SEVENTEEN

 

Aaron couldn’t even remember what city he was in. He got to that point in every tour, where he couldn’t even remember the name of the hotel where he stayed. Only this was more intense because it had been months and months since he’d last seen his own bed, and because he could no longer even remember the name of the city he was in when he woke up in the morning.

His alarm was ringing, which was weird because he was very sure that he hadn’t set it the night before. His sleep schedule was all over the place, and what with he and Brad sneaking around to be together when they could, he hadn’t been getting nearly enough shut-eye. He’d been hoping to catch up a little bit, so why did he hear his alarm?

Only he wasn’t. His alarm was an insistent beeping. This was his ringtone. His phone was ringing, and he groaned as he reached over and almost smacked it right off of the bedside table, where he’d put it the night before to charge. With eyes dim with sleep, he noted that it was currently eight in the morning. Past time for him to be awake, normally, but he’d been hoping to get a few more hours.

He almost did it. He almost just dismissed the call, because the display showed a number that he couldn’t remember having seen before. But it looked familiar like it had been given to him once, maybe. It seemed to be a call from a government office …

Oh shit. Aaron’s fingers suddenly felt about five sizes too big, and numb, like they didn’t even belong to him. Breathing shallowly and rapidly, Aaron punched at the phone, accepting the call, all remnants of sleep gone in an instant, shoved down by panic instead.

He thought he knew why someone from the state government might be calling him. Or at least, he had a guess.

“Is this Aaron?” It was Julie’s voice, just as some instinct inside of Aaron had known that it would be.

“Yeah,” Aaron managed, but his voice was too soft, his voice as dry as the Sahara. He swallowed, trying to bring some moisture into his mouth, and tried again. “Yeah. What’s up, Julie?”

Whatever it was, it was going to be big. He knew that already. She wasn’t just calling to find out how his tour was going. He was sure of that. So he tried to prepare himself for the worst, though there were some things that he knew he would never be able to deal with.

As it turned out, it wasn’t as bad as it could be, but it was still plenty bad.

“I just wanted to let you know that your sister …” Her voice trailed off, but Aaron barely had time for his anxiety to build up even more. “She’s fine now,” Julie assured him, which didn’t lessen anything much, “But she ran away.”

No, it definitely wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She was back now, at least, so Aaron only knew about it once it was already over and safely resolved. Still, it was bad enough that he felt like someone had poured ice water down his spine, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down a little.

“For how long? Why am I only finding out about this now?” Aaron’s voice, despite his best efforts, was a little bit sharp when he heard the words, and he sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t go making an enemy of Julie, who was doing everything she could to help Leah. “Sorry. Just … is she going to do it again?”

The thought of his sister, not even seventeen years old, out in the world alone, that was terrifying. Or would it be more terrifying if she wasn’t alone? On her own, she might not get up to much trouble, but he knew she had made some friends who might not be the best people for her to hang out with.

“It’s quite all right,” Julie commented, her voice unperturbed. She was probably used to it, had probably seen far worse in her days than Aaron. “She was only gone for slightly over twenty-four hours. I’ve tried to reach you, but you’re not an easy person to get in touch with, Aaron. I don’t think the time zones helped, either.”

Aaron wanted to swear, to curse right out loud. Damn it. He had snapped at her for nothing. He had been on planes, he sometimes felt, more often than not in the four months since he’d left home. Not to mention that, with the jetlag and the strange hours, he often forgot to charge his phone.

“Right,” Aaron said, just a touch awkward. “Sorry. So what now?”

He had no idea what the system was. Or how it had gotten as bad as it had. If only Leah had been with him the whole time, he could have stopped this from happening. Their parents would be horrified by the whole thing. They had always been the kind of people who wanted things done properly, and their daughter was not behaving in a proper way.

Aaron cared less about that than he did about her safety, though.

“She needs help. More help than I can give her.” It couldn’t be an easy thing for Julie, who gave so much, to admit to, but she did it freely. “She needs therapy. Better therapy than the state can provide for her.”

Immediately, Aaron felt like punching himself. Hard. Right in the face. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that before? He had all of this money, and he had gotten it because he wanted to take care of his sister. Then, when the chance came, he didn’t even notice it because he was too busy.

Too busy being on tour. Too busy being a big star. Too busy having delusions of grandeur and getting caught up in his own publicity.

