Off Stage

by Jaime Samms

“What?” Len glanced over his shoulder, rake in one hand, phone in the other.

  “No texting from the barn,” Kilmer said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Horses are not machines, Len. They are living, breathing creatures, unpredictable and spontaneous, and if you take your eye off the ball, there’s a good chance you’ll wander into the wrong blind spot or do something else dumb to get yourself or one of them hurt.” He held out a hand. “Hand it over. You can have it back when you’re done.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Kilmer lifted both brows.

  “You are.”

  “I am.”

  “This is stupid. I’m not a kid.”

  Kilmer tilted his head to one side and stretched his hand a little bit farther, waiting.

  “Really?”

  “Really, really.”

  Len handed the phone over with an audible slap against Kilmer’s palm.

  “Thank you.”

  “Fuck off,” Len muttered. Annoyed and feeling like a fool, he snatched up his shovel and wheelbarrow and stalked toward the far end of the barn and the muck pile.

  Outside, the sun was already high enough to be oppressive, and the breeze not strong enough to be a relief. Len dumped his load and looked out over the rest of the yard. He was working in the smallest of three barns. They had a Kubota for moving the muck in the largest of the barns that was used for training and stabling horses that didn’t belong to the ranch proper. Rich people paid an awful lot to have their horses stabled by someone famous, even if they never caught a glimpse of the man in question. Len watched now as a Hummer drove into the parking lot and a tumble of teenage girls spilled out and headed for the big barn.

  He was about to go back inside when one of the teenagers stopped, shaded her eyes, and looked his way. He was close enough to see the transformation on her face and cursed as he dropped the wheelbarrow and shovel and pivoted, hoping to make a break for it before she alerted her friends.

  Too late, he heard the shriek behind him, echoed by three or four more, and then the stampede of running feet. A horse whinnied and someone shouted. Len had just about made the safety of the barn when the first hand grabbed for him and a dozen more small, tight fingers wrapped around his arm and shoulder and one clutched at his hair.

  “Get off!” The sound of his blood rushing to the frantic drumbeat of his heart drowned out the girls’ high-pitched calls for an instant, and the world seemed, for that instant, to slow to a stop before it rushed on and he was left behind in a wasteland of horror.

  He yanked one arm, only to have the other caught. Then the hair-puller yanked him backward and he almost fell. His arms were once again snagged in the grip of many hands, and at least one of the girls pressed herself fully against him.

  White noise flared inside Len’s head, and he shoved at her. Panic drowned out caution as he struggled for his freedom, and one girl tripped over her companions and landed on her jeans-clad ass in the dust of the yard. Len barely noticed. All he knew was every careful stitch of thin, membranous protection he’d managed to sew into place around his psyche over the last twenty-four hours was tearing at the seams, and in his mind, hands on him without consent only led to one thing.

  He ignored the tearing sound of his soul and struggled to free himself.

  “Ladies! Ladies!” Kilmer was suddenly there, along with another farmhand, whose name Len didn’t remember at that moment, and the girls were summarily shooed to a safe distance.

  Len turned to face them, keeping well behind the safety of Kilmer’s lanky frame and his companion’s broad shoulders and scowling face. He scratched at the stinging patch of scalp and squared his shoulders, struggling to breathe, to see past the red fury and black panic.

  “What the hell is going on out here?”

  Len half expected Ace to appear, right out of his nightmares, to rise up and claim him. He shied into the shadow of the barn, back pressed to the rough wooden planks, sweat racing down his sides and spine. His breathing was harsh, overpowered in volume by the rush of blood pounding through his head.

  It was Stanley’s voice booming over the yard, though, his suit jacket flapping in his haste to reach them. His shiny shoes caught the light and bounced shards of reality through Len’s shredded thoughts.

  The same horse who had spooked at the sound of the shrieking girls danced out of Stanley’s way.

  A blonde girl darted past Kilmer and almost made it to Len, launching herself only to be caught in the arms of the second burly ranch hand, who set her gently on her feet facing the opposite direction.

