Page 36 of Echoes of a Muted Song

“It still blows my mind that people wouldeven want to read about that shit. It’s not like it was glamorous, like we literally learned how to make chipped beef only to realize that we’d forgotten to pick up the god damned bread to spread it on. It was ridiculous. We ended up treating the chipped beef like dip and scooping it up with ritz crackers because we were out of chips, too. We were so bad at adulting that for our first three years on the road, Dash’s mother sent us weekly reminders of when to pick up groceries and when to wash our funky clothes. We sucked at being responsible, like, every last one of us, including Dash, who’s mom is the most organized woman I know.”

I chuckled at that, enjoyed the images on the screen while I listened to his story.

“This one time, we decided to do this loaded hotdog night, and Ozzy wrote out a list of what we needed and these little flags we could tear off, with ingredients lists on them so we weren’t all running around grabbing the same things,” Johnny explained. “But do you think any of us remembered to grab one?”

I shook my head and typed,tell me Ozzy did at least.

Johnny hung his head and giggled. “Nope, so he did what we all did and picked up what he remembered, or thought he remembered. We wound up with an interesting array of things that took a long time to use up.”

“You can’t just leave things at that and not tellme some of what people bought,” I pointed out.

“Let’s just say that we didn’t run out of hotdogs, ketchup, mustard, buns, chili, or melty cheese for a very long time,” Johnny said, grimacing. “Of course that also meant gaseous warfare the likes of which has never been waged on the tour bus before or since. It was foul, it was atrocious, it was a grievous assault on the senses, and I swear it looked like we were hot boxing the place when he opened up the door, only we were completely out of weed at the time.”

Now I grimaced and hoped I never had the misfortune of stepping on their bus after a run of meals like that. The aftermath of the chili dogs alone would probably be fatal, yet I knew I’d still smile and linger there with Johnny, because he loved them the way I loved the guys in Damaged Saints. We were so damned lucky that the people we loved the most also loved spending time with one another, because I had every intention of stealing Johnny away for as many days like this as we could manage. It was almost funny, how dearly we cherished the moments of solitude now, when we’d spent years chasing a place in the spotlight.

Guess you could say we’d grown or at least come to appreciate how rare it was to find someone to love us exactly the way we were without trying to pin us down with time and places. The way our schedules flexed and shifted as the tour evolved, we’d havewound up disappointing someone who didn’t understand the business. I’d seen more budding relationships fade that way when my bandmates and I had first attempted dating with the crazy schedule we had.

Now I just hoped the fates were kind enough to let me keep the man I’d found, because now that I knew what it was like to be with someone who truly got it, I never wanted to go back to the way things had been. I wanted each day to be me and Johnny Amaral, no matter what his brand of chaos, or mine, played out to be. Head over heels didn’t even begin to describe what I felt about him.

And to think, I’d almost lost out on it by trying to keep him at arm’s length.

Wasted time.

So much wasted time.

But one thing I knew for certain, was that I’d never push him away again.

Chapter 19

(Johnny)

Sweat dripped into my eyes and plastered my hair to my forehead as I launched into the final song of the night. While I’d kicked off the show in one of my trademark hoodies, I’d shed it while singing “Walkabout with Wappa,” a song that diehard fans knew the meaning behind while casual listeners constantly mistook the reference for having something to do with Australia. We’d never been, but it was a bucket list dream of mine and Rebel’s to play on a stage there. For Dash, it was Scotland, while Ozzy had been dreaming of playing in Montreal since he’d spent spring break up there during his one year at college.

That was one more than the rest of us had.

I poured my soul into the words, clutching the mic, never wanting the song to end. If I could have frozen this moment in time I would have, because getting off the stage meant facing the possibility that it was the last stage I wouldstand up on for quite some time. There was a message waiting for me in the back punctuated with the words god dammit, which I’m certain was not a legal term, despite it having come from my lawyer. I’d been putting it off all day, distracted, spending the time before getting on stage working on a song with Dash. Now it was time to end the music, so I could face the music.

Every step felt like a thousand miles.

“That was fuckin’ awesome!” Rebel declared as he slung an arm over my shoulders. “I love coming back to Everett.”

“Like a second home,” Dash said as they descended the steps from the stage to the backstage area.

Despite an hour and forty-five minutes onstage, their energy was still high as they descended upon the bottled water, juice, snacks and sandwiches Draven had started having one of our roadies pick up during the show, so it would be fresh by the time we’d finished. The best part was that our guys knew how we liked our food, so we never had to worry about getting something that we couldn’t eat.

Just the thought of trying to stomach anything left my stomach roiling, so I sought out a quiet corner, and my bag, retrieved my phone, and headed outside to smoke and make the dreaded call. All the while, Christine was a silent presence at my back, never commenting, though she did drape my hoodie over my shoulders whenI shivered. Either the temperature had dropped significantly, or I was rapidly hitting the crash that always came at the end of a performance. It took several pulls off my vape before I could work up the urge to hit the call button, pacing and muttering curses the longer it rang.

“How did I know that you were going to wait until ass-thirty to call me back?”

My eyes skimmed over the numbers in the corner and I snickered, because yeah, I’d forgotten all about the three-hour time difference in my zeal to avoid hearing whatever bad news I was sure he’d called to tell me. All day, thoughts had raced through my head, from bad to the ultimate worst-case scenario. Now that I had him on the line, my heart had started pounding. I leaned against the wall because it no longer felt like my legs would be willing to hold me, exhaled and tightened my grip on the phone so I didn’t drop and break it before I had the chance to hear what he wanted.

“It’s only ten here.”

“Yeah, well it was ten here three hours ago,” he pointed out. “Now it’s one in the damned morning and I’m half temped to get on a plane and make you wait until I arrive and can give you the news in person.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, I said I’m tempted, but only half, the other half is cozy and warm with the blankets pulled up around my ears,” he snapped. “Beforeyou called I was dreaming about sipping cold, fruity drinks on the bow of a boat in the Florida Keys, now I’m awake and I can hear the wind howling outside as we get dumped on by another round of snow.”

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