Page 24 of Never Been Shipped

Because that was the worst part. It was definitely, unmistakably Micah’s fault that they kept fucking up. She went too early into that chorus, and then somehow the syncopated guitar riff threw her off, and she could never catch up. It was like jumping into the middle of a game of double dutch, and thinking for a second you had it, until all of a sudden the rope tripped you up and you were face-first on the ground.

“I think I know what I’m doing wrong,” she said.

He shook his head. “Don’t think.Feelit. You know you can feel it.”

God, could she feel it. That was part of her problem. She was trying to look anywhere but at John’s hands, but her gaze kept getting pulled toward that direction, and then suddenly she was right back in that bed, him warm and hard against her.

“Micah?” She realized John had been talking to her for thelast few seconds, but she’d been off on some other planet. Some distant, horny star. What she needed was to find twenty minutes to herself where she could take care of these feelings, and then she could go back to normal.

“Hmm?”

“You okay?”

John had always been good at seeming to tune out the conflict around him, to focus on the task at hand. It had made him an ideal bandmate when things had been at their most tense and fractured, because she could always look to him to help ground her onstage, could take strength from his calm presence even off the stage. She’d wondered about his home life when they were kids, knew deep in her bones that there was stuff going on there that had made him turn inward the way he had, like rough waters smoothing down a rock. She thought leaving at a young age to play music would give him a respite from that, but then she supposed it had just introduced a different kind of strife. She wished she’d been a better friend to him in those years.

“Last night—” he started, but she never got to hear the rest of what he was going to say, because Ryder rejoined the group, draining what was left of a beer. It was nine thirty in the morning, but what did she know.

“Let’s go again,” Ryder said. “Do we need to slow it down for you, Micah?”

He stretched out the words, sayingslow it downlike she wouldn’t possibly be able to understand. In a perfect world, she would’ve nailed it on her next try, and Ryder would’ve somehow cut his hand open on a guitar string and needed to be helicoptered off the boat for emergency care.

In this extremely imperfect world, Micah fucked up again. And again.

“I can’t believe this shit,” Ryder said, taking off his guitar and practically throwing it on the ground. He’d always been about the rock-star dramatics, but this one seemed especially stupid, since they only had so many instruments on board. Presumably he would need that guitar in one piece.

“I’m sorry,” Micah said. She could feel tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, and willed them not to fall. “Maybe it’s the song, maybe we move on to—”

But Ryder was already halfway down the aisle toward the door to the theater. “I’m taking ten,” he said over his shoulder. “I suggest you take the time to search upbasic four-four time signatureand see if anything on YouTube can help you out.”

Steve stood up, too, twirling one drumstick in his hand before setting both on top of his kit. “The jump from three to four in the chorus is tough,” he said. “But you’ve done this before.”

Frankie gave Micah a sympathetic shoulder squeeze, but they left with Steve. Micah knew that a break was probably a good idea, that there was no point in continuing to push through if it just wasn’t working, but she also couldn’t shake her panic that time was running out and they were no closer to having a tight set than they’d been half an hour ago.

Only John remained behind, sitting on his amp, one leg crossed over the other while he idly strummed his guitar.

“Ihavedone this before,” she said, pacing back and forth, chewing on her thumbnail. It tasted horrible because of the nail polish she’d had applied before the cruise in order to prevent that very action, but not horrible enough to stop her. “I’ma professional. Or at least Iwasa professional. I haven’t performed in eight years—did you know that?”

“Why did you stop?”

She barked a bitter laugh. “I didn’t get another record deal,” she said. “Soft sales—that was the phrase they used. And no record deal, no tour. They’re not looking to sink money into an artist that isn’t going to have anything else come out.”

“But what stopped you from doing anything else? Something on your own. An indie project, featuring on another artist’s song, whatever.”

She paused in her pacing, turning to look at him. “Join some cover band, play the local bar scene? That’s what you did, right?”

It came out nasty, the way she said it. And maybe she’d meant it to. She was frustrated—at her incompetence, at the seemingly infinite number of ways she could let people down. She was frustrated by the way John could just sit there, playing his guitar with such quiet skill, could slot himself into any band he wanted without missing a beat. The way he could fade into the background, providing the foundation of the music without needing to take center stage. It could be just him and his guitar against the world. He didn’t even know what a gift that was.

“Why not?” John asked. “You could’ve made a killer Elvis impersonator at a fast-food joint.” His brown eyes were steady and serious, staying on her as he started strumming a song she immediately recognized.“Chicken tender, sour and sweet, never let me go…you have made my life complete, and I love you so.”

He sang softly, his voice barely projecting over the guitar, which was still playing through his amp. John had always been self-conscious about his voice—Ryder and Frankie had done all the live backup vocals. Micah didn’t entirely see why. He mightnot have the strongest voice—she wouldn’t know, since she’d barely heard him use it. But he could carry a tune reasonably well, and there was a low warmth to it that she liked. Or maybe that was just because it washim.

“Keep going,” she said when he stopped after that verse.

He laughed, slapping the strings of his guitar in a way that she knew meant he wouldn’t be singing any more. “That was supposed to get you to smile.”

It had objectively been hilarious. She’d probably crack up later, thinking of how he’d turned the lyrics of “Love Me Tender” into a song about chicken nuggets. But for now she was caught in the spell of his serenade, and she just didn’t want it to stop.

“What kind of cover bands are you in?” she asked.

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