Page 28 of Never Been Shipped

“Anyone sitting here?” John said from behind her, gesturing at the chair next to hers.

“No.”

He sat down at the end of his, tilting it forward with his weight. He had to catch himself from falling with one hand down on the deck, and he laughed a little when he settled himself more securely, rubbing two of his fingers that had stopped his fall.

“Are you hurt?”

He examined his fingers, which looked normal at least—not bent or scraped up or anything like that. “Nah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

She thought of his fingers playing the guitar. She thought of them against her nipple this morning, what they would feel like inside her. She cleared her throat. “I think you’re going to need those.”

“I’ll try not to be so clumsy in the future,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

The wind had started back up a bit—not as bad as the day before, thankfully, but enough that it kept whipping strands of Micah’s ponytail onto her cheeks, sticking against her mouth. She gathered her ponytail with one hand to hold it out of her face.

“He’s not wrong, you know,” she said. “I did snake the album deal right out from underneath all of you. And I never apologized for it. But Iamsorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. I should’ve apologized a long time ago. To everyone, but especially to you.”

Why especially to me?she thought he might ask, and then she’d have to decide just how honest she wanted to be. But instead he shifted on the chair, leaning back into it so he was reclining, not even looking at her.

“Ryder shouldn’t have thrown that in your face,” he said. “Not now, and definitely not as a way to deflect from the fact thathewas the one who was being a jackass. He shouldn’t have kissed you like that, in front of everyone, when he knew you wouldn’t like it. The band had a lot of problems, and was probably doomed in a hundred different ways that had nothing to do with you.”

That was kind of him to say, but Micah didn’t believe that. She could think of a number of the band’s problems, and unfortunately she seemed to be at the center of all of them.

He did turn to look at her then, squinting against the sun. “I never did get to hear your side of the story when that all went down,” he said. “I feel like it’s my fault that I didn’t ask.”

“You were angry with me,” she said. “You all were.”

“Well, I’m not angry now. And I’m asking now. What happened, Micah?”

Just that question, the gentle way he’d asked it…She felt tears already starting to leak down her face, and she wiped them away, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

“Things weren’t great between Ryder and me,” she said finally. “You had to have noticed that. I know it was adding to all the tension in the band, because we were fighting all the time, and then the whole band was fighting all the time…”

That last European tour, it had felt like they couldn’t agree onanything. Ryder hated the sequencing of the set list. Frankie kept having technical issues with their rig and because they were overseas with limited equipment, they kept trying quick fixes that never seemed to solve the underlying problem. Steve had wanted more time to party and see the sights and had rebelled against itineraries that he said were hampering his ability to enjoy himself. Micah had been exhausted—physically, mentally, emotionally. It came out in her voice, which she couldn’t even stand to listen to in video recordings from that tour. It sounded so raw, it broke when she tried for certain notes, and she could justhearthe way she was barely hanging on by a thread.

And as for John…well, he’d been withdrawn. She felt like she’d lost him, ever since she started dating Ryder, and she feltlike she couldn’t blame anyone but herself. He was still around, still steady, reliable John. But ever since she’d made the mistake of telling Ryder the story of the night she and John had written “If Only” together, he’d gotten it into his head that John was a huge threat to their relationship and possibly to the entire band. The only way Micah could mitigate that was to spend less and less time with John, and so that was what she’d done.

“God, it’s such a cliché, right?” she said. “Romantic relationships fucking up a band. Except No Doubt and Fleetwood Mac were able to work through it, becomebetter, even. I don’t know why I started dating him in the first place, I always—”

She broke off, not sure how honest she wanted to be. There was giving John the closure he deserved, and then there was just opening up a bunch more doors that were probably best left locked up tight.

“He can be very charming,” John said. “When he’s not being a complete dick.”

Micah choked on a laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess that was it. I was young and stupid, I don’t know. We were all spending so much time together, it was this pressure cooker that nobody else understood…”

“So you two broke up before the band did,” John said, like he was prompting her to continue but also like he was clicking something into place for himself.

“Like the week before,” Micah said. She paused, wanting to feel John out on one of the few thingsshe’dalways had questions about, that had been an open wound all these years. “Did Ryder ever show you anything?”

He frowned. “Show me anything? Like what?”

It was possible he was playing dumb, but she didn’t thinkso. It was also possible he just didn’t remember, in which case she wasn’t looking to jog his memory. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s not important. The point is, Ryder and I broke up—for good this time—and it was messy and ugly and I just didn’t see any way back from it. Not to him, and definitely not to being in a band with him.”

“I would’ve kicked him out so fast,” John said. “I was dying for an excuse.”

She believed thatnow. But then, everything had been so topsy-turvy that she legitimately hadn’t known what to believe. Ryder had said things that made her feel like the band would be onhisside over hers, if it came to that, and she didn’t know if she could take it.

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to do that for me.”

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