Stevie climbed onto the bus and headed straight for her bunk. They had been driving for a couple of hours and had stopped for a quick break and a leg stretch at a tiny little gas station in the middle of nowhere. She felt like she was coming down with something, or maybe that was just the effects of a broken heart. The poor thing had been broken more times than was healthy and the fact that the same guy did the breaking only exacerbated the damage. Stevie didn’t think she would ever be able to love again. She didn't think her heart would ever be whole enough to try.

She closed the curtains to her bunk and lay down with her earbuds firmly in her ears. She didn’t feel like doing anything but wallowing in her self-pity. She had hours of sad music to act as the soundtrack to her pain. ‘Just a Fool’ by Christina Aguilera and Blake Shelton. ‘Different for Girls’ by Dierks Bentley and Elle King. ‘Unlove You’ by Jennifer Nettles. ‘Every Time I Hear That Song’ by Blake Shelton. These songs had the words she couldn’t find.

She closed her eyes and let the music lull her into a quasi-sleep. She didn’t think she would ever sleep properly again. She couldn’t risk it. She knew that as soon a she let her guard down she would dream about him and she just couldn’t face it. Waking up and knowing it had all just been a dream would be like losing him all over again.

Had she ever really had him? She’d held him in her arms and made love to him. She’d kissed him and touched him; run her hands and her mouth over every inch of his body, but was he ever really hers? For a little while, perhaps. For maybe a zeptosecond she had actually had Nate; had really been able to call him hers. But in less time than it took to blink, he’d been gone again. Nate was her unicorn. Her Eleanor. The only person in the world she truly wanted and the only one she didn’t think she could ever have.

The curtain was pulled roughly aside and Stevie blinked into the light. “What?”

“Come and write with me,” Jace said.

Stevie groaned. “I can’t.”

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You have never not been able to write, Stevie. I don’t know what is going on with you, but you need to get it out. You and I are the same. We need to get the words out or they turn to poison in our system.”

“I’ve got no words,” Stevie said.

“Then play your guitar. I can see it inside you - the hurt. I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that you need to get it out. If the words aren’t there, then the music definitely is.”

Jace was right. The music moved within her like a sad refrain. She’d been hearing the same melody over and over again and it was just about driving her crazy.

“Fine,” she said, sitting up, “but it’s not going to be pretty.”

Jace just shrugged and led her to the back of the bus. Up the front they had seats and a television and a little kitchenette. The back of the bus had been set up as a place they could come to rehearse or jam or just strum away on a guitar and not bother anyone.

She threw herself down on the couch and pulled her battered Takamine towards her. She didn’t play this one on stage, but she always composed with it. There was something about holding the well-worn guitar on her lap that allowed the music to flow out of her soul and into her fingers. She closed her eyes and started to strum - nothing coherent, just nonsense notes and scales. She tried to pick up the thread of the melody in her head. It wasn’t a sweet, heartbreaking song. It was angry and harsh and something she had never written before. It was also being elusive. Every time she thought she had it, it skittered away from her like a frightened mouse.

“You’re forcing it,” Jace said from his position on the couch, his own acoustic in his hands.

“I can’t find the thread,” she said with a sigh, lifting her hands from the strings.

“Okay, so let’s start by playing something else. What are you listening to?”

Stevie looked down at her phone. The song she had been listening to before Jace had interrupted her was ‘Ain’t No Little Girl’ by Kasey Chambers. It was gritty and raw and exactly what she was feeling. She started playing and Jace joined in. It started low and slow. Stevie sang the words and closed her eyes, feeling the pain of the song.

When they finished the song, they both kept playing and the song morphed into the melody that Stevie had been hearing in her head. It wasn’t perfect yet, but the bones were there. She and Jace had written songs together before and they knew, almost intuitively, how the other one thought. They teased the song out, filling it with complex chords and minor keys. Stevie sang a few words here and there, but it was just a phrase or two. It was nothing like they had ever written before. Court’n Jacks were all about the power ballads heart-wrenching songs. This one was angry and rough and had grit that rubbed against her like sandpaper. It felt good, that abrasiveness. It was a relief to feel it when everything else around her had begun to feel all the same. She had become numb and this song was the only thing that seemed to get through the sponginess that surrounded her like a cocoon.

“‘Not Dead Yet,’” she said, opening her eyes to look at Jace. “That’s the name of this song.”

He nodded his head and sang a few words. A feral grin split her face. No. She wasn’t dead yet.

