Chapter Nine

The next month flew by. I finally realized why we had been booked into suites that were basically apartments. How else were we meant to survive the endless wait to go on tour?

My band and Kayla teamed up most days to write songs together. Kayla and I had been spending an awful lot of time together. The first time she had come over to the hotel suite, she had brought her songbook and the mini acoustic guitar that she had won – well, that we had won – and she excitedly told me about how she had restrung the guitar and varnished it. It was a miniature but it worked like the real thing.

We had spent the afternoon inside my room, playing with her guitar and writing songs together. Jake and Mike had given up on teaching me how to play guitar years before, almost as soon as the band had formed. Neither of them were patient enough to have to deal with a newbie and they had both taught themselves how to play.

Kayla had been shocked to find out that I did not play a single instrument. She had made it her mission to teach me at least one. She had taught me all of the basic chords in one sitting and the next day we started learning how to play an obscure nursery rhyme together. It felt a bit odd to be playing a nursery rhyme but I guessed that everyone had to learn somewhere.

As a joke, two days after we started learning how to play on her mini acoustic guitar, Kayla returned to my suite with a harmonica. She was determined to help me learn.

“Well,” she had said. “The thing is that I already know how to play guitar. So I like thought that maybe we could learn a new instrument together. I already know how to play a bunch and a harmonica is super random but I have always loved the sound of it.”

I loved the harmonica. The sound of it was awesome. I agreed with her when she said that she got a blues vibe from it. It felt kind of special that she had gone and gotten each of us one to learn, too. We spent hours watching tutorials. Within only a few days, I thought that I did not sound half bad at playing a harmonica. She may have been biased or nice but Kayla seemed pretty impressed with my skills, too.

Soon enough, I was beginning to incorporate harmonica into my songwriting. I wanted to sing on stage and play harmonica on stage, too. Kayla thought that it was a brilliant idea. I had been too shy to approach my band with it, so she came up with the idea of letting them hear it rather than asking them to listen to it.

It was confusing at first. Kayla rolled her eyes and hopped out of the seat. She made her way to the interconnecting doors and put her ear to it while I stared at her. I was entirely baffled. Once she was sure of whatever it was that she was trying to be sure of, she opened the door. She came back over to the sofa and pulled the songbook out. We began to rehearse the song that we had been working on. It was a love song with bittersweet and melancholy notes. I thought about Thomas when I played it. There was a part dedicated to a harmonica solo.

Before long, Mike walked into the room. I had been tempted to stop playing but a vigorous shake of Kayla’s head and I continued. I closed my eyes, pretending that Mike was not in the room. It was only Kayla and I. That was, until the song came to an end.

“Damn son,” Mike said.

I opened my eyes to find that he was no longer the only one in the room. Kayla had managed to draw all three of my band members into the room and they were all standing there, staring at me. Kyle and Mike seemed stunned while Jake was grinning.

Pride burst into my chest.

That was only one great occasion with Kayla. We had started to hang out nearly every day. We wrote songs together, played games together, and the label had scheduled us for several events together.

I will not lie. The events were always the worst part. I got the impression that Kayla hated them as much as I did because every time we got out of the limelight, she would release this sigh like she was out of energy. We had to wrap our arms around one another and get in close when we posed for photos. The label had called Kayla’s mom after one of the very first events to ask if we would be willing to kiss, if only on the cheeks, for the camera. Obviously we said that we would not be willing to do such a thing.

There was something that had been on my mind since the third time that Kayla and I had hung out. We had been at the arcade once again. I had decided that I would not bring anyone else to an arcade on a date because it was beginning to feel like a special place for Kayla and I. She really was becoming my best friend. It was something that she had said.

We made our way through the arcade with the intent of playing every single game that we had not yet played. We avoided all the ones from our previous trip. Unfortunately for me, that meant that we also avoided all of the first-person shooters that we had played and I was very quick to realize that Kayla was an incredibly skilled gamer girl and I stood absolutely no chance against her.

Still, it was while we were playing a racing game that she said it. It was one of those three-dimensional simulators. They had entire car seats, complete with gear shifts, brakes, accelerator pedals, and steering wheels. I was honestly surprised that we did not have an indicator switch beside the steering wheel.

