Loving Dallas - Caisey Quinn Page 0,60

the corners. “Bad. She had to do two rounds of chemo. Had an awful reaction and didn’t respond to the first round well at all.”

“When?”

I don’t know why I’m asking. I already know.

“That summer,” Dixie says softly, almost so softly I don’t hear her over Jase’s guitar.

She doesn’t clarify which summer. She doesn’t have to. The summer before I turned twenty-one, Robyn began acting strangely. Up until then, she’d done all the social media and online outreach for the band. She’d gone overboard in her typical way, acting as our manager and our agent even though she didn’t know a whole lot about the music business. What she did know was how to reach people and to this day I’m certain she is one of the main reasons we had such a large local following.

We were planning a six-week tour between Dixie’s junior and senior year of high school. Mostly just the tristate area, but a big deal for Leaving Amarillo since it was our first time actually going on “tour.” Robyn was all set to go with us and she was so excited about being on the road. She had this whole list of places we were going to go in each city we were scheduled to play in, a road trip music mix, and enough snacks stockpiled to feed a football team.

Then she bailed. Said she had decided to take a few summer classes and she stopped answering my calls. Eventually I got frustrated and drove down to see her at school. Except she wasn’t there.

When I showed up at her house and confronted her, her eyes filled with tears and she broke down. Said she just couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to focus on the band and she had other obligations. I’d assumed she meant school obligations. She’d always been such an academic overachiever.

From that night on her porch until now I have imagined a thousand scenarios that caused Robyn to end it. I can’t even count the nights I lay awake wondering.

Was there another guy?

Did she finally decide I wasn’t worth waiting for? That I was just going to spend my life chasing a dream I’d never catch?

I’d refused to leave her porch that night until the sun peeked over the horizon.

“Just tell me what I did. I can fix it, baby. Please.”

I’d been fucking pathetic.

“You can’t,” she’d said a dozen times. “No one can.”

The more I’d pressed, the more she’d closed herself off to me.

“Just come with me,” I’d begged. “We have a show in Fort Worth tomorrow night. Sunday we can go to that museum like you wanted.” I’d never given two fucks about visiting art museums, but I’d suffered through a couple for her. She’d get so excited. While she was looking at paintings I couldn’t make heads or tails of, I’d be watching her. The way her eyes would light up and her mouth would drop open just slightly as she stared in awe at each work.

For a moment, I thought I’d had her. She got that look, the same one she got when she looked at her favorite paintings. Then her expression blanked, her eyes lost their light, and she shook her head.

“I can’t, Dallas. Life on the road is your thing. Not mine.” She wouldn’t even meet my eyes when she said it.

I’d wondered briefly that if maybe I had more money, if the band were more successful, if I could promise her fancy hotels and room service instead of leftover pizza and Cracker Jacks in a van, if that would’ve mattered. But I’d never known her to be materialistic and up until then she’d seemed fine with the lack of luxury accommodations.

But as we said goodbye for the final time, my insecurities took over and I decided that she’d simply gotten tired of my shit and finally lost faith. In the band. In me. In us.

There was always a possibility the band would never take off, never “make it,” so to speak.

I’d had a choice to make.

I could let her down or let her go.

Standing here now, staring at the woman she loves most in the world and half-listening while Dixie details the hell that was Robyn and Belinda’s life that summer, I know I chose wrong.

29 | Robyn

“YOU LATE?”

Dallas’s words echo in my head over and over.

Because I am late. And I am never late. My life runs according to a very set schedule and my body cooperates with this most of the time.

I try to reason