Are You In?, page 20
When it was over, I curled my body against his side and fell into a peaceful sleep, my head resting comfortably on his chest.
My last thought before I was completely lost in dreamland was that I may have already started to break my own rule.
Chapter 17
“How’s life on the road treating you?” my mom asked, her warm voice bright and clear through the phone line, even hundreds of miles away. It instantly relaxed me, the way it always had growing up. Then she added, “It’s been almost a week since your last call, I guess work must be keeping you busy?” and I felt an instant twinge of regret.
Had it been that long?
She initially proposed we talk on the phone every day. I told her that would be impossible, especially on show nights, and she had relented… to phone calls every other day.
Up until now, I had stuck to my promise.
Things had gotten a bit chaotic over the last week in Ohio. When Ezra and I spent nearly every spare moment we had together. Sending each other flirty text messages from opposite ends of the tour bus while we traveled from town to town. Stealing kisses backstage when no one was around. Exploring every inch of one another beneath the rumpled sheets of whatever hotel we were at for the night.
His bed, my bed. It didn’t matter.
I lost track more than once when some of my clothes ended up left behind in his room. Or that time he brought his toothbrush, along with his very fancy and very expensive hair care products—one reason he smelled so damn good all the time, I discovered—so he could sneak in a shower before a particularly early morning start.
Mmm, that was our first time together in the shower, I recalled. Thank God for years of yoga classes. Ezra was surprisingly limber considering his height.
Every stolen moment with him was heady. Like the rush from a drug I never tried before but couldn’t imagine giving up now.
I was treading on more dangerous ground than I thought.
“You there, sweetheart? I said work must be keeping you busy,” my mom repeated when I became lost in my thoughts for too long.
“Among other things,” I thought to myself.
“What was that, honey?” my mom asked. “I couldn’t quite make it out.”
Crap, did I say that out loud?
“Nothing, mom. Just that you’re right, work has been really busy. I’m sorry I’ve been MIA, but things should ease up soon. This is our last night in Ohio. After that, we’ve got a show in Pittsburgh, a show in Philly, and then we’re on to Atlantic City for the big finale.”
“I saw online you guys were coming to Philadelphia soon! I don’t think I told you, I tried to get tickets but it was already sold out.”
“Mom! You don’t have to buy tickets. You’ve got someone on the inside now. I could’ve hooked you up.”
“Ah well, I already told the rescue I would take a volunteer shift that evening. We’ll just have to plan a weekend for me to visit when you’re back home.”
I smiled, though she couldn’t see me. “That would be great. I miss you, Mom.”
Her voice was like warm honey when she answered, “I miss you too, Hannah. I don’t think I say this nearly enough, but I’m proud of you. So, so proud of you. The first in our family to go to college, and now look at you! On tour with your favorite band, working at your dream job. I always knew you’d go far. Ever since the day you corrected that little boy in preschool when he called a spider an insect.”
My cheeks colored at the memory and I was pleased she couldn’t see me. She had a penchant for telling this story to any unsuspecting stranger who would listen.
“You looked that boy dead in the eye and said, ‘Actually, spiders are arachnids’ at the age of four! Using a word like arachnids before you were even in kindergarten.” I could hear the pride in her voice, it was always there when she recounted my achievements. I could picture her shaking her head in awe like she always did.
“And here I always thought I disappointed you for not going into something science-y after that, like entomology,” I joked. Like I always did when we ran through this routine.
She laughed, right on cue. “Oh no, sweetie. It never mattered what you did, just that you found something you loved. Something that would keep you safe and secure and well cared for.”
I sighed, a pang of homesickness I hadn’t felt in weeks stabbing me in the chest.
My mom had always pushed me, not to be the best, but to do my best. Her kind and caring support was what carried me through late nights studying for the SATs, and the all-nighters in college as I worked toward my degree.
She was my lighthouse in uncertain weather. Someone I could look toward and find my way through any storm.
I felt a tear prick the corner of my eye and shook my head, snapping myself back to the present. “As soon as I’m settled back in New York, you’re coming to stay with us for the weekend. Olivia will be glad to see you again. We’ll go to all your favorite restaurants in the city, walk through Central Park, all the touristy stuff you love.”
“I’ll be counting down the days.”
“Are you okay?” Peter asked me in between bites of the biggest bowl of Cheerios I had ever seen. It looked like he grabbed a stainless steel mixing bowl out of the cupboard, probably the only one we had, and filled it with an entire box of cereal.
We sat opposite one another on the tour bus as it carried us to our next stop in Cleveland. I tore my eyes away from the bus window I had been staring blankly out of for… how much time had passed?
Shaking my head to dispel the fog, I turned my attention back to Peter to find him blinking expectantly at me, eyebrows arched high on his forehead. I hadn’t even noticed when he sat down, my thoughts trailing off into the distance with each passing mile. I was supposed to be working, but I was having a hard time concentrating.
The entire past week, I had a hard time concentrating.
“You had this weird look on your face and I swear you haven’t blinked in like… longer than normal,” Peter explained slowly, putting his spoon down and tensing up as though he might need to spring across the table to stop me from having a fit.
