The Way Back Home (8 page)

“Oops!” she says, chuckling.

“These are great,” he says when he removes the lid. “Thanks, guys.”

“You're welcome, son,” my dad says, “but I didn't have anything to do with what's underneath those T-shirts.”

Dylan lifts the shirts up and grins. “Thanks, Mom,” he says, leaning over for a hug. Then in a loud whisper he says, “But I'll buy my own underwear from here on out, okay?”

I lean forward and pass my brother a small gift bag from the table, knowing he's going to completely flip out. “Here, Dylan, open mine next,” I say eagerly.

He pulls the tissue paper out and frowns. “It's empty,” he says, turning the bag upside down.

“No, it must've fallen out,” I say, looking on the floor for the page I printed in the hotel's business center earlier, a photo of the amp he's been eyeing the whole tour. “Here it is. Happy birthday.”

He takes the piece of paper, and his face lights up. “Bird!” he says, gawking at the picture. “This is mine?”

“Yep,” I say, beaming. “All yours.”

I knew he'd love it.

“I can't believe you did this.”

“I had it sent to the Nashville house, so it'll be waiting for you once we're off tour.”

“I
cannot
believe you did this,” he repeats, standing for a hug. “Thank you. You shouldn't have spent that much.”

“Eh, I'll just take it out of your next paycheck,” I tease.

“Let me see that,” Adam says, and Dylan passes him the picture. Adam lets out a low whistle. “Sick.”

“Now mine,” Stella says, patting the love seat so that Dylan will sit back down. He opens the last gift, the one that looks like it was wrapped in a fancy boutique but was clearly just wrapped by Stella being Stella. She is looking at Dylan's face with so much anticipation that you'd think it was
her
birthday.

“No way,” he says simply, after he lifts the lid. Grinning, he pulls out a vintage red leather guitar strap, flips it over, and then looks down at her face. She smiles up at him and they share a moment, just the two of them, while we all look on. When he looks back down at the gift box in his lap, Stella steals a quick kiss on his cheek. My brother, obviously conscious of all of us in the room, glances up at my mom, whose eyes have gone wide. She looks over at me, astonished, and I nod back like,
Yep. Can you believe it?

“I love it,” he says, looking at Stella again. “Thank you.”

“Happy birthday,” she replies.

“Looks like a nice strap, son,” my dad says. “Something special?”

“Sorry, it's just—I saw this in a vintage shop in Vegas on our first date.” He blushes. “Or I don't know, our first hang out or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Stella repeats, laughing.

“And it's, well, it just means a lot to me.”

Stella can't help but gush as she takes the guitar strap out of his hands and shows us all the back. “He was totally going to buy it, but then he realized the previous owner had written, ‘You were right here all along,' on the inside, and he got all cute and embarrassed and changed his mind. I decided to just go for it, and if he never made a move, I'd sell it on eBay.”

Dylan laughs. “Oh, really?”

“May I see it?” I ask, eager to eye the guitar strap that upstaged my amp. We all pass it around, everybody heaping praise on Stella for her thoughtfulness, but I realize that once again, I feel like I'm missing out. And it's crazy. Do I not want my brother to be with a great girl who's super thoughtful and makes him happy? Do I not want my best friend to be with a guy who cares about her so much that he's taken things slow? Or do I just not want to be around people who have what I sometimes think is impossible for me?

“
I
CAN
'
T DO
this, go through this, pretend it didn't hurt,”
I sing. We are on our way to Wichita, and I'm writing a song in my room, or trying to, but it's hard because Dylan and Stella are right outside and could probably guess whom it's about. I've tried to play it cool around Adam, even keeping my distance a little, but this week has wreaked havoc on me. The feelings I've always had for him have taken root in my heart again, and it's not professional. I can't date my opener. These nightly Coke meet ups, fangirling in the wings, the nonstop texting, it's all too much.
“When you said good-bye, maybe you didn't cry, but—”

“Bird?” Stella calls, knocking on my door frame.

“Come in!”

“Hey, we're stopping for gas,” she says. I look out the window and see we've exited the interstate and are pulling into a truck stop. “You want to stretch your legs?”

“Nah, I think I'll just chill here,” I say.

“Cool. Oh, and Dylan invited Adam to come over and play Black Ops. That's okay, right?”

