“We’re Dirtshine!” Gavin shouts. “Thank you!”

The crowd screams, the lights go dark. I put my guitar down on its stand and walk off stage, my whole body still humming.

We’re in another tiny venue, this one finally in Los Angeles. It’s the very end of the tour, the third of three nights playing at the Music Box, which was a theater in the 1920s that now has rock shows in it.

In the vestibule just off stage, we all stop, take a breath, and wait.

“Well,” Gavin says, grinning. “How long do we give them?”

Everyone else just laughs. Even though I hate encores when I go see bands — just play your show, don’t make me scream for three more songs — I like them when I’m playing.

Sure, it’s nice to hear everyone scream for you to come back. But taking this tiny break mid-show, seeing each other quietly when there’s this manic energy all around, is oddly nice.

“Don’t make them wait forever,” Darcy laughs. “I hate that shit.”

“Ava used to take smoke breaks before an encore,” Joan says. “I hated that shit.”

“Is that when she tried to set Nadine on fire?” Darcy asks.

“Surprisingly, no,” Joan says. “But we did go back on stage without her a few times, and she’d come running on twenty seconds into the first song, pissed as hell.”

On our last tour, there were a couple times that we went off stage for an encore only for Gavin and Liam to never come back, and I can tell we’re all thinking of it, though no one says anything, because Gavin doesn’t deserve it.

He’s been fucking stellar. I haven’t seen him drink so much as a glass of wine with dinner, let alone anything harder.

Honestly, I didn’t quite expect the sobriety to take. Not that I don’t believe in Gavin, but it usually takes a couple of tries, and even then, addicts are often always just addicts. I guess he beat the odds, though.

“Joan,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “Any final words before you become the first former member of Dirtshine we’re still on speaking terms with?”

Joan just laughs.

“What, like ‘fuck all you assholes, I’m leaving’?” she asks, grinning. “Are you saying I shouldn’t break the streak?”

“We do have a reputation to uphold,” Darcy says.

“And we’d hate for it to be too easy to find a new drummer,” I say. “So definitely don’t go telling your friends that we’re lovely people and easy to work with.”

“Noted,” she says. “You’re a bunch of difficult musicians who barely get along with each other and have chewed through every drummer you’ve ever had.”

“Brilliant,” Gavin says. “Just what we wanted.”

We pause for a moment, and at the same time, we all lean toward the stage, looking out at the audience. They’re still screaming and clapping and stomping, and for a moment, my heart constricts in my chest because this tour is almost over.

Going back to regular life after a tour is... well, I’ve never done it the normal way. Before we hit it big, we were just always on the road, and the last tour got cut short when half our band overdosed.

And I’m coming back different than I left. I’ve got one more girlfriend and one less brother, a fucking seismic shift in my life, and after learning how to function properly with both those things on the road, I have to learn in real life, too.

In the dark, Darcy looks back at me, raises one eyebrow. I put a hand on her back and rub my thumb over her shoulder blade, even though she’s slightly damp, sweating through her dress on the hot stage.

The girlfriend part I’m excited for. I’m excited to wake up in her loft, make her breakfast, go on dates, run errands together. The brother part I’ll have to get used to.

“All right,” Gavin says, still looking out at the crowd. “You lot ready?”

It’s what he always says right before we go out on stage, like a good luck charm.

“Let’s do this,” Darcy says, and we walk back out.

I pick up my guitar, slide the strap over my head, flex my fingers. The crowd’s completely losing its shit, and then the stage lights come back up.

Joan counts off, and we start playing again.

* * *

After the show, we head to Darcy’s place since it’s the closest, along with Marisol and Dan, Joan’s longtime life partner.

She’s finally gotten couches and stopped making guests sit on giant pillows on the floor, and we all sprawl on those as Bowie, her cat, wanders from person to person, suspiciously sniffing shoes.

“He likes to get projects done while I’m on tour,” Joan is laughing. “Once, I swear I came back and we had a new downstairs bathroom.”

“It was just remodeled,” Dan says, smiling softly. He’s kind of quiet but very nice, an urban planner for the City of Los Angeles or something.

In other words, not the kind of person you’d think would be in a committed twenty-year relationship with a Riot Grrl, but it obviously works for them.

“And I told you all about it,” he goes on, holding out one hand to Bowie, who sniffs him, glares, and then headbutts his hand. “I don’t know how you were surprised.”

“I was surprised because that was the tour where Nadine went missing in East St. Louis for three days and we thought she was dead when she was just doing every drug she could find with some bohemian literature professor who compared her to Anna Karenina,” Joan says. “God, what a shit show.”

“At least I did a nice job on the bathroom,” Dan points out.

