I hold up the dress bag my mom flew out with, feeling the electricity I get in my movements whenever I have shows coming up. It’s not just excitement—it’s more like the feeling of coming home to myself. Like the real Riley Wynn is the one who steps out under the stage lights. I feel her close now.
I’m reaching for the zipper when the bus doors open.
On the steps is Max. He does not, I cannot help noticing, look happy. His eyes remind me now of dark skies, not gemstones.
It’s . . . interesting. I raise an eyebrow, waiting for him to speak.
I don’t need him to, of course. I would be lying if I said hugging him in front of everyone was innocent, and I knew Max would understand it wasn’t. It was intended to spark rumors, which I know my fans well enough to feel certain it has. I wanted to see how Max would respond.
Not well, it seems.
His gaze fixed on me, he mounts the first few steps. “I didn’t agree to pretending we’re togeth—” he starts, stopping short when he notices the other person on the bus. My mother watches him from over my shoulder with undisguised curiosity. Max’s manner changes instantly, his anger evaporating. “Carrie,” he says with surprise mirroring hers. “It’s nice to see you again. How are you?”
Like she’s remembered herself, my mom moves past me, reaching to wrap Max in a hug. “I’m good,” she says, then withdraws with her hands remaining on his shoulders. “But look at you. You’re so grown-up!”
Max smiles. “Am I? Sometimes I’m not so sure,” he replies with gentle warmth.
It is sucker-punch endearing, right to my heart. Yes, I want to say, and no.
In fact, every moment I spend with him, every moment he even crossed my mind since my visit to Harcourt Homes, has left me contending with the dual man he is. I know, realistically, he’s the Max who’s lived the past decade without me. Whose jaw is stronger, frame sturdier.
Yet sometimes, when I see him in the right light or when I hear the way he speaks to my mom, I see the shimmering mirage flash of the Max I used to know. The Max who meant everything to me.
The memory slips over me of bringing him home for our relationship’s only Christmas. He met my whole extended family. We had sex in my car when I excused myself on a supply run, fighting off the cold in the sedan’s interior on the vacant street we found. I remember flattening his wrinkled shirt on our way in to dinner, smiling smiles only we could read, the strung-up lights painting us in the warm glow that looked like how I felt around him. I didn’t know if I could ever capture in lyrics the love in my heart then.
If I couldn’t write our love song, however, I knew what I could write. I decided right then that I would give Max my heart, and if he broke it, I would write the moment into our breakup song. Knowing I wouldn’t walk away empty-handed even if he hurt me had given me the courage to love him fully.
Little lights, close hearts
I felt the end in the start
I wasn’t left empty-handed.
“Are you seeing Riley off?” Max asks my mom. His perfectly pleasant demeanor says I’m the only one surfacing from the reverie of memory. I feel sheepish until I remind myself not to. Feel fearlessly. My dearest songwriting principle, inscribed into my heart with years of practice.
I drape the garment bag over the nearest chair. “My mom is coming on tour with us,” I say. “I was just showing her around.”
“I hear we’re all going to be roommates,” my mom chimes in with enthusiasm. I know she isn’t oblivious to the tension in the room. She’s not hiding from it, either. She’s smiling in its face, saying You don’t scare Carrie Wynn.
“That’s cool with you, right?” I fix Max with my cheeriest smile, mustering my own imitation of my mom’s indefatigable Midwestern nonchalance. “There just isn’t enough room on the other buses. I could ask someone to switch, but they might wonder why.” I let my meaningful look linger, watching him weigh my words, realize how it would only increase gossip in the crew.
Max pauses. His gaze remains on mine, the hollow moment widening. He’s a very good pauser, I have to concede. Like rests in music, he speaks with silence.
Until finally, he lowers his duffel bag from his shoulder.
“It’s your name on the bus window,” he says. “I’ll go wherever you want me.”
I wanted you to go where I go, something raw screams in me. I wanted you to want to go where I go. Does he not realize what different lives we could have lived if he’d only gone where I wanted him—where I wanted us—when we were younger?