I sigh. Now I definitely won't be able to work on this song. “Sure.”

She winks at me. “I finally did some recon: He's single.”

I lay my guitar on the bed and fall back against my pillows. “That just makes it harder!”

“Why? 'Cause of the ‘boundaries' and all that?”

“It's unprofessional, yeah, but”—I pause and look out the window, then quietly finish—“honestly, I think I'm more worried about my heart.”

“I know,” she says. “But I swear to you: Things are different this time.”

“Stella! You coming?” Dylan calls from the front of the bus.

“Yeah!” she hollers back. As she backs down the little hallway she points at me and says, “Don't. Worry,” and then heads outside. I sit up and watch her through the window, catching up to Dylan and tripping him from behind. He turns around and chases her into the convenience store, and I feel that stab of envy again.

Some people don't know how good they've got it.

“‘Dear Bird,'” Stella reads a few hours later. Marco brought over another box of fan mail that Anita FedExed, and we're going through it as the bus makes its way to our next stop. “‘I saw that you're filming a scene in the new Drew Barrymore movie. Any chance you'll be making a Bird Barrett movie? Like, based on your real life? Even if it goes straight to DVD, I think it would be amazing. I've been trying to break into acting, and I would be a perfect body double for your stunts.'”

“What does this girl think would be happening in your real-life movie?” Dylan asks. “Ziplining through arenas?”

“And why does she assume it'd go right to DVD?” Stella asks. “That's just offensive.”

“Listen to this one,” Adam interjects. He's holding up a scroll, the back of which is a terrible pencil drawing of my face in profile while a flock of birds fly from my head in what is supposed to represent my hair. I don't have high hopes for this letter. “‘To the one who flew into my heart, I knew you'd be mine from the start. Our stories so similar, our hearts so familiar, only yellow lines keep us apart.'”

But it does make me giggle.

“Please stop,” Dylan says, plugging his ears.

“What do you think that guy looks like?” Stella asks. “I bet he's forty and lives in his mom's basement.”

“Well, the ones I'm opening are really sweet,” I say. “I love little-kid handwriting. This girl writes every
e
backward. It's so cute.”

“Okay, here's one you can actually answer,” Dylan says. “‘I have a major crush on a guy at school, but he's my best friend's cousin and I can't tell if he likes me, too, or if he's just nice to me because our whole group is always going down to the beach together. How did you finally get your guy to notice you, and who is ‘Notice Me' actually about?'” He looks up at me and says, “Yeah, Bird. Spill.”

But my mouth just hangs open. It's gone totally dry. I can feel heat rising up in my chest, and I know that my neck and face are probably bright red. Adam is sitting right beside me. We were finally having a normal day of hanging out that involved video games and opening innocent fan letters, until my idiotic brother shined a spotlight
directly onto my soul.

I glance over at Stella, who is shooting Dylan a laser beam death glare that could zap all the hair off a baby bunny. “What?” he asks. The bus is totally silent. And now it's just weird. When Dylan looks at Adam, though, who I notice in a lightning-quick glimpse is also bright red, realization dawns. It's obvious now that Adam knows, too. And I'd say it's pretty obvious that I want to stop the bus, lie down in front of it, and die as the tour goes on without me.

“So this one's pretty good,” Adam finally ekes out. His normally low voice is, like, an octave higher at first. He clears his throat as he tries to change the subject. He reads through a long letter about a girl getting bullied at her school because she is overweight, and I have to say that by the end of it, I do realize that there are much worse problems in the world than my crush finding out about my crush… although I am still contemplating ways to murder my brother in his sleep.

“You're bringing your guitar?” I ask Adam. Over the past week, we've wound our way across America to Charleston, South Carolina, where we play tomorrow night. Adam and I had to shoot a few promos this morning, but we have the rest of the day off, so we're going to the beach with Dylan and Stella.

“Hey, my guitar is as important as sunscreen,” Adam answers.

“Um, clearly you aren't fair-skinned,” I say as I lift the back hatch and throw my stuff into the SUV Dylan rented.

He laughs and loads his stuff, too, then hops into the back, his legs dangling over the bumper. “How much longer? I thought we were leaving soon.”

