Love Songs for the Road (17 page)

She looked at him like he’d just told her he’d been raised by wolves in a post-apocalyptic future. “Shut up!” she said, slapping his hand.

“Swear on my children.” He smiled, though she was still eyeing him skeptically. He didn’t care if she believed him or not. Eventually, she would realize he was telling the truth. That he always told the truth.

“But you’re a total exhibitionist!”

“And you’re pathologically shy, but who the hell cares?”

Marcus leaned forward to kiss her, but Ryan held him at bay and yelped in frustration. “I can’t tell what’s real with you and what’s a performance.”

“This isn’t a performance. I haven’t wanted anyone, and I mean
anyone
,
for four years. At first, I thought maybe that time in my life had ended, that my job at this point was just to be the best parent I could. The romantic part of me just seemed, I don’t know, dead. I would look at a beautiful girl and feel absolutely nothing, no connection. But now I know that this whole time, I was just waiting for you.”

Hearing that must have done something to Ryan, because she went for him this time, pressing her lips against his, running her fingers through his hair as she kissed him passionately. Marcus was so happy she believed him. He would never lie to her, not about this, not about anything.

Ryan swiveled on top of him and straddled him. Marcus peeked beyond her, just to make sure the kids’ door was still closed and locked. Then he looked at Ryan above him, bathed in gentle light from the bedside lamp, her hair falling over her naked shoulders. She was so, so beautiful. “You’re ready again, so soon?” he teased.

“You know what?” She smiled. “I think I am.”

…

Ryan lay in bed for forty-five minutes, staring up at the artfully draped mosquito netting on the four-poster bed while Marcus lay asleep beside her.
In five minutes, I’ll go
, she thought. No matter how definitive Marcus’s victory at the hearing had been, she did not want Charlotte or Miles to wake up and find her in their father’s bed. It didn’t matter whether the risks had disappeared or not; for now, Ryan was the children’s nanny.
I’m not really “just the nanny”
anymore, am I?
she thought. Still, the kids should be introduced to the idea after the tour was over, in a more stable environment: home.

She watched Marcus’s smooth, muscular chest rise and fall with each breath, and she thought that if the two of them were living in a bubble, away from the complications of the music world and the media, she would probably fall hopelessly in love with him. They’d never live in a bubble, she knew. But would they ever be able to create a life for themselves? Two days ago, she’d have said it was impossible. He was a rock star, too famous to just disappear into a life of anonymity. He complained about touring and performing, but she could tell he loved at least part of it. And she had goals and dreams of her own that didn’t involve following a man and his children around. Where was the middle ground here?

But being with Marcus and the kids felt so good and so right, and they had just achieved an incredible victory in a situation that had seemed totally hopeless before Marcus had boarded that plane to LA. All of a sudden, this relationship felt like it was meant to be. It felt like she and Marcus could do
anything
, as long as they made the commitment to stay together. All they had to do was figure out the details. How hard could it be?

At five forty-five a.m., Ryan kissed Marcus on the cheek. He smiled in his sleep and turned toward her. Careful not to wake him, she slipped soundlessly from under the covers, dressed, and went back to her room, wanting him, but knowing that, if she were patient, she’d be back with him soon enough.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Living in the Bubble

At some point during the tour’s nearly week-long stint in Texas, Charlotte and Miles had started counting pro-beef bumper stickers—“Cows are Meat,” “Meat: It’s What’s For Dinner,” “Whatever Happens in Vegans, Stays in Vegans.” Today they would cross the East Texas border of Louisiana, and they were up to eighty-seven.

For the first three weeks after the hearing, the tour, to make up for the interruption the Canyon Ranch visit had caused, zigzagged wildly across the country. In the second week of August, the crew flew from Kansas City to Portland, Maine, where the bus met them, and they began a three-week stint along the entire Eastern seaboard.