  The back door of the house banged.

  A soft wicker from the barn behind him slipped through a momentary break in the chaos.

  The barnyard, the gaggle of girls, Kilmer and Patrick—the ranch hand’s name was Patrick—swam back into focus. The spooked horse was being led away. The screen door to the kitchen creaked slowly open, and Len focused on that small sound. He looked up. Vance was standing there, watching him, his expression intense and confusing from that distance.

  Stanley took control of the situation and spread his arms wide, blocking Len’s view of most of the teenagers.

  “Kilmer, please herd these young ladies back to their horses,” he said, calm as could be. “Len, come with me.”

  Len nodded vigorously and scurried from the shelter of Kilmer and Patrick’s flesh-and-bone barrier to the massive shadow cast by his manager.

  “We want autographs!” one of the girls shouted.

  Stanley scowled at her. “You should have damn well thought of that before you attacked him, young lady. Now clear out before we call the police, and be glad all you’re getting is a warning.”

  A few of the girls turned pale and hurried off to the big barn. The others lingered long enough to see Len disappear into the house. He saw at least one cell phone rise. He heard the click but when he looked, it had disappeared.

  “How many pictures did they get of me losing my mind?” he muttered as he hurried in Stanley’s wake to the house. “God. I can just see the headlines now. I didn’t mean to push that girl, Stan. I swear.”

  “I know.” Stanley held the door open as Vance backed up just enough to allow Len inside.

  Len didn’t have time to take another breath before Vance was on him, pulling him away from the screen door and slamming the heavy wooden one closed too. He hauled Len to the light of the kitchen window and peered down at him.

  “You all right?”

  Len shifted, gaze fixed on the V where the top button of Vance’s plaid shirt held the colorful fabric together over the white T-shirt beneath. He couldn’t stop shaking. He could barely breathe. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the flash of long hair and the girl falling into the dirt. It intermingled with another memory of Trevor and a rainy city street, and with the feel of Ace’s steely hands on his skin, and he shivered. And once he’d started shaking, he couldn’t stop.

  His insides congealed, and every emotion gummed up into the now-familiar, gooey mess in his gut that strained against his already stressed connections and sent that tearing, rending sound ripping through him.

  He wanted to scream. And he wanted to curl into a ball right there on the cold tile and never move again. It was the only way to hold it all together.

  Warmth surrounded him. Strength and the scent of soap and hay and sweat. And he sagged, only he didn’t fall to the floor into a quivering ball. He listened as Vance hummed softly into his hair.

  It took a long time for him to stop shaking. It took even longer for him to recognize the tune Vance was humming. It was a song Len had heard him sing a few times, though he couldn’t remember what album it was on, or if he’d ever heard Vance sing it in concert. Not that he’d heard that many of Vance’s concerts yet. Only two, in fact, and they had both been relatively small.

  “Hey.” Vance’s voice reached him, a soft caress over his consciousness, and he looked up.

  Deep amber eyes glowing with worry met his, and
he knew instantly the smile he offered was loopy, because Vance frowned instead of returning it.

  “Darlin’, come on, now. Look at me.”

  “I am.” Len blinked and focused on Vance’s impossibly dark eyes. He reached up and caressed Vance’s stubbly cheek. “You need a shave.”

  Vance smiled and nodded slightly, just a faint movement under Len’s palm. “Come on.”

  “Vance.” Stanley was still there. Len had forgotten about him, lost as he was in the moment of realizing he was safe with Vance, and the screaming females had been routed, and everything else had been all in his head.

  “I’m taking him upstairs.”

  “No.” Len extricated himself from Vance’s embrace, though he didn’t stop leaning on the much bigger man. “No, I’m okay now. Did I hurt that girl?”

  “Just her pride, maybe,” Stanley snapped. “She got up quick enough. Are you okay?”

  Len wrapped an arm around Vance’s waist and nodded.

  “You were pretty out of it,” Stanley agreed.

