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Chapter Sixteen
Nashville to New Jersey was a longer hop than Remy expected—a little over thirteen hours. He was grateful that everyone had reached a certain point of tour exhaustion and more or less went straight to bed after the show. He was even more grateful that he didn’t see Vivi again that evening. The buses pulled into the MetLife Stadium parking lot just as the sky was starting to lighten, but Remy was barely aware of it. It felt like all those late nights and early mornings with Vivi were finally catching up with him; he slept until almost noon.
“Remy? Are you dead?” Parish’s voice floated through Remy’s sleeping mind. Remy blinked—his phone alarm had gone off, but he’d been hitting sleep for…from the looks of it, three hours.
“I’m alive,” Remy said, voice gravelly. He slid back the privacy curtain in front of his bunk to see Parish standing in the bedroom doorway.
“Good, because your presence is requested on Bus Three,” Parish said.
Truthfully, Remy wanted to stay on the bus and wait for a text or call from Vivi, because surely they’d hang out before the show, right? But he was keenly aware of the fact this was his final show, and that whatever happened with Vivi, the musicians had been incredibly welcoming to him from the start. So he heaved himself from his bunk, found a fresh T-shirt, and stepped out into the bright daylight.
It was beautiful outside—one of those perfect days where the sky was epically blue and you wondered how anyone might think New Jersey was a dirty sort of state. Several buses had their panels pushed out and sunshades pulled up—the dancers drinking Bloody Marys on folding chairs waved to him as he walked by. Bus Three had their panels extended as well; when he arrived, Laurel was coming down the steps with a carafe of water. She placed it on the ground between the band, Ro, and the other two backup singers, all of whom were eating takeout from the burger place across the street.
“The guest of honor arrives!” Michael said. Remy grinned.
“We got you a goodbye hamburger,” Laurel said, thrusting a paper bag his way. “Know I had big plans to make a cake, and then those changed to plans to buy a cake, and now it’s just burgers. Though we did upsize your fries.”
“I like burgers more than cake anyway,” Remy said. “This is great. Thanks, guys.”
“Thanks for not being all that interested in skateboards,” David said, raising his fast-food cup to toast Remy. The others followed, one at a time; Laurel leaned over and kissed his cheek quickly.
“So what’s the plan when you get back?” David asked. “Keep on Quiet Coyote-ing?”
“Probably,” Remy said, which was the truth. The lie, however, was in the way he smiled and nodded, the way he implied this was exactly what he wanted to do for the next five months. “But I’d like to keep doing some songwriting and producing, like I was doing with Vivi,” he added quickly, like he was trying to sneak in the confession of how he really wanted to spend his days.
“Smart,” David said, pointing a fat finger at him. “Be the one making the music, not just the one playing it.”
“That’s the goal,” Remy said and smiled at him.
“You got a contract for that song you worked on with her, right?” Parish asked.
“I—no, actually. We never got around to it,” Remy said, embarrassed.
Eyebrows raised—all eyebrows other than his, in fact. “Well,” Parish said, giving a forced shrug, “we can vouch for you if she tries to cheat you. We could hear you guys working on it in Dallas in her dressing room. Plus, you hum it all the damn time.”
Remy frowned, unaware that he hummed, period, much less that he’d been humming the song. “I don’t think she’ll try to cheat me. But thanks. Seriously,” Remy said. The fact they were offering to go to bat for him—against their boss, no less—was genuinely touching.
When Remy left Bus Three, he intended to finish packing up his things but found himself wandering toward Vivi’s bus. He wanted to apologize—maybe. Or perhaps he wanted her to apologize to him. Or was it that he wanted to tell her never mind, he’d go to Europe? Or to call him? Or that he’d call her?
He just needed to see her. It wasn’t a crushing, desperate need—it was more a dull ache, a want that could be ignored but only if you were willing to make yourself miserable. He needed to see Vivi, and even though he could have come up with a thousand excuses as to why, the truth was that he simplyneededit before he left the tour and perhaps never saw her in person again.
She didn’t answer when he rapped on her door, nor did his text to her show that it’d been read. Remy scouted around until he saw Walter’s assistant flitting between buses, his clipboard thick with papers, talking into his headset.
“Hey! Any idea where Vivi is?” Remy asked, jogging up to him.
“It’s three o’clock,” Walter’s assistant said, looking at the digital clock on his clipboard. “So I believe she’s in her fitting for her CMA dress. Probably in her costuming trailer.”
“Where’s her costuming trailer?”
Walter’s assistant lifted an eyebrow, and Remy fought off flushing. “I just—we needed to talk about some stuff with the song,” Remy tried, but it sounded as stupid out loud as it had in his head. He hoped this guy wasn’t the one who’d leaked their working together. If he was, Remy’s face was probably giving him plenty more stories to sell.
Walter’s assistant rolled his eyes unapologetically then pointed in the direction of the trailer.
The trailer’s door was shut, but he could hear voices inside, Vivi’s included. He lingered, waiting for a break in the conversation to knock, enjoying the soft melody of her words—even when she wasn’t singing, her voice had a cadence, almost like a love song. Her words were punctuated by a loud, meaty laugh—one of the dressers—and then the same voice asked, “So what is Noel wearing?”
“I’m not really sure. That’s sort of why I’m wearing white—he’ll have to work hard not to match it,” Vivi’s bright, shiny voice responded, and a few others laughed.
Right. Noel. Her boyfriend.
