Chasing Kane (35 page)

Regan threw his head back, letting out a laugh I hadn’t heard in weeks—longer, maybe. “Yes. Food,
please.
”

We chased the last dregs of daylight with Brie, prosciutto, a baguette, and a renewed commitment to each other. After cleaning up our space on the empty beach, we trekked to the bakery where we feasted on cupcakes I’d over baked from a wedding order.

And I even joined him as he sat on the counter.

***

Regan had missed the rest of Minneapolis, and all of the Chicago and Ohio shows, but was scheduled to rejoin the tour in time for their New York City shows. Saying goodbye to him this time was harder than it had ever been.

This time, though, we had a much more defined plan. I was going to fly out to Massachusetts, meeting him there at his parents’ house for the entire duration of his set there, and the break following. This would allow us to spend some much-needed quality time with his family, as well as time for us to spend with our friends, Bo and Ember, in New Hampshire.

Before Regan left, CJ called us to fill us in on all that had gone on with his dad and Frankie while Regan was MIA. As shocking as it all was, I was proud of CJ for handling it on his own—meaning dealing with it at all—and coming out the other side relatively okay. Frankie had traveled with the band through Chicago and Ohio, and was planning to stay on the road through the tour’s arrival in Massachusetts.

I was a bit rabid with envy at Frankie’s profession when I’d heard that, one that gave her time off during my busiest season. I’d never particularly had a desire to travel the road with Regan and some of the musical behemoths he runs with, but seeing the fun Frankie and CJ seemed to be having—not to mention the quality time they were able to rack up—left me wanting.

I sat with the thought for a couple of days, wanting to make sure it was a true desire rather than a moment of fancy, before texting Regan about it.

Me:
How’s NY treating you?

Regan:
Good. It’s so weird seeing CJ and Frankie together. I mean, we saw them together for years—but not like this. Something’s definitely different. In a good way.

I smiled, a warm feeling enveloping my chest at the thought of CJ and Frankie finally finding the happiness they both deserved—
and
with each other, to boot. I sighed, steeling my resolve as I decided to jump in.

Me:
I want to do that sometime—join you on tour. I couldn’t do it for, like, months, but … I want to. Sometime. If you’ll have me.

I stared with panicked anticipation at the three blinking dots on my screen indicating he was typing back his response. The wait was short lived.

Regan:
Are you serious? I’d love that.

I let out a breath of relief, smiling as I leaned against the counter inside the bakery while a bride and groom pored over my portfolio in a booth by the front window.

Me:
You would? Is it weird? Do people give Frankie and CJ shit?

Regan:
Tons of shit, it’s not weird to me, and I would love it. ;)

Me:
Let me look at my schedule coming up. Maybe I can lose my mind and shut down for September—or at least put Jen and Mom on part time for basic stuff—and join you for a few stops after Massachusetts?

The dots blinked for a little longer this time, and I wondered if I’d overplayed my hand. I ushered those thoughts from my mind when I reminded myself this was my husband I was talking to—not some new boyfriend and I was worried about seeming too needy. Because this was Regan. I needed to need him, and he needed me to need him, sometimes. But, more than that, I needed to offer the gift of time to him. Something that can’t be bought and sold, but runs through our fingers faster than money ever could.

The blinking stopped without a message coming through, which admittedly deflated my sails. But, the phone rang and Regan’s name appeared on the screen.

“Hello?” I was breathless with nerves.

“Are you serious?” Regan’s voice was an excited whisper. Airy and soft, and a little hesitant. Restrained hope.

I grinned, biting my lip as heat spread to my cheeks. “Yes.”

“Jesus …”

“Good or bad?” I asked, peeking at the future bride and groom who were still peering through my cake pictures.

He let out a sigh inside a laugh. “Good. So good. I love you.”

“And I love you. See you in Massachusetts?”

Regan’s voice dropped, now producing a low moan. “That’s so far away.”

“It’s like a week, champ. I think we can manage,” I answered with a chuckle.

“Tonight,” he whispered. “Can we … you know?”