And his sister had paid the price for it. At that moment, Aaron couldn’t speak, too crippled with self-loathing to even manage it. Finally, he cleared his throat, because Julie was a busy woman and there was no way that she could just wait on the line with him while he dealt with his stuff.

“Okay. Arrange the counseling. Anything she needs,” Aaron granted. “I can send you money now, if you want, to cover it. Is there anything else I can do to help her?”

Aaron was pretty sure that he could actually hear the relief in the woman’s voice when she spoke again.

“Yeah, now that you mention it. She needs you, Aaron. I know that you’re not back for two months, but anything you could do. A phone call. Just whatever you have time for.”

Aaron guiltily tried to remember the last time that he had called his sister. It had been a while. This whole big brother thing was harder than he would have thought, once there were no parents around. And the longer it had been since he last called, the worse he felt about the whole thing, and the less likely he was to call in some sort of twisted, vicious cycle.

“I’ll Skype with her, if she wants,” Aaron offered. “I can help with her homework, or whatever. Do you think that would help?”

Aaron could swear that he actually heard the woman on the other end of the line smile a little bit. What sort of life had she led, that seeing someone showing just basic consideration could make her smile? Could make her sound like she did when she finally spoke?

“That would be good. As much as you can,” Julie replied, and Aaron nodded. He could do that, and he would be happy to do that. Truth was, though he’d spoken to his sister a few times since he’d left on tour, it hadn’t been nearly enough, and maybe the same was true for her, too.

As they said their goodbyes, and Aaron hung up the phone, he let himself drift off into his own thoughts. He had been honestly considering whether he could actually let himself do what Brad so obviously wanted, and what Aaron wanted, too, if he were completely honest with himself. He had been halfway to convincing himself that it was possible for him to juggle all of his responsibilities, that he could be a good brother and raise his little sister, that he could handle all that came along with that and also launch his own solo career.

Sighing softly, he went out to the balcony of his room, gazing down into the congested streets, watching the swarms of people passing by like ants far beneath him. Tokyo, he suddenly realized. That’s where he was. He hadn’t been able to remember when he first woke up, but he did now.

He was in Tokyo, and that was the last stop before they headed back to North America. They were headed to Vancouver, Canada, if he wasn’t very much mistaken, which was always a possibility because it was nearly impossible for him to keep all of the stops straight in his mind. Understandable, maybe, considering that they’d been everywhere from London to Rome to Berlin to, well, Tokyo. And everywhere in between.

What sort of life could he give Leah if he took this on, if he really committed himself? He shook his head as he pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over his sister’s name on the screen. She needed him, and far more than Brad did, or the Lost Boys did, or the record label did.

He knew where his priorities needed to lie. He’d known in all along. So he closed his eyes and mentally told the part of his brain that had held on to a hopeless fantasy to take a hike, then opened them and pressed the screen, tapping out a text message to his sister quickly, arranging a time for him to Skype with her, hang out in whatever way they could.

So that was that. Aaron had to give up on his childhood dreams. He was an adult now, and on his own, he knew now that he would have taken Brad’s offer in a heartbeat. But he wasn’t on his own.

He and Brad had been signing month to month contract extensions because Brad refused to give up on him, and Aaron hadn’t, until just now, been fully willing to give up, either. But it was time to tell Brad that he would sign only one more contract, one that lasted right through to the end of the tour, and that was it. Then, he was done.

If he thought about it too much, it would be very depressing. How many men could say that a record label, a highly successful one, wanted them badly enough that they would operate in as unusual a way as they had been with him? That they would sign contracts, month by month? That he, as the artist, had dictated the terms?

He was so lucky, or he would be if only he could allow himself to take it. Sighing softly, he went back inside and shut his door on the smog behind him.

It was time to tell not only Brad but also the rest of the Lost Boys that he was leaving. For good, forever, just like Darien had. It was time to start saying his goodbyes.

And time to start hoping against hope that, when he was gone, when he was off to some sort of normal life, some sort of normal job slinging burgers or serving coffee, that Lance, Jamie, and Ken would still have time for him, that they would still be just as interested in being his friend as they were now.

About Brad? Well, he had no idea what to even hope about Brad. He should never have given Brad hope in the first place, and he knew he would deserve it if the other man never spoke to him again.