I suppose it’s definitive proof of which Max stands here in this cramped corridor. It certainly isn’t the Max I still feel could have been my everything, the Max of my memories. This is the Max who wouldn’t follow me when I desperately wanted him to.
Because, like he’s just reminded me, no matter what we were to each other, he’s only with me now because of my fucking name on the window.
I let none of this onto my face, of course. Instead, I grin, hiding my little maelstrom from him. “Perfect. Well, with you both here, I can give you the tour.” Distraction, I reassure myself. “This is the kitchen and living space. The pantry will be stocked with whatever you tell the page to grab.”
I gesture to the cupboards over the counter, the lacquered wood reflecting the overhead lights. Next to me is a built-in booth of soft white leather. Everything is upscale-RV standard, pleasantly personality-less.
Still, I’m relieved to feel my restless heartache changing into something else. I can’t fight my excitement. Never mind the close quarters, the hotel-on-wheels furnishings. This feels like home.
I lead them backward through the bus, pausing by a door on one side of the corridor. “Bathroom is in here.” We pass the narrow rows of bunks to reach the bedroom. “Mom, this is where you’ll sleep.”
When I slide open the door, my mom walks past me into the room, evaluating its unexpected spaciousness. Wide windows let the winter sunlight in on three sides. The large bed is done up with a surprisingly luxurious duvet, leaving just enough room for a small vanity in the corner.
“Riley, this looks like it’s supposed to be your room,” she says skeptically, like she’s wary of putting me out. “Where’s your bed?”
Stepping back, I pat the closest bunk. “Right here.”
Mom frowns in righteous indignation, her usual reaction to receiving generosity from others. “No. This is your tour. You’re going to be working hard. You need your rest. I’m just . . . here.”
“I invited you,” I point out, playing to her sense of etiquette. “Just accept the VIP treatment.” Just let someone take care of you for once, I want to say, but I don’t.
Mom opens her mouth, objections ready.
“I want to sleep in the bunk anyway,” I continue hastily. “It’s part of the tour magic.”
While she looks only half-convinced, she doesn’t get the chance to object. I hear the bus doors open, and in steps an older man with an impressive gray-black beard and a shiny bald head.
“Frank!” I squeal, delighted to see him. He was the driver on my first smaller tour, and I specifically requested him for this one. He’s worked in the industry for forty years, yet never once talked down to me. During our nights on the road, I started to see him as my “tour dad.” When I was wired from performing, he would exchange favorite pieces of music lore with me until sunrise. When I wasn’t, he drove smoothly enough I could actually sleep.
His smile matches mine, his eyes crinkling exactly like I remember. “Hey, Ri,” he says. “Congrats on the record. Pretty sure I recognized a couple of those licks from late-night writing on the road. Well done, kiddo.”
My heart warms to hear he remembers. In fact, he’s not wrong. I wrote parts of what would become The Breakup Record tracks on our bus years ago. I know some songwriters don’t like writing on the road, despite how modern release schedules often necessitate the practice. I’m the opposite. I love when songs reach me somewhere inconvenient. Like they’re reminding me they’re their own masters.
“This is Max,” I say when he steps up next to me. “Our pianist. And this is Carrie, my mom.”
Frank extends his hand eagerly to each of them. His quick cheer is entirely free of posturing or hesitation. It’s my favorite of his qualities. Not swapping music stories or even pleasant driving. It’s his openness. His every gesture is like the crinkles next to his eyes—they show what he’s feeling right on the surface.
“So you’re where Riley gets it,” he says to my mom.
When my mom laughs, visibly perplexed, Frank looks twice at her. “Certainly not,” she demurs. “I can’t carry a tune or speak in front of a crowd.”
“I meant her eyes,” he says.
I have to purse my lips to suck in my surprise. My mom goes the pinkest shade of pink I’ve ever seen in her cheeks. “Oh,” she manages. In seconds, she recovers. “Yes, those I take credit for.”
“You could practically get a cut of the royalties,” Frank replies easily, then looks to me before I take offense. “I said practically. Your talent speaks for itself, Riley Wynn.”
