Theo

“Theo Decker: Reluctant Rock Star.”

That was the headline that accompanied the cover of Groove magazine that came out today, and it was the reason I was hiding in my dressing room from the rest of the band. I could already imagine Ven, nostrils flaring, voice tight with anger: Lead singer standing in for the whole band again, awesome!

And that was before you even got to the photo, which was about fifty percent me.

I pulled the magazine out of my bag to glare at it and my stomach dropped again. Ven, Coco, and Ethan hovered in the background, eclipsed by me. My arms were wrapped around myself like a straitjacket or a hug and I was gazing up at the camera in what had been an awkward plea for the shoot to be over, but looked coy. I cursed myself for the hundredth time for believing the smarmy editor who’d assured me that of course all the band members would be featured equally.

Reluctant rock star wasn’t precisely accurate. More like, Rock Star Who Loves Performing with a Fiery Passion but Hates Being Famous More than He Ever Expected. Only that didn’t make for a very snappy headline.

I cast one last look in the dressing room mirror. Staring back at me wasn’t a rock star of any description. It was a scared kid who’d gone from no one caring about him to everyone caring about him in the time it would take most people to clean out a garage. My black hair was wild around my face, just like it always was, gray eyes ringed in days of overlaid black eyeliner, just like they always were, lips bitten raw, as had become common lately. My black jeans were tight, permanently sweat-creased behind the knees, and hanging a little low on my hips, since I hadn’t been able to stomach much lately. The white T-shirt hung on me, making my arms look skinnier than they were, and my shoulders sharper.

It wasn’t even a costume. These were my own clothes, my own aesthetic, just as I used my real name. Which made it feel even weirder to see it all turned into a persona. Theo Decker: Reluctant Rock Star.

I smeared on some lip balm so my mouth wouldn’t crack and bleed onstage, hitched my jeans up, and patted the lucky pick I wore on a string around my neck, hidden under my T-shirt. The one I’d been using the night Ethan had heard me at Sushi Bar’s open mic night and changed my life forever. I hummed a few lines of our opening song. My voice was on its last legs, but this was the end of the tour, thank god, and I’d have time to rest it.

I swallowed hard, pushing the sick feeling of alienation from the rest of Riven down into the pit of my stomach.

“Okay, go,” I ordered Theo Decker in the mirror, and pushed through the door to join my band.

Blinded by floodlights, shaky with exertion, and high on adrenaline, I closed my eyes as the lights changed for our final song. It had been a great set, the rest of the band coming through despite their anger at the cover, just like I knew they would. They always did. We were magical together. That’s what everybody said. Synergistic. Nearly psychic.

Coco plucked the first, haunting notes of “No More Time,” our newest single, as the stage was washed in eerie blue light. They reverberated, striking like a gong in my chest. Ven came in with the bass line, then Ethan counted in, and the rhythm went to double time. I pounded the drumbeats with my foot, needing to wring every last bit of energy out onto the stage.

There was this moment, before the first note left my mouth, when everything changed. There was the before and the after; the quiet and the noise; the off and the on. It was the moment when I felt like I appeared, pushing everything that I was out of myself like the notes I sang were a strong-currented river, able to disgorge me.

I’d written this song in about twenty minutes. It had fallen into my head fully formed, like something in a dream. It swooped and soared from the bottom of my register to the top, and there was a moment after the second bridge when the instruments cut out and I hit a note that blasted through the sudden silence like a wrecking ball.

Tonight, since I knew it was the last show of the tour, I sang it with everything I had left, let it pull me to my tiptoes and to the edge of the stage, sweat flicking off my hair as I threw myself open before the screaming crowd.

The crowd. They thundered around me, their stomps and screams like my own heartbeat, their energy coursing through me like blood. These were the moments I lived for. These were the moments that made every other miserable bit of fame worth it.

I opened my arms, threw my head back, and shattered myself to pieces for them, until there was nothing left.

---

“It’s a phenomenal opportunity—a real honor,” Dougal, our manager, was saying as we sat in Coco’s dressing room after the show. I was so exhausted I was hardly listening to him. Still floaty from performing, I was already gone, back to New York and my apartment, blissfully alone.

“It would just mean extending by three more weeks. Easy-peasy.”

My blitzed brain caught on the absurdity of “easy-peasy,” before it got around to processing the rest of his sentence.

“Extending?” I croaked around my cherry menthol cough drop.

“Just for three weeks or so,” Dougal confirmed. “The Scandinavian leg of the tour would end the first day of the DeadBeat Festival. Done.”

I looked around at the rest of the band, expecting to see that they were equally horrified at the idea of extending the tour. But Coco looked excited, her foot tapping like it always did when she was plotting; Ethan was nodding, and Ven had leaned forward, elbows on knees.

My heart began to triphammer and suddenly the taste of the cherry threatened to make me sick. I shook my head.

“You guys, no way. I can’t.” My throat felt raw, a metallic taste lurking beneath the cherry and menthol.

