Wild Open (24 page)

“He sounded pretty sure that he wanted to quit,” O’Connor said.

Andrew’s mother shook her head. “No. There’s nothing in this world that gives him more joy. He was just being dramatic. His father’s the same way, you know. Once he feels better, he’ll be back in the studio before you know it.”

“I hope so,” O’Connor said, still doubtful; but Andrew’s mother knew him better than anyone, so maybe there was hope.

He spent a week in Chicago settling back into his apartment and his routine, and then he had lunch with James, who filled him in on the latest with Andrew—because of course James didn’t believe in ever taking it easy. “He’s living in his parents’ basement for now,” James said. “His mom confiscated the keys to his apartment.”

O’Connor laughed. “How’d she get them away from him?”

“I think she picked his pockets in the middle of the night,” James said. “I’m serious.”

“She’s a badass lady,” O’Connor said.

“Totally. I’m scared of her. Anyway, he’s doing some outpatient program at the hospital, and she says that’s going to last for about three months. So we won’t be doing anything until that’s over. She says he’s settling in well and we can go see him later this week.”

“Okay,” O’Connor said, and sighed, and took a bite of his sandwich. “I guess that’s about the best we can hope for.”

“One day at a time,” James said. “Heard from Leah lately?”

O’Connor held his sandwich in front of his mouth and gave James a look that he hoped was hard and intimidating. “Why would I have heard from Leah?”

James rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. Everyone on the tour knew you two were screwing.”

“Oh what the fuck!” O’Connor exclaimed, and got a dirty look from a woman at the next table. “There is no way—”

“Really? You spent literally all of your time together,” James said.

“None of you are that observant,” O’Connor said. “We were
so
discreet—”

“You weren’t discreet at all,” James said, “but probably nobody would have noticed except Tom saw her coming out of your hotel room one morning.”

“You snooping motherfuckers,” O’Connor said. “God damn it. We were so careful.”

“There are no secrets on tour,” James said. “But you haven’t heard from her?”

“No,” O’Connor said shortly, and took another bite of his sandwich.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that he’d made a gigantic mistake in being so cold to Leah when she came to say goodbye. He hadn’t really intended to blow her off—he’d just been so overwhelmed by Andrew’s announcement that he was quitting that he hadn’t been able to think about anything else. Leah’s imminent departure hadn’t seemed
real
to him. Of course she would still be there in the morning, and the day after that. She had become such a fixture in his life so quickly that he hadn’t totally grasped that she was
leaving
leaving. Not just going on a short trip somewhere. She was
gone
.

Of course, by the time he had woken up and realized that he was a self-pitying, self-obsessed jackass, she had already left for the airport.

And now—well, he didn’t quite know what to do. He figured he had pretty much burned that bridge. He didn’t want to piss her off by trying to apologize when that probably fell into the category of “too little, too late.” And, okay, he was a fucking coward. And he hated apologizing. He hated admitting he was wrong.

So he was stubborn, and arrogant, and impossible to deal with. What else was new? Leah was better off without him, probably. She would find some hot movie star type and forget all about him within a week.

And so on. He spent a few days moping around his apartment feeling incredibly sorry for himself, and then he went to visit Andrew, who at least had the distinction of being an even sorrier bastard than O’Connor. Except Andrew seemed to be doing better. He was dressed, and seemed relatively clean, and he even offered O’Connor a glass of water and made polite chit-chat for a few minutes. “He’s taking his meds,” Andrew’s mother stage-whispered, and Andrew rolled his eyes and said, “Thanks for the support, mom.”

“Do you, uh. Do you want anything?” O’Connor asked. “I could bring you, uh—”

“I’m bored as fuck,” Andrew said. “Please get me out of this house.”

“Supervised trips only,” his mother said.

“You see what I’m up against,” Andrew said. “Look, I know I’ve been a miserable asshole for months, and I’m sure you hate me by now, but for the love of God, if you drive me to the fucking
supermarket
I will be in your debt until the end of time.”

O’Connor blinked, a little taken aback. “Okay. Let’s go see a Sox game.”

So they did that, and it was fine, and Andrew didn’t drink any beer and seemed to have a good time. He was polite, and friendly, and more or less acted like a pod person. O’Connor wasn’t sure what to think. He gave James a full report on the phone, later, and James laughed and said, “Maybe he’s just getting better, man. Chill out.”

Maybe. O’Connor wasn’t ready to hope for that yet.

He went to visit his parents for a few days. Nothing on the farm had changed since he left for college, and visiting was always a little bit surreal, like stepping backward in time. He almost expected his younger self to emerge from the barn at dusk, sweaty from evening chores. But it was nice to spend his days doing hard manual labor, collapsing into bed each night too tired to think. And his mom’s cooking was, of course, unrivaled.

The problem with parents was that they were too goddamn perceptive. “You seem sad,” his mom said on the third morning, when he was finishing his second plate of pancakes.

O’Connor glanced up and met his dad’s gaze across the table. They shared a moment of sheer masculine panic:
She’s going to make us talk about feelings.

“Uh,” O’Connor said. “I’m mostly hungry.”

His mother made a clucking sound. “Come on, sweetie. I know you better than that. Is it a girl? Oh, I’ll bet it’s a girl.”

O’Connor’s father rolled his eyes and stood up from the table. “I’m going to go check on the cows.”

“The cows are fine,” his mother said, but his father was already out the door.

Then it was just O’Connor and his mother in the kitchen, and she pushed a few more slices of bacon onto his plate and said, “Tell me everything.”