I set my eyes on the newlyweds in my shop, making sure they were out of earshot, before I whispered back, “Sext or phone?”

“Phone,” he replied without a second thought.

“Eight my time?”

“Oooooh fine,” he answered with a comical sigh. “I guess I can manage.”

The blond, suntanned couple in my front-and-center booth signaled me with matching waves and pearly white smiles that they were ready to discuss their options.

“Gotta go. Business to conduct. Be amazing tonight.”

“You, too, Babe. Oh, wait—” he stopped himself with a bright question in his voice. “You’re sending cupcakes, right? Cookies, too?”

A lump formed in my throat at his eagerness. Despite the standard sweets-delivery protocol we’d had for all his other tours, this was the first package I’d be sending out for this one.

He hadn’t asked.

I hadn’t done it.

We’d fallen apart on the most basic levels in ways that were no more evident than when missing things turned up. Requests for phone sex, cupcakes, and cross-country rendezvous among them.

“Yes,” I answered after a lost-in-thought pause. “Of course. I love you.”

“I love you.”

And finally, we were in Massachusetts.

It felt like it took forever to get there, and even then I had to face the fact that we were only half-way through with the tour. I was able to meet back up with the tour in NYC, and I was glad for that because it was a trip watching CJ play for a huge crowd in Central Park.

Moreover, seeing him and Frankie together was reassuring somehow. For him, them, and all of us, maybe. If
they
could make it—and it seemed like they just might—then there were few excuses left for the rest of us.

We’d already played our shows in Barnstable and Wellfleet, and were scheduled to start a three-day stint at a
wild
arts and music festival in Provincetown before being granted a nearly two-week break. During that time, most members of the tour would scatter back to their home bases—mostly in California—or take vacations before we headed out for the second half of our tour. Georgia and I were looking forward to downtime spent between my parents’ here on the cape and Bo and Ember’s in New Hampshire.

I picked Georgia up from the airport first thing in the morning—she’d taken the redeye—and as we wandered the grounds of the festival hand-in-hand, I couldn’t help but steal a thousand and one glances at her.

“You’re freakin’ me out,” she chuckled, squeezing my hand. “Why d’you keep staring at me?” She’d only been back on East Coast soil for a few hours, but her accent was thickening by the second.

I grinned. “I still can’t believe you’re
here
.”

“We planned for me to come out here months ago,” she reminded me of our original plans when this tour first sprang into our lives.

Untangling my hand from hers, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to my side as we walked over the grassy sand toward the far end of the festival. I kissed the top of her head and she let out a satisfied sigh that left me wishing we were walking toward our bedroom.
Anywhere
but where we were headed.

“You know what I mean,” I whispered as if we were in a crowded room.

“I know,” she whispered back.

The fact was, as recent as a few weeks before this moment, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that we would be hand-in-hand on this beach, or that she’d be joining us for the next month—our two-week break, plus the following two weeks on the road. I couldn’t have told you that we’d even be on speaking terms, never mind anything else.

Georgia stopped, turning to face me as she placed her hand under my chin, eyeing me carefully. “I love you, Regan. I’m so happy we’re here. Not just
here
,” she gestured with her other hand to the land around us, “but
here
.” She moved her hand to point between the two of us. “We got a little off-track there, huh?”

I nodded solemnly. “We did. But, not for long when you really look at it. And, you know what? We got through it together, and back
on
track together. The same track even.” I gave her a wink, then rejoiced in her yelp when I scooped her off her feet, spinning her around once with my lips locked onto hers before setting her back down.

“Sure you’re ready for this?” I asked as we resumed our walk, a few paces from our intended destination.

She shrugged, but I caught the deep breath she took underneath her raised shoulders. “It’s just a building, right? Some salt-worn wood and cement.”

Her hard swallow highlighted the glaring lie.

I gave her a smile and grabbed a hold of her hand again. “Yeah. Just a building,” I said softly.