Pleased, I nod.
“How long have you been a driver?” my mom asks.
Knowing where the story starts—with every grunge band I’d ever heard of, with whom Frank crossed the country on countless occasions—I let him regale my mom while I glance back. Max has retreated to the bunk corridor and is stowing clothes from his duffel in the slim closet space. I drift over to join him.
“So,” I start. Hitting questions head-on is my style, and no delicate eloquence could ease the coming conversation. “Are you more pissed about sharing a bus with me or that I hugged you in front of the band?”
He doesn’t turn, doesn’t falter in his unpacking. I watch his jacket join his shirts in the closet.
I press him. Silence isn’t for flinching. It’s for filling. “Remember how I told you this was my tour and I was going to spin a narrative around you?”
Now he looks right into my eyes.
“Did I not do exactly what I warned you I would?” I ask.
The storm in his eyes roils. I ride it out, meeting his gaze, perversely glad. Max retreated from me once. I lost him then. I’m entitled to none of him now. Which is why I’m deeply, desperately hopeful he won’t retreat from what he wants to say in this moment.
I nearly go weak when he finally lets out a breath.
“I guess I didn’t expect you to insinuate we’re currently together,” he explains, his voice measured, his syllables metronomic. “I don’t want to be part of some pretend showmance offstage.”
“Fair,” I say, straightening up. I’m glad he’s not cloaking this conversation in inscrutable glances or long pauses. “I’ll dial it back in front of the crew. Look, the bus thing really was because someone has to share with my mom and me. You seemed like the best option. Besides”—I smile winningly, my encore smile—“it’s a bus with my mother. When the band meets her, they’ll realize there’s nothing at all sexy about our sleeping arrangements.”
Max laughs. The sound is low and strikingly sincere. It’s my favorite sort of flashback. I feel tension I didn’t notice I was holding on to slip soothingly through my fingers.
“Just—when it’s only us,” he says, “I want the truth. In here, I don’t want to feel like I’m in front of an audience.”
I stare at him, reality and song lyrics overwriting each other in front of me. The truth.
What I wrote is the truth. “Until You” was written from deep within me, dark sparks struck in corners of my soul. The feelings I put into song never fade, not fully. The love never fades, like how the half-remembered man I once loved never quite stops flickering over the one in front of me now. I’m not sure if the songs preserve them or if I preserve them for the songs, but they’re never really gone.
“I’m always in front of an audience, Max,” I say, softer.
His smile slips.
“I suppose you are,” he says.
I don’t need an experienced ear to discern the disappointment in his voice. It isn’t just the sting of judgment I feel, either. He doesn’t understand me, or this part of me. He assumes the performance is the lie, like everyone does, like the critics who chasten my heartsick songs. On his own, he’s concluded the me who stands onstage or in front of paparazzi cameras isn’t real.
I didn’t force him to come on this tour, I remind myself. I didn’t even ask him. It was his idea. I don’t owe it to him to live the lie he decided was the truth. Pretending I’m not the same woman, in the same spotlight, living the same endless song, even when I’m offstage.
Still, the idea of him walking out now has fear stretching the strings of my heart. I’ve heard our duet ringing in my head, in my dreams. It would rip something out of me to never live it out loud.
He doesn’t leave.
With solemn resolve, he turns back to his bunk. “I can move my stuff if this is the bed you wanted,” he says.
“Oh.” The relief is instantaneous. Relearning Max’s indirect way of speaking, I recognize his logistical comment for what it is. His peace offering. “No,” I reply. “I’m good. I’ll take this one.” I tap the bunk not three feet from his.
Without reply, he resumes unpacking his clothes. While I’m grateful he’s still here, our conversation clearly isn’t finished. I don’t know where we’ll stand tomorrow.
I linger in the hallway, feeling like Max somehow makes our mutual silence sound like its own duet. Maybe, I rationalize, it’s because we’re realizing the same thing. We’ll be sleeping side by side, close enough to hold hands.
I hear my own refrain, repeating hollowly in my head.
Nothing at all sexy about our sleeping arrangements.