I sent him a look that I figured would peel paint off walls and began to turn to the doors to close them and leave them to it when Tommy called out.
“Lyla.”
I looked right into his eyes and said quietly, “No, Tommy. I’m sorry, but you know that cannot come from me.”
He looked pissed and maybe he had a right to be pissed.
But so be it.
I was pissed too.
I didn’t look to DuShawn.
He had the power to drag me in. He was older than all the guys, save Tommy, but he had a wisdom even Tom didn’t have, and a manner about him, with the issues they were discussing, he could manage to do what none of the others had done.
And especially with the way Preacher was acting, I couldn’t have that.
The band was my family.
My home.
But it was coming clear I had my own problems even closer.
Right in the heart.
And I needed all my focus for those.
I closed the doors behind me, and I resolutely did not listen to their voices coming through.
But they talked for so long, not only did I pack up myself, I packed up Preacher who usually did his own packing because, “Baby, when you pack my shit, it’s all orderly and tidy and when I open my bag when we get to our room, I feel like goin’ onstage and singing Rick Astley songs.”
I’d laughed at that.
Was he so funny and sweet just weeks ago?
Why did the shit times drag on forever and the good times go by in a flash?
The voices stopped, the doors to the bedroom opened and Preacher took two steps in and stopped.
“Goin’ down to breakfast, cher, ready?”
Now I wasn’t “babe” or “Lyla” but “cher.”
“Not being a bitch or anything,” this meaning I was totally being a bitch, “but I’m really not hungry.” Though that last was the truth.
I was avoiding his eyes and reorganizing my jewelry in my jewelry bag.
It took him a second to speak again and he did this to say, “Okay then, come down and have coffee.”
I zipped in some earrings and looked up at him.
“I’m good.”
“Lyla—”
“I’m not a puppy who follows you around, Preacher.”
His head twitched and he started to look a mixture of angry and uneasy.
“’Course you’re not,” he mumbled.
“And I’m also not a dog you can kick when you’re in a bad mood,” I went on.
That erased the angry and all there was left was uneasy.
“Baby,” he whispered.
“I’m not saying this to piss you off. I did that once, not purposefully, and I should have talked to you about it then, but I didn’t. That was the wrong decision, so I’ll tell you now. It scared the shit out of me. I’m just saying, I know there’s something wrong and I can’t see to you unless I know what it is.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said.
Fast.
He was lying.
To me.
“Right,” I replied softly.
He changed the subject.
“What’s your take on Leeanne?”
I shook my head. “Oh no, Preacher. Tommy’s not gonna drag me in and you’re not gonna drag me in either.”
Though I should probably see about taking care of the situation that seemed to be Leeanne.
I just didn’t know how to do that at the same time dealing with Preacher.
“You don’t like her,” he murmured.
“Is this my man, Preacher, standing in the room with me?”
He looked puzzled. “Always.”
“Then between me and my man, talking about a friend we have concerns about, I will tell you what you already know. Leeanne is trouble. If I’m having a conversation with Preacher McCade of the eponymous Roadmasters, I didn’t say that.”
His lips ticked and he muttered, “Eponymous.”
I read. I’d studied to be an English teacher. My mother and grandparents taught us how to use our words. I had an expansive vocabulary.
Preacher’s parents didn’t bother sending him to school most the time, and other times, they purposefully kept him out of it.
He always got a kick out of it when I used what he called “big words.”
Though he always knew what they meant.
And I always got a kick out of him getting that same thing because I knew this came from a feeling of pride.
I was glad his mood had lifted.
But I was scared as hell.
“I can’t tell a man who he should share his bed with,” he said.
“Then don’t,” I returned and looked back to my jewelry.
“Lyla. Baby.”
I drew breath into my nose and turned my eyes back to him.
“We good?” he asked.
We were not.
“I don’t need you in order to live my life, Preacher,” I told him.
He looked like I’d walked right up to him and slapped him across the face.
I powered through that and how hard it was to see and carried on.
“I need you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Yes.”
That came fast too.
I let out a huge breath saying, “Go have breakfast with the band.”
His face got soft.
“Kiss me before I go.”
Lyla:
I kissed him before he went.
I’d fallen in love with their music by then.
Obviously, after Audie and Lynie Live On.
[Smiles sadly]
But I think it was more.
I was getting older, maturing.
Preacher matured when he was nine years old.
It takes maturity to write the songs he wrote.
And it takes maturity to understand the stories these people tell.
You have a pen and paper. [Nods head to interviewer] I know you’re taping this but to make it easy, write these titles down and go to your hotel and listen to them tonight. You’re into music, so you’ve undoubtedly heard them before. But this time, make a note of what they make you feel, if anything at all. What you think they mean.
Don’t look it up. Don’t read what someone else thinks they mean. What they make someone else feel.
Only you.
Then keep those notes, and when you run across those notes again, listen to those songs before you read what you wrote and see what you feel then versus what you felt when you wrote those notes.
Ready?
[Waits until she gets a nod]
“American Girl,” by Petty. “Heroes,” by Bowie. “Me and Bobby McGee,” Joplin, but Kristofferson wrote it, and listen to all the versions, including Gordon Lightfoot’s. “Because the Night,” Springsteen and Smith. “Fire and Rain,” by Taylor. “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” by Wainwright. “Gold Dust Woman. “Into the Mystic.” “Living in the City.” “Walk on the Wild Side” “What’s Goin’ On.”
I promise you, what you get out of those songs will not be what you got out of them after you have more life under your belt.
You will fall in love, and fall out of it, and back in, and get a broken heart.
You will lose people you love in slow ways that will feel like someone opened a tap in your heart to let the blood drip out and in fast ways that will set you spinning so you’re so dizzy, you don’t think the earth will ever rotate the same again.