He did, because there was no point in resisting; she would just wear him down eventually. And when he was finished, she sat for a moment, sipping her coffee, and then said, “I think you had better give that girl a call.”

His mother still lived in an era when people had land-lines and called the neighbors down the road to invite them over for Sunday dinner. O’Connor certainly wasn’t going to
call
Leah. The only people he talked to on the phone were his parents. But he sent her a text message, after writing and erasing about fifty equally pathetic attempts:
I miss you.

Then there was nothing to do but wait to see if she would reply.

* * *

She didn’t do much at first, for the first couple of weeks she was home. The tour had made her enough money that she didn’t need to work for a while, and so she slept in, and took walks to her favorite coffee shop, and went out with her friends—a mixture of people she had grown up with and people she had met through the music scene. She and Luka had dinner with their parents. She went to a few shows with Mateo. And she thought a lot about what she wanted to do with her life. Music, in some regard. She could be a studio musician, and play on other people’s albums. Or do tech work, like Jeff had suggested, for touring bands. Or maybe even start a new band of her own. The thought was less painful than it had been at one time. She had just spent several weeks performing with people who weren’t Corey and Mateo and Luka and Bryce, and it had gone fine. Better than fine. She had loved it. So she could start over again, with a band that wasn’t Rung.

Luka left her alone for a week, but then he started probing. “Are you thinking about looking for work? I know the manager at the Wildhorse, and he’s thinking about hiring someone to help with booking.”

That was exactly what she’d hoped for, that Luka would pull something out of his hat, but she was irrationally annoyed by his meddling. “I just want to take a break,” she said. “Okay? I’ve been working nonstop since I was sixteen. I just want to take some time off.”

“Jesus, okay,” he said, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender.

Leah sighed. Great. Now his feelings were hurt, and she would
definitely
be hearing about it from Bryce.

Sure enough, Bryce called her later that afternoon and said, “I hear you’ve been fighting with Luka.”

She flopped onto her back on the couch and groaned. “It wasn’t a fight. I just told him to back off. That’s all. Oh my God, Bryce, you don’t need to stick up for him! He’s my brother. I’m allowed to squabble with him.”

“Well, when the two of you are mad at each other, I’m the one who has to deal with the fallout,” Bryce said. “So kiss his ass a little and make up.”

So there was Luka to deal with; but after that he backed off, and left her to her own devices. And she did go down to the Wildhorse a few days later and talk to the manager, who was well over six feet tall, heavily tattooed, and went by the incongruous name of Baby. He wanted some part-time help, and he would pay enough for Leah to skate by, and when he offered her the job, she accepted on the spot.

“Will wonders never cease,” Luka said, when she told him.

“You are such a smug jerk,” she said, and he just laughed.

Her first few days at the club were busy and informative. She was very familiar with booking from the artists’ perspective—she had handled most of the booking for Rung’s early shows—but now she was dealing with individual artists’ booking agents and also reaching out to more established acts, and there was a lot to keep track of. She spent a lot of time on the phone. But Baby was happy with her, and she liked being immersed in the busy atmosphere of the club, and being surrounded by people who loved music as much as she did. She settled into a nice routine: mornings at home, playing her guitar and, for the first time in her life, experimenting with writing her own songs; and afternoons at the club, working.

She was in the back room at the club when she got O’Connor’s text message.

I miss you
. She knew it was him even though she’d deleted his number from her phone. Nobody else would have had the audacity.

Unbelievable! He blew her off, told her he didn’t have time for her—and now he thought he could send her one pitiful text message and she’d come crawling right back?

She fumed about it for a few hours while she finished the paperwork for an upcoming show, and while she crept home through rush-hour traffic. Really:
who did he think he was
? Conceited, self-centered, self-important, presumptive, insufferable—

But she missed him. And she understood. He had been under a lot of stress; he had probably felt like the world was ending. And maybe Andrew was better now, and the situation seemed less dire, and O’Connor was having second thoughts.

Luka was out for the evening; one of his bands had a show that night. She made herself a light dinner and did some housework, puttered around on the balcony watering her plants, put in a load of laundry. Tried to decide how she would respond to O’Connor—because by now she knew that she would.

Finally, she texted him the only thing she knew for sure:
I’m not sure what to say
.

Her phone rang.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and answered.

“Leah,” he said.

The sound of his voice was so familiar, and it sent a wave of emotion sweeping through her, some arcane mixture of joy and nostalgia and anger. She drew in another breath. “Hi, O’Connor.”

“Leah, I miss you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I really fucked up.”

“Well, yeah, you did,” she said. She didn’t want to listen to him grovel and beg for her forgiveness; she wasn’t ready to forgive him, yet. “How is Andrew?”

He sighed. “Better. It’s taking time, you know? We haven’t talked about the band at all. His mother says he isn’t really going to quit, but we’ll see.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said. They hadn’t ever talked on the phone before, and it was strange to hear him without being able to see his face. He was very expressive, and she had gotten used to paying attention to both his words and the constantly shifting landscape of his face. “Do you think he would like a care package?”

“I think he would
love
a care package,” O’Connor said. “That’s really sweet of you. He’s staying with his parents right now. I’ll text you the address.”

“I’ll send him some baked goods,” Leah said. “I’m glad he’s improving.”

“How’s Los Angeles?” he asked, and they talked about that for a while, and about people from the tour—Leah had talked to Rinna a few times, and texted with some of the other roadies. Leah was shocked when she wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water and saw that an hour had passed.

“Hey, I should probably go,” she told him. “I need to do some more housework tonight so Luka doesn’t kill me.”