He’s now friends with Bowie, who’s standing on his lap and purring her face off.

“All I did was throw away ten thousand takeout containers before Gavin got back,” Marisol says. “I think.”

“I did find a half-empty carton of white rice below the kitchen sink,” Gavin says.

Marisol makes a face.

“Shameful,” he teases her. “Absolutely disgusting, worst filth I’ve ever seen.”

“Okay, shut up,” Marisol teases. “Though, honestly, it’s not so bad that you were gone a lot during my first year as an associate, because I didn’t have to feel guilty if I worked from eight a.m. to midnight.”

“Ugh,” Darcy says, and I recoil.

“I know,” Marisol admits. “But it’s slacking off, at least. Oh, speaking of which, sort of...”

She stands and walks to Darcy’s kitchen counter, where she tossed her purse.

“Did you bring them?” Gavin calls.

“I did,” Marisol says. “Figured we could just hand them out now.”

We all go quiet, craning our necks as Marisol pulls a bunch of thick, off-white envelopes out of her purse.

“Ooooh,” Darcy says, rubbing her hands together. “Is this them?”

“This is them,” Marisol confirms. “I’ve spent more time than I literally ever thought I would staring down the wording of hey, I’m getting married and you’re about to hold the end result in your very hands.”

She comes back, handing one envelope to Joan and Dan, and one to us.

Mr. Trent Ryder and Miss Darcy Greene, it reads.

“Fancy,” Darcy breathes.

“You can open it, you know,” Marisol laughs. “My mom’s gotten a little crazy and she wanted to me to hire someone with nice handwriting to write these out, but I just made myself re-learn cursive.”

“They look fine,” I offer. I had no idea that hiring someone with nice handwriting to write your wedding invitations was even a thing.

“Thanks,” Marisol says, flopping onto the couch again. “I agree.”

Darcy opens it and pulls out the card inside. It’s fancy, but in a normal way. No curlicues or any of that shit.

“What details are following?” I ask.

“Oh, Christ, Valerie’s making us do that,” Gavin says, rubbing his face with one hand. “It’s at the Griffith Mansion, but she pitched a fit about us actually putting that on the invitations because according to her, I may as well invite all the paparazzi in Los Angeles. So now we’ve got to somehow tell all the attendees where it is only a day or two in advance so that there’s not a man with a telephoto lens taking photos of our tonsils as we say our vows.”

“It must suck to be famous,” Darcy says wryly, and I snort.

Neither of us is as well-known as Gavin, of course, but we do keep getting followed around by people with cameras. The other day we left somewhere and got into separate cars, because sometimes people take separate cars, and the next day’s TMZ was alight with breakup rumors.

“I should start wearing massive sunglasses and a huge hat everywhere I go,” Gavin says. “That ought to help.”

Darcy flips the invitation over, glances at the back, and then hands it to me, not that I know what to do with it, and leans against my arm.

“Well, congrats,” Joan says. “We’ll be there.”

“Brilliant,” Gavin says, and Marisol gives him a significant look.

He frowns at her, slightly, and she just raises one eyebrow.

“Now?”

“May as well,” she says.

They just look at each other for a moment.

“Now you have to say whatever it is,” Darcy points out. “We all heard that.”

“The rest of us were being polite,” I say.

“The rest of you are also curious and are glad I’m bothering them about it right now,” she teases, and she’s right.

There’s a pause, and Gavin glances from her to me and back.

“We invited Liam,” he finally says.

There’s another pause.

“Oh, shit,” says Darcy. “Is that a good idea?”

“He’s alive?” I add.

Marisol gives Gavin something I can only describe as kind of a look, and he flops back against the couch, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee.

“Yes, he’s alive, and I’ve got no bloody clue if it’s a good idea,” he says, sounding a little resigned. “But he’s in some sort of program that requires him to make amends to everyone he’s wronged with his addiction, and I guess I was pretty high on that list. He called a couple of weeks ago and we ended up talking for ages.”

Dead silence. Liam hasn’t contacted Darcy or me, and God knows he wronged us too. Not as badly as Gavin, but bad enough that I could use an apology.

“Liam’s the original drummer,” Joan murmurs to Dan.

“The guy who’s in the jam band now?”

“No, the one before that, with the heroin problem,” she says, trying to keep her voice down. “I told you the whole story, with the overdose and the guy who died?”

“He went back to England when he couldn’t get clean,” Darcy explains. “And that was the last we heard of him. Until a couple weeks ago, apparently.”

“He said he’d be calling you as well,” Gavin offers. “And I suppose I ought to have told you he’s alive, but I thought it was best to let him explain.”