I barked a laugh I didn’t quite feel and waved my hand dismissively. “Oh yeah, I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep well last night. Exhaustion must be catching up to me.”
It wasn’t a lie. I bit my lip as my thoughts drifted once again, this time remembering the way Ezra’s teeth felt when he tugged on my earlobe, the way his week’s worth of stubble tickled when it dragged across my inner thigh, the sound he made when I went down—
“There! You just did it again,” Peter exclaimed, breaking my reverie before it could get too far.
My cheeks reddened and I had to look down at my lap, pretending to pick a piece of lint off my black leggings. “I just need a giant cup of coffee, then I’ll be good as new.”
Peter nodded, lips pursed together while he considered, then shrugged with what I assumed was acceptance. He stood, taking his giant bowl of cereal with him, and moved toward the front of the tour bus where his bandmates were already entrenched in a video game. All I could make out over their shouting were the sounds of explosions and gunfire.
Before I could return to my very important duty of staring out the window and replaying the events of the last week in my head, my still half-open laptop started to ring, the sound of an incoming Zoom call bleating from its tiny speakers. I rushed to throw it open the rest of the way, my worst nightmare playing out in stark reality as Annabelle’s name and perfect headshot flashed across the screen.
As quickly as I could, I reached for my laptop bag, pulling out pens and business cards and scraps of paper with long-forgotten notes on them, digging for my headphones.
I couldn’t find them.
There was no time. The call had already been ringing for far too long. I sucked in a deep breath and spared one more glance at the guys in the front of the tour bus. They were too entrenched in their game to notice me, not if I kept the volume low enough. And prayed the background noise suppression feature did its damn job.
“Annabelle! How are you?” I asked when my boss’s face popped into view, forcing what I hoped looked like a bright and totally at ease smile to my lips.
“Oh good, I was hoping I’d catch you,” Annabelle answered with her own thousand-watt grin, her white teeth stark against the fire engine red of her lipstick. “Sorry to call unexpectedly. I was in the middle of typing an email to you and thought this would be easier.”
I lifted my eyebrows slightly. “Of course, what can I do for you?”
“I was hoping to get a quick update on your content plan for the rest of the tour. As I mentioned in my email last week, we’re looking for something big to cap things off now that we’ve got just over a week until the break. Something that will engage the fans, keep them wanting more, just in time for us to tease the new album.”
Oh my god. She had asked for something big.
I had completely forgotten to put together a pitch. But I still had time! That wasn’t due to her until… I glanced down covertly at the calendar on my laptop. Today.
The pitch was due today, and I had fumbled it. No wonder she was calling me.
Think, think, think.
I opened my mouth, closed it. Then opened it again, willing something—anything—to come out.
I had nothing.
I had barely even given it a passing thought over the past week. It was taking all I had just to keep up with the content cycle, filling the daily pipeline with videos and stills from each show, because…
Because I was spending every spare moment I had with Ezra.
And when I wasn’t with him, I was thinking about him. I was just doing it now, right before this call. And I was probably going to do it again after we hung up.
“Hannah? Are you still there? It looks like you might be frozen.” Annabelle’s singsong voice snapped me back to reality. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough to give me a brilliant content idea.
“Yes, yes, I’m still here. Sorry, the WiFi in the bus can be a bit spotty when we’re moving,” I stalled.
“Of course, of course,” Annabelle nodded on my laptop screen. “If you could just give me a quick rundown of your ideas here, we can hop off so you can kick the details over via email.”
“Right, yes. My ideas,” I said slowly, still trying to buy time. “So my idea is… well, what I was hoping we could do was—”
“Hey, Annabelle!” Ezra’s voice boomed in my ears, cutting off my pathetic blundering. He slid into the booth beside me, reaching a hand out to turn my laptop until he was in the frame. “Looking radiant as always.”
I could see Annabelle’s blush through the video screen and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Even with the momentary distraction, it was still me in the hot seat, not her.
“Ezra! So good to see you,” she preened. “I trust you’ve been taking excellent care of our Hannah.”
Her tone was light, playful, no more than friendly banter. Only Ezra and I knew the hidden implication in her words. My hands started to sweat, my every nerve ending acutely aware of where Ezra’s body touched mine as we sat side by side.
“Of course! She’s been keeping us in line,” Ezra replied smoothly with a wink that had Annabelle beaming. “We’re all pumped about her idea.”
It took every ounce of restraint to stop my jaw from falling open.
My idea? What idea?
I shifted my eyes to shoot a horrified glance at Ezra who merely returned it with another, almost imperceptible, wink and a slight upturn to the corner of his mouth.
“That’s actually why I called!” Annabelle answered, completely unaware that I was internally melting. Could one die from lack of preparation and stress? If so, I was for sure a goner.
“Oh, the Instagram Live Q&A? Yeah, we love it! We’ve never done anything like that before, and it seems really in line with the direction we’ve taken lately.”
Ezra’s lips were moving, I could hear the words coming out of his mouth, and yet it was like my brain registered them in another language.