Dunes was the beachside townie bar Georgia’s father had owned and operated for decades. Long before Georgia was born, all through her childhood, and right up to his death, by which time Georgia had been living with her mother in California for years. It looked like a glorified shack that could blow away with a low-grade hurricane wind, but the emotional weight pulled heavy at the corners of my wife’s eyes.

Aside from the years Georgia spent tending bar and cleaning up after her father’s messes inside the tattered walls of the place, Dunes had held the complete setting for her father’s rise and fall as a father and a man. It wasn’t even the bar itself, or the alcoholism it let him poorly conceal for years. It was what it stood for—the choices he’d always made ahead of his only child.

While Georgia had returned to Massachusetts several times in the fifteen years since she left the dank, one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of the bar, she’d never once reentered Dunes.

I’d been there as a late teenager, watching CJ play with various incarnations of garage bands, and sometimes playing myself, but never when Georgia was there that I know of. I’d met the owner of the place a time or two—Georgia’s dad I found out later—but there’s not much to tell there. He was your standard rundown drunk with a charming smile and a quick deal to turn around every corner. But, I hadn’t been back here since then. I learned early on how painful this pitiful little section of Provincetown was for her, and did my best to respect that.

“Here we are,” she said with flat intention, like she’d reached the edge of a thirty-foot-high diving board and hadn’t yet looked down. “Ready?”

I nodded as if she needed my permission—or my readiness—to enter. “Are you?”

She looked away from me for a moment, furrowing her brow. After chewing her answer over her bottom lip for a while, she answered. “I have to let go of this place if the back of my brain is
ever
going to let me stop waiting for you to treat me like he did.”

Her honesty was straightforward, resolute, and firm. A new leaf she’d promised in our counseling sessions to turn over—facing demons with honesty and conviction. To acknowledge their existence which, in theory, would immediately cut their power off at the knees. Then head forward to begin the work of dismantling the rest of them.

“Well then, let’s do this,” I said in an effort to remind her that, while this was
her
past she was facing, she wasn’t doing it alone.

She arched an eyebrow and set her hand on the door.

We stood in the breezy quiet outside the bar, only a few inches of wood separating us from the drunken noise on the other side. While it
was
traditionally a townie bar, the arts and music crowd drew ironic hipsters through the door who
looked
like they sort of fit in, but didn’t, if you asked me. But no one asked, and money was money, so I’m sure Dunes was more than happy for any extra business that came its way.

The joyfully raucous noise of stereotypically drunken Irish pub music swarmed into our ears as we pushed the door open. Not long after came the stench of beer, sweat, and sand—a heady combination that oceanside bars specialize in.

During the steep decline of his health before he passed away, Georgia’s father had handed operation of the bar over to an old friend and part-time manager of the bar—a man Georgia called Creature, without any further explanation. As if that were his name.

On the mission of a lifetime, Georgia pushed toward the bar, never letting go of my hand as she tugged me behind her to handle all the “excuse me’s” necessary when my pint-sized stunner of a wife hip-checked her way through the thick crowd.

“Here we are.” She stood up on her toes to speak in my ear as we reached the broad, pine, horseshoe-shaped bar.

I nodded, waiting for her to make her next move. Normally when a guy wants to peek into his girl’s past they’ll go to her high school reunion, or something. Not us. Never mind the fact that Provincetown High School only existed as a K-8 building now—their doors closed as a high school in 2013 when their final graduating class of eight students gathered their diplomas. Teenagers in P-town had to go to nearby public or technical high schools now. That aside, Georgia isn’t the smiley reunion type.

She’s the kind of girl who grips the edge of the bar and hollers, “Creature!” nearly out of nowhere.

But the broad-backed guy she yelled to, who stood about my height, turned around. And, finally, the name was explained. His jet-black hair was wrapped into thick, corded dreadlocks held back from his face with a moss green bandana. He had the weathered skin you’d find on lifelong fishermen in these parts—ruddy and wind-beaten, ashen around the eyes. Those deep brown eyes of his lit up in utter disbelief as he seemed to question his sanity, assessing who stood before him. And, somewhere behind a thick, full-faced dark beard, he smiled.