Page 73 of Never Been Shipped

“I could barely keep my eyes open,” Frankie said. “I know I’m going to have to get used to it again, if I end up doing that summer tour after all, but for right now this millennial likes to be in their pajamas and watching their programs by nine o’clock.”

“Well, I hope you do the tour,” John said. “If there’s a date in Orlando, you know I’ll be there.”

“Not L.A.?”

He smiled but didn’t have anything to say to that. “Do you think there’s a way to make music and not have it get warped somehow? Like a way to make something and share it with people, but avoid all the pitfalls of record labels and critics and sales and promotion and all that?”

“No,” Frankie said, the answer so quick and deadpan he couldn’t help but let out a surprised laugh.

“Okay,” he said. “Fair enough.”

“I mean, there are different paths,” Frankie said. “Like if we’d had more time to just be aband, and had signed to some tiny indie label, sure. Everything would’ve been different. But no, I don’t think you can ever avoid all of it. The minute you take a song from your bedroom to a record where anybody can hear it, it doesn’t belong to just you anymore. And that lets a lot of people in, all the voices that tell you it’s not good enough or not selling enough or not as good as your last one, or worse sometimes, telling you that it’s brilliant.”

John rocked back on his heels, thinking about how truethatwas. The praise could fuck you up as badly as the criticism; that was one part he hadn’t been prepared for. He thought about those people crying in the front row at the concert the other night, how many years it had taken for him to feel grateful for that instead of uncomfortable and weird.

“You can keep everything small,” Frankie said. “And then you let fewer people in. But the flip side is that you let fewer people in. And what’s the point of music if you’re not sharing it with other people?”

He thought back to the night before, howgoodit had felt just to play songs and sing them with his friends, no microphones, no set list, nobody carefully arranging the schedule so they played three hits, recorded a radio bumper—This is ElectricOh!, and you’re listening to THE Ninety-Seven X, Home of Tampa Bay’s New Rock Alternative—and then moved on to the next thing.

“It really didn’t fuck you up, did it,” he said. “What happened with the band?”

“Hell no,” Frankie said. “For a few years it was an absolutedream. We got to fly across the world! When we couldn’t even legally drink yet! And then the shine started to wear off, and yeah, I was mad when Micah blew it all up, but I was relieved, too. It freed us all up so we could do our own things. I’ve never been sorry we started the band, and I’ve never been sorry that we ended it, either.”

Hearing Frankie put it that way, it seemed obvious. John felt almost stupid for all the years when hehadbeen fucked up by everything that went down. The band had been fun. Until it wasn’t. Simple as that.

Frankie touched his arm. “It was always more emotional for you,” they said. “And for Micah. We knew that.”

“Well, I’m glad we did it with you,” he said. “And with Steve…and even Ryder, when he was on his best behavior and not being a complete prick.”

Frankie made an exaggerated expression of confusion, their brow furrowed, looking up to the sky. “My memory must be going,” they said, “because I’m having a hard time accessing ones of Rydernotbeing a prick. But maybe he gave ElectricOh! the edge that everyone wanted it to have, who knows. I guess sometimes you write a discordant note into a composition on purpose.”

“And then sometimes you write it out,” John said, thinking back to the moment yesterday when he, Steve, and Frankie had all joined together to tell Ryder they wanted nothing more to do with him. It had been one of the most satisfying moments of his life.

“I don’t think she ever loved him,” Frankie said. “There was some sort of toxic thing there, and as long as they were in the band together she was going to find herself drawn back into it. That’s why in a way I wasn’t surprised when she blew it all up. On some level I was proud of her for doing it.”

He was proud of Micah, too, even if he wished it had all gone down differently. But he definitely understood it now more than he had then.

The sun was starting to get low in the sky—not touching the horizon yet, but not too far off. People were already gathering on the main deck, some in fullNightshifterscostumes, many others in formal prom gear. It was supposed to kick off at sunset, with him and Micah to perform a couple hours in afternight had taken hold. He knew he didn’t have much time before he needed to be ready, and he had something he needed to pick up first before he made his way to Micah’s room.

“It was good doing this with you,” John said. “Talking, I mean, but also the whole cruise. I’m glad we did it.”

“Me, too,” Frankie said, cuffing him good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Now go do your thing, and I’ll see you out there.”

—

An hour later,John stood outside Micah’s room, adjusting the left cuff of his shirt. He was wearing black dress pants and a crisp white button-down with a thin black tie, but at the last minute he couldn’t stand the feeling of the cuffs buttoned tightly at his wrists, and so he’d rolled them up to just below his elbows, trying to keep everything still looking clean and nice. He couldn’t quite get the sleeves to be the exact same length, and it was bugging him.

The door flew open before he had a chance to knock, and he glanced up to see Micah in the doorway. She was wearing a sparkly silver dress that draped softly over her curves, looking somehow like she’d been dipped in liquid metal. It went down to the floor, but there was a slit all the way up her thigh, showing a glimpse of her tattoo when she moved. He could see that her feet were still bare.

“There you are,” she said, like she’d been looking for him.

“Here I am.”

Her gaze swept over him from head to toe, and she gave him a smile that let him know she liked what she saw. “If you even knew what it does to me when you wear white. You look like an angel.”

He remembered her saying something that first time they’d seen each other, at that meeting at the record label. He hadn’t known how she’d meant it then—whether she was commenting on the color of his shirt in a good way or a bad way. It had seemed like such an odd thing to notice. But he liked thinking that it had done something to her even then.

“I’ll throw out all my black T-shirts,” he said.

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