Page 138 of Secondhand Smoke
“Guys, I still have tables waiting—” Nell tried to push past them, trying to escape from their bombardment of questions. But then the last question froze her once again in her tracks. “What?”
“What?”
“They’re going to be in Bellevue on Saturday?”
The girls shared a look.
Margaret turned around and picked up the newspaper. “Yeah, didn’t you see?”
She held it up, and Nell took in the photo of the band on the front, a snapshot of them mid-performance. The headline read:Local Rock Band Returns for Reunion Concert.
“I drove to Bellevue and bought tickets as soon as they announced it,” Carrie said.
Nell tried to stay calm, coaching her face to remain neutral even though she felt . . . Well, actually, she didn’t know how she felt. They hadn’t been in the area since they moved to LA almost a year ago. At least, not publicly.
A million and one emotions were running through her mind, none of them clear enough for her to grab and hold on to.
So much had changed. They had changed; she had changed.
For a while, she would go into the music store every now and then in hopes that she might run into one of them by chance.Sometimes, she would drive or ride her bike past Toni’s garage. Occasionally, she would drop a dozen cookies off on Ron’s porch. And she still spent some nights sitting by the quarry, looking at the stars and listening to music.
Some might say she needed to move on, but she didn’t feel like she wasn’t moving on.
Instead, she felt like it was a reflection of how far she’d come. How different she’d been in those places with them then, and how much she’d grown to be who she was now.
She looked for them there so she could show them that, and maybe one day make new stories.
And now they were coming back. For one night. After that, they were leaving to tour across the entire country for nine months.
When they came back,ifthey came back, it would be a long time.
“Are there still tickets available?” she asked, and the girls beamed.
“Are you going to go?” Margaret asked.
Nell looked at them and finally was able to grasp one of the emotions swirling in her: excitement.
She laughed and shooed the girls with her hand. “Get back to work.”
56 - Barrett
“Is that really all you need?” Ron shook his head as he took in the mess Barrett had made of the suitcases he was trying to fit his entire life into. “Are three suitcases really going to last you?”
“Yes. I told you. We can’t fit that much on the bus anyways,” Barrett said, throwing in a few of the shirts the stylists had suggested. They’d insisted on completely styling the band throughout the course of their tour, but Barrett liked to keep things simpler than their three-hundred-dollar leather jackets, so he’d opted to take a few shirt and ring suggestions and call it good.
“Can’t fit much but plan on living out of it for a year. You’re practically homeless.” Ron shook his head.
“That’s part of the fun. You know you’re welcome to join,” Barrett teased.
“Trade my couch for constant car sickness? No, thank you. I’m fine staying right here.”
“I know.” Barrett managed to shut the zipper despite the bag bursting at the seams. “You better not turn my room into an office or something. I’m coming back.”
“Why would you do that? You should just get that place in Los Angeles Dennis was going on about. It’s better.”
“I’m looking at different places around the city,” Barrett said. “But I like having options.”
He’d had a hard time accepting he was going to be even further away from Ron for almost an entire year, but as always, the man was more than insistent that if Barrett decided not to do the tour just because of him, he would never let him inside the house again.
