Wild Open

by Bec Linder

  “Business dinner,” O’Connor agreed.

  That was their code for drinking heavily while eating greasy food; but they did end up discussing business a little. “You know we’re going to have to cancel the tour,” James said, after they had demolished an order of onion rings and knocked back two rounds of shots.

  “I know,” O’Connor said. “I’m assuming you’ve done the math?”

  James nodded. “We’re in the black for this tour, even after we pay the crew their full salary. So that doesn’t matter. But the label—”

  “Fuck the label,” O’Connor said. “We’re big. We’re fucking huge. We’re making them more money than I can even conceptualize. If they want to throw a fit, fine. What are they going to do? Get rid of us? Fine. We’ll find another label. Anyone out there would snap us up in a hot second. I don’t care about the label.”

  “Okay,” James said. “Noted. But what about the fans?”

  O’Connor rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t know. Fuck. We’ll have to make it up to them somehow. Special behind-the-scenes footage? Free live tracks on the website? Maybe we can fly some of them out to hang out with us in the studio—”

  “You’re terrible at this,” James said. “Rushani and I will deal with it.”

  “We don’t pay you enough,” O’Connor said. “And we definitely don’t pay her enough.”

  “I think she’ll be getting a raise after this tour,” James said. “Just a feeling.”

  “I think you may be right,” O’Connor said. “Let’s get another round of shots.”

  He was pretty drunk by the time they made it back to the hotel. It took him several tries to get his key card in the door. He stood in his hotel room, head spinning, and looked at his freshly-made bed, the pillows fluffed and neatly arranged against the headboard. He didn’t want to sleep alone.

  He went down the hall to Leah’s room and knocked on her door. She didn’t answer right away, and he realized it would look pretty suspicious if someone saw him waiting outside her room at this time of night—but how would anyone know it was her room? He leaned his head against the door. He was too drunk.

  Leah came to the door in her pajamas with a towel wrapped around her head. She took one look at O’Connor and ushered her into the room. “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I was out with James. We drank too much.”

  “Sleep here tonight,” Leah said, and he nodded, grateful. That was exactly what he wanted. He didn’t deserve her comfort, but he would accept it for as long as she was willing to make the offer.

  They didn’t have sex that night, just lay curled together in Leah’s bed. O’Connor didn’t sleep much. He lay awake in the dark and listened to Leah murmuring to herself in her sleep. He held her in his arms and felt all of his dreams spinning away from him like dandelion fluff. There would be no visits to L.A. now, no time to see where their hearts took them. He would be too busy with Andrew and with salvaging the band to devote any time to his own desires.

  He got up early in the morning, before Leah was awake, and rented a car to drive up into the mountains. He had no real destination in mind, just drove west out of the city and up into the foothills, and took every turn that looked like it would lead him higher. The vegetation changed as he gained altitude, from low scrubby plain to fir trees and finally to bare rock. He pulled into a parking lot at the top of some mountain or another and walked a short way out along a ridge. Snow-capped peaks rose to the west. The air was cold at the summit. He was more than 10,000 feet up. He kicked a couple of pebbles over the side of the mountain. Took a picture with his phone. Shivered a little. Then he drove back to Denver, and whatever awaited him there.

  His phone buzzed shortly after he turned onto I-70. It was a text message from James: Band meeting at the hospital, 11AM. He would have just enough time to make it.

  They met in Andrew’s room. This was apparently somewhat unorthodox, and a nurse hovered anxiously in the hallway outside, probably to make sure that they didn’t get Andrew too worked up. Andrew was wearing pajamas, which struck O’Connor as a deliberate statement: I’m too sick to even get dressed, so don’t expect me to finish your stupid tour.

  Rushani looked like she hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep. O’Connor knew the feeling.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” James said. “We’re canceling the rest of the tour.”

