Leaving Amarillo(94)
He ignores every single one of my pleas and answers with one of his own. “Wait for me, Bluebird? Please?”
I glance over my shoulder, looking to see if my brother saw our kiss. Strangely Gavin doesn’t seem as worried. Dallas’s back is to us as he shoves something into the cab of his truck. Treacherous tears well in my throat on their promising journey toward the ducts in my eyes.
We’re standing together, locked in one another’s stares and breathing each other’s air on the front porch, when my brother calls out to Gavin to get a move on. He gives me one more pleading look and then a soft kiss on the forehead when he realizes I’m really not going to go with them.
For the first time, I’m the one who pulls away. Frustration binds me and tugs at my nerves.
“You drive across the entire state to bail your mom out. You do everything and anything Dallas asks including breaking the law and risking jail time. You even gave me what I wanted, despite the many risks involved.”
He gives me the what-are-you-getting-at look.
My voice is sharper than I intend for it to be when I ask him what I’ve been wondering for years.
“Who has your back, Gavin? Who’s looking out for you? Tell me. Tell me who holds you up when you start to fall? Who is there for you when you need them? You’re the man behind the beat, literally. You’ve always been the heart of this band, beating steadily behind us. Who’s behind you?”
Me, I think to myself. Let it be me.
“I’ve got this, Bluebird. I don’t need anyone. I never did.”
The truth hurts. It punches me in the chest and bruises my heart. A solid lump of hurt forms instantly in my throat, blocking my attempts at swallowing my feelings. Inhaling his warmth one last time, I resist the urge to drag his face back to mine and kiss him until he agrees to stay and get legal permission to leave. An image of him being handcuffed and shoved into the back of a police car stifles my ability to breathe.
When he pulls away, I let him go.
Once Gavin climbs into the truck, I watch them drive off until they’re out of sight. Feels like they pull a piece of my heart along with them and I can almost see it bouncing battered and bloody behind the truck.
It’s then that I realize I didn’t answer him, not with words. I didn’t confirm whether or not I would wait. And he left anyway.
“I don’t need anyone. I never did.”
Breathing is suddenly harder, as if the air thickened once they were out of sight. My heart has to put forth a bit more effort to beat.
I can see it—how the audition will go. How excited they’ll be when they find out they’ve been added to the tour. And where will I be? An image of myself appears unwelcome in my mind. I’m dressed in all black, my wild hair tamed and slicked back into a tight bun as I play the kind of music that the maestro demands instead of the kind I want—the kind that frees me.
No.
I shake my head to clear the stifling picture and start making a list of everything that needs to be done.
I’ll have to call Jaggerd to take me to pick up Dallas’s truck from the airport. The thought reminds me that I want to see my grandparents’ RV. I’m grateful for Jag’s friendship, for having someone here to help with the mountain of responsibilities I have to deal with now that Papa is gone. As much fun as turning into a younger version of Mrs. Lawson while Gavin and Dallas go on tour seems like it could be, or possibly to jail in Gavin’s case, I’m going to do my best not to sit around and wallow.
I’ve never really thought much about what I’d do with myself without the band, other than my brief hiatus last year. And as much as my brother is going to fight me on it, and I know that he will, I’m not going back to Houston for fall semester. Life is short. My parents and grandparents are nonliving proof. Maybe my band doesn’t need me anymore, maybe it never will again. But I will not move backward.
I meander slowly through the empty living room. Without Nana or Papa, I feel like the shadow of a ghost haunting their house.
Folding myself in a shawl-style chenille throw that we keep draped over the back of what was once Nana’s favorite rocking chair, I peruse the pictures that have adorned these walls for as long as I can remember. When I come to one of me, Dallas, and Gavin at our first official band rehearsal in the shed out back when I was fifteen, I stop and run my fingers over us, passing my brother’s dopey grin, my own worshipful expression turned toward the boy on my left, and linger on Gavin’s smirking mouth below his soulful eyes. I move my fingers to my still-tingling lips.
Wait for me, Bluebird.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, with us, with the band, with my brother. But I have one memory, one solid piece of the past that I can hold on to and add to my internal memory box while I wait for the universe to help me figure it all out.
For one night, I held fire. And then a few nights ago, fire held me, too.
I thought it would destroy me, being that close to him. In some ways it did. But as I take a long, lonely walk down memory lane, I realize that the fire Gavin and I created has fueled me as well.
I will wait for him. Feels like I’ve been waiting on him for most of my life.
But I will not put off living for another second.
Chapter 32
“I’M GLAD THAT YOU CALLED,” JAG TELLS ME AS I CLIMB INTO THE metallic blue classic Mustang he and his father rebuilt when we were dating.