  “Lot of shit has come up,” he said finally. “In therapy. Comes back a bit. It… I’m okay. I’m working it out.”

  “Is that what his split lip is about? And the stolen horse?” Stanley asked.

  “You told him about that?” Len looked to Vance, who had the decency to look a little bit chagrined even as he nodded.

  “If he’s going to insist you go back to work, he has to know what’s going on.”

  Len studied Vance for a long time before finally looking at Stanley. “Back to work.”

  “At some point, you will have to,” Stanley said, all business and logic. “You have to make a living, and you signed a contract. If you want out of that contract, then we have some serious negotiating to do.”

  Len glanced between Stanley and Vance, then back to Stanley. “I don’t want out. Am I going back to Firefly?” His stomach turned over at the idea. His heart flipped and flopped like a beached fish. “Do they want me back?”

  As soon as the question was out of his mouth, he regretted asking because the next awkward space of heartbeats was filled with Stanley trying to find a delicate way of saying no, the band did not want him back. He was out, and he was going to stay out.

  “Never mind.” He fully freed himself from Vance’s grip and pulled out a kitchen chair. “So what does ‘going back to work’ entail if there’s no Firefly?”

  “It’s not that they don’t want you back,” Stanley corrected. “It’s just that they want what’s best for you. They want you healthy and—”

  “Sane.”

  “Len, no one thinks you’re not sane,” Stanley said.

  “Troubled?” Len twisted the word to mean the same as crazy, and Stanley flinched. “Yeah. What I thought. I’m a liability. I know.”

  “You can play with me,” Vance said, running a soothing hand over Len’s back.

  Len shrugged him off. “Thanks.” “But no thanks” was implied, and Vance’s hand disappeared.

  “What do you want to do?” Stanley asked, and the question was so unexpected, Len failed to realize it was directed at him until the silence had stretched to embarrassing.

  “I want to go and fetch that horse I borrowed yesterday.” He looked over his shoulder hopefully at Vance, who only lifted both brows and shook his head slightly.

  “Answer the question, Len.”

  “Why? What difference does it make? You saw me out there. I freaked the hell out over four little girls wanting me to sign their tits. Like that’s never happened before. I’m a mess, and you can’t really let me out in public, let alone on a stage where the crowd’s going to eat me alive.”

  Stanley leaned forward and looked him square in the eye. “You were never the pussy onstage, Len. You were the brave one. So what’s changed?”

  Len snorted. “You really asking me that? Everything’s changed, asshole. Trev’s gone. What am I supposed to do onstage without him? Who do I play to if he’s not there? What the hell do I play if he’s not there to sing?” He slumped in his chair and picked with his nails at the slowly vanishing calluses on his fingertips. “What’s the point? I don’t even know what to play if he’s not around to write it down. Nobody else got what was in my head like he did. No one can see what I’m doing when I write it down, but he gets it. He always has.”

  He dropped his head onto his forearm and closed his eyes, remembering the last time he’d tried so hard to write the music himself and how Trevor had offered to help. How he’d thrown the offer back in his friend’s face and never finished the song.

  He still had the eraser-torn pages of staff paper with the backward notes and the mixed-up phrasing that made no sense to anyone but him. He knew the notes on the page weren’t right. He knew what they were supposed to sound like, and anyone trying to read the music he wrote would end up confused, think he was nuts if they tried to play it the way it was written. But he’d kept it anyway, folded in his sock drawer in the dresser next to Vance’s.

  After a moment, he registered that Vance was rubbing his back again and humming.

  The humming took shape, grew words in Vance’s deep baritone voice, and the words were not words Len had ever heard onstage or on an album, because that tune had never been anywhere but inside Len’s head. And on those crumpled sheets of paper in his sock drawer.

  He froze, even his breathing stopping in his chest as Vance’s voice rose and words filtered through his head to his brain. Words Vance had invented to mesh with the tune Len had created. A tune he could only have gotten from the mixed-up, twisted notes on a few grubby sheets of torn staff paper.