  Rushani nodded. “I’ve spoken with Hakeem, and with Andrew’s doctor.” She cut a quick glance in Andrew’s direction. “And with Andrew. It just isn’t going to happen.”

  O’Connor had known this was coming, but he still felt it like a blow to the gut.

  James ran his hands through his hair. “Okay. We’ll have to release a statement. We’ll say—what’s the usual euphemism? Exhaustion?”

  “No,” Andrew said. “No euphemisms. Just say what it is.”

  They all looked at him. He seemed very calm, and well-rested. At least one of them had gotten enough sleep.

  “You want to—all of it?” Rushani asked. “All the details, and—”

  “Yes,” Andrew said. “I’m not ashamed. And maybe it will help someone, to know they aren’t alone.”

  Oddly, his words gave O’Connor the first ray of hope he’d had in a long time. Compassion, thinking about other people—these were signs of the old Andrew, the person O’Connor had thought was gone completely. Maybe it wasn’t too late. He could still return to them.

  “Okay,” James said, and sighed. “I’ll draft a statement and we can go over it later this afternoon. I guess we’ll need to get in touch with one of the label’s PR people for final approval.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Rushani said. “Maybe they can give us some tips.”

  “One other thing,” Andrew said, and they all looked at him expectantly. “I don’t just want out of the tour. I want out of the band. I’m finished with all of it.”

  * * *

  “That sounds fucking crazy,” Luka said. “Are you serious about this? It’s way too much like what happened with Corey.”

  “I know,” Leah said. “It’s spooky.”

  She heard a crinkling noise, and then the sound of water. It was an hour earlier in L.A., and Luka was probably making his mid-afternoon “lunch.” “How are you holding up?”

  “Okay, I guess,” she said. “I guess I never really dealt with Corey’s death, you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” Luka said dryly.

  “Shut up,” Leah said. “Anyway, I think I’m dealing with it now. Andrew is sort of—he knows about Corey, and he seems to sort of think that I can, I don’t know. Help him. Offer advice. So now all of those bad memories mean that maybe I can help him a little. It’s starting to seem like a bad thing that happened to me once, instead of the defining event of my entire life.”

  “I’m glad,” Luka said. “We should talk about it when you’re home. It’s good to get these things out in the open.”

  “Ugh, processing,” Leah said, and he laughed. “So has Bryce moved in by now?”

  “Well,” Luka said, drawing the word out dramatically. “Nah, no more so than usual. I haven’t filled your room with boxes or anything. We’ll be glad to have you back.”

  “I’ll be glad to be home,” Leah said. She would be; and she wasn’t going to talk to Luka about how sad she was to be leaving the tour, or how worried that she would never see O’Connor again. Some things he was better off not knowing.

  “When are you getting back?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “I land at LAX around 11. You’ll come pick me up, right?”

  He laughed. “Yes, I’ll come pick you up. Bryce will make a sign to hold at arrivals. We’ll go out for brunch.”

  Homesickness gripped her. She missed L.A., and Luka, and Bryce, and the apartment, and good Mexican food. She missed sleeping in her own bed.

  She would miss O’Connor more than she cared to think about. And she would miss being on stage every night, and playing the s
ongs she had come to know so well.

  It was a hard thing, change. And not always for the best.

  She got off the phone with Luka and went down to the lobby, sort of hoping to run into O’Connor but not really expecting to. He had been scarce lately. Understandably. By the time she woke up this morning, he had left her hotel room, and she hadn’t seen him since. She wanted to talk with him before she left, to get some sort of closure. Which was stupid. Closure didn’t exist. Things happened; things ended; you either moved on or you didn’t. Leah was pretty much the poster child for failing to move on. But she was changing that. She was putting the past behind her. She was getting on with her life.

  She needed to start thinking about what she would do once she was back in L.A. A job of some sort. Maybe a new band.

  It would all work itself out. She was going to be optimistic.

  She sat in the lobby for a while, looking for jobs on her laptop. She didn’t want to work in an office again. Maybe Luka could pull some strings and get her a job at a venue. She could do promotion, or booking.

