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“How are you liking it? Being on the tour?” Celeste said quietly from just off Remy’s shoulder.
He turned to her, ready to lie—to sayit’s finewith a shrug, the same answer he was trying to telegraph to Val. Noncommittal and uninterested. Celeste could see through lies, though, and so he still shrugged but said, “It’s pretty good. It’s great, actually. It’s like this well-oiled machine. Stand here, play this, bow now.”
“Val wouldhatethis.” She laughed a little.
“Yeah,” Remy agreed.
“What about Vivi? Is she cool?” Celeste asked.
Remy almost answered but stopped himself. “Nondisclosure. No site talk.”
Celeste rolled her eyes. “I’m just asking as a friend, not as a reporter. Look, Val is worried about you. I know this is a great gig, you know it’s a great gig, but Val is worried that you’re miserable and afraid to tell him. He thinks he’s at home working on a song without you, which is absolutely freaking him the fuck out, and that you’re here on a sad bus with strangers being sad.”
Remy frowned. “What? No.” No, he wasn’t sad. No, Val didn’t worry abouthim.
Celeste rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m just saying, you now know that he’s okay. Let him know you’re okay.”
Remy hadn’t once, in his entire life, gotten advice on how to be Val’s brother. The feeling in his chest wanted to rear up, wanted to remind Celeste that he’d been Val’s brother longer than she’d been his girlfriend.
It wouldn’t help, though. He nodded stiffly and looked back toward Val, who was walking back to them, shaking his head.
“This shit is nuts. Absolutely nuts,” he said.
“Pop music is where it’s at,” Celeste replied, and her face went from concerned or hurt or annoyed to grinning. “Come on, Remy—show us where we’re sitting?”
Their seats were close to the stage for the show—close enough that Remy could see Celeste singing along when the lights flashed over her. It was a good show—the same show it always was, the shared gaze before his platform ascended, the brilliant videos on the screens above. Vivi spoke to the audience during her acoustic sections, pausing as if thinking of what to say next, and the crowd screamed and cheered and called her name over and over and over until her name wasn’t made of words or letters anymore but just a sound, like a war cry.
Afterward he, Celeste, and Val—along with Laurel, Ro, and Parish—walked to the soda shop across the street from the arena. It was one of the few things open in Salt Lake—it and a handful of ice cream parlors all within hopping distance of one another. The soda shop had a long menu of sodas mixed with fruits and juices and ice creams, a Mormon-friendly cocktail.
They sat on benches outside with a handful of other young people from the city’s colleges. Remy blended with them well enough, but Celeste, with her ultralow top that would have been conservative in LA, and Val, with his Val-ness, looked like exotic flowers stuck into the salt flats. Celeste and Ro were talking marketing strategy for Laurel’s singing videos she posted on social media—Celeste had a thousand ideas about how she could land bigger sponsors, none of which Remy understood. Remy and Val talked shop with Parish for a while, until he gradually sank into his phone, and it was just Remy and Val, Val and Remy, alone in a crowd like they always were.
“So, hey—Celeste said you’re working on a song?” Remy asked, trying to sound casual.
Val nodded. “Yeah. It’s coming. It’s good.”
There was a long pause where Remy debated asking Val if he could hear it. It wasn’t that he was afraid to ask—it was that he was afraid of the fact that he felt like he had to, for the first time in his life. Val had never held music back from Remy. He’d played it for him, like it or not, over and over as he meddled with notes and ideas and curses. A performance artist figuring out what the performance was.
Val bathed in the silence then exhaled. “I’m still kind of…I don’t know. I’ve never really done a song by myself, and it’s like, since you’re not home anyway—”
“It’s fine,” Remy said, unsure if he was lying. “I can hear it when it’s done.”
“Not done,” Val said quickly. “It won’t be done till you fuck it up, obviously. Don’t worry.”
Remy laughed, sort of.Don’t worry, Val had said, which made sense—because Remy worried about Val, not the other way around. And yet the hitch in Val’s voice, the way he’d so quickly tried to explain away the song… Val was worried about Remy, and Remy had been too worried aboutValto notice.
Let him know you’re okay.
Remy looked at the stars for a second then said, “So, actually, I’m working with Vivi on something. On a song.”
Val went still. “Like, the Vivi we just saw perform?”
“Not a lot of other Vivis on the Vivi Swan tour,” Remy answered.
“Right,” Val said, as if that hadn’t been a jab. “Is it—what kind of song? I mean, is it your song, or is it hers?”
“Hers,” Remy said quickly. “I’m helping with hers. Just here and there.”
“Nice,” Val said.
