall? Who is there for you when you need them?”
You. I answer Dixie’s questions in my mind for what feels like the thousandth time. They’ve played on repeat in my head since I walked away from her on that damned porch. The answer is the same. Every time.
But I didn’t tell her. I should have. I wish to fuck I had.
“Garrison? Did you hear me?” Dallas sets his cell phone on the nightstand in our hotel room and lowers himself onto the bed across from mine. “Dude.”
I heard him. He said, “We’re in.”
The audition went well. Dallas sang the song Dixie had handed him when we left, “Better to Burn” she’d titled it, and it fucked with me the entire time. And now we’re going on tour. Without her.
I look up from the lyrics I’ve been reading. The ones that are breaking me apart and building me back up again.
“Yeah, man. I heard you. That’s awesome.” I offer him a halfhearted fist bump and he grins.
“There’s more. Since Afton Tate’s band joined up with the tour, more venues have signed on. Instead of three weeks it’s going to be six. And instead of a dozen cities, it’s going to be thirty-six. Thirty-six cities, man.”
I glance at Dixie’s lyrics again, then lift my eyes to Dallas. Dude is about to start jumping on the bed and squealing like a fucking five-year-old. Meanwhile I feel like the floor is being ripped out from underneath me. “Yeah. That’s great.”
“Stop bein’ all broody. They loved us. Kind of a big deal here, brother. Thirty-six cities. Hear me? Three-six. You and me. On a sponsored tour.”
His enthusiasm is contagious so I grin at him. But my Bluebird’s words are burning a hole in my head and in my hands.
Even her handwriting is beautiful.
This one goes out to the one I love. These words I wrote while trying to rise above. You’re the one I can’t get past—the flame I knew would burn too fast. Deep down we both know I’m a dreamer, looking for the hope in world of doubt. But how will we know what we could be, if we’re not willing to find out?
Something fucked-up is happening to me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s akin to having my ass kicked while on a bad acid trip.
Dallas stands up and rattles off some shit about flights and times but I can’t hear him over her lyrics coming to life in my mind. I can already feel the beat that belongs behind them. I rub one hand roughly across my denim-covered knee. It heats, but it would be better to set my leg on fire than hit something and alert Dallas to my five-alarm situation.
I’d rather have one night of finally feeling alive than to live forever holding everything inside. I finally get it, the other half of love. It’s pain and loss and all of the ugly above. And when it ends, and you wish we’d stayed just friends, I won’t be able to deny the truth. There’s no price I wouldn’t pay for you.
A mirrored reflection of her gloriously naked body in front of mine is permanently tattooed behind my eyes—imprinted as deep as the ink on my skin. It’s as if my blood has turned to kerosene and Dixie Lark tossed a match at me.
Every line of her song is fuel to the flames in my chest.
It’s better
to burn, better to risk it. ’Cause I’d rather have scars than take a chance on missing this. I flew too close to the flame. Just couldn’t stay away. We ran out of time for playin’ it safe.
“Dallas,” I say on a wavering breath before clearing my throat. “We gotta talk.”
He stops his yammering about the tour and looks at me. “What’s up?”
My eyes fall to the paper in my hands. How it hasn’t burnt to dust is beyond me.
You turned my night into bright blinding day. Let me be the angel that chases the darkness away. We don’t have to live this life alone. You don’t have to keep doin’ this on your own. If when it’s all said and done, I turn to ashes, only ashes, scattered on the wind, it won’t change a thing. ’Cause given the chance, baby, I’d do it all again.
The first verse repeats and I just stare.
“Did you tell her?” He nods to the paper in my hands. He means have I told Dixie about the shit that happened while she was in Houston. He has no idea what the words on this paper mean to me. Thank fuck. Except . . . I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to tell him.
“Some of it,” I answer. “Not all.”
He arches an eyebrow and folds his arm across his chest. I lay Dixie’s lyrics beside Dallas’s phone on the nightstand, feeling both relieved and bereft when I distance myself from them.
“Thirty-six cities, huh?” I rake my hand roughly over the top of my head. “That’s a lot of state lines.”
We both know I’m not supposed to cross a single one. Hell, even Dixie knows that now. She just doesn’t know why.
Dallas’s shoulders sag and his barely contained bravado vanishes as if he’s been deflated. I glance up to see him giving me that same damn stare his sister pins on people. Somehow they both inherited the ability to see straight through my bullshit. I suspect they got it from their grandmother.
“It’s just . . . I’m not sure, man. That’s a fuck-ton of places where I could be—”
I lift a shoulder instead of finishing my sentence, leaving it there because he knows what could happen.
Dallas clears his throat and relaxes his stance. “I know.” He looks away for a moment and then back at me again. “Maybe we should head back to Amarillo, help Dixie sort out Papa’s stuff, and hold out for something else. There will be other tours, right?” His lips quirk up in a grin that I don’t believe for a second because we both know this isn’t necessarily true. The window of opportunity in our world is small. Like keyhole small.
“Dude. Stop. No.” I shake my head because no fucking way am I going to let my mistakes hold him back. “Do your thing. Kick ass and take names. I have to take care of me, you take care of you.”
Dallas nods. “You’ve always had my back. I appreciate that, but I understand. I don’t know if I’d be willing to risk it if our roles were reversed, and I’m sure as hell not going to ask you to.”
Dallas is a good friend. A great friend. A brother from another mother. I owe him the truth.
“Yeah. There’s more. I would suggest sitting down or backing up because if you punch me, you might hurt your hand and playing guitar at your show in Omaha will be a bitch.”
“Dude, you’re on probation. I’m not going to punch you for—”
“It’s about Dixie.”
He sits.