  She waited for more than an hour, but she never saw O’Connor.

  That night, Dave organized a farewell dinner for the crew, and Leah was invited—“Because you’re out of work now just like the rest of us,” Jeff said, when he swung by Leah’s room to deliver the invitation. “Solidarity among the oppressed.” And then he winked to show he was joking, because they were, after all, still getting paid, and because everyone understood that the band had made the only choice they could.

  “I hope solidarity involves beer,” Leah said.

  Jeff laughed. “You know it. 7:00. We’ll take a van to the restaurant, because none of us are going to be in any shape to drive back.”

  They went to some hideous, tacky, over-the-top themed barbecue place southeast of downtown. Dave had wisely booked a private room in the back, because they got pretty raucous. Someone ordered an alcoholic concoction that came in huge pitchers with flamingo-shaped drinking straws. Someone else ordered a round of Jägerbombs. Leah sat between Rinna and Leonard, laughed until her stomach hurt, and ate her own weight in ribs. She didn’t drink very much, since she had an early flight to catch the next day, and a hangover on a plane was one of the worst experiences imaginable; but she had enough to feel warm and happy. It was easy, surrounded by these noisy, cheerful people who had become her friends, to forget all of her worries.

  Still, shop talk was inevitable, and while they waited for their food to be brought out, people started discussing their next moves. Many of them already had worked lined up with other bands, and were viewing the tour’s cancellation as a chance for an extended break. Some of them hadn’t made any prior arrangements, and Leah was pretty amazed by the extent of the networking that ensued. Everyone seemed to know a guy who knew a guy who needed a new lighting person. Jeff even turned to Leah at one point and said, “You have plans?”

  She blinked, taken by surprise. “Uh, not really.”

  “I can get you some tech work, if you want to do that,” he said. “Or I know a guy who works for a guy who’s looking for a new touring bassist. I could get you his number.”

  Astounding to see the machine at work, and even more astounding to be caught up in it. It really was all about who you knew. “That would be incredible,” Leah said. “Thanks, Jeff.”

  “You’re a good kid,” he said. “Don’t let the assholes get you down.”

  Wise advice.

  She went to O’Connor’s room after they returned from the hotel. She waited long enough that she didn’t think anyone would be lingering in the hallway, and then she went out and knocked on his door.

  He answered wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung sweatpants, but he looked so worn out and defeated that she couldn’t get any joy out of ogling him. “Leah,” he said, and sighed. “Come on in.”

  Not exactly the warm welcome she’d been hoping for. She edged into his room and leaned against the desk. She didn’t want to sit on the bed.

  He moved around the room, picking things up and putting them down in a different place, not making eye contact. Her stomach rolled. “What’s up?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” she said. “I just thought—well. I don’t know. I guess I thought I would say goodbye.”

  “Oh, Christ,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed and cradled his head in his hands. “Leah. Fuck. None of this is turning out how I wanted it to.”

  Well, this conversation definitely wasn’t turning out how she wanted. But what had she been expecting, really? Tearful declarations of love? Promises to stay in touch? An invitation to come visit him in Chicago?

  Yes, actually. She had expected any of those things, or maybe all three. But it looked like she wasn’t going to get a single one.

  “So,” she said. Her face felt numb and stiff. “I guess that’s that.”

  “Andrew told us today that he wants to quit the band altogether,” he said. “I can’t deal with anything else right now, Leah. The band is my entire life. You know this. And it’s going to eat up every ounce of my time and energy for the foreseeable future.”

  She understood, but she didn’t like it, and she didn’t think he was being fair. He hadn’t promised her anything, but there had been an implicit promise in all the time they spent together, the long hours of talking and wandering around, their nights together, the way he kissed and held her. And now he was taking it all back, undoing each one of those moments, like they had never meant anything at all.

