Wild Open

by Bec Linder

  Of course, by the time he had woken up and realized that he was a self-pitying, self-obsessed jackass, she had already left for the airport.

  And now—well, he didn’t quite know what to do. He figured he had pretty much burned that bridge. He didn’t want to piss her off by trying to apologize when that probably fell into the category of “too little, too late.” And, okay, he was a fucking coward. And he hated apologizing. He hated admitting he was wrong.

  So he was stubborn, and arrogant, and impossible to deal with. What else was new? Leah was better off without him, probably. She would find some hot movie star type and forget all about him within a week.

  And so on. He spent a few days moping around his apartment feeling incredibly sorry for himself, and then he went to visit Andrew, who at least had the distinction of being an even sorrier bastard than O’Connor. Except Andrew seemed to be doing better. He was dressed, and seemed relatively clean, and he even offered O’Connor a glass of water and made polite chit-chat for a few minutes. “He’s taking his meds,” Andrew’s mother stage-whispered, and Andrew rolled his eyes and said, “Thanks for the support, mom.”

  “Do you, uh. Do you want anything?” O’Connor asked. “I could bring you, uh—”

  “I’m bored as fuck,” Andrew said. “Please get me out of this house.”

  “Supervised trips only,” his mother said.

  “You see what I’m up against,” Andrew said. “Look, I know I’ve been a miserable asshole for months, and I’m sure you hate me by now, but for the love of God, if you drive me to the fucking supermarket I will be in your debt until the end of time.”

  O’Connor blinked, a little taken aback. “Okay. Let’s go see a Sox game.”

  So they did that, and it was fine, and Andrew didn’t drink any beer and seemed to have a good time. He was polite, and friendly, and more or less acted like a pod person. O’Connor wasn’t sure what to think. He gave James a full report on the phone, later, and James laughed and said, “Maybe he’s just getting better, man. Chill out.”

  Maybe. O’Connor wasn’t ready to hope for that yet.

  He went to visit his parents for a few days. Nothing on the farm had changed since he left for college, and visiting was always a little bit surreal, like stepping backward in time. He almost expected his younger self to emerge from the barn at dusk, sweaty from evening chores. But it was nice to spend his days doing hard manual labor, collapsing into bed each night too tired to think. And his mom’s cooking was, of course, unrivaled.

  The problem with parents was that they were too goddamn perceptive. “You seem sad,” his mom said on the third morning, when he was finishing his second plate of pancakes.

  O’Connor glanced up and met his dad’s gaze across the table. They shared a moment of sheer masculine panic: She’s going to make us talk about feelings.

  “Uh,” O’Connor said. “I’m mostly hungry.”

  His mother made a clucking sound. “Come on, sweetie. I know you better than that. Is it a girl? Oh, I’ll bet it’s a girl.”

  O’Connor’s father rolled his eyes and stood up from the table. “I’m going to go check on the cows.”

  “The cows are fine,” his mother said, but his father was already out the door.

  Then it was just O’Connor and his mother in the kitchen, and she pushed a few more slices of bacon onto his plate and said, “Tell me everything.”

  He did, because there was no point in resisting; she would just wear him down eventually. And when he was finished, she sat for a moment, sipping her coffee, and then said, “I think you had better give that girl a call.”

  His mother still lived in an era when people had land-lines and called the neighbors down the road to invite them over for Sunday dinner. O’Connor certainly wasn’t going to call Leah. The only people he talked to on the phone were his parents. But he sent her a text message, after writing and erasing about fifty equally pathetic attempts: I miss you.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait to see if she would reply.

  * * *

  She didn’t do much at first, for the first couple of weeks she was home. The tour had made her enough money that she didn’t need to work for a while, and so she slept in, and took walks to her favorite coffee shop, and went out with her friends—a mixture of people she had grown up with and people she had met through the music scene. She and Luka had dinner with their parents. She went to a few shows with Mateo. And she thought a lot about what she wanted to do with her life. Music, in some regard. She could be a studio musician, and play on other people’s albums. Or do tech work, like Jeff had suggested, for touring bands. Or maybe even start a new band of her own. The thought was less painful than it had been at one time. She had just spent several weeks performing with people who weren’t Corey and Mateo and Luka and Bryce, and it had gone fine. Better than fine. She had loved it. So she could start over again, with a band that wasn’t Rung.

  Luka left her alone for a week, but then he started probing. “Are you thinking about looking for work? I know the manager at the Wildhorse, and he’s thinking about hiring someone to help with booking.”

  That was exactly what she’d hoped for, that Luka would pull something out of his hat, but she was irrationally annoyed by his meddling. “I just want to take a break,” she said. “Okay? I’ve been working nonstop since I was sixteen. I just want to take some time off.”

  “Jesus, okay,” he said, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender.

  Leah sighed. Great. Now his feelings were hurt, and she would definitely be hearing about it from Bryce.

  Sure enough, Bryce called her later that afternoon and said, “I hear you’ve been fighting with Luka.”

