“I’m not.” Cupping both my hands over my mouth, I tried to swallow my yawn.
“You’re one Red Bull short of a coma. Let’s get you back to the hotel.”
“Why’d he freak?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Emily came out of the production side door with all our bags.
On the ride back to the hotel, the two of them tapped furiously on their phones and scribbled on their tablets. They were probably talking to each other.
A noise jingled through the interior of the black SUV. I stared out the window. When we’d gone inside, the sun had still been up. Now night life had taken over the city. Keyton would play tomorrow. I’d planned on checking the score before warning myself away from it.
I’d followed his career at the beginning. It had been a blow when I’d realized he’d been cut from the team and bumped down to the practice squad, an electric guitar swung straight at my chest. His career had been faltering while mine had been poised to take off. That had made it even harder to think about calling him up. What the hell was I supposed to say?
Now that he’d landed on his feet the question still reverberated in my head.
“Bay, it’s your phone.”
I jolted and looked down at my bag on my lap. Rummaging through it, I grabbed the glowing screen nestled between the notebooks tucked inside.
More at ease, I tapped the screen. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hey, Superstar.”
“Ugh, I hate it when you call me that.”
“What else am I supposed to call you when I have to call you on a different number every three months?” There were barely more than three contacts in my phone. My mom. Holden. And Emily. I almost never made calls. None of the numbers were ever registered to me directly, but six months had been the longest we’d gone without the number leaking and the weird calls and texts flooding in.
“Your daughter or Bay?”
“But you know both of those things. Sometimes you need a reminder that you’re my superstar.”
I grinned. “Thanks, Mom. How are you doing?”
“Good. Enjoying my early retirement. Met a new guy.”
A pang went straight to my chest. You could forget about an old pain for a while, but something would hit it out of nowhere and it came rolling in again. I missed my dad, and I knew she did too, but she deserved to be happy. “Will I get to meet him soon?”
“You will, if you’re home for Thanksgiving.”
I covered the end of the phone and whispered, “Thanksgiving?” to Holden.
He held up his hand, teetering it back and forth. “Depends on whether we add extra shows or not. They’ve sold out already and the arenas are looking to shift a few things to squeeze more in. Tickets for most shows were gone within two hours.”
Arenas worth of people wanted to hear my songs. I remembered how it had felt to wait with my laptop and a phone, ready to click a button and snag a ticket for a musician I loved, and how much it had sucked when they’d sold out. The tug-of-war to not let anyone down intensified.
“It’s still up in the air. We leave for the European leg of the tour at the end of October. We could fly you both out to wherever I’ll be.”
“You don’t even know?” She said it like I’d announced I’d forgotten my own name.
“I barely remember what day it is.” I chuckled and tugged on the end of my ponytail. It was Sunday, right? No, Saturday.
“You tell Holden to stop running you so ragged.” Her chiding Mom-tone wrapped around me like a weighted blanket.
I stifled another yawn. “He’s not running me ragged. I’m totally fine.”
“Says the young lady three minutes from passing out in the back of her SUV.”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s the only way you travel nowadays. Not that I can blame you. The Rio concert was kind of crazy.”
A security miscommunication had led us down the wrong street and straight in the path of throngs of fans coming to the concert. Once they knew it was me inside, we’d almost been rocked off our wheels by people trying to get pictures and autographs.
“It was, but it was my own fault for trying to sign autographs in a crowd that big.”
“I hope you’re keeping safe.”
I hated worrying her, but we’d been good about security. There hadn’t been any weird letters or gifts sent in over a year. So far it was standard fan fanaticism and nothing bordering on dangerous. Even Eric had taken a more lax approach.
“Always.”
“Well, my dates are open for Thanksgiving. But I’ll have to check with Ray about his plans. He’s got kids in the area, so I don’t know if he’ll want to travel around then. Will you be inviting anyone else to our dinner, no matter where we have it?” Her fishing expedition had the subtlety of a thirty-pound salmon to the face.
“No, Mom. No other guests.”
“Why not? What about that Mark guy I see you in all the perfume counter ads with?”
I laughed. “Campaign photoshoots don’t mean we’re in a relationship.” Plus, Mark’s breath smelled like he’d eaten nothing but week-old tuna for the entire morning before we’d been plunked down in the middle of a desert set sharing a white chaise lounge. He might’ve looked pretty, but he wasn’t a thrilling conversationalist, which was probably why I’d made it out of the shoot with my nose hairs intact.
“But you two looked so doe-eyed in those pics.”
“It’s called doing my job.”
“What about the one from your music video? With the blonde hair?”
“He’s an actor. Hired for the job.” He’d been nice. No tuna breath there, but he’d also been engaged. His exceedingly nice girlfriend hadn’t even glared at me once while we got into some totally above-board compromising situations.
“From the way you two were rolling around in the sheets, I thought maybe…”
I slapped my hand over my eyes, trying to hold back the cringe. “Stop watching my stuff.”
“How can I not? It comes up on my YouTube recommended videos all the time.”
“It’s because you keep watching the videos.”
“Well, how else am I supposed to see my daughter?” She laughed, but under the melodic sound there was a hint of truth.
There hadn’t been any cookie-and-hot-chocolate mother-daughter mornings since I’d graduated. Over college breaks, we’d stayed up late or early depending on her shifts, watched movies, and eaten way too many cookies. The breakneck schedule I’d pushed myself on had left so much of my previous life in the rearview mirror. It was hard to stop a runaway train and nothing in my life felt like it was in my control anymore.
“I miss you too, Mom.”
“It’s my job as a mom to worry. First page of the manual they hand out at the hospital says ‘get ready to worry more than you’ve ever worried in your entire life.’”
“Thanks for the parenting heads up.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’m good. Tired, but good. Looking forward to a break after the tour is finished. Then we can do a girls’ trip somewhere. Anywhere you want. Just the two of us for a few weeks.” I didn’t look up at Holden to see the bug-eyed panic scrawled all over his face.