Page 32 of Never Been Shipped

“All right, let’s grab food. Anyone else?”

Ryder immediately jumped in, which meant that Micah, predictably, declined. John took one glance at Micah and turned down the offer of food, too. He could hear Frankie still talking as the three band members walked away—“I can’t get used to this new Steve who doesn’t curse. It freaks me out.”

When they left, John looked over at Micah. She was actively trembling, he realized, her hands shaking so much she was having trouble raising her water bottle to her mouth.

“Hey,” he said. “Rest for a minute. Catch your breath. It’s okay.”

She sat down on one of the amps that was stowed in the alcove where they’d been hanging out before the show, and he urged her over so he could squeeze onto the spot next to her. He took the water bottle from her.

“Open up.”

She gave him a helpless look, aReally? You think I can’t handle it myself?type of expression, but she did as he told her, opening her mouth and letting him squirt a stream of water in.

He wanted to smooth the strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail away from her face, wanted to pull her onto his lap and hold her until she stopped trembling. She’d touched him during the show, but that was different—that had been the heat of the moment, part of the stagecraft. He didn’t know what was allowed here.

“Do you need your medicine?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It’s the adrenaline,” she said. “I’ll be fine in a minute. I just—”

“You were incredible out there,” he said. “But I get it. It was a lot.”

“It was alot, right?”

“A fuckton of a lot,” John agreed. “But in a good way.”

She smiled at him. Her eyeliner was a little smudged, and it made her look like a tired party girl at the end of the night. “You were incredible out there, too, you know.”

“ElectricOh!’s still got it,” John said. “Who would’ve guessed.”

Micah snorted. “NotPitchfork.”

John laughed himself, rubbing his hand over his face. “God, no, certainly notPitchfork. What did they give our second album? A five point something?”

“Four point five. They called itlighthearted but shoddily constructed.”

“Which made no sense,” John said. “If anything, the album was a bit of a downer butimpeccablyconstructed, in my opinion.”

“It was front-loaded.”

“Well.” John looked down at his hands. His fingertips wereall calloused from playing the guitar as much as he did, but still somehow he’d managed to nick the side of his hand on the strings while playing so hard tonight, and he had a thin scratch to show for it. He noticed that Micah was staring at his hands, too, and he picked up her water bottle again, intending to hand it back to her.

But instead she opened her mouth once more, and he squirted another stream of water inside. Some of it dripped down her chin, and she wiped it away, her eyes on him the whole time.

“We probably should get food,” he said, then backtracked when he heard how that sounded. “I mean, not together—just that we should both eat. Separately.”

She smiled, her lips still bright and shiny from the water. “Why not together? I don’t know if I can handle being around a ton of people right now. Why don’t we each go back to our rooms, shower, freshen up, whatever—then I’ll order room service and we can eat it on my balcony?”

If things didn’t feel soweirdit was exactly the way John would’ve wanted to spend his night. Just the two of them, hanging out, postgaming the show or talking about everything but the show as they decompressed. But things did feel weird.

“Please?” Micah said.

Then again, they didn’t have to feel that way. Ever since they’d cleared the air somewhat on the upper deck earlier that day, John felt like there was a chance of them being friends again. Maybe not the way they were—maybe they could never get that back—but at least where they could be in each other’s lives. A simple dinner together was a good way to start.

“Okay,” John said. “Give me an hour and I’ll come over.”

Chapter

Sixteen

---