  She flopped onto her back on the couch and groaned. “It wasn’t a fight. I just told him to back off. That’s all. Oh my God, Bryce, you don’t need to stick up for him! He’s my brother. I’m allowed to squabble with him.”

  “Well, when the two of you are mad at each other, I’m the one who has to deal with the fallout,” Bryce said. “So kiss his ass a little and make up.”

  So there was Luka to deal with; but after that he backed off, and left her to her own devices. And she did go down to the Wildhorse a few days later and talk to the manager, who was well over six feet tall, heavily tattooed, and went by the incongruous name of Baby. He wanted some part-time help, and he would pay enough for Leah to skate by, and when he offered her the job, she accepted on the spot.

  “Will wonders never cease,” Luka said, when she told him.

  “You are such a smug jerk,” she said, and he just laughed.

  Her first few days at the club were busy and informative. She was very familiar with booking from the artists’ perspective—she had handled most of the booking for Rung’s early shows—but now she was dealing with individual artists’ booking agents and also reaching out to more established acts, and there was a lot to keep track of. She spent a lot of time on the phone. But Baby was happy with her, and she liked being immersed in the busy atmosphere of the club, and being surrounded by people who loved music as much as she did. She settled into a nice routine: mornings at home, playing her guitar and, for the first time in her life, experimenting with writing her own songs; and afternoons at the club, working.

  She was in the back room at the club when she got O’Connor’s text message.

  I miss you. She knew it was him even though she’d deleted his number from her phone. Nobody else would have had the audacity.

  Unbelievable! He blew her off, told her he didn’t have time for her—and now he thought he could send her one pitiful text message and she’d come crawling right back?

  She fumed about it for a few hours while she finished the paperwork for an upcoming show, and while she crept home through rush-hour traffic. Really: who did he think he was? Conceited, self-centered, self-important, presumptive, insufferable—

  But she missed him. And she understood. He had been under a lot of stress; he had probably felt
like the world was ending. And maybe Andrew was better now, and the situation seemed less dire, and O’Connor was having second thoughts.

  Luka was out for the evening; one of his bands had a show that night. She made herself a light dinner and did some housework, puttered around on the balcony watering her plants, put in a load of laundry. Tried to decide how she would respond to O’Connor—because by now she knew that she would.

  Finally, she texted him the only thing she knew for sure: I’m not sure what to say.

  Her phone rang.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and answered.

  “Leah,” he said.

  The sound of his voice was so familiar, and it sent a wave of emotion sweeping through her, some arcane mixture of joy and nostalgia and anger. She drew in another breath. “Hi, O’Connor.”

  “Leah, I miss you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I really fucked up.”

  “Well, yeah, you did,” she said. She didn’t want to listen to him grovel and beg for her forgiveness; she wasn’t ready to forgive him, yet. “How is Andrew?”

  He sighed. “Better. It’s taking time, you know? We haven’t talked about the band at all. His mother says he isn’t really going to quit, but we’ll see.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she said. They hadn’t ever talked on the phone before, and it was strange to hear him without being able to see his face. He was very expressive, and she had gotten used to paying attention to both his words and the constantly shifting landscape of his face. “Do you think he would like a care package?”

  “I think he would love a care package,” O’Connor said. “That’s really sweet of you. He’s staying with his parents right now. I’ll text you the address.”

  “I’ll send him some baked goods,” Leah said. “I’m glad he’s improving.”

  “How’s Los Angeles?” he asked, and they talked about that for a while, and about people from the tour—Leah had talked to Rinna a few times, and texted with some of the other roadies. Leah was shocked when she wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water and saw that an hour had passed.

  “Hey, I should probably go,” she told him. “I need to do some more housework tonight so Luka doesn’t kill me.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I should probably do some of that myself. Look. Leah. I want to talk to you again.”

  “I’d like that,” she said, cautious, pleased.

  That was the start of it. Soon they were texting all day every day, and sending each other pictures of their meals and funny things they saw out and about. They talked on the phone a few times a week. O’Connor went to visit one of his brothers in New York, and he documented the whole thing for Leah through a series of pictures, videos, and hilarious, rambling emails.

  Andrew says hi, he texted her one day, and then attached a picture of Andrew wearing the Playboy Bunny suit she had mailed him, peeking back over his shoulder with the cotton tail facing the camera. Leah laughed until she cried.

  He sent her a picture of James eating a burger bigger than his face, his mouth stretched comically wide to take a bite; and a picture of himself playing the guitar, his laptop open beside him. Working on the next album.

  They didn’t talk about seeing each other in person, or about their feelings, or what any of it meant. It was great. There was no pressure, and Leah felt like she was finally, genuinely getting to know him. Their time together on tour had been so brief and fevered that they had gotten to know each other’s bodies better than they had gotten to know, well, each other. But now they were going through the slow process of actually becoming friends.

  Weeks passed. Leah worked, and bickered with Luka about whose turn it was to wash the dishes, and floated through life on a cloud, blissful beyond measure, falling in love.

  In early October, O’Connor sent her an email: the Saving Graces were going to be in town for a few days to meet with their label, do a little recording, and play a small surprise show at a local nightclub; did she want to come to the show?

