Page 101 of If Not for My Baby
Tom wraps his body around mine, a vine contorting itself to the fence of its home. “You don’t have to change who you are, Clem. Your mam is a wonderful woman, and she loves you with a vastness oceans might envy. But at some point in life we become whoever we needed most as a child. Whoever your mam couldn’t quite be for you. That’s human. And you needn’t beat yourself up for it.”
And I know in this moment, that when I’m back in this bed alone, back in my real life—I’ll never be able to forget.Not how it feels to be held like this by him. Not the clear compassion in his eyes when I turn over and our gazes meet. Not his lips on mine. I’ll never be able to shake how it felt to step into that unknown. To perhaps be loved by Tom Halloran, and to know for certain how badly I loved him in return.
Thirty-Three
In the morning, my momdrives us back to the venue, where we board the bus free of paparazzi. Grayson’s bags are already gone. I fill Indy in on the fistfight—and Monopoly, and my existential Dana Scully crisis—but company line is that Grayson left of his own accord after losing theRolling Stonepiece.
While Tom surely told Jen everything, it’s clear none of the other bandmates seem to know what really happened, though the tie-dye-looking bruise across Tom’s nose is enough for me to assume everyone has a rough idea and is just being polite. Either way, after a few hours nobody else brings Grayson up, and he doesn’t return for the last six days of the tour.
When we arrive in Santa Fe, Jen’s called in a favor and set Tom up in a local studio to go over the set list with a round-faced, gap-toothed keyboardist named Gabriel. I stop by around five a.m. with Lionel to bring Tom some tea and keep them company, and find that even though Gabriel looks likea middle school teacher the cool kids would bully, he’s actually a certified badass who plays the keys like folk-rock Elton John.
Gabriel requires a fair bit of rehearsal. That, paired with the stretch of long-haul bus rides through the baking desert, mean Tom and I spend less time together this last week than we have almost all tour. If I could go back to the weeks when I was too scared to let him in, and kick myself in the head for all the minutes I wasted not picking his brain and holding his hand, I absolutely would. Past-me has it coming, that bitch.
By the time we reach Los Angeles, I can’t seem to fathom where the time has gone. The thought hits me like a lightning bolt of anxiety as our bus crawls past the palm trees in Beverly Hills.
Our final show is tonight—the tour is over.
In twenty-four hours, I’ll be back in Cherry Grove. It’s possible—likely, even—that I’ll never see any of these people again. Not Indy, not Molly, not even Lionel.
That I might never see Tom again.
Tom, whom I have fallen stupidly, gut-wrenchingly, head over heels in love with. Worst-case scenario has arrived, and she’s a doozy.
“Does the AC on this bus go up any higher?” Molly asks. “My skin is cooking.”
It’s early August, and apparently in LA that means the end times. Fire and brimstone might actually be preferable to a tour bus stuck in bumper-to-bumper midday traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard with ineffective air-conditioning.
I’ve tied my hair up in the kind of ugly topknot youconstruct to keep as few hairs as possible from touching any exposed skin. I’m in Tom’s boxers and a sports bra, which two months ago you wouldn’t have caught me in before my own ex-boyfriend, and now I’m bared half-naked before veritable strangers.
But, that’s the thing. They aren’t strangers. These people have become my family. Perhaps a strange, extended family, with a gruff, toothpick-chewing mom and a fastidious, overwhelmed cousin in Skechers, but a family nonetheless. Even our evil aunt, Jen, and her razor-sharp haircut is the kind of family you might avoid on Thanksgiving but would begrudgingly save in a zombie apocalypse.
“Chin up, Molls,” Pete says, fanning her with one of Indy’s adult coloring books. “We’ll be there in less than thirty. Then we’re home free.”
His phrasing sours my stomach. “What will you guys do after tonight?”
Pete shrugs. “Find another gig. I’m talking to a buddy about some eighties hair metal band’s revival tour. Could be badass.”
I look to Molly. Her eyeliner is melting in the corners of her eyes. “This pay’ll last me while I work on my EP in Nashville. Might visit my abuela in San Miguel de Allende.”
“So you two won’t…”
I don’t finish the thought. But they get it, and look at each other before shaking their heads.
“Not till Halloran writes another album,” Molly says.
Pete smirks. “If I’m not wifed up by then. Couple of Pete Juniors on the way.”
Molly examines her nails. “You won’t be.”
The sad part is, it’s possible. Pete could end up married in a year. What had Tom said all those nights ago?Life gets in the way…I get back to town months later and find the girl’s married.That could be me. In Cherry Grove. With some guy who doesn’t quote Homer or Yeats, or sing like he’s channeling the entire history of the blues, or make me laugh so hard I snort.
All our memories from the last eight weeks slam into me like a semi. Each one dappled in summer sun through Central Park’s trees. Smelling of the sea, lemon-colored, and doused in stage fog. Heat and humor and a melody I’ll never be able to shake from my mind.
I’m not the woman I was when I first stepped onto this bus.
And suddenly I’m going to weep. It hits me so hard I stand up and Pete gives me ayou okay?look.
“Little lightheaded,” I say, though I’m obviously welling up.