  It’s this river of tears, never been so real to me

  I’d drown in this wash of pain, but you save me

  Let out a heartstring, throw me your line

  This is what’s left to us, this is what’s mine,

  and it’s the river we cried together

  Now let’s ride together

  Dry land or open sea, makes no diff’rence to me,

  long as you’re there, there’s free wind and air

  And it’s time to move on to the real thing.

  The true thing. To you.

  “You made it into a country song?” Len lifted his head and glared at Vance.

  Vance smiled softly, almost shyly. “It’s what I do, darlin’. I’m country. I thought the boots gave it away.”

  “You made it into a country song!” Len swiveled in his chair and frowned. “How did you even read it?”

  Vance shrugged. “Just did. Wasn’t so hard.”

  “People have tried to read my music before, Vance. No one gets it. They all look at me like I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Ain’t no chance of that.” Vance pushed a bit of hair from Len’s forehead where it had stuck with sweat and kept poking into his eyes. “I can read you. I can read your music. When you goin’ to get it through your head I can do this?”

  Len swallowed hard and for a long time, studied Vance’s steady, open expression. “Yeah,” he whispered at last. “But you made it into a country song.”

  Vance laughed, and Len smiled, feeling lighter in that moment than he had in he couldn’t even remember how long. He turned back to Stanley.

  “The band, the guys, they really don’t want me back?”

  Stanley smiled wide and lifted one shoulder. “I didn’t get that sense. They’re almost done with the tour. They’ll take a few weeks off before they go back to the studio. Trevor hasn’t said much. I think he’s still processing everything, but Beks wants you to lay some tracks on the next album, and Jethro’s willing.”

  “Clive is still pretty pissed at me.”

  “Clive….” Stanley nodded. “Clive is still pretty pissed. Because Trevor’s struggling onstage, and he worries. But he doesn’t hate you, and he hasn’t said no. So keep an open mind, and if you’re up to it, we can negotiate something. In the meantime….” He glanced over Len’s shoulder at Vance and back again. “I really think it’s a good idea to get
your stage legs back. However you think you want to do that. It hasn’t been easy for Trevor to get up there without you either, but he’s doing it, and I think you need to do the same. Whatever happens with Firefly, you’re still a musician, and a damn good one. Don’t let that die, Len. It’s too precious.”

  Len nodded. “I’ll think it over.”

  “Good. That’s all I ask.”

  They sat in silence for another few moments before Stanley spoke again. “There’s something else they wanted me to mention.”

  Len looked up at him, waiting, and this time, there was no dire manager expression on Stanley’s face. Just plain, ordinary apprehension, as though what he had to say was making him nervous.

  “What other thing?” Len prompted.

  “Your birthday.”

  Len frowned. “What about it?”

  “You have anything planned?” Here, Stan looked past him to Vance, because the question was really one for Vance to address. A birthday party, or lack thereof, was not even on Len’s radar.

  “We hadn’t planned more than a nice dinner together, no,” Vance said. He rubbed a hand over Len’s back as he spoke. “Why?”

  “Well, it was something Clive brought up in Boston. Remember?”

  Len stared, still silent.

  “I remember.” Vance removed his hand from Len’s back and clenched it in a tight fist on the table in front of him. “Something about them being worried I was going to hide Len away from the world. Cut him off.”

  “They haven’t seen him in over a month,” Stanley pointed out. “Or heard from him. What do you want them to think?”

  “That he’s taking some much-needed time—”

  “I’m in the room, assholes,” Len said.

  Both men’s attention shifted to him. “What, exactly, do you want, Stanley?” he asked, fixing a glare on Stan and ignoring the way his guts seemed glued together only by that ugly ball of sick fear and anger.

  “Invite them to celebrate with you is all I’m suggesting,” Stanley said, and damn the man if his voice wasn’t perfectly gentle and reasonable. “Even Clive. Let them see you’re doing well here. That you have a life that’s working. That you miss them, maybe.” He patted Len’s shoulder. “Mend some fences.”