“But, the DeadBeat Festival!” Coco crowed, at the same time Ven said, “It’s a major ask, and major sales after the festival.”

Coco shot him a look, as if they’d already discussed the tack they were going to take and that wasn’t it. Had they discussed it? Had Dougal told them but not me? She went on. “Cavalcade and The Runny Whites are playing. DJ Romulus is gonna be there. If it’d make people think of us as being in the same league as artists like them, how can we turn it down? Besides, it’s only three more weeks. What’s three weeks after four months?”

Ven, Ethan, and Dougal nodded their agreement and my heart sank.

This date marked in my calendar had been the only thing getting me through the last month. The Boston show meant the end of the tour. The promise of home, of the familiar streets of my neighborhood, the warmth and solitude of my own bed, and the chance to just…be, without being under constant scrutiny. I longed for it.

But I couldn’t say any of that to the band. They had been living for this tour. After all, it was what they’d always been working toward—long before they’d met me.

I was opening my mouth to say that I just didn’t have another three weeks left in me, when Ven fixed me with a cool stare.

“Come on, bro. Everyone says you’re the star. Well, stars have to pay their dues.”

And there it was. They were all looking at me. Coco’s expression was pleading, Ethan’s hopeful, Ven’s a challenge, and Dougal’s the studied neutrality of calculation.

“You all want to?” I asked them, and was immediately met with a chorus of yeses.

“I—”

How could I let them down? We were a team; we were supposed to look out for one another. Usually, we were friends, too. I needed to be on the same side as them or being in Riven was beyond lonely. If I said no, I ruined it for all of them. Besides, Coco was right about what it meant for us to be asked to play the festival, to be asked to add dates to our tour. It meant we’d arrived.

If only I wanted to be at the place where we’d arrived.

“Okay,” I said, my voice a whisper. “Sure. It’s only three weeks.”

---

We had a day and a half back in New York to gather our stuff before flying to Europe. It was just enough time to be reminded of all the ways that tour wasn’t real life, but not enough to actually feel rested before leaving again. The second the car dropped me at my apartment I fell into bed, so relieved to know that no one would knock on my door or try to interrupt me that I slept for hours before waking, ravenous, around 10 P.M.

I felt almost human again after a quick shower and a quick bowl of pho at the Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from my apartment, the one where I could sit at the counter with my back to the other diners and my hat pulled low, so no one could recognize me. Since it was late, I decided it was safe to brave a walk after I ate.

One of the worst things about being recognizable was that I practically had to run a recon mission just to know if it was safe to grab a damn slice of pizza. I couldn’t pop out for a bite or go to a movie without risking being set upon by people snapping pictures or grabbing at me. I had to know the places where I could hide in plain sight, like the Vietnamese restaurant, or enter through an alleyway to avoid a crowd. More often than not, I didn’t even bother, because getting caught in a flurry of photos and whispers left me frazzled, drained, and too anxious to want the pizza or the movie by the time the crowd had passed.

But tonight there was a gorgeous bloom of fresh spring air, and by the time I got back from the new leg of this tour, it would be summer, that edge of cool breeze rustling the leaves gone, replaced by the smell of garbage and too many bodies. So I walked. In the dark, with my hat shading my eyes, in my jeans, Chucks, and T-shirt, I looked like a hundred other dudes.

I walked aimlessly at first, relishing the simple pleasure of letting my mind wander after months of fretting over details, always with somewhere to be. But as anxious thoughts about the next few weeks intruded, I turned east and headed over the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d done it a hundred times, but pausing in the middle of the bridge, looking back toward Manhattan and out toward the Statue of Liberty, always felt special. The wind from the water whipped my hair and I stuffed my hat in my back pocket so it wouldn’t get blown off, and pulled my jean jacket on. I was always cold these days, except when I was onstage.

I’d had no idea what it would feel like to perform—really perform, the crowd so loud and the stage so large that every step, every note, every gesture, was a show.

The first time I’d realized it, we were opening for Oops Icarus. It was our first tour, our first show. The rest of the band was nervous that people wouldn’t know who we were, but I felt liberated by the relative anonymity. It was easier to believe this was just an experiment, and that if it failed, I wouldn’t be that loser, Theo, who dropped out of college for a pipe dream, like my parents said. When we ripped into our first song, I felt the prickle of all my senses coming alive. For once, I didn’t feel like gawky Theo who cared too much about the music.

I sang with everything I had, hair lashing my face, sweat trickling down my spine, and gathering at the backs of my knees. When we ran offstage at the end of our set, Coco’s eyes were wide and Ven was looking at me with a grudging respect I’d never seen from him. Ethan clapped me on the back. That was when I knew they hadn’t expected me to be that good, that they’d needed me for the songs I could provide, without thinking about what it would be like to have me around. It took the wind out of me, since they’d pursued me for the band single-mindedly.

