Sure, it was dumb, but Jeff loved pleasing people, and sometimes pleasing people meant being kind of dumb. The crowd roared back.
“Did you miss us?” Joe asked.
Another roar.
Jeff didn’t have to glance over his shoulder to know Trix was looking at Max. “D’you think that was a yes?”
And more, louder cheers.
“We missed you too,” he said. “We’re gonna let Trix sing you this one.”
Fuck, he loved this—the lights, the noise, the way things fell into place. He and Max and Trix and Joe justclicking, feeding on each other. Walking their guitars across the stage to share a mic for some slick harmonies, ad-libbing the extra-profane verse in “Heavenly Bodies” the way they always did because it had been deemed too hot for radio but they were too pleased with themselves to leave it out.
If this version left Jeff’s bandmates wondering what exactly he and Carter had been up to in Willow Sound, they didn’t call him on it while he was onstage.
They wrapped the night with “Ginsberg,” because if you couldn’t scream about fucking the establishment with twenty thousand strangers who’d paid hundreds of dollars to see the same concert as you, then when could you? Jeff felt the irony of it in his bones, but the truth was, he might be rich, but he’d never be the man.
When they filed into the green room, Jeff felt as good and as loose as he had after any concert in their early years, before everything started going to shit. He high-fived Max and hugged Joe, even though both of them were soaked with sweat, and he planted a wet kiss on Trix’s cheek.
“So that didn’t suck,” he said cheerfully.
Joe stripped off his shirt and flung it at him. Then he dug on the wardrobe rack for a clean one. “Who was it who told you you had a way with words, again?”
“My third-grade teacher.” Jeff threw the shirt back and followed it with his own. “Ugh, I think I’m getting sweatier with age.”
Trix kicked her minidress into the laundry pile. “Don’t even start. If I’m still doing this in fifteen years, I’m gonna need a freakin’ snorkel.”
Joe laughed. “Charming.”
There were two showers just off the green room, and by the time Jeff had had his turn, Trix was toweling her hair dry at the table and Tim was going over the details for the morning show.
“I’ll have a service swing by to pick you up at five.Don’tbe late.”
Jeff shuddered.
Max made a face. “Guess we’re not going out tonight.”
“You guys were the ones who wanted to do416 Morning,” Jeff pointed out. “And now we’re all going to suffer.”
“Sleep when you’re dead,” Trix advised.
That had been Jeff’s motto at twenty, but ten years later, his body did not function the same way. “I’ll die if I don’t sleep, is more like it.” He stifled a yawn. Usually he was jittery for an hour or so after a show, but tonight he just wanted to climb into bed. Apparently the rural life had made him soft.
It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he hadn’t stayed up past eleven in two weeks.
“Well, don’t forget your stuff.” Trix pushed his comp book at him across the table and motioned to the guitar by the door. They were playing a different venue tomorrow.
He was half-asleep when the car pulled up in front of his building, and he made it inside on autopilot alone—impressive since he barely spent any time there. He was most of the way into bed before he remembered to check his phone, but he took it out, thinking the least he could do was text Carter before bed.
Instead he saw a message.Call me when you get this after the show? I’ll be up.
How could he resist that?
The phone rang only once before Carter picked up, sounding warm and sleep-worn. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. ‘I’ll be up,’ he says.”
“I was awake,” Carter protested. There was a sound like a few smallfoom fooms, like the air huffing out of pillows. Sleeping on the couch, probably. Or “resting.” “Mostly. Healing a broken bone is surprisingly exhausting.”