All I can do is man up and tell him the truth. So I look him right in the eye and do that.
“I love her, Dallas. I fucking love her and I swear to God, I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t even know it could happen. You were right, what you said last year, about my shit and her not needing that. You were right to tell me to keep my loser fucking hands off her when we were kids, too. But that was a promise I couldn’t keep.”
There is visible movement in his jaw. “I’m going to need a little more clarification than that,” he says evenly.
I pull in a deep breath that has more to do with courage than oxygen. “I’m in love with your sister—maybe I always have been. I broke the promise I made you when we were kids and the one I made you last year in about a dozen different ways and as sorry as I am for that, I wouldn’t take it back if my life depended on it.”
I wait a beat for his reaction, wondering if my life does depend on it. A dozen emotions play across his expressive face. He’s a lot like her, I realize. Neither of them has a poker face for shit.
Finally he seems to settle on a look of concern seasoned with determination. “I saw how you were at the funeral and after. Whatever you do, just be sure you mean it, Garrison. If this is just jealousy over McKinley, maybe shove that shit down deep and keep it to yourself.”
“It’s not,” I answer abruptly, picturing McKinley with his arms around her in her kitchen. “But I’m not opposed to tearing his greasy fucking hands off if I ever see him touch her again, either.”
Dallas gives me a half grin until he sees that I’m dead serious. Then his expression shifts to one of amused interest.
I shake my head and lift my hands in a gesture of helplessness. “She’s my Bluebird, Dallas. I need to go home and get my shit straight so that I can be the kind of man she deserves.”
“I can see that you care about her, and that’s great. Really. I believe you’ll protect her from your own bullshit like you promised—because otherwise I’d have to kill you here and now. But the nicknames or putting your hands all over her in front of me, that shit ain’t gonna fly. Ever.”
“I’ll try my best. But I think we both need to go ahead and accept the fact that what Dixie wants, Dixie gets. From me at least. I can’t put you first anymore.”
“It’s like you’re breaking up with me, Garrison. Do I get breakup sex?”
“You wish,” I tell him as I stand to pick up my bag.
“You leaving because you don’t want to risk going to jail or for her?”
There’s a good question. I give him the most honest answer that I can. “Both.”
Sliding my phone into my pocket and lifting my bag onto my shoulder, I ask him to make sure someone gets my drum kit home. Most likely I’ll have to hitchhike back to Amarillo.
Dallas promises that he will and leans on the wall by the door.
“You’re not a bad guy, Gavin. And I trust you with my own life. But if you hurt my sister, you’re fucking—”
“I know. I won’t. Or I’ll do everything in my power not to.”
“You have to tell her,” he says with a straight face. “All of it. Maybe not all at once, but eventually.”
“I know. I will. I need to get my shit handled and then, I swear to God, I will tell her everything.”
The lines etched into his face fade noticeably. “When I saw you with her in the alley at the showcase I thought it was like—”
“It wasn’t,” I say, cutting him off sharply. “And it never will be.”
His mouth flattens into a straight line and he gives a quick nod. “Good. Better not be.”
“After I tell her everything—once she knows everything that I did and what happened—she might tell me to stay the fuck away from her.”
Dallas doesn’t reassure me. Probably because he knows I’m right. “She might. But that’s her decision to make.”
“There are some sins even saints can’t forgive,” I mumble.
Dallas claps me on the shoulder and shakes my hand, pressing something into it. “Well let’s just hope she loves your sorry ass back. Good luck, man.”
Adjusting my bag on my shoulder, I nod to where Dallas’s guitar is propped by the dresser. “Same to you, my friend.”
She answers on the second ring.
I’m sitting in the station where I used the money my best friend slipped me for bus fare to get a ticket home. I have about five minutes until my bus arrives so I decide to call the absolute last person I want to talk to. Well, one of the last people. Definitely not the first.
“Well, well. To what do I owe this honor?” She asks once I’ve told her it’s me.
I stop tapping my drumstick on my knee
. “We need to meet.”
“Well that sounds promising. Dinner? Or just my place for dessert?”
My skin crawls at the sound of her voice. I shove a memory I wish I didn’t have back into the deep, dark closet of my mind and ram the door shut. “Neither. This isn’t about that.”
“A girl can dream.”
I don’t have time for her bullshit. “Look, I’m not in the mood to play games with you.”
“Too bad,” she purrs through the phone. “We have so much fun when we play.”
Jesus.
“Can you meet with me or not?”
“I have time tomorrow after lunch.”
“Great. See you then.” I disconnect the call without bothering with the formality of a goodbye. She doesn’t need or deserve one.
My bus arrives and I lift my bag and climb on. Taking an empty seat, I glance out the gaping mouth that is the front windshield. There’s a long road ahead of me, but for the first time in my life, I’m headed toward someone I love.
Someone I wish I didn’t have to hurt.
Dixie, Gavin, and the band’s story continues, but first . . . now that Dallas has his dreams within reach, does it mean anything if he’s on his own? And what happens when a certain gorgeous redhead comes back into his life?
Loving Dallas
Coming Summer 2015
Dallas
THE AIRPORT IS ABOUT AS CROWDED AS I EXPECT HELL TO BE WHEN I get there. Everyone’s either on their phone or eating or staring up at the electronic flight schedules. A few moms scream at their kids to stay the fuck where they are and not move. Even one who has hers on a leash attached to a teddy bear backpack. Christ. Why would anyone travel with these tiny gremlins?
My phone buzzes with a text from Mandy.
See you in Omaha! Safe travels, Superstar!
I stare at it for a full minute. This is it. I’m joining an actual tour paid for by someone other than myself. And if all goes well, a record deal will follow.