Darcy’s just looking at Marisol, because Liam’s not exactly her favorite person. Not after what he did to her and Gavin.

“Did he apologize to you?” Darcy asks her.

“He actually did,” Marisol says slowly, like she’s trying to pick her words carefully. “And we ended up talking for a really long time, and... I’m not exactly sure how I feel about him in general, but I’m good with him getting invited to the wedding. Who knows if he’ll even come.”

I haven’t seen Liam in a year and a half. I think the last time was our first show with Eddie, nearly eighteen months ago. He showed up drunk and high and God knows what else, screaming about how we couldn’t be Dirtshine without him, and I haven’t seen him since.

Gavin and Marisol did, though, which is why he called them to apologize first. Whatever apology he owes me, he owes them about ten times that.

“I give it a fifty-fifty chance,” Darcy muses. “If he were going to show up to a wedding, it’d be yours, but he’s kind of...”

For once, she trails off, like she doesn’t want to be rude.

“...A self-centered fuckmuppet and a total fucking knob, even when he’s not high?” Gavin fills in.

“Pretty much,” Darcy says. “Though I’m not well acquainted with sober Liam.”

“I did tell him if he shows up high or drunk I’ll fucking have him flown straight back across the pond,” Gavin says. “Which he seemed to find funny.”

* * *

“Do you two want a ride home?” Dan offers. “I parked like a block away, it’s no problem.”

“Sure, if you’ve got room,” Marisol says, and Joan laughs.

“Rock stars: they get rides from friends, just like us!” she says.

“Rock stars: sometimes they’re in the back seat of a Subaru,” Dan jokes.

“I don’t get shotgun?” Gavin teases.

We’re all clustered around Darcy’s front door, hugging and shaking hands. If you’d asked me two years ago how we’d be closing out a major world tour, I’d never have said this. I’d have said that Liam and Gavin would be somewhere, nodded out, that Darcy and I would be closing down some bar, that I’d be going home without her again and probably jerking off wishing I were here.

But that’s all dead wrong. Gavin’s fucking engaged, I’m staying here with Darcy, and Liam’s... well, Liam’s alive and apparently sober or sober-ish, and we’re all saying a very civilized goodbye.

I’m not mourning the alternative. We did that for long enough, and now we’re here, and I’m good with it.

“Night!” Darcy says brightly, as the others all leave, then shuts the door behind herself and leans against it, puffing out her cheeks.

“I guess that’s over,” she says.

I just kiss her on the forehead, because I’m not exactly sure what to say. The tour’s over, yeah, but that’s about it.

“Now we have to figure out how to be a regular couple,” I tease.

“You mean one who’s not together every minute of every day?”

“One who spends time together not on a tour bus or in a hotel room.”

“Strange,” Darcy says. “Are we gonna have to learn to fight over the dishes and stuff like that?”

“I bet we can just transfer our argument over who used the fuzzbox last and packed the cables wrong,” I say.

“Which was you,” Darcy points out.

It wasn’t. There’s no fucking way it was me, I always pack cables properly because I’m not a madman.

I don’t say that.

“It might not be all bad,” I tease.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she says.

“I know.”

“I think it’s gonna be good,” she says, her voice suddenly quiet. “I think it’ll be really good.”

“I think it’ll be spectacular,” I say.

“MRROWWWW,” Bowie shouts as she headbutts my leg, and Darcy laughs.

“She wants us to go to bed,” she says. “We’re way behind schedule, according to her.”

“Bowie, we’re having a nice talk,” I tell the cat. “Give us a minute.”

She sits and stares up at me with one green eye and one blue eye.

“MARP,” she insists.

“I love you,” Darcy says. “And I’m kinda glad I caught on fire because it ended this way, even though that part did suck.”

“I’m not glad you caught on fire, and I love you too,” I say.

I kiss her, slowly, and even though by now this is perfectly familiar, it still sends a tingle all the way down to my toes. I know Darcy better than I’ve ever known anyone, and somehow, it only makes me love her more.

She pushes her fingers through my hair, pulling me closer, and I slide one hand around her waist. Even though I know her burn is fully healed, I’m still careful with her back, still try not to be rough with that spot.

Darcy bites my lip. She pulls on my shirt, and I step in closer, pressing her fully against the door.

“MRAAAHHHH,” Bowie insists, and we both start laughing.

“I think she’s telling us to go to bed,” Darcy says, grinning.

I grab her ass and squeeze.

“Is that what she wants or what you want?” I ask, and Darcy just laughs.

“C’mon,” she says, taking my hand and slipping through my arms. “It’s not such a bad idea.”

With that, she pulls me into her bedroom.