Page 19 of Noah
I still didn’t know why she was here, but she hadn’t come for me after all.
I stalked to the bar and waved for the tender’s attention. “Bottle of Jack,” I said when he arrived.
He took one look at my face and didn’t argue.
“A whole bottle?” Hudson asked quietly. “That’s a strange reaction to seeing your best friend again.”
“She’s not here for me,” I snapped. “And she’s not my best friend.”
He snorted at that. “She’s always been your best friend, and you’re an idiot. Also, she is here for you. Or at least us. Word on the street is her magazine sent her here to cover the tour.”
Sent her here to cover the tour. So she was here for us. But not because she missed us. Only because her job had sent her.
I grabbed the bottle of Jack when the bartender returned, and looked over at Hudson. “Then she’s just another member of the press. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
I didn’t wait to hear his answer. At that moment, I didn’t even care why Molly was back. I just wanted to get drunk enough to forget about her.
And I didn’t need any company. I was perfectly capable of getting drunk on my own.
It took a bottle of whiskey to get me drunk enough. Halfway through the next, I was seeing three glasses rather than one. I’d wound through all the things Molly had done wrong and moved on to the thingsIwas doing wrong. Only I couldn’t seem to focus on anything for more than five seconds. God, I needed to get it together. There would be label reps at our first show and we needed to look our best. Sound amazing. And instead I was walking around like someone had just insulted mymom. Well, something a lot worse than that, I guessed. Because I wouldn’t give two shits if someone insulted my mom.
I needed to go to sleep. That thought didn’t even belong in my head. I needed my bed.
Wait. Wherewasmy bed? Were we still in a hotel or had that been a dream? Was... Was Molly actually in this hotel? Was I hallucinating?
When I looked around, though, I realized we had to be in a hotel. The room was way nicer than the one I had at home, and the bed was in the wrong spot. Floral couch, ugly but plush carpeting... Hotel, yes. In... Prague? No. Portland.
Portland, and then we were heading up to Washington. And the record execs would be at the first show, or at least some of them. My mind started to wake up and I sat up straighter. The first show was tomorrow. We had one more day in Portland, then we’d head out.
The last time I was in this room, I’d been working on a plan for meeting the first execs. A script for what I wanted to tell them. New music. New look. Anna and Lila as part of the band. Right. Those were all good ideas.
I’d been having good ideas.
I moved over so I could reach the coffee table and started rifling through the papers there. Notes. I’d been making notes. There they were. I pulled the pages off the table, relieved for some reason–like someone might have come in and taken them–and started reading what I wrote.
Three full scripts, depending on what they were talking about.
God, I was smart.
I closed my eyes, fought to get the world to stop spinning, and then put the notes down. This was a good start, but it wasn’t the whole thing. I’d been on tour often enough to know how it went. You always thought you’d have plenty of down time, andthen it vanished into thin air and you ended up feeling stressed the whole time. I would almost inevitably think I’d have plenty of time to do more scripts between shows. And then I’d remember that we didn’t have time to doanythingbetween shows. We’d come up on these other meetings and I wouldn’t have anything prepared.
This was too important to leave up to chance.
I pulled the itinerary toward me again, glancing down the list of cities. Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, Idaho Falls, Bozeman, Billings, Lincoln, Kansas City, St. Louis, Louisville, and then Nashville. My eye caught on St. Louis and held, the memories coming fast and hard of that city. An orphanage that was both overcrowded and underfunded. Administrators who thought it was best for kids to get out into foster families as often as possible, so they got a taste for family life.
Foster families who had abused the kids that weren’t actually theirs, and sent them back to the orphanage damaged.
We’d all been born in St. Louis, too, or at least I thought we had. Rivers, Matt, and I could actually remember living with our families before the orphanage. Hudson...
Hudson had never told us where he came from or whether he remembered anything about it.
And Molly had been dropped off at the orphanage on the day she was born, her eyes still closed and her parents nowhere to be seen. As far as I knew, they’d never even tried to find out where she ended up. She didn’t talk about them at all. I only knew her history because I’d forced one of the ladies at the orphanage to tell me, once. I’d wanted to know how that tiny, feisty girl had ended up in the orphanage, thinking I could make things easier for her if I knew. It hadn’t worked. And I’d never told her that I knew her story.
I didn’t want her thinking I was invading her privacy.
Regardless of whether they’d been born there, Hudson and Molly had grown up in St. Louis, same as the rest of us, and going back there was always bittersweet. Heavy on the bitter. When we got a new record label, I was going to tell them we didn’t want to do stops in St. Louis anymore. There was nothing for any of us in that city. We’d taken the only good things we had–each other–when we left for Nashville and our new lives.
I turned my eyes back to the itinerary and the notes I’d jotted down. We’d have record execs tomorrow night in Portland, and then again in Bozeman and Kansas City. Three shots at getting us a new record deal, with two other sets of reps potentially showing up in Nashville. And I was going to be ready. By the time we finished this tour, I wanted a new deal in our pocket.
