I let out a long breath. “I guess it’s a good idea.”
“Of course it is. All right, I gotta go. I gotta bring the wife a mimosa and a credit card in bed or my back might never recover from this couch.”
“Why don’t you just turn off your phone?” I asked tiredly.
“Because I need to be there when my clients call. What you’re doing is a hell of a lot harder than what I’m doing. If I would have had an agent who answered the phone to give me relationship advice when I needed him, I might still be married to my first wife. And that was the only wife I ever shoulda been married to.”
There was a serious pause in the silence. “Take care of her, Jason. You won’t get another one.”
Chapter 37
Sloan
♪ Keep Your Head Up | Ben Howard
Zane brought DayQuil and NyQuil. I took the NyQuil. I needed to sleep. I needed to not think about what Jason had just told me. It was too enormous and far-reaching to even comprehend in my current state.
A decade.
This would be our life for the next decade.
I wouldn’t see Oliver grow up. I wouldn’t paint. I wouldn’t even have a home. What would be the point? We’d never be there for more than a few months.
And there was no other choice. I wouldn’t ever leave him. That was the most final thing of all. Our fates were bound—what happened to him happened to me.
The way my body cried for sleep after this news scared me because it felt like before, when I used to sleep through my depression. Only this time I hadn’t lost anyone but myself, swallowed whole by Jason’s career.
I waited until it was 6:00 a.m. in California, and I called Kristen.
“God, you sound like you have the black lung,” she said, when I launched into a coughing fit instead of saying hello.
“I know. I’ve been super sick.” I wiped my nose with a tissue. Tucker pushed his face under my arm on the bed like he knew I needed it.
She snickered. “Did Jason offer you the penis-cillin yet?”
“Uh, what?”
“Men think their penis is the cure for everything. I swear to God, I could have some terminal disease and Josh would be over here bouncing his eyebrows like, ‘Gurl, I know what you need.’”
My snort of laughter thrust me into another coughing fit.
“So how’s the groupie life?” she asked once I’d recovered.
I gave her the recap of the last week since I’d talked to her and told her what had happened this morning.
“Damn,” she said. “That sucks. What are you gonna do?”
“Nothing. What can I do? It’s his job.”
“The guy’s like a nomad. You’re just going to walk the Earth with him for the next ten years?”
“It won’t be the whole time,” I said defensively. “We’ll get breaks.”
“I should have known when you told me the dude lived in a trailer that this wasn’t a put-roots-down kind of guy.” Oliver fussed in the background. “You do not travel well either. Remember in the ninth grade when Mom took us to Coronado and your nose bled the whole time?”
I snorted. “And she kept saying, ‘This is truly unacceptable, Sloan,’ like I was doing it on purpose?”
We fell into laughter again and my mood lifted a bit.
“Look,” she said. “If this was Josh, then I’d go full nomad too. If you love him, do what you gotta do. But try and take better care of yourself.”
“I don’t even know how to take care of myself out here.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And I miss you guys.”
She paused for a long moment. “We miss you too.”
We talked for a few more minutes and then the NyQuil kicked in. When I hung up with her, I did feel a little better.
Maybe she was right. Maybe Zane was right too. I had to figure this out. I needed more sleep. I needed to exercise and eat better.
Ernie had really pushed for driving at night instead of the day and sleeping in the bunks on the bus. Jason thought it was a good idea too, but we’d tried it a few times and I couldn’t get used to it. My mind couldn’t relax knowing I was in my pajamas on a freeway somewhere. It was just weird. And I could feel the braking and turning into parking lots and I kept waking up.
But if we did that instead of staying in a hotel every night, we’d have the days free of travel to actually do things. We’d wake up in our city instead of running out of hotel rooms at 5:00 a.m. and driving all day to get there. Maybe we could even sightsee now and then, go to restaurants. Then we’d eat better and I could get moving again.
I let out a sigh as I climbed under the covers and bunched the pillow under my head. I’d tell him when he came back that I wanted to give sleeping on the bus another try. I couldn’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results.
I fell into one of those cold-medicine slumbers. The kind where you float through the black and don’t dream.
When I woke up, Jason was there sleeping next to me, an arm draped over my waist.
It took me a few moments to blink away the confusion. The room was pitch-dark, but I could see the sunlight etching the sides of the curtains. He was supposed to be gone until tonight, running around doing media and then at his sound check.
I sat up on my elbows. The clock said noon. I’d slept five hours.
Jason stirred and opened his eyes. “Hey, you’re up. How are you feeling?”
“Groggy. What are you doing here?”
He brushed the hair off my forehead and kissed it. “I canceled my day.”
“You canceled your day?” Ugh. His publicist was going to be so pissed. “Jason…”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t cancel my concert. But we’re staying in today. We’re going to lie in bed and watch crime shows. Zane’s picking up food from the highest-rated restaurant in Memphis, and I have a doctor coming to see you in an hour.”
It was a punch to my heart. My chin started to quiver. “Jason…”
He put his forehead to mine. “Sloan, I haven’t been taking very good care of you and I’m sorry. I’m going to do better.”
I sniffed. “This isn’t your fault, Jason.”
“It’s all my fault.” His eyes held mine. “There’s nothing that I want more than for you to be happy. Do you understand? I would do anything to make you happy.”
“I am happy.”
But his eyes told me he didn’t believe it.
* * *
Two hours later the doctor had come and gone. I had bronchitis and a double ear infection. When the doctor announced it, Jason looked like someone had kicked his dog. I think he felt guilty that I hadn’t seen someone sooner, but it wasn’t his fault. I could have gone to urgent care while he did what he had to do, but I’d just thought I’d get over it on my own.
The doctor gave me antibiotics, a shot of vitamins, prescription cough medicine, and a breathing treatment. And after that, Jason and I stayed in bed. God, we needed it. It was amazing that even though we were almost never apart, it was like we hadn’t seen each other in months. Nothing we did out here was quality time.