Ryan thought more about that phrase, “living in a bubble,” and how accurately it described the touring life. She would forever remember, of course, the magical details that distinguished one landscape from another: the rocky shores and craggy cliffs of Maine, the impossibly lush rolling hills of Vermont, and the moment she and Miles (alone while Charlotte breakfasted with her father) spotted, on Boston’s Charles River, a lone rower powering a pencil-thin scull through water that shone like steel. But these were stolen moments, rare interruptions in a life on the road that was mostly characterized by a dizzying sameness: theaters and stadiums looked identical after a while, and the blueprint of Marcus’s suite—the bed with its frou-frou pillows and unnecessary mosquito netting, the plump blue couch—was exactly the same, no matter the city.

On a lunch break in Silver Spring, Maryland, Ryan and the kids followed Marcus through the aisles of a Target where they’d stopped to buy both of the kids a refresher set of PJs. “It’s just like the one in Kalispell,” Ryan said. “Like,
exactly
the same.”

“I know, isn’t it great?” said Marcus.

“Is it?” It dawned on her that no one had
forced
Marcus to stay in the exact same hotel chain with the exact same suite with the exact same furniture at each and every tour stop. Marcus must have
wanted
it that way.

“My whole life has been filled with changes. I went to six schools in four cities by the time I was nine. I can do change. But I need
some
things in my life to stay consistent.” He grabbed her hand and smiled before jogging to catch up with the wandering Miles.

Ryan smiled to herself.
A rock star who yearns for the comfort of routine?
Marcus continued to puzzle her at every turn. But what did his need for sameness mean? Was it a natural response to the unpredictability of life on the road? Or did it mean that somewhere under his rocker’s facade, Marcus Troy wanted, if not to settle down outright, then to adopt a slower, saner life, not just for his kids, but for himself? If they could just figure out whether to live in Montana, Michigan, California, or some fourth option that hadn’t presented itself yet, they could make this work, she knew it.

…

Ryan hadn’t spent the night in Marcus’s bed again, not since the night after the hearing. The two of them had agreed that they would at least
try
to wait until the tour was over, for the kids’ sake. Ryan had voiced her concerns, told Marcus that she didn’t want to confuse Charlotte and Miles, and she’d expected resistance. But Marcus instantly agreed with her. “There’s something pretty fun about the stolen-kisses strategy. I’m thirty-four, remember. Feeling like a teenager again, even with all the restrictions that come with it—well, it’s not so bad. And like we said, ‘All good things…’”

Marcus looked around him, saw that no one on the bus was looking, and gave her a sweet, swoon-worthy kiss.

“‘…come to those who’…yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ryan said after emerging from the kiss. The man sure knew how to take her breath away, there was no doubt about it. And their self-imposed abstinence made every kiss, every touch, that much sweeter. Leaning back in her chair, Marcus’s hand on her arm, she pondered the advantages of dating a more mature man who knew how to savor life’s little pleasures.

Still, as September loomed in the not-so-distant future, neither of them brought up what would happen to them at the end of the tour. Only Charlotte, hanging out with Ryan in the back of the bus while her dad conferred with Alex ten rows ahead of them, had had the courage to mention it. It was scary to think that a ten-year-old was more mindful of her future than Ryan herself.

Somewhere between Baltimore and Philadelphia, Ryan had woken from a nap to find Charlotte inches from her face, the little girl’s fierce eyes examining her with the detached interest of a scientist.

“I need to ask you something,” Charlotte said, calm but intent.

“How long have you been sitting here watching me like that?” Ryan smiled, though sometimes Charlotte’s scrutiny did unnerve her.

“A few minutes.” Her eyes continued to wander, from nose to forehead to cheekbones, not quite connecting with Ryan’s. “When the tour is over, are you going to come and live with us?”

To buy some time, Ryan sat up in her seat and stretched, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. It would be useless to try to talk Charlotte out of this line of inquiry—by now, Ryan knew her well enough to realize that—so she had to think of something fast.

“Well, as far as I know, you guys will be going back to your mom’s.” All she had to do was tell the truth, right? “You have school in September. But you’ll also be spending lots of time with your dad. I’m not sure if they’ve worked out the specifics yet, but I’m sure they will soon.”

“Yeah, but will you go live with Daddy in Bigfork? Will we see you for Thanksgiving?”

Ryan took Charlotte’s hand. “You really like school, right? You have good teachers, and you don’t mind the homework too much?”