I glance over my shoulder at our bus. Apparently, my brother and Stella are having their first fight—something about her not being able to find her cover-up because my brother is a major slob and his stuff is always everywhere—but I'm not sure that's something I should share with Adam. I'm trying to stay as far out of it as possible. I am Switzerland.

“Yeah, well, there's no hurry,” I say, yawning. “I'm happy for a relaxing day with no schedule.”

“Good point,” Adam says. “Take the day off today, because you won't be able to relax any when that
Rolling Stone
reporter joins the tour.”

Involuntarily, I shudder. “I know. Anita's making it this huge deal. I wish she'd stop talking about it 'cause she's just stressing me out more.”

Adam nods. “A
Rolling Stone
feature is a big deal.”

“It's huge!” I say. “But why does the reporter have to join the tour? She'll be living on my bus for, like, four days. I'll have to be on my toes twenty-four-seven.”

Adam laughs. “Are there many skeletons in your bus's closet?” he teases.

I feel my shoulders relax and I return his grin. “You're right. I'm being ridiculous.”

“No, you're being cautious,” he says, surprising me by reaching out for my hand and giving it a quick squeeze. “It's hard not knowing what people will write, but just try to have fun with it.”

I nod but am only thinking about that hand squeeze. Was it just encouragement from a good friend or something more?

His phone beeps and he frowns. “Hey, a couple of guys in my band want to know which beach. Is it cool if they come?”

“The more the merrier,” I say, glancing over my shoulder. “My bodyguard is coming, and I'm hoping he's a Speedo type of guy.”

Adam laughs and looks over at Big Dave. “Oh, me too. A Speedo
and
tanning-oil type of guy.”

I swat his arm and we both laugh, the thought of my ex–football linebacker bodyguard lounging in a banana hammock too much for either of us to take. I climb up next to Adam in the back, and for the next five minutes we sit in mostly comfortable silence. Every now and then one of us will talk about the tour or a part of the show or Jacob, but mainly we enjoy the time to be still. Our lives are nonstop. There are very few times we can just
be
, and very few people we can just
be
with.

“Hey, so I was going to play this for you on the beach later, but I've been working on something,” Adam finally says, reaching back for his guitar.

“Oh yeah?” I ask, lifting up my sunglasses. I shed my big hat, too. With the back hatch open we've got plenty of shade, and at this point, I'm beginning to wonder if we'll even make it to the beach. “Something you just wrote?”

“Kind of,” he says, scratching the stubble on his jaw. “More like something that's just now coming together.”

“I'm intrigued.”

“I think I'm on the right track, but I don't know if it's really my sound,” he says with a frown. “My label wants something ‘fun'—their word—and I've tried a few things, but they've called it all generic. And I'm like, yeah, generic because it's manufactured. Does that make sense?”

I nod my head emphatically. “Yes. My second album was a nightmare for the same reason. It was like everybody was ordering songs the way you'd order a steak at a restaurant. I wanted to pull my hair out.”

“That's it exactly,” he says. “So anyway, I've been waiting for inspiration to hit, and I've been thinking back to Dylan's birthday, the whole food fight, and
that
was fun. I scrawled out some images, but I'm having trouble weaving them together into a story.”

“I love the premise,” I say, crossing my legs. “Sounds ‘fun.'”

He grins. “Exactly. It was awesome. But I also feel like there has to be a girl, you know?” He swallows hard, nervous. “'Cause there's not really enough there with just the food fight itself.”

I nod slowly, trying to ignore the fact that my pulse just picked up a little.

“So I was thinking, what's the food fight represent?” he goes on. “What are the people in the song fighting over?”

He starts to pick, a fun little quiet melody that surprises me. His usual stuff has a rock edge, but this is almost playful. He doesn't sing, but as he plays, the song fills out and his strumming leads to a chorus that has me bobbing my head. Finally, I comment.

“I love this already,” I say.

He nods and smiles widely. “Good. Now sing.”

Startled, I ask, “What?”

Adam slaps the strings quiet and laughs out loud. “Bird! I'm stuck! Write me a song. I'm begging you!”

I laugh, too, shaking my head at him. “Oh, Adam, I know we're laughing right now, but this album is killing you, right?”

“Torture.”

“You used to just write what you wanted and sing what you loved and go along down the highway from gig to gig—”

“Yes! I just made music, whatever was on my mind.”