Side Trip(20)

Joy slung him a look. “What?”

“You look nice.” Too nice, he thought, for someone he’d friend-zoned.

“Thanks.” A skittish half smile quirked her full lips. She exited the parking lot.

Once they’d turned onto West Columbus Avenue and headed northeast on US Route 180, Joy announced, “We’re on the road.”

“Yes, we are.” Dylan glanced at her, loving the feel of the wind in his hair, the freedom of moving. His Porsche was a convertible. It had been only two days since he left LA and he missed that sweet ride.

“I always wondered what it would be like to live on a tour bus. I’ve read about it, but that’s not the same.”

Dylan slowly nodded, understanding the meaning behind her announcement about being on the road. He’d promised to share the Westfield Brothers’ tour bus rules.

“I think it would be cool to wake up in a new city every morning.”

“It gets old fast,” Dylan countered. He wondered if she’d feel the same by the time they’d reached New York.

“I’ve seen photos. Some bands have majorly plush rides. Like Aerosmith. Rolling Stone did a feature. Have you seen their bus? It’s like a five-star hotel. What was your dad’s bus like?”

“It wasn’t a five-star hotel, that’s for sure.” When he was a kid, life on the road was an adventure. As he got older, living on the bus was a serious pain in his teenage ass. He had minimal privacy and, looking back, he’d been exposed to far more than any teenager should. It still surprised him that his mom, Billie, agreed Dylan could work as Jack’s guitar tech during tour season after she’d quit as the band’s manager. She hadn’t been there to watch out for him, and Jack never could get the hang of parenthood. Or monogamy.

Dylan and Billie were close now, but only for the past few years as Dylan, through his own life experiences, recognized how messed up Billie had been after Jack. It wasn’t until Billie invited him to one of her counseling sessions that Dylan understood that his mom had to fix herself before she could fix her relationship with him.

“What was tour bus life like?” Joy asked, tugging him back to the car, the road underneath and the wind in their hair.

“Cramped and inconvenient. We rented our buses for the season and they were not luxurious. More like those RV buses we’ve been passing.” He gestured at the traffic outside. “We had several—a family bus that Chase and I slept in with our parents. One for the band and another for the tech and stage crew. Jack allowed us to ride with the band when we got older.”

“Like how old?”

“Fourteen, fifteen.”

Joy’s eyes widened. “That’s not old enough. What about drugs and stuff?”

“Billie, my mom, she wasn’t around then to knock some sense into Jack. My parents had a messy relationship and messier divorce. Jack really screwed her up. If he hadn’t, I doubt she would have let me continue to tour with the band. The guys partied a lot. But they’d also have impromptu jam sessions, which I loved. What else? Conflicts heated up like a lit fuse and things got dicey fast. There isn’t any place to go when you’re on the road. You can’t walk away from an argument or a fight.”

“You guys fought? Like fist fighting?”

“Yep, we had to work through our issues. That was the rule. Another one was respect the driver. He’s the guy that stayed up all night and got us where we needed to be. We had to know his name and there’d be hell to pay if we woke him up. He slept during the day. Daylight hours meant quiet time. Don’t slam doors and don’t leave your stuff lying around.”

“Sounds like home.”

“It was home to me for three months out of the year. Hmm.” He scratched his palm on his stubbled jaw. “Don’t make calls from the bunk unless you wanted everyone to know your business. You can hear everything in the bunk above or below you.”

Joy glanced at him. “Everything?”

“Everything.” He drew out the word so that she’d catch his meaning, then added for good measure, “No sex on the bus.”

The one rule Jack, Uncle Cal, and some of the other crew habitually broke.

“You never—” She blushed. “Never mind.” She turned redder.

He’d had ample opportunities to screw a groupie or do drugs, but unlike Jack, Dylan didn’t like waking up regretting his behavior the previous night. Groupies were clingy. They didn’t always get off the bus at the next stop.

“I never had sex on the bus,” he said in a low tone. His one-nighters had never been frequent, and they’d gotten even rarer of late. They always came with drama the morning after.

Her grip loosened on the steering wheel and a little smile played on her lips. Kissable lips. Naked lips. He dug that she didn’t wear color or sticky gloss.

He averted his gaze before his thoughts took him too far down that road and focused on the passing scenery.

In less than two hours they reached the south entrance. It was August, and the park was hot and crowded. It took another hour to get through the entrance and twenty minutes more to find parking. By the time Joy tucked her Bug between an Escalade and a Prius, Dylan was ready to bail and hitch a ride back to Flagstaff, that or grab the wheel and drive them to Albuquerque. He didn’t have a gig that night, but he hadn’t expected to spend a better part of the day on a side trip.