Charlotte nodded vigorously.

“Well, I’ll be going to school in the fall, too, in Michigan,” Ryan said. “I’ll be studying how kids learn to read and write.”

Charlotte pouted. “How far,” she asked, “is Michigan from Montana?”

Ryan smiled. The answer was simple. “It’s only a plane ride away.”

Charlotte nodded, grinned, and trotted off, and the ease with which Ryan had satisfied her serious question felt like a revelation. Could she simply continue with her life, do everything she wanted,
and
continue to see Marcus? But a long-distance relationship—didn’t people say they never worked?

Still, Ryan felt emboldened by the unexpected conversation with Charlotte. She looked behind her, where Marcus and Smitty were sprawled out in the back row, trading guitar licks. Just seeing Marcus filled her heart with joy. Could it really be so simple? The two of them had proved themselves pretty gifted in the patience category. Could they see each other long-distance for the two to three years it would take Ryan to finish her coursework, and then take things from there? Could a rock star handle that?

Could she?

Chapter Twenty-Four

Love of My Life

Marcus knew that it was too soon to be using the word—even if he was only forming it silently in his brain—“co-parenting,” but he couldn’t help it. Before Ryan, he’d never liked the term, which sounded self-help-y and pretentious. But now, he realized he’d probably disliked it because he’d never
experienced
it. With Ryan at his side, Marcus had begun to see how—he didn’t want to say
easy
, because these were children, after all, demanding and unpredictable by definition—but how clear-cut and direct and sensible parenting could be. He’d never been a better dad than he’d been during these last few weeks, and he owed it all to Ryan.

Marcus had begged Alex to schedule an extra day after the tour’s final concert, in New Orleans. It was his favorite city in the states, if not the world, and he wanted a little more time to enjoy it. As they walked down Royal Street, from the French Quarter Hyatt to the funky Faubourg-Marigny, a twenty-something kid lumbered by on a rickety-looking vintage bicycle, a tuba strapped to his back with nothing more than a length of twine. Somehow the guy managed to take a chomp out of a Po’ Boy sandwich without crashing, and to Marcus, he seemed a suitable symbol of this great city—everywhere you looked, you could count on finding great music, delicious food, or both.

Marcus glanced over at Ryan, who held Charlotte’s hand. The time they spent together with the kids was amazing, but he wanted her all to himself for an evening, or part of one. Tomorrow would be their free day, before setting off for Atlanta. He would ask Serena to take the kids for an evening, and take Ryan out to Vaughan’s, one of the oldest clubs in the city. Or maybe they’d go see his old friend Kermit Ruffins play at the club he’d opened a few years ago in the Lower Ninth.

As the quartet strolled back toward the hotel on Canal, Marcus bought them each an umbrella to block out the intense sun. Miles complained bitterly, but Marcus knew a pit stop at the
Café du Monde
would put a stop to that. And sure enough, by the time he had lit into his third beignet, the boy settled into a blissed-out food coma. Ryan shook her head at Marcus, and he shrugged—their wordless agreement that they would cut the kid off after this last pastry.

Since the hearing, the tour had become the most blissful and confident of Marcus’s career. He played to capacity crowds every night and found out that, despite Alex’s protests, the world didn’t come to a crashing halt if he cut his press schedule in half or skipped the occasional VIP event (Smitty could charm a crowd twice as well as he could, he’d learned). And ever since the hearing, there’d been a calm ease in every moment he shared with Ryan and the kids.

In the suite, they’d settled into a pattern. Ryan would return to her own room after they tucked the kids in, leaving Marcus after a make out session that was brief, but very hot. As a younger man, Marcus wouldn’t have been able to handle that brevity, but now, he thought it was sexy that, for Ryan and him, the best was yet to come. With a woman like this, he didn’t feel the need to rush. He wanted to take his own sweet time.

…

Back at the hotel, Ryan had just finished putting Miles down for a much-needed nap. Marcus started to ready his stage clothes for the evening’s concert, while Charlotte watched cartoons.

Suddenly, with an intensity that Marcus had rarely seen in her, Ryan came back into the living area and said, with no explanation whatsoever, “God closes one door as he opens another.”

