Page 11 of Never Been Shipped

Her room was small, by necessity, but pretty nice. It even had a balcony, with two chairs and a view of the horizon stretching out over the water. Micah’s first thought had beenI hope Ryder has a balcony room or I’ll never hear the end of it. Her second had beenActually, fuck that, I hope they put him in a storage closet.

He had a lot of nerve, coming up to her and tellingherthat she needed to be on her best behavior on the ship. “We’re all professionals here,” he’d said. “And people just want to see a good show.”

It was condescending that he thought he needed to tell her that, but fine. She didn’t disagree. But then he’d touched her arm. “You know,” he’d said. “People still ship us.”

And then Micah thought she understood a bit better. Theywere supposed toput on a good shownot just on the stage but off it, too—maybe give people a little bit of what they wanted, clandestine moments that gave more proof to the pretty-much-confirmed rumors that they’d dated, that maybe suggested they could date again. Or maybe Ryder expected it to be real, thought that Micah would be able to put everything behind her and pick up right where they left off.

Yeah,fuckthat.

She collapsed onto the bed starfish-style, lying there for the few minutes it took to get her breathing back to normal. Then she turned her head to the view outside the balcony, her gaze snagging instead on her luggage stacked up in the corner.

She could’ve done without the embarrassing moment outside, when her guitar case had fallen open and all the bracelets had spilled everywhere. She didn’t even know why she’d brought them. Maybe she’d had some thought that she could give them away to people, leave them in various places around the ship, unload all these things that she’d made just tomakethem and now didn’t know what to do with them after that. Maybe she’d just wanted her former bandmates to think she’d actually brought an instrument.

She knew they all hated her. It had been pretty obvious, by the way they’d stayed in a little group separate from her. And Micah supposed she couldn’t blame them for that. Shehadbroken up the band. Shehadbeen the one to walk away. Or worse—to walk into the rest of their contract without them. Technically, that meant they’d gotten paid for a record they didn’t even have to make, but she knew that was no comfort.

Micah rolled over onto her stomach, pressing her face into the crisp white comforter on the bed. She didn’t know if Johnhated her. It was hard to imagine him hating anyone—it had never really been his style. But he was definitely a stranger to her now, and somehow that felt just as bad.

He’d come to a concert of hers once. She’d been playing the El Rey on a tour that had been absolutely miserable, starting with the fact that she couldfeelthe disappointment from her entire team that it wasn’t going better. So she’d performed at legendary venues that normally would’ve had her over the moon, and instead all she could think about were the emails that had gone back and forth about how they didn’t have “confidence in the numbers” to warrant booking bigger stadiums, what benchmarks she wasn’t making for presales, and on and on.

When one of the venue’s security team had found her backstage to tell her that someone was asking to see her, she’d snapped a quickNobefore she’d even registered the name. That was what she’d told herself later—she hadn’t realized it was him.

But the truth was that there’d been a moment between when she’d said no and when the security guard had left when it had hit her.John.There’d been enough time for her to sayWait. Yes. I do want to see that person. Send him back.

Instead, she’d let the security guard walk away. And then she’d spent the last ten years wondering what John would’ve said.

There was a knock at her door, and Micah startled. She had the sudden irrational thought that it washim, that she’d summoned him just by thinking his name. But when she opened the door, Frankie stood on the other side, their tight corkscrew curls teased out into an Afro around their face, their dangling earrings giant rainbows with fringe hanging down from the clouds on either end.

“Are you coming to the panel?” Frankie said. “You don’t have to, but remember that it’s ‘encouraged.’ ”

Their air quotes made Micah smile. To hear Bobbi talk about the cruise at that meeting, it had sounded like everything was absolutely up to them, they were just there to have fun…except of course for the quasi-mandatory, if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you activities they’d been “encouraged” to take part in.

“Let me just get ready,” Micah said. She started to close the door, figuring that Frankie wouldn’t want to wait around and she’d meet them out there, but instead Frankie surprised her by coming all the way into the room.

“Your digs are really nice,” Frankie said. “A balcony, wow.”

Micah felt her stomach sink as she grabbed her makeup case from her bag. “Do we not all have balconies?”

Frankie shrugged. “I can’t speak for everyone. John and I are in interior rooms. We don’t even have a porthole.”

It was a good reminder that no matter how far into their own bullshit they might be, ElectricOh! was far from the main draw for this cruise. There were Tatiana and the otherNightshifterscast members, who probably all had balconies and huge suites, and then the Silver Cuties, the main band who’d provided several songs for the show’s soundtrack over the years. They were the ones who were playing full sets, not just the mini ones ElectricOh! had been contracted for. They were also still an active band that put out new music and toured. Micah had spent a few hours when the cruise had first been announced watching their music videos and scrolling through their social media with all the excited comments from fans.

Micah had dipped a toe into a few lingering ElectricOh! fan accounts to gauge any response there, too. Her favorite one wasan account with only a few hundred followers that captioned every single post with “if this flops I stg” but always managed to dig up older photos Micah had forgotten existed. Most importantly, the account didn’t seem to blame Micah for breaking up the band the way most people did, including, she was sure—and with justification!—her own bandmates. Part of cutting things off so abruptly the way she had was that she really didn’t know the ins and outs of how they all felt. So far in that initial cruise meeting, they’d seemed almost as over Ryder as she was, so maybe he hadn’t been able to poison them against her as much as she’d feared.

Still, Micah wished that they’d at least given every member of the band the same type of room.

“Surprised you came to get me,” Micah said, leaning in to apply her lip stain. “Won’t they be mad at you for crossing sides?”

She caught Frankie’s frown out of the corner of her eye, reflected in the mirror.

“There aren’tsides,” Frankie said. “At least, not in my book. That shit was a long time ago. And yeah, some of it sucked at the time—I’m not saying I didn’t hold a grudge for a bit. But in the end, I’m glad everything worked out the way it did. I feel like I’m living the life I want.”

Micah was genuinely happy for Frankie if that was the case. They deserved it. But she couldn’t deny the kick their words sent to her stomach.I’m living the life I want.It sounded so simple, when they put it like that. As if the life you wanted was just out there, waiting, and all you had to do was grab it and put it on like you were applying color to your face.

“I heard the parts you recorded on thatWonderingalbum,” Micah said. “They slapped. The first track especially.”

Frankie beamed. “Thank you,” they said. “John said that was his favorite, too. They might go on tour this summer—I’m still in talks to join the live band for the North American leg.”

Something about the fact that she and John had both listened to the same record, had responded to the identical song, got to her a bit. It felt like the equivalent of looking up at the same moon or something fanciful like that. It was stupid of Micah to even feel that way.

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