pretty awesome, not just adorably quirky.
“So, Eagleton, huh?” I say, trying to be understanding. Supportive.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m doing the fellowship concurrent with an MBA.”
“MBA?” My mouth falls open. “As in, master’s in business administration?”
He looks down at his plate and shuttles more eggs onto a piece of rye toast. He takes a swig of coffee before he answers me.
“Yeah,” he says, looking back up at me.
“Business? Really?”
“Yes, Emmy,” he says. “Business.”
“What about Stars on the Floor?”
“What about it?”
“Are you serious about getting a record deal or aren’t you?”
“Do you really have to ask me that?” he says.
“I never thought so before, but apparently there’s a lot I don’t know about you and your plans for a career in business.”
“Music is all business,” he says. “We’re already in business.”
“MBAs don’t get MBAs so they can play guitar, Travis. MBAs go work on Wall Street. I just don’t see you as a Wall Street kind of guy.”
“I’m not a finance major,” he says and laughs. “What’s your problem?”
My problem is that he’s planning on a future without Stars on the Floor, that’s my problem. And that’s a future where Stars on the Floor doesn’t exist, as far as I know.
“My problem?” I argue, my face hot with anger. “What’s your problem, making all these graduate school plans and never once telling me?”
“Look,” he says. “I’m not graduating Rutgers with a 4.0 so I can do lube jobs while I’m waiting to break my band, okay? You need to start thinking ahead, too.”
“I am thinking ahead,” I argue. “I’m the only one here who’s done any work to set up a summer tour, aren’t I?”
“Joey and I sent twelve demo tapes out last week, so I’d say not. And I’m not just talking about the summer, you know that.”
“Are your parents putting you up to this?” I ask.
“Leave my parents out of this,” he says. “Please.”
“They hate you being in a band, I know they do.”
“Not any more than your mother does,” he says. “I’m twenty-two, not twelve. I can make my own life choices, thanks very much.”
“And what exactly are your life choices, Travis?” I am squarely confronting him now, even though I’m terrified I already know the answer and it’s not what I want to hear.
“When you’re a senior, you have to think differently, you’ll see,” he says and looks out the window. “You don’t have all the time in the world to figure the future out.”
I want to argue with him about what I know he’s really saying. I want to tell him that he just can’t make a safety net for himself, because a safety net is nothing more than a trolling net you trap your dreams in to die. This is the panic rising in my throat, on my face, that I can see he wants to say something about, but just then Ron and Dom from Red Five wander in and we stop talking. They help themselves to the two extra seats at our table and start talking about how damn lucky we are we got the Ag Field Day gig with Ween. Travis starts talking about that and asking Ron about his Seattle contacts because we’re thinking of heading out there over the summer, and I have no idea what to think. None.
When Travis and I get back in the car he plays Bob Marley on the CD player in the van and hums along to “No Woman, No Cry.” When he parks in my driveway he leaves the van running, and I know he’s leaving to go write his paper.
“Look, I just don’t get it,” I say. “I thought we were of the same mind on this.”
“On what?”
“The band, Travis. Come on, don’t be so dense.”
He’s gritting his teeth he’s so irritated with me, and he’s just not that easy to piss off—I should know, since I’m probably better at it than anyone.
“Is that all you ever think about? The only thing in the world you even care about?”
“I take it seriously. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he says. “But maybe that’s not the only thing I take seriously. Maybe there are other things in life I care about, too.”
“Then that’s your problem,” I say. “Because those other things are going to hold you back.”
“Oh, right. Now I see,” he says, and turns to look away from me, dead ahead out the windshield. His eyes are cold and so far away. “I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Everything,” he says.
***
I go inside and curl up in a