TWENTY SEVEN

It was like he couldn’t stop pacing. Like he might just pass out, just from the strain of all of this pressure. It was so strange, how the first time around, the first time his career had been launched, he had been relatively unmoved by the strain. Lost in the pain of his recent loss, worried about his sister and himself, it hadn’t been that big a deal to him whether the Lost Boys succeeded or failed.

“Stop pacing. You’re going to wear a hole right through the floor,” Brad suggested, and though he sounded amused and even blasé, about the whole thing, Aaron couldn’t help but notice that Brad’s hands were gripping onto the arms of his chair tightly enough that his knuckles were white with the strain of it.

Still, Brad had a point, and Aaron dropped down into a chair. He glanced around the room, Brad’s office, which was packed full almost to the bursting point. Ken and Justin. Lance and Jamie, of course. Darien and Noah, who were still doing social media management for them, and himself and Brad.

“Come on, man. It’s not that big a deal,” Lance told him, idly running his fingers through Jamie’s long, bright hair, effortlessly affectionate in a way that Aaron, despite falling in love, knew that he would never be. Not in public, anyway. But that was fine, good, even, because Brad wasn’t like that either.

“Sure. Because you’ve already been through this,” Aaron pointed out, and Lance and Jamie just gave him smug, satisfied little grins. They had done this, after all, just a month ago. Their album had dropped, and the huge experiment was performed and declared a success.

Jamie and Lance were tearing up the charts, more than anyone, even Lara, Aaron thought, had expected. With Justin’s songwriting and Brad’s management, they had been incredibly successful, both through radio play and also online.

In short, it seemed that people had lost no love for the Lost Boys, and they were eager to keep buying anything that they, or any subset of them, put out. Although Aaron couldn’t help but wonder, was it just that people liked Lance and Jamie? They were undoubtedly more personable than him, and their love for each other was very clear every time they were together.

Aaron was a different thing altogether. He was going it alone, for one thing. And he had deliberately kept himself more mysterious than Lance and Jamie had. He and Brad hadn’t kept their relationship a secret, but neither had they openly announced it. They were playing off of Aaron’s mystery, and he just had to hope it paid off.

At long last, the door opened, and Lara scanned the room and arched her eyebrows when she saw how packed it was. This probably wasn’t normal for a solo act, to have all of the other members of their former band there, not to mention other people who really had no business being there at all, like Darien and Justin. But Aaron had wanted them there, and this was, hopefully at least, his big day.

“I guess there’s no point in trying to kick all of you out,” Lara said, her voice wry, and Aaron just gave her a little shrug as he tried to scan her face. To read there, in the depths of her eyes, what the news was. This label had put so much money into him, into advertising, and if he failed at this …

“You’re a hit.”

Aaron hadn’t fully realized it until she spoke those three words, but he had been carrying around this weight which had been growing heavier as the date of his launch approached. All of a sudden, she took that weight from him, and he reached out for Brad’s hand and found that Brad was already reaching for him.

Lara kept talking, of course. Talking album numbers, downloads, radio play, dollar amounts that seemed faintly ludicrous to Aaron. But she had already said the words that mattered, and Aaron found himself surrounded by his friends, by smiling faces, and a few of them even hugged him and then it was pretty much a free for all.

In the center of all of them, Aaron’s eyes met Brad, who was still standing outside of the cluster, a smile on his face. Without hesitation, Aaron held out his hand to Brad, offering it to him, bringing him into the center with him.

“This is yours as much as it’s mine,” Aaron murmured and rested his head on Brad’s chest, listening to the comforting beat of his heart as Brad’s strong arms went around his waist.

It was the end of an era, in a very real way, he supposed, but other than a faint bittersweet tinge to the moment, Aaron found that he didn’t mind. The Lost Boys had never been anything but a temporary act, he realized. Something that was thrown together very artificially, but which had grown into something greater than the sum of his parts.

They were all successes now, and even though the band itself had to end, it wasn’t the end. Not really. It was just the beginning, and for something that Aaron could already sense was going to be completely amazing for all of them.