“What?” For one instant, he thought she might have been choosing this moment to reveal to him that she was some brand of super-Christian.

“Your ‘lock the door’ song. ‘Six of one, half a dozen of the other. God closes one door as he opens another.’ That should be the last line.”

Marcus looked askance at Ryan for a second, but he put down the pair of leather pants draped over his arm and opened his notebook, humming the lines to himself. They worked. Of course, it was perfectly natural that Ryan would emerge from naptime with a new line for the song that he’d continued to play throughout the tour, despite the bored reaction of the audience. Of course, she’d simply spoken the couplet to him, after not mentioning the song for weeks. Not that the two lines made logical sense together, but somehow in the context of the song, they worked perfectly. Now the whole song worked so much better—what a gift.

He rushed over to her and gave her a big kiss, right in front of a surprised-looking Charlotte.

“Slow down, bub,” Ryan said, pushing him away playfully. He looked guiltily in his daughter’s direction, but Charlotte was positively beaming at him.

Feeling like an absolute fool, Marcus, who’d always thought of himself as an agnostic, gazed up at the ceiling, thanking this “God” character for all the blessings that the woman next to him had brought into his life.

Ryan’s school—he now had no confusion over the location, in Ann Arbor, Michigan—was only a couple of weeks away now. What was he going to do when she left them at the end of the tour? Could she find some place to continue her studies closer to Bigfork, or if that didn’t exist, LA? Or should he move to Michigan? They had to figure
something
out, because what was happening between them was too good to put a stop to now.

…

Marcus had come to New Orleans many times since Katrina, and every year, the city had seemed a bit better off than the year before. New bars and restaurants were opening everywhere, the music scene was thriving, and there were so many film sets around, NOLA was starting to feel like a mini-Hollywood. But the newly renovated Superdome, complete with fancy Mercedes Benz branding and a truly dazzling light display that, tonight, featured shimmering gold and green hues, symbolized to Marcus the city’s resurgence better than any other landmark. With a capacity of more than 70,000, this would be, by far, the biggest venue he’d play on the tour, and Marcus considered it an honor to do so. At the same time, the show hadn’t quite sold out, and he hoped that most of the 50,000 who
had
bought tickets would show up. To a rock star, there was nothing worse than a half-empty arena.

But as soon as the show started, Marcus got into his comfort zone.
Just have fun
, he said to himself.
Stay loose.
He looked in Smitty’s direction. His old friend was wearing an ancient straw cowboy hat tonight, one of those floppy things with a big hunk of turquoise sitting on top of the brim, which he’d probably owned for close to two decades. Marcus wondered what he would do without that real-life angel, Smitty, here. He wasn’t just the bedrock foundation of the band; he was the soul of the entire tour. Marcus was glad that both the real Smitty and the imaginary-projection version that had sat atop Marcus’s shoulder for much of June and July, warning him against involvement with “the nanny,” as they’d both thought of her before she’d become a trusted member of the crew, had seemed to approve of his new, promising relationship with Ryan, the real, flesh-and-blood Ryan for whom Marcus had fallen so hard.

During the band’s break, Marcus tried “I Lock the Door” with the new lyrics, adding them to the end of the song as a sweeping, anthemic coda. What did they even mean? “Six of one, a half dozen the other/God closes one door as he opens another.” To Marcus, they meant two things: admitting that he couldn’t micro-manage his life, or really, control it at all; and embracing the new beginnings, the revelatory possibilities offered by his life as a parent, but also as a…what—lover? romantic partner? boyfriend? These titles didn’t seem to fit his feelings for Ryan, and his musings might have been silly. But he felt like a new person, and the song felt to him like a perfect expression of his rebirth.

When he finished, the crowd response was surprisingly good. Marcus didn’t kid himself—he knew no audience in the world would go ballistic for a song they’d just heard for the first time. But at least, this time, no doofuses yelled out, “Stick to the hits, Troy!” the way they had in so many of the previous cities.

