. .” I didn’t want to confess they were too fan girl. If I were hanging out with anyone else, I’d throw one on, no problem.
She pointed across the hall. “My dresser is on the far wall. There should be a T-shirt you can borrow in the bottom drawer. Or if you want something a little nicer, check the closet.”
I thanked her again for her hospitality and proceeded to invade her privacy even more. Her openness constantly impressed me, given her own history and that of anyone around her. The press could print the ugliest stories about her. Yet, she trusted me. It meant a lot.
She’d been on the road with so many bands by this point, it didn’t surprise me to find a varied collection of her own concert T-shirts in the drawer. I picked one up and smelled it, immediately feeling weird about that. Fans always joked about that, asking “What does Adam smell like?” when someone got lucky enough to meet him. Sadly, I knew the answer to that. For some reason, he supposedly smelled like jasmine.
Micah supposedly smelled like citrus. I was in Jo’s drawers, and all I could smell was laundry detergent.
“Did you find anything?” she hollered.
I glanced at the shirt in my hands. In giant gold letters, it read Not throwing away my shot! I laughed because it brought up visions of my mom singing along with the Hamilton soundtrack in her car.
“Yes!” I hollered, pulling it on. I clicked a photo and texted my mom.
“Good. Because we need to be going.” She walked into the bedroom. “Ah. You found my favorite shirt.”
“My mom would love this.”
“Yeah? I’m a huge theater geek myself.” She pulled the bedroom door closed so she could look in the hanging mirror. “Shit. I need to fix my hair and makeup. Do you need a minute in the bathroom?”
I still didn’t know where we were going, but a cookout sounded casual, and casual sounded familiar, and familiar made me think it involved her friends, and her friends included Shane.
“Yes. I’ll just be a minute.”
I gave myself a lightning fast makeover. Slightly dramatic eyeliner, subtle foundation, a bit of cheek shading, and a lip color that worked well against my bright hair. I surveyed my work and decided it was the best I could do on short notice.
And then, I took care of nature. The tail end of my period didn’t require ShamWow! levels of absorbency, but I was spotting, so I made sure to load up with some backup protection. It reminded me to take today’s sugar pill from my birth control pack.
“I’m ready,” I called as I went downstairs to wait.
Five minutes later, Jo practically tumbled down and grabbed her purse. “Let’s go!”
As the car rolled up, I asked, “So, where is it we’re going?”
“It’s not that far. Just over in Brooklyn Heights.”
Before I could ask anything more, she picked up her phone. “We’re heading over now. Can you meet us?” Pause. “Love you, too.”
She hung up. “Micah’s been rehearsing since noon.”
“It must be nice when he’s home, though.”
“Oh, yeah. I never thought I’d get involved with someone who’s never around. We make it work. There’s video chat, and I join him when I can. We definitely cherish the few times the fates convene so we’re all in town at the same time.”
I wanted to ask what she meant by “all,” but she said, “It’s just up here,” and unfastened her seatbelt. The car halted in front of a building similar to the one she lived in. We climbed the steps, and Jo knocked once, then just opened the door. “Hello?”
“We’re back here!” called a voice.
We followed it through a living room into a kitchen that opened onto a backyard. An older woman sat at the kitchen table with a baby asleep on her lap. “Shhh!” she somehow yelled.
Jo leaned down and whispered, “Hello, Joshua. How’s my good boy?”
The woman said, “Fussy. He just fell asleep. If Eden would quiet down.”
Eden?
Micah came in from the back patio, kissed Jo, laid a hand on my shoulder with a “Hey, Layla,” and disappeared into the house.
Jo waved me through the sliding door onto a deck to where Shane stood in the yard, hammering what looked like croquet hoops. Before I could drink him in, Eden stood and put a hand on her hip. “No, I think they’re supposed to be farther apart.”
I whipped my head to the patio table where I discovered a black man with a killer afro holding