Page 17 of Drum Me Away
A laugh disguised as a sob burst from my mouth. The idea of swapping stories with Craig actually sounded nice.
I rarely spoke about my family to any of them. Mostly because it was easier for me to pretend family didn’t exist. Except Grandma. She’d gone to our very first arena concert we’d ever played, and she’d worn a DarkHeaven T-shirt and even dyed her hair purple.
She was my biggest fan when the rest of my family found me little more than an embarrassment.
I really wish I had stopped to visit last week.
“I remember your grandma. She’s been to a few of our concerts,” Matt said.
I nodded and swallowed a fresh wave of tears. “She was the only person in my family who supported my dream of becoming a rock star.”
“Damn,” Lucas said quietly, but then he shook it off and pointed at the dressing room. “Get dressed. Get packed. We need to go.”
“You’ll let us know about the funeral arrangements so we can be there, okay?” Angel said. I had no idea where the kids were. With their nanny on the other bus, probably. We were supposed to be leaving from here and driving all night to Kansas City, where we had a day to recover before playing our next show.
“I appreciate the support, but you don’t all have to come.” My mother would be appalled if a bunch of tattooed, long-haired rockers showed up at the funeral. My grandmother, on the other hand, would have loved it.
“Well, now that we have an unexpected week’s vacation, we have nothing better to do,” Dean quipped. Lucas punched him on the shoulder, harder than was probably necessary. Dean rubbed at the offended spot. “I was just kidding, dude.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll let you all know as soon as I know,” I said and then closed myself in the dressing room to pull on a pair of leggings and a pale yellow DarkHeaven T-shirt. But then I dragged the shirt back over my head and replaced it with a Detroit Tigers shirt I’d picked up last year when we’d played Little Caesar’s Arena. The last thing I wanted to do was advertise that I was in a band when I was about to get on a flight and go home to a family I dreaded seeing almost as much as I dreaded the funeral.
Thank God Lucas insisted on coming with me. I was going to need all the support I could get.
* * *
The flight was, thankfully, uneventful. I was pretty sure the attendant in first class recognized us, but people who worked first class knew how to keep their fangirling to a minimum, so she didn’t bother us beyond being overly attentive.
Lucas ordered a double whiskey, and I drank most of it before passing out for the rest of the flight. Crying was exhausting, as it turned out.
By the time he nudged me awake, we’d landed and everyone was unbuckling their seat belts, preparing to disembark.
And then we were walking through Seattle-Tacoma International, and Lucas said, “I’ve only ever been here for our concerts, so I don’t know much about it. Is it better to rent a car or rely on Uber?”
“My family doesn’t actually live in the city. They live about an hour and a half east. So it probably makes more sense to rent a car.”
He already had his phone out and was tapping away at his screen. “I guess I’d better cancel my hotel and get one closer, then. Where do they live?”
“Your hotel?”
He glanced up from his phone. “I figured you’d stay with your parents. And that it would be less awkward if I didn’t.”
“Actually, it would be less awkward if I didn’t, too. We don’t, uh, we don’t really get along.” That was an understatement if I’d ever uttered one. I was pretty sure my mother pretended she had only two daughters instead of three. There probably weren’t even pictures of me in the house.
“What do you mean, you don’t really get along?”
This had to be completely foreign to Lucas, whose family supported him every step of his career. That first Christmas break after we met in college, when I told him I wasn’t going home, he’d invited me to go to Missouri with him. I’d declined because I had no freaking clue how to act in a happy family environment.
“I mean exactly what the words imply,” I replied, probably with too much bite, but honestly, I was exhausted and this was not the time to have this conversation. It would take hours, possibly an entire day to explain my family dynamics, and no way was I going down that rabbit hole without some sort of liquid enhancement.
There was a moment’s pause, during which I focused on the sound of my own heartbeat until Lucas let out a breath and said, “Okay, so tell me which town, and I’ll look for an Airbnb. That’ll be more comfortable than a hotel for a week. Plus, I can make your coffee every morning instead of you having to head down to the lobby because you can’t stand the stuff in the room.”
And we were back on even footing. Chuckling, I said, “Or, more likely, I can’t figure out how to work those machines either.”
He shook his head. “Those things are dummy-proof. But the coffee does suck. Now, where am I looking for an Airbnb?”
I grimaced. “Roma.”
He tapped on his phone, then arched his brows in my direction. “Population 893?” He whistled. “I have so many questions.” He shook his head and luckily for me did not immediately begin rattling off those questions. Instead, he used his phone to indicate the short queue of people waiting for the single attendant at the rental car counter.