  She did.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Leah slept poorly the night before the concert, and woke up feeling groggy and anxious. Her morning coffee made the feeling worse. Her heart beat too quickly, and her hands shook. She was going to see O’Connor again, for the first time in more than two months.

  She wandered around the apartment, distracted and aimless, until Luka woke up and told her to get out of the house before she drove him crazy. She walked to the nearby farmers’ market and bought a few vegetables that she couldn’t identify, and some of the expensive goat-milk soap that was her favorite guilty pleasure. It was a beautiful day. Los Angeles was miserable in the summer, but during the rest of the year she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  O’Connor texted her: *Can’t wait to see you tonight.*

  She felt like throwing up. Were they going to have sex? They were probably going to have sex.

  She went home to shower, and spent a long time shaving her legs. Luka banged on the bathroom door and yelled, “We’re in a water crisis!”

  “I’m getting laid tonight!” she yelled back.

  He went away after that, because thinking about your sibling having sex was basically emotional Kryptonite.

  She had work that afternoon, and she went gratefully, happy for the distraction. It was easy to bury herself in paperwork and phone calls and forget all about her impending reunion with O’Connor.

  But work ended, and Baby kicked her out of the club because he said she’d been doing too much unpaid overtime lately. She didn’t want to go home, because the show that night was in the opposite direction; so she drove out to Santa Monica and paid way too much for parking, and walked around for a couple of hours until the show started. She ate a burrito the size of a newborn, and drank a couple of light beers, just enough to get the start of a buzz going. And then she spilled sour cream on her shirt, because that was just her luck, and went into the bathroom to try to clean it off, and spent a few minutes examining herself in the mirror. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, which maybe was a mistake. She had put on a dress that morning, and taken it off, and put it back on again, and then finally decided that wearing a dress would be a sure sign to O’Connor that she was trying to impress him, and she didn’t want to give him that sort of ammunition. But now, looking at her pale face, the damp spot on her shirt from the sour cream, she wished she had made more of an effort.

  It was too late now. He would have to deal with her as she was.

  The show was scheduled to start at 8. Leah showed up at a quarter to and waded her way through the crowd to the floor right in front of the stage, using her elbows judiciously and ignoring the dirty looks and angry mutters she left in her wake. None of these people knew. They were fans, and they loved the band, but she loved the lead guitarist, God damn him, and she wanted to be front and center, close enough that he would look down into the crowd and see her there looking up at him. The teenage girls at the very front wouldn’t surrender their positions—their chests were pressed right against the stage, and they looked like they were prepared to defend their spots to the death—but that was fine; Leah left them in peace. One row back was good enough for her.

  She noticed a couple of the teenagers glancing back at her and whispering to each other. She ignored them, but one of them gathered up the courage to turn all the way around and say, “Are you Leah?”

  Lord. She had forgotten that James had plastered her all over the band’s social media. She smiled tightly, not sure where this interaction was headed. “Yeah. I’m Leah.”

  “Oh my *God,*” the girl said, and prodded an I-told-you-so elbow into her friend’s ribs. “Can I get your autograph?”

  It was too surreal to be believed, so Leah just signed the girl’s notebook and told her to enjoy the show. Fortunately the girls seemed too awed to ask any awkward questions.

  The lights dimmed, and the show began.

  They came out on stage, Andrew and James and O’Connor all in a row, followed by a
lean black guy who must have been the new bass player—a Craigslist find, O’Connor had told her, who showed up thinking he was auditioning for someone’s anonymous garage band, and had almost stroked out when he realized he was playing for the Saving Graces. Leah was glad that she had declined when James called her and asked if she wanted the spot. She was happy where she was, at least for now.

  All of this passed through her head in an instant. Mostly she was watching O’Connor.

  His hair was a little shorter, but otherwise he looked just the same. It hadn’t been *that* long. He slung his guitar around his neck, leaned toward his microphone, grinned, and said, “How’s everyone doing tonight?”

  The sound of his voice sent chills through Leah’s body. The audience erupted in joyful screams, and Leah screamed along with them, raising her hands above her head and jumping up and down, taking her cue from the teenagers in front of her. She would go all out.

  “Quit hogging the mic, O’Connor,” Andrew said, and everyone laughed. Andrew smiled at them, the gathered, adoring crowd, and said, “We’re so glad you’re here. You guys may have heard that I’ve, uh, I’ve had sort of a rough time lately. This is my first time back on stage since I was in the hospital, so I hope you’ll be patient with me if I miss a few notes.”

  “We love you, Andrew!” a girl shrieked from the back of the room.

  Andrew threw his head back and laughed. He *did* look better, Leah decided. Lighter. “I’m glad to hear it. This is also our first show with our new bass player, Nathan. I hope you’ll give him a warm welcome.”

  “We love you, Nathan,” a man bellowed, to much general hilarity.

  “All right, all right,” O’Connor said. “Let’s play some fucking music.”

  James, grinning behind his drum set, counted them off, and they launched into the first chords of “Settle Your Debts.”