“But what sold it was her idea to give away all-access passes to Nowhere Fest to four lucky participants in the Q&A, plus a private meet and greet. She really gets how important the fans are to us, how much we want to build those personal connections whenever we can.” When he finished, Ezra slung a casual arm around my shoulders, like we were old buddies, and beamed at the camera lens on my computer.
All I could do was blink. My mouth opened and closed like a drowning fish.
Ezra was… well, he was rescuing me. There was no other way of putting it.
And his idea.
It was brilliant.
It was something I would have thought of. Something I should have thought of, had I been giving my actual job any attention whatsoever this past week.
Annabelle was saying something to us, but I could barely hear it. “—love it! I’m sure we can accommodate the expense. I think there’s time for a meet and greet right after your acoustic set on the first day. Oh, this is great! Dominic upstairs is going to love it. The whole exec team will.”
I forced a smile to my lips, trying to act like this wasn’t a total shock. Like it had been my idea all along.
Through the blood pounding in my ears, I managed to make it through the rest of the call. Thankfully, it wrapped up pretty quickly after Ezra saved my job. My life.
I promised Annabelle a more detailed write-up of the plan via email later that day, saying I needed the additional time to incorporate her brilliant suggestions before it would be ready to present to our Chief Marketing Officer.
The bus was just pulling into the parking lot of our hotel in Cleveland when I clicked the End Meeting button to close the video call. Before I could shut my laptop, Ezra grabbed my hand under the table to give it a squeeze.
“That was amazing! We make a pretty great team. Maybe I should quit the band and be your assistant or something,” he joked, lips stretched wide in one of his trademark handsome grins.
My lips tugged down as I avoided his gaze, pulling my hand free from his and shoving it into my lap.
Ezra’s eyebrows furrowed, his grin faltering. He leaned in closer to me, trying desperately to meet my eyes. “Hannah, what’s wrong?”
“Can you scoot out? I think I need some air.”
“Hannah, come on. Talk to me.” His whisper was hoarse. Concerned.
I pushed lightly against his shoulder. “Just, please. Let me out.”
Frowning, Ezra stood from the booth, stepping back just far enough for me to slide out. As I moved toward the front of the bus, I heard the others groan when I crossed their field of vision and blocked the television for half a second. At least they hadn’t heard my painful call with Annabelle, too.
In a daze, I stomped down the steel steps and didn’t stop when my feet hit asphalt. Somewhere, it could have been miles behind me, I heard the sound of heavier footsteps following me.
“Hannah, wait!”
I kept walking toward the empty back half of the parking lot, willing myself to calm down.
“Hannah, come on! Just stop and talk to me. Tell me what I did wrong!”
I could feel the fiery pit of anger and shame opening up in my gut. I knew I should ignore it. Quelch it. Keep going and keep my mouth shut.
It was too late.
“You didn’t do anything wrong!” I exploded, whirling on the spot to face Ezra.
He pulled up short behind me, his hands shooting up in front of him, as though the look on my face was enough to knock him to the ground.
“I’m the one who screwed up,” I clarified in a softer voice, my gaze going distant as it slid toward the horizon.
“Hannah,” Ezra breathed, taking one tentative step forward. Then another. Until he could reach a gentle hand out to touch my shoulder. “You didn’t screw up.”
I cocked my head to the side, eventually meeting his eyes again. The empathy and concern within them almost brought me to my knees. “I did. I missed an assignment. A huge assignment. That call was five seconds away from ending in complete disaster. If you hadn’t stepped in—” Tears pricked at the back of my eyes and I blinked them back, unable to finish my sentence. I couldn’t afford two mental breakdowns today, especially not in front of this man. My client.
“But it didn’t, Han. Annabelle loved the idea. She’s happy. She says Dominic is also going to be happy, whoever the hell that is. They all think you’re some sort of marketing wizard. So what if you got a little help? You’ve done so much for us these past few weeks, I’m only glad I could finally repay the favor.”
Ezra’s thumb traced idle circles against my shoulder, trying to relax away the doubt and self-loathing that crept up my spine. That dark, intrusive voice inside me had me shrugging Ezra’s hand off and taking a step back from him. His face fell at the distance I put between us.
“I shouldn’t need you to swoop in and save me, Ezra. I appreciate you jumping in, I do. And if I had the presence of mind to ask how you came up with such a brilliant idea right now, I would. The problem is that I should be the one coming up with brilliant ideas. I should’ve been putting in the work, focusing more on Annabelle’s assignment this past week.” I paused and dragged a hand through my hair, looking just past Ezra’s shoulder. “This is exactly what I was worried about when I said we had to keep things light and casual. This is my job. I can’t screw it up. I can’t afford any distractions.”
Ezra recoiled from me as though I’d slapped him, his amber eyes darkening until they were nearly black. “Is that what I am to you, a distraction?” There was a tightness in his voice I so seldom heard, it was enough to send me backpedaling.
“Ezra,” I whispered, taking a slow step toward him. When he didn’t retreat, I advanced another, until I could reach out and rest my hand against his bicep. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I was telling the truth before, you didn’t do anything wrong. This is my fault. I just need some time to cool down.”
