Page 103 of If Not for My Baby
“Barry’s and Claritin. The pair of us.”
It’s what I’d thought, too. A rider—the list of anything an artist wants that gets sent to every venue on the tour—usually means famous folks get their dressing room stocked with fine bottles of wine and bonbons imported from a specific boutique in Paris. What I doubt most musicians ask for is Barry’s tea and a pack of Claritin. Like together Tom and I make up one congested old woman.
The rest of sound check goes off without a hitch. When Conor strums the opening chords of “If Not for My Baby,” I make my way to the front of the stage, only to see Cara doing the same.
Of course.
That’s why she’s here: to sing their song together. I retreat back to my spot beside Molly and am grateful when nobody points out my mistake.
Cara doesn’t sing her first note, though, and I wonder, with childlike hope, if she’s about to offer it to me. But life isn’t a musical, and I kick myself for falling in love and becoming one of those dopes who has thoughts like that.Here,kid, I picture her saying. You guys should sing it. It was made for you.Despicably stupid.
“I think we’ve an audience,” Cara says into the mic, so the teen girls already lining up with signs outside the gates can hear. “Shall we wait until tonight, Halloran? No practice?”
Tom shrugs. “I still remember if you do.”
Cara’s eyes—the kind that give you the chills when she affixes them on you—glitter at him. “What’s that expression? You never forget your first?”
I grip my mic and swallow acid.
Thirty-Four
“I know it didn’t go sowell last time I pushed you from your comfort zone—” I say, thinking of when I begged him to join us at Dime a Dozen. Tom’s teeth clench so hard I can hear it and I wonder if he’s just anxious or if he’s thinking about that night and what happened with Grayson. “—but could I make a suggestion?”
“Have at it.”
I have half a mind to abort this entire crusade. He already looks so miserable. I don’t want to make things harder for him. But at the same time, I know it’ll eat at me if I don’t try to help. “It might relieve your nerves to be with the group before the show starts instead of in here all alone. Remind you what you actually like about performing? That closeness you told me about in Central Park?”
The Bowl’s greenroom is lit warmly with paper lanterns and has a mesmerizing view of the other side of the mountains. This dressing room Tom’s sequestered himself inside has no windows and the vanity is missing a few bulbs. I’dcome in here hoping to admit my gruesome love confession before the show, but his nerves are unrelenting tonight and I know it’s not the time.
“There’s solace in the peace and quiet,” he says, eyes closed tightly. “The isolation.”
He looks about as peaceful as someone going into emergency surgery.
“No problem. We’ll stay in here, then.”
But when Tom opens his eyes, there’s a sadness in them I don’t expect. “I don’t even know why I avoid them anymore.”
I lean in from the chair opposite him, but tread carefully. “Feeling anxious is a private thing. Maybe it feels too vulnerable, sharing this part of yourself with them.”
Tom squints up at the flickering overhead light and peeling wallpaper. This room was probably last used in the 1960s.
“I’m the resident expert on avoiding intimacy,” I add. “In case you didn’t know.”
That earns me a weak smile.
“Maybe you don’t want them to see you like this?”
A moment later Tom stands with a scowl and runs a hand over his beard. “So useless,” he says to himself.
I stand, too, and move for the door, triumph warring with concern. “Why useless?”
He pins me with his gaze and says, “They’ve already seen every inch of me; they know what I’m like when I’m with you.”
He’s halfway down the hall before I can gather the bits of my heart back into my chest. When I catch up with him he’s walking into the greenroom, where the band is doing a vocal warm-up.
Wren’s toothpick nearly topples from her mouth. “Tommy?”
Tom’s cheeks are a little pink. “Good evenin’ to ya.”
