Page 9 of Never Been Shipped

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen when our first album came out, nineteen by the time we broke up.”

“Wow,” Asa said. “A whirlwind three years.”

It had been a maelstrom. And John felt like he’d never fully gotten closure on any of it. Maybe it was impossible to believe he ever would.

But Micah had approachedhimin the parking lot. She could’ve just jumped into a car and left, but instead she’d chosen to walk over, admonish him for being late, make fun of his T-shirt, take off her shoes and then stand so close to him that he could see where she’d applied her mascara thicker on one eye than the other. He’d always assumed that she was done with him, that whatever had broken their band had broken them, too. Now he didn’t know what to think.

Just then, he heard the sound of the front door opening and shutting, the clatter of keys being hung up on the wall where they all kept theirs in case someone had to move someone else’s car. It was just past five, which meant it was probably Lauren, home from work.

Asa leaned out John’s doorway, the grin on his face already confirming what John had figured. “Hey,” he called out. “In here. We’re trying to get John ready for this cruise.”

Lauren stepped cautiously into the doorway, clearly not wanting to disrupt anything by coming all the way into John’s room. She’d only moved in with them last year, and she could still be a little hesitant about asserting herself in any way with the rest of them in the house. John tried to help her feel comfortable as much as he could by including her in all their traditions and activities, filling her in on any idiosyncrasies of the house he could tell she hadn’t caught on to yet. But heunderstood how it could be. It took a lot to feel truly part of a group that had already existed before you.

Asa looped his arm around her waist, pulling her in to kiss her temple. “What do you think?” he asked. “What’s the perfect outfit for a day at sea, playing in a band with an exclamation point in its name, with people you haven’t performed with since you were all in skinny jeans?”

Lauren eyed the clothes that John had spread over his bed, tilting her head while she seemed to consider the question. “I guess I would say…” She bit her lip, and John could tell she was holding back a smile. “You look very nice in black.”

—

In the end,John had more luggage than he’d ever remembered bringing on a single trip. Back when ElectricOh! were touring, he’d become an expert on packing light, fitting the bare essentials into a single suitcase, rewearing the same outfits over and over again and letting the roadies handle most of the gear. But now, they had no roadies, and he was petrified he’d forget something important.

If he thoughthe’doverpacked, he couldn’t wait to see what Micah had brought. It had been yet another source of contention with Ryder—how many outfit changes she’d always had, all the coverage they’d gotten as people posted roundups of her best tour looks or videos of her showing off her closet on the bus. To John, it had been a stupid thing to hold against her. She was the lead singer, after all. Her look was as much a part of the band’s stage show as the images projected behind them or the lights that pulsed to the beat.

But when he saw her, standing over to one side in the areareserved for the artists to board the ship, she didn’t seem to have much with her. A silver hard-shell suitcase, a single guitar case, and a smaller purse slung over one shoulder. She was frowning down at something on her phone, and he wished he knew if she was really intent on whatever was on there or if she was faking to look like she had something to do. There was a time when he would’ve known.

“Hey,” a voice said from behind him, and he turned.

“Hey, Frankie.” It was surprisingly instinctual, his move to hug them, and so that was what he did. “Decent flight?”

“Not too bad,” Frankie said. “Got in super late last night, so just crashed at the hotel and then woke up in time for the driver to get me here.”

Ryder, Frankie, and Micah all still lived in L.A., whereas Steve had moved back to Ohio where they were originally from. John hadn’t seen Steve or Ryder arrive yet, but he assumed they weren’t far off. “Was anyone else on it?”

Frankie glanced pointedly over to Micah, who was still on her phone. “No,” they said. “I assume she caught an earlier one. Have you really not talked to her since—”

“Nope,” John said.Shealso hadn’t talked tohimin all those years, he could point out. It went two ways. But that probably opened up a bunch of stuff best left unsaid, parts of their history that had been wrapped up in the band but separate from it, too. “Are you nervous about playing again?”

Frankie shrugged. “Not really. I’m such a better bassist now than I was then. I swear I used to just follow the root notes and was scared to do anything more innovative than that. So I’m ready to have some fun with it. What about you?”

“Yeah,” John said. “Same.”

Hewasa better guitarist than he’d been then. He might not be writing many of his own songs anymore, but he’d played thousands—maybe tens of thousands, he didn’t even know—of other people’s songs. It had made him learn chord shapes and techniques he might not have otherwise, made him more precise in where he put his fingers and more attuned to different strumming patterns. Some of ElectricOh!’s first songs seemed almost endearingly simple to him now, clearly the work of kids who wrote around chords that felt natural to their hands and didn’t know all the clever little things you could do with music. John had felt like he’d put everything he wanted tosayinto that music, but now he realized how limited his vocabulary had been.

And yet the songs really did say something to him, even now. Maybe more so for their simplicity.Thatpart did make him nervous.

“Should we go over there?” Frankie asked, nodding toward Micah again, and John hesitated. He was just about to saySure, let’s go, when Steve bounded up toward them, Ryder following close behind.

“The gang’s all here!” Steve said, holding up his phone and snapping a quick picture before John even knew what was happening. He’d probably been caught midblink. “Can you believe we’re going to be on a ship with Tatiana Rivera? Do you think we’ll get to hang out with her or will the TV people and music people be separate?”

Tatiana had been the female star ofNightshiftersand was definitely the most famous person on the ship, since her male counterpart had been the only cast member to decline the cruise. John wouldn’t be surprised if they barely breathed the same air as Tatiana Rivera, fellow “talent” or no.

“I met her at a party in the Hills a few years ago,” Ryder said with a smirk. “I’ll introduce you.”

“Sweet,” Steve said. “I just want a picture. So I can show my kids when they’re old enough to be impressed by it. You know? Like look at Dad with a real-life celebrity! Tyler would be more impressed if this was a Disney cruise and I got a picture with Donald Duck, to be honest, but what are you going to do.”

Frankie gave Steve an indulgent smile. “Not Mickey?”

---