  She said nothing. And then she said, “Well. Good luck with everything. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

  And then she left.

  She went back to L.A. the next morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  In the end, one of them—probably James—finally had the presence of mind to call Andrew’s mother, who flew out that same day, scolded all of them, and promptly took over. She had Andrew released into her care and decided to take him home to Chicago for continued treatment. So that was that.

  Rushani booked them all tickets on the same flight, and then said her goodbyes. She was going back to New York, and then out on tour with her other band, whose name they refused to speak. It had started as a joke, but by now O’Connor did actually resent the other band, like she was cheating on them with a younger, sexier man.

  “You aren’t going to miss us,” James said, when the shuttle came to pick her up at the hotel. “You’ll be glad to be through with this drama.”

  “I’m sure there will plenty of drama waiting for me the next time you guys go on tour,” she said, and hugged both of them. “Keep me in the loop. Take good care of Andrew.”

  “Take care of yourself, Rushani,” O’Connor said, and then she was off.

  Rushani talked like there would be another tour, but O’Connor had his doubts. But at the airport the next day, waiting for their flight to Chicago, Andrew’s mother said, “Don’t be silly. Of course he isn’t going to quit the band.” James had taken Andrew for a supervised bathroom visit—a little absurd, but nobody trusted him to be alone—and it was the first chance O’Connor had gotten to speak with Andrew’s mother in private.

  “He sounded pretty sure that he wanted to quit,” O’Connor said.

  Andrew’s mother shook her head. “No. There’s nothing in this world that gives him more joy. He was just being dramatic. His father’s the same way, you know. Once he feels better, he’ll be back in the studio before you know it.”

  “I hope so,” O’Connor said, still doubtful; but Andrew’s mother knew him better than anyone, so maybe there was hope.

  He spent a week in Chicago settling back into his apartment and his routine, and then he had lunch with James, who filled him in on the latest with Andrew—because of course James didn’t believe in ever taking it easy. “He’s living in his parents’ basement for now,” James said. “His mom confiscated the keys to his apartment.”

  O’Connor laughed. “How’d she get them away from him?”r />
  “I think she picked his pockets in the middle of the night,” James said. “I’m serious.”

  “She’s a badass lady,” O’Connor said.

  “Totally. I’m scared of her. Anyway, he’s doing some outpatient program at the hospital, and she says that’s going to last for about three months. So we won’t be doing anything until that’s over. She says he’s settling in well and we can go see him later this week.”

  “Okay,” O’Connor said, and sighed, and took a bite of his sandwich. “I guess that’s about the best we can hope for.”

  “One day at a time,” James said. “Heard from Leah lately?”

  O’Connor held his sandwich in front of his mouth and gave James a look that he hoped was hard and intimidating. “Why would I have heard from Leah?”

  James rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. Everyone on the tour knew you two were screwing.”

  “Oh what the fuck!” O’Connor exclaimed, and got a dirty look from a woman at the next table. “There is no way—”

  “Really? You spent literally all of your time together,” James said.

  “None of you are that observant,” O’Connor said. “We were so discreet—”

  “You weren’t discreet at all,” James said, “but probably nobody would have noticed except Tom saw her coming out of your hotel room one morning.”

  “You snooping motherfuckers,” O’Connor said. “God damn it. We were so careful.”

  “There are no secrets on tour,” James said. “But you haven’t heard from her?”

  “No,” O’Connor said shortly, and took another bite of his sandwich.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize that he’d made a gigantic mistake in being so cold to Leah when she came to say goodbye. He hadn’t really intended to blow her off—he’d just been so overwhelmed by Andrew’s announcement that he was quitting that he hadn’t been able to think about anything else. Leah’s imminent departure hadn’t seemed real to him. Of course she would still be there in the morning, and the day after that. She had become such a fixture in his life so quickly that he hadn’t totally grasped that she was leaving leaving. Not just going on a short trip somewhere. She was gone.