chapter fourteen

 

“Are you the one related to the singer?” A sultry finger with a pointy fingernail makes its way up my torso, and I cough on the stench of rum punch from her breathy question.

I tighten my grip on the backstage passes. “I’m the tour manager. Can I help you?”

She sidles up a little closer to me in an attempt to appear sexy. When you’re not drunk and you’re surrounded by people who are, they just seem that much dumber.

“Can you get me backstage? I’ll make it worth your time.”

I press my lips together as I attempt to extract myself from her. “Why do you want to get back there?” I ask. It’s a dumb question, but the answers are always entertaining.

“Because it’s Mark fucking Ashton!” The entourage of blondes who all basically look the same behind her collectively squeal.

“You do know he’s married, right? And happily, I might add. He and his wife just had a baby.”

Pointy fingernail is not to be stopped. “Aw, we love babies, don’t we, girls?” The entourage confirms they love babies with a collective aww.

“I don’t think he’s interested in introducing his baby to strangers. Sorry, ladies.”

“What are those passes for, then?” one of the blondes demands.

Since I don’t have to explain myself, I simply walk away as I clutch the passes even tighter. Once upon a time, the passes in my hands were for women exactly like the crew that just assaulted me. But all four of the band members are married now. They’ve moved out of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll stage. They’re more in the babies, burp rags, and rocking chairs stage.

Walking away from those gorgeous women is exactly how I can tell I’m a changed man. Instead of giving into the blonde’s advances as she practically felt me up to get to my brother, I walked away.

I didn’t even want anything to do with her. Instead, I can’t stop thinking about Vivian. We’re on our first tour stop in Mansfield, Massachusetts, just a forty-five minute drive from Boston, and I’m already not sure how I’m going to get through the next six weeks apart from her. Especially after that last text message conversation I had with her.

Vail is on stage. I’ll need to be back in an hour and a half to oversee that their set is finished by curfew, which is eleven, but while they’re on, I have a multitude of other tasks to perform. I head back to Mark’s dressing room. Reese and the baby must be on the bus, because it’s empty except for Keith and Vick, who are prepping the room for all the post-show events.

I order the band’s food and request for it to be delivered five minutes before they leave the stage so it’s hot and ready for them. I find Keith and shadow him as he settles performance fees with the promoter and collects payment from the venue. We look over attendance figures and shoot them off to Penny, check the budget, and figure out who will be invited backstage—now typically local friends and family first, then top executives and people with money. No longer hot chicks with big tits unless they fall into one of those categories.

Once all those tasks are completed, I have five minutes to myself.

I’m sitting on the couch when I spot four tote bags sitting on the table in front of me. I pick one up and look it over. In huge letters, the bag proclaims Massachusetts next to a rendering of the state’s boundaries. I look inside the bag and find a Sam Adams pint glass, a ballcap with the Red Sox’s signature B logo, a Patriots squishy football, a Bruins hockey puck, a Celtics headband, a package of candy marked Boston Baked Beans, and a handful of postcards with local landmarks on them.

I chuckle as I look through the items someone considers the best representation of their city. The boys just wanted one souvenir from each tour stop, but they already got an entire bag full of Boston’s finest stuff. I wonder how they’ll get it all back home, but then I remember they each have their own buses. They’re not sharing bunks with nine other people.

I flew into Boston yesterday to get everything ready with Keith, and I haven’t actually done an overnight on the bus yet. Tonight will be the first night as we travel from Massachusetts to New York. I’ve seen my space. It’s tight, but it’s home for the next six weeks.

As I look at the bag of souvenirs, I get an idea.

I’ll have a little bit of time in every city we visit to pick up souvenirs of my own. Wouldn’t it be a nice gesture to bring something back for the woman who is temporarily taking over my position at Ashmark?

My initial thought is just to do something nice for her, but when I look deeper, my motivation seems to stem from the idea that I want her to know I was thinking about her every single day I was away from her. I don’t know if she’s still married or not, still happy or not. If she is, then this is just a friendly gesture from one colleague to another.

But if she isn’t...then maybe it’ll mean something more.

I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t have told me the very second we saw each other if she wasn’t, but the words of one of her texts play though my mind again. We’ll talk when you get back.

I know enough about her to know she prefers red wine and she smells like roses. She eats dark chocolate almonds while she works. Her favorite color is red, which contrasts sharply with her demure character but is adorable and fitting nonetheless. So red wine, dark chocolate, and the color red. Surely I can come up with some sort of souvenir from each place we visit that would fit with the things she likes. It’s only twenty-one stops. I can find somewhere to store them as we make our way around the country.

I decide on the Boston Baked Beans candy for the Massachusetts souvenir. It’s chocolate, it’s nuts, and it’s red. Now I just have to find a store that sells them.

I head out from backstage and take a walk around the venue. Keith said he always does a lap and stops to listen from various spots in the arena to ensure everything is working properly. I’m not as trained in what to listen for, but it sounds good to me. The fans are cheering and singing along as my brother works the stage.

Lucky for me, I spot a gift shop as I make my way around the concourse. I pop into it, and sure enough, a display of Boston Baked Beans sits beside the register as if fate stepped in to help me tonight. Right next to it is a little stuffed lobster. I hand both to the cashier.

“Will this be all?” the cashier asks.

“That’s all. Thank you.”

She gives me a smile as she rings me up.

Maybe fate is stepping in to help because I’m finally doing something right.

Or maybe it’s all wrong. She’s married, after all. I shouldn’t be buying gifts for another man’s wife.

Yet I can’t help myself. It’s just colleague to colleague. Friend to friend. It doesn’t have to be anything more, and it doesn’t matter if I want it to be more. Maybe this is just...closure. It’s my way of doing something nice for someone I haven’t always been nice to.

I meet up with Keith after I pay for my souvenirs. We distribute the backstage passes, we get the guys off stage right on time, we make sure the food is ordered, we oversee stage breakdown, we finish the rest of our duties, and then we head out to our bus as we get ready to move onto New York.

And with every step I take, my heart longs for the woman sitting at my desk back in Los Angeles.

With every breath I draw, my heart beats for one woman.

It shouldn’t be like this. I want to stubbornly hold onto my ethics. I want to be angry at her, and I still am. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t give her a chance to explain it from her perspective.

I went five months without her, but I don’t have any idea how to manage the next six weeks the same way.