She did eventually sleep, if only for a few hours. Jace had made her play with him until she could barely keep her eyes open and her fingers refused to work. She was grateful for it, and for Jace. Without it there was no way she would have slept. It was only after she had emptied herself of all the messed up emotions that she could close her eyes without fear of them invading her dreams. So she had slept, a short but dreamless sleep, and in some weird way, she felt better.

She took a quick shower. The bus was still moving which made showering tricky, but she managed it. Dressed and feeling a little bit more human, Stevie made her way to the front of the bus where Nadine and Vanessa sat watching old Charlie’s Angels reruns.

“I’d definitely be Farrah Faucet,” Nadine said.

“No way,” Vanessa said, “I’d be Farrah. We’re like twins, her and I.”

Nadine snorted. “No way. You’d be the other one…the serious one. What was her name?”

“Kate Jackson,” Stevie said, “but Vanessa wouldn’t be her, she’d be Jaclyn Smith. Jace would be Kate and I would definitely be Farrah.”

“So who would I be then?” Nadine said indignantly.

“You’d be the other blonde that they brought in for season two… Cheryl Ladd.”

Nadine slumped back in her seat. “The ring in?”

“No,” Stevie said sitting down beside her, “that would be Shelley Hack.”

“How do you know so much about Charlie’s Angels?” Vanessa asked.

Stevie shrugged, “My mom was about everything seventies and eighties. She named me Stevie for goodness sakes. After Stevie Nicks. We would spend hours watching her favorite shows and Charlie’s Angels was one of them. Wonder Woman was another.”

Both girls were quiet and the fun of before had fizzled out. Stevie didn’t know what it was that she’d said to cause such a reaction.

“What did I say?” she asked. If they were going to spend all this time together on the bus, they needed to not let things fester.

The two girls shared a look and Stevie knew they were doing some weird sister thing where they could read each other’s thoughts. The non-twin twin thing they did.

It was Nadine who spoke first. “It was just hearing about your mom,” she said. “It made us wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mom like yours.”

“What was your mom like?” Stevie asked, desperate to know the story but not wanting to push them too far. They never talked about their parents. This was the first time Stevie had ever heard that they even had parents.

“I don’t really remember her,” Vanessa said.

“She died when we were young,” Nadine added, cutting Vanessa off before she could say anymore.

“So your dad raised you on his own?”

Nadine turned to her with an overly bright smile. “Yeah, something like that.” She turned to peer out the little sliver of front window they could see. “Hey, it looks like we’re stopping.”

Stevie let the subject drop. There was something about their past that seemed a little off, but it wasn’t her place to pry. Stevie just hoped that it wasn’t something that the press would find out and make a big deal of. Reporters had already been digging into the band members’ pasts and she had the uncomfortable feeling that it was only a matter of time before some skeletons were found. She knew she was on tenterhooks waiting for someone to discover the videos of her and Nate performing back in the day. Once it was on the internet it was almost impossible to get rid of and she didn’t think Darla had taken the videos down, not unless Nate’s record company had made her. Somehow Stevie would have heard about it if she did. There was no way Darla would remain quiet about something like that.

The bus came to a stop and there was a muted sound of a gathered crowd that came through the bus walls. Stevie had expected the venue to be empty - Lily wasn’t scheduled to arrive until the next day. Court’n Jacks were to have the venue to themselves for the day to give them a chance to rehearse and get used to the stage. Lily had played here before and had wanted to take an extra day before getting back into the swing of the tour. Jace and Stevie had jumped at the chance of having the venue to themselves.

“Are those fans here for us?” Vanessa said as she moved the curtain to look out the window.

“They probably think it Lily’s bus,” Stevie said.

“I don’t think so,” Nadine said, joining her sister at the window, “they have signs.”

Stevie squeezed in next to the other girls to see for herself. A crowd of people had surrounded the bus and they were indeed holding up signs. Signs with her and the girls’ names on them. And Jace’s name, and the name of the band. These were their fans.

The door of the bus opened and Marci hustled on. It closed behind her with a snap and Marci looked a little shell-shocked, like she’d just run the gauntlet.

“Right, okay,” she said as she appeared to be getting her breath.

“What’s happening outside?” Stevie asked.

“That,” Marci said with a grimace before a big smile, “Is what happens when you have a number one single. ‘No Good for You’ just topped the charts!”

There was a moment of silence before the girls started to scream and jump around, hugging each other. Stevie stood stunned and was soon joined by Jace who was rubbing his head as he squinted sleepily at his hysterical sisters.