It was the best game that we had played and Kayla and I had been pretty evenly matched overall. We had managed to win three consecutive games without needing to reinsert tokens to continue playing. We had a small gathering of people watching us play and I realized that we must have been breaking records or something. No other game had an audience watching the players. A part of me wondered if the people there even knew who we were.

The moment was small. I was sure that no one else would have even noticed it. The only reason I did was because of who I was.

“Oh, holy shit,” Kayla murmured. I looked over at her screen. She had unlocked a new character – a woman with long blonde hair, a pair of short shorts, and a crop top. She looked like the typical video game female, underdressed and pretty. “My new character is seriously hot. I’d so do her. Yes, please.”

I raised my eyebrows, surprised by her statement. I did not say anything, though. My eyes darted back to my own character screen. I had unlocked a character but mine was some kind of animal that wore a pair of goggles. I could have sworn that Kayla was giving me sideways glances but I avoided her eyes for the rest of the day.

Kayla had never looked at or commented on another guy in front of me. There were times where I had been afraid that she might actually like me as more than a friend, despite what she had said previously. After that day, however, I got the feeling that Kayla was not interested in me or any other man.

Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing what I wanted to see. I was sure that she had checked out a girl at a few of the events that we had attended together. I was too gutless to actually ask Kayla whether or not she was like me. It would have been easier to handle it if I was not alone. That was the precise reason why I never asked her if she was into women.

I was too afraid that I wanted so badly to have someone else understand me that I was seeing things that were not even present.

Everything had been going great, aside from the fact that we practically lived in the hotel. We were writing more songs and releasing tidbits of content on our social media pages. It meant that we kept fans interested in us despite not having released our tour dates as of yet.

The only thing that was less than great was my relationship with Thomas. Rather, my lack of a relationship with Thomas. We had regular phone calls and he seemed to have forgiven me for the lapse after our first date. Really, it had been an incredible night until the moment that I had pulled away from him. He never mentioned it again and we spoke as though it had never happened.

On occasion, I felt the guilt grabbing onto me. I wanted to tell Thomas everything but I was scared that he would not understand. I had the feeling that he knew that the fans thought that Kayla and I were dating. I kept waiting for him to mention it but he never did. It was something in the back of our minds; a constant tugging that demanded attention but was never hard enough to actually obtain it.

I should have known that it could not have lasted forever.

Thomas had asked me out again. That was the night that everything seemed to blow up. I had agreed. Of course I had agreed. I was free for the evening and I missed him terribly. I had been supremely excited.

I had only just climbed out of the shower to hear my phone ringing from the lounge. I wrapped the towel around my waist and made my way to the sound. I remember leaving wet footprints all along the tile floor as I went. I had taken to making sure that the suite was mostly clean when the cleaning services came around every morning. It was one thing to be a guest and have people clean the room because it was their job and another entirely to have people clean up after you indefinitely. I felt guilty for all the messes that the cleaning services had to remove from my and the band’s rooms. I had no idea what Kayla’s room looked like so I could not speak for her. She always came by our suites to hang out and rehearse.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hey, Myles. It’s Kayla. Have you been contacted by the label at all?”

“No? What’s up?”

Kayla sighed, crackling coming through the line. It was full of static. “Okay, well, clearly they want me to handle this. We have been booked for a last minute event. It’s in, like, an hour.”

“One hour…?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry, Myles. I know you and Thomas were supposed to hang out tonight.”

I checked the clock on my phone, pulling it away from my ear to look at the screen. Thomas was meant to arrive in less than an hour to pick me up for our date. I’d have to call him as soon as I got off of the phone with Kayla. I felt like crying. My heart sank in my chest.

“Myles? Are you okay?”

I sighed and put the phone back up to my ear. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll get ready. I’ll come get you from your room once I’m done.”

“I’m really sorry, Myles.”

“It’s not your fault, Kayla. Thank you for letting me know what was up. I’ll see you soon.”

I ended the call before Kayla could respond. With a strange ache in my chest and a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, I called Thomas to blow him off. It was not going to be an easy call.