When I first met them, it felt like I finally belonged somewhere—was wanted somewhere—for the first fucking time in my life. Onstage that first time, under the hot lights and the ringing in my ears, with dust motes forming a constellation that connected me with the audience as if we could stay suspended in it forever, I felt it for the second time.

I belonged onstage. I was wanted, there. By the band, by the audience. And, most surprisingly, by myself. I could lose myself in a way I’d never known, and by losing myself I found pieces I could live with.

And it’s what I came back to every time I thought all the rest of it wasn’t worth it. Onstage, I felt invincible, but also so, so open. It was the impossibility of the combination that made it so potent. Onstage, I was blown open, but held.

---

Prospect Heights was turning into Crown Heights, and I was thinking of heading home, back to bed, when I heard something that stopped me dead on the sidewalk.

The back door of a bar was flung open to the spring night, and inside, someone was playing a song that sent shivers all through me. It was mournful and angry and beautiful and raw, and the feelings of it roiled around in my chest until I was craning to hear more. I couldn’t see who was playing, so I walked around to the front door, expecting a crowd, but the place was nearly empty, just a couple of randoms scattered around the bar.

And there he was. Back turned to the room, a man played guitar and sang under his breath, voice whiskey low and honey sweet. No crowd, no audience, he was playing for himself, one foot resting on the rung of a beat-up chair, tattooed fingers cradling his guitar like a precious thing. The notes he tore from that guitar twisted me up and set me buzzing with energy, like they were seeping into my skin.

Before I was even aware I’d moved, I found myself beside him.

“Sorry,” I said when he stiffened and turned, sensing he was no longer alone.

When he faced me, I swallowed hard. He looked like I’d pulled him back from someplace far away. But goddamn, was he gorgeous.

He was taller than me, broad and thick with muscle, but his fingers on the guitar were poetry. Intense dark eyes—brown or maybe a dark green—beneath expressive eyebrows, brown hair combed back, full mouth surrounded by a groomed beard. He looked like some half-mad sea captain who’d wandered ashore.

“Help you, bro?” he drawled.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d approached a stranger. Nowadays, people usually approached me and I tried to avoid them, and before…it wasn’t that I was shy, exactly, I just never assumed people would welcome my approach.

“Is that yours? The song.”

He nodded.

I’m obsessed with it. The expression dropped into my head, what I used to say about songs, books, movies I felt a kind of connection with that I couldn’t quite explain because it seemed in excess of the thing itself.

“I love it,” I said. It sounded trite and generic but I couldn’t have meant it more. The guy raised an eyebrow. Not unkind, just not very enthusiastic.

“Thanks, man.”

Then he started to turn away and I felt a dire need to prevent it. Because, after months on tour, with music feeling oppressive, the joy that song called forth in me was such a welcome relief—such a gift—I couldn’t let it go. And if he turned away, the tendril connecting me to this moment would snap, and I’d careen off into space. Back out into the dark night; back to my empty apartment; back on tour to day after day of nameless, interchangeable cities and night after night of nameless, interchangeable men.

I put a hand out, plucked at his sleeve. It was a red, waffle-knit Henley that fit him close to the skin, so what I’d intended as an impersonal touch instead let me feel the warmth of his body, the strength of his muscles, sinewy beneath the worn fabric. His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“That part after the bridge, where it seemed like you were gonna go up but then you dropped into minor. How’d you choose that?”

After a pause that stretched long enough I thought he wasn’t going to answer, he shrugged and said, “Just tried it a couple different ways. Liked that one best.”

But I didn’t believe him. That unexpected key change—going down instead of up—it was masterful. Unique and haunting and…accomplished. No way was this guy just playing around for fun.

“It changed the whole mood of the song,” I ventured. “It was sad, longing. But then that one moment made the whole thing feel, like, eerie. Haunted and…”

I shrugged, irritated by how uncertain I sounded. I knew music. Music was the one thing I could talk about with anyone. So why did I feel like every sentence carried an incredible weight?

“Yeah, that’s right,” the guy said, voice warming slightly. “I didn’t want to let the listener just be sad. Too easy. Too comfortable. It had to spin them around a little. Make them question what they’d felt so far.”

His eyes burned into me as he talked, voice low and rumbling as thunder, catching at the lowest notes. I tried to think of something to say, but my brain and my voice were gone, lost somewhere in his eyes and his words, and I just looked at him. Finally, I forced myself to look down because I was probably creeping the guy out.

“I’m Theo.”

“Hey, Theo. Caleb.”

He reached for my hand as if the idea of an introduction without a handshake was unthinkable, even in a dirty bar. I could feel the calluses on the tips of his fingers, and his hand was rough and dry. He wore a ring on his middle finger, a thick, smooth band of metal that looked like the kind of thing you never take off.

The hand I was holding had strummed that beautiful song out of his guitar, and I wanted to squeeze it so tight that some of that magic leached into me. I wanted to pull its beauty inside me.