“What is going on?” he asked in his husky, not quite awake voice. He’d pulled on a pair of well worn jeans, but his chest was bare. It took moment for Stevie to drag her eyes away from all that naked male chest. Who knew Jace had been hiding all that under his clothes?

“‘No Good for You’ just hit number one,” Marci said again for his benefit.

“And we’ve got fans!” Nadine squealed.

The next few hours were a little crazy, but the good kind of crazy. Marci managed to corral the fans into some semblance of order and they had an impromptu autograph signing. The local press had picked up on what was happening and cameras appeared to get footage of them as they shook hands and posed for selfies with the fans. Stevie wasn’t big on crowds, but when they were all there for her it was kind of…empowering. The heartbreak and melancholy that she had felt would never leave was shunted aside by having a hundred fans screaming her name and wanting a photograph with her.

Jace was practically mobbed. The girls and young women in the crowd all wanted a piece of him. He looked a little stunned at first but it didn’t take long for him to find that smooth groove that all cocky male stars had. He even swaggered a little as he walked and it made Stevie smile. Jace was the last person she would have ever expected to be affected by a little fan adoration. He was nothing like Nate. Nate lapped up attention like a man starved, but Jace had never been like that. For Jace, it was all about the music. It seemed though that it only took a few flashes of bare breasts and whispered promises for Jace to morph into the stereotypical rock star.

Nadine and Vanessa had their own special crowd of male groupies. It had been the same at the Apple Orchard Festival and yet it still seemed weird to Stevie. Groupies, in her mind, referred to women, but there couldn’t be another word for the young men who crowded around the sisters. The girls lapped it up and it reminded Stevie that they would need to have a band meeting to firm up some rules about bringing company on the bus. The last thing Stevie wanted was to wake up and find strangers in her personal space. They wouldn’t have much privacy on this tour and Stevie was determined to jealously guard as much of it as possible.

As for Stevie, she had her own fans. A nice mix of men and women. She was probably the most conservative of the group, although she had always pegged Jace as the grown-up. After seeing the way he came alive under the attention of his fans, Stevie suddenly felt old and like she was now the grown-up and that was reflected in the people who clamored for her attention. Sure, she got slips of paper with names and cell phone numbers scrawled on them from the men who asked for her autograph or picture, but it was the young girls who drew most of her attention. They looked at her like some sort of goddess who could give them the secrets of the universe. These were young girls who dreamed of being singers just like her, and Stevie remembered her own days of hero worship. Rather than hyping her up like it did to the other members of her band, it made her all too aware of the influence - good or bad - she could have on these impressionable young minds. It was sobering. She tried to speak to as many of them as possible and encourage them in their pursuit of their dreams. It was important to her that she keep her humanity and never forget that it was the fans that made her job possible. Without them she would be nothing. She did not want to turn into some aloof and pretentious celebrity that disdained the fans who had made her successful.

Wow. That was a really arrogant thing to think. Stevie shook her head at herself. The band had one hit, that was it so far, and here she was thinking that she was some megastar. Maybe she wasn’t so unaffected by the adoring attention of her fans as she thought. This could be nothing but a flash in the pan. They were number one today, but it didn’t mean they would be number one forever. She just had to look at Nate and what happened to his career to know that it wasn’t as easy as having a few good hits. She had to look at the long game. They had a good, solid album that would do well, but they couldn’t get caught up in the short-term success. They needed to keep writing. When this tour was finished they would need to get back into the studio and start recording again. This was not the time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor. That would come later. Much later.

Marci arrived with a couple of the burly security guards from the venue and the crowd started to disperse. Stevie felt exhausted and all she wanted to do was crawl back into her bunk for a couple of hours of shut-eye. Unfortunately she was the only one. The girls and Jace seemed energized by all the people and she knew they had a long afternoon of rehearsals. At least she would be able to sleep tonight and she would be far too busy to think of Nate and wonder what he was doing. He had just had his first number one song in a couple of years, how would he celebrate?

She closed her eyes and forced the thought out of her mind. She didn’t want to know. She could imagine and in her imagination it involved a bevy of beauties. With a growl she turned her thoughts to something else. The last thing she wanted to do was think about Nate fucking a gaggle of only-too-eager groupies as a way to celebrate his being back on top. And just like that, her good mood evaporated. It was just like that saying; when you tell yourself not to think of an elephant, what do you do? Think of a fucking elephant. The vision of Nate being ridden by an enthusiastic bimbo was now firmly lodged in her brain and she would be lucky to think of anything else. Shit.