“You like that one?” he called out. The audience screamed louder, maybe out of politeness, sure, but Marcus thought the new ending drove the song home. He looked stage left for Ryan—he wanted her to hear the new coda in action—and nodded in her direction. She smiled back, and so did the kids. As the set wound to a close, Marcus got ready to introduce “Love of My Life,” and bring Ryan and the kids onstage. Over the last several weeks, he had come to think of Charlotte, Miles, and Ryan as a unit, and it no longer made sense to
just
have the kids. He had cleared it with Ryan first, of course, a
nd now that things were going so smoothly with them, she seemed game. So Marcus decided to take it one meaningful step further: he would introduce Ryan to the audience as his girlfriend.

“You must be nuts,” she’d said. “After all we’ve been through.”

“Trust me,” Marcus said. “I know how these things work. Once we show the press that we’re just going to be a boring, monogamous couple hanging out with the kids, they’ll lose interest. This’ll be the last image of us, before the tour ends, and we can start building…”

“What? Don’t be shy, come out and say it.”

“Start building a life together. What do you say?”

She’d taken a little more convincing, but Marcus was a persuasive guy, and he knew how PR worked. One wholesome photo-op onstage, followed by a post-tour disappearing act, would do the trick. Sure, there would be grumbling by a few haters, but that wouldn’t last long, and eventually, his fans would accept Ryan, even embrace her.

“Everybody, this is the song I like to bring my kids out for,” he said from the stage. “But tonight, I’d like someone else to join them. Will you please welcome Charlotte Troy, Miles Troy, and my girlfriend, Ryan Evans, to the stage?”

Miles appeared right away, joining his dad on cue to the audience’s roaring approval. But Charlotte and Ryan weren’t at his side. Marcus squinted in their direction but couldn’t make out what was going on. He hoped she wasn’t having second thoughts.

But soon enough, Charlotte emerged, with her nanny in tow. As Ryan shielded her eyes from the lights, she looked a little awkward, but he would fix that by charming her the way he’d been charming audiences for most of his adult life: with his own brand of zesty, hard-driving showmanship.

As soon as she reached his side, Marcus put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her.

In front, a couple guys hooted in amusement.

“Marcus, are you sure about this?” she shouted, but he still had to lip-read to understand her.

“It’s all over—she can’t hurt us now!” Marcus said, close to her ear.

Of course, the audience mistook the conference for a sexy, intimate gesture, and a few more people in the front started whistling and hollering, while Ryan continued to blush like a maniac. But Smitty had already counted off for the rest of the band, and Marcus didn’t have time to resolve this mess before launching into the familiar first verse.

“I really hope you’re right about that!”

Marcus nodded. He knew he was. He started the song.

Came into this world a frightened little boy

Never knew I’d know nobody who could give me any joy

But a man can climb a mountain if you give him enough rope

And a hopeless soul can fall in love if you give him enough hope

While the crowd bellowed, Marcus slung his acoustic guitar over his back and grabbed Ryan’s hand, dancing a little Texas two-step and, with his eyes, inviting her to join him. And, thank the living stars, she did, smiling at last as the audience encouraged her. She wasn’t a bad dancer, either.

As Marcus’s sweaty hand clutched her sweaty hand, he could feel the rhythm of Ryan’s pulse. He looked at her and smiled, and the world around them seemed to fall away. He was just Marcus, not some big rock star, and everything he’d just sung to Ryan had been straight from the heart. And she was enjoying herself, he could tell.

“People!” he yelled into the microphone. “Are you falling for this woman, just like I am?”

He pulled the mic out of the stand and gripped it with both hands, falling to one knee with a flourish just like his heroes Elvis and Bruce used to do. As he sang the lyrics, they seemed to be written for her and her alone.

You’re the love of my life, and the reason I try

To be a better, kinder man

Never want to go back to the life I lived before

Sure hope that’s not part of the plan

Yes, she did make him want to improve himself, to grow and change. And thankfully, he’d broken
her
open a little bit, too. As the band soared through the final chorus, Ryan sang backup, a little wobbly but with great spirit, right along with the kids.

Marcus didn’t want the moment to end. He’d never experienced such joy, on stage or off. Finally, his life felt good and right and meaningful again. Ryan had brought him back to himself.