Page 1 of Never Been Shipped

Chapter

One

John didn’tneednew strings. He could’ve easily bought them in the month he had before the cruise would set sail, could’ve ordered them online and had them waiting at the house by tomorrow morning. Hell, he probably had several unopened packets of strings already in his guitar case, or shoved deep in his underwear drawer, or slid carelessly somewhere under his bed.

It was a delay tactic. He knew it, and he didn’t care.

The bell on the door to the music shop tinkled overhead as he stepped in, already comforted by being surrounded by instruments—the wall of electric guitars hung up for display, the row of amps to test out, the drum kits and xylophones and keyboards set up where kids wouldn’t be able to help themselves when they walked by. The only downside was that his favorite clerk wasn’t behind the counter, but that was okay. He’d be in and out.

Except John had never made a quick trip to a music store in his life, and he certainly wasn’t going to start today, when thewhole point was to put off the inevitable. He wandered over to the guitars, his eyes drawn to one with a sunburst paint job and a fifteen-hundred-dollar price tag. He took it down from the wall and plugged it into an amp.

“Sir?” The freckled clerk—he couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old—came over before John even had time to play theMay I help you?riff. “I’m sorry, sir, you’re not supposed to touch the guitars.”

John knew that. There was an index card with that very message printed on it, stuck between the strings. Sometimes John played around it if he was just looking to fuck off for a second, other times he removed it entirely if it was interfering with his ability to play.

“Sorry,” he said. “Usually I come when Gary’s here, and he always lets me get them down myself.”

The clerk’s face brightened for a second at the mention of Gary’s name, then dropped again. “I get it, but customers really aren’t allowed to—”

And then the clerk’s face changed completely, and John knew with a sinking feeling exactly what was coming. As a teenager, John had been in a band that had released a couple albums, toured the world, and, most memorably, performed a song onstage at a fictional prom for fictional shapeshifter characters in a TV show that aired at eight, seven Central.

“Wait, aren’t you—I mean, weren’t you—” The kid wouldn’t be able to remember John’s name. Probably he’d never known it. But that was the problem with appearing in a single episode of a popular TV show fifteen years ago, and also the problem with having his distinctive black curly hair. John got recognizeda few times a year, which wasn’t too bad, definitely wasn’t as bad as it used to be, but was still a few times too many as far as he was concerned.

There was no point in denying it, though. John had tried that tactic a few times, and it was seldom convincing and only made him feel like a dick.

“John Populin,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake the kid’s. “I played guitar in ElectricOh! back in the day.”

“You playedNightshiftersprom,” the kid said. “That song—”

And then, to John’s horror, the kid startedsingingit. “If Only,” the one hit from his one-hit-wonder band. The big, surging high notes all came in the bridge, but it was a low note at the end of the first verse that John had always thought was the sneaky hard one to nail. You almost had to half speak it, and done badly it could sound discordant, like you’d made a mistake.

When Micah sang it, it had always sounded like a warm, intimate purr directly in his ears, like he was listening to her voice through headphones even when she’d been projecting to the back of the venue.

“Yup, that’s the one,” John said now, cutting the kid off before he could get to the lyrics that still felt like a stab to his gut, even all these years later. “Surprised you watched that show. Seems a little before your time.”

“Everything’s streaming now. And my girlfriend watches all that old teen crap. The one about the brothers who hunt supernatural shit, the one about the brothers who play basketball, the one about the brothers who live in that sick house and the guy with the eyebrows plays their dad…”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten Ryan got adopted.”

The kid blinked down at John. “Huh?”

John didn’t know why he was letting himself get drawn into this conversation. “That’s a lot of brothers,” he said instead, then gestured down at the guitar he was still holding. “Is this the only finish you have in stock for this one?”

“What you see is what we have,” the kid said, which of course John had already known. He wasn’t in the market for a new, expensive guitar anyway. John got by—he was still living off his royalties from “If Only,” which he had a co-writing credit on, and then supplemented that income with various corporate events and weddings he played with one of his cover bands. He lived with housemates to split the rent, he stayed home most nights he didn’t have a gig, he kept his wants and needs small enough that they didn’t take up too much room.

He set the guitar carefully back up on the wall. ThePlease ask a sales associate for assistancecard was a little askew, threaded between the strings, and so John nudged it straight again.Strings.He had come there for strings.

He didn’t wear a watch and didn’t feel like taking out his phone, but he probably only had forty-five minutes before the meeting at the record label’s offices started, and he really didn’t want to be late. He hated being late.

“Can I just get a couple sets of tens?” he asked the kid.

“Of course,” the kid said. “Electric? We have D’Addario nickel-wound, we have—”

“That’s fine.”

The kid led him over to the front of the store, where he grabbed a couple packets from behind the counter and set them next to the cash register. “What are you playing now?” the kid asked as he started to ring John up. “Let me guess. A customFender? A Les Paul? Wait, wait, one of those boutique brands, like a—”

“A Squier Telecaster, mostly.”

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