Spencer doesn't pick up when I try to call him. Vicky might, but she'd roll her eyes and hang up on me. Gabe would pick up, probably, as Jon's called him at the rehab centre a few times and Jon said that I should give Gabe a call, show some support. I will when I stop feeling so guilty. And then there's Sisky, I could talk to him, but no way in hell am I opening up to him anymore, and then there's Jon, but he'd do the old "you're putting me in an awkward position" speech, what with Brendon and I both being like brothers to him. I briefly consider Jürgen – we've kind of bonded, we share cigarettes. I could explain away all I want and he'd quip it with a lyric he's memorised like "No woman, no cry."
Or then I could just keep it to myself: this uncertainty created by the words of a jealous man, not anything to be taken seriously. Dallon sees what he sees, deals with the hurt in whatever way he deems the most appropriate, like taking it out on me.
It's not entirely unexpected – he's been suspicious for days now. But what have I done? Nothing. Nursed Brendon back to health. Held him through a single night. Retreated when morning came. Loved him and let him go, and isn't that the new definition of love, anyway?
Still I end up bumming around the Stuttgart music shop for two hours. It's not like I'm avoiding going back, seeing Brendon again, not at all. I jam with the owners of the shop, who look like they can't believe their eyes that I walked in. I promise to get them on the guest list for the show – Hans and Joachim, two brothers. They even let me make a phone call to England, but Spencer doesn't pick up so it's just as well. It's probably a blessing in disguise because he'd only say, 'I told you so.'
Hans and Joachim probably don't want to hear of the mess in my head either.
I can't concentrate on anything.
I refuse the freebies that the brothers offer – I'm loaded, they're trying to run a business – and eventually head back to the venue with more shit than I need. I bump into fans heading to the venue to start lining up, and I give them a handful of plectrums each because I don't need them. The kids start to crowd me so I throw a handful of plectrums on the street and then escape them. I touched the picks so everyone wants one, and they look like chickens pecking grains.
Brendon's strictly on bed rest, so it shouldn't be hard to avoid him. Not that I even need to avoid him because Dallon's wrong about us. We're friends, and we're not going down that road anymore.
Dallon is mostly wrong.
Maybe I am in love, but that's not news. I can be in love with Brendon and still just be his friend. I've been doing just that for the past week, I can keep it up for the rest of my days. That doesn't mean that my friendship with him is insincere.
But for Dallon to say that... Brendon. That he and I both.
I've closed that door, and I don't want to reopen it. It's too full of bitter disappointment when reality kicks in.
I go to the dressing room, expecting to find the guys there with Brendon asleep on the bus, but it's the other way around: Brendon is in the dressing room and the others are absent. I stop at the door. Curse my luck. I don't want to see him right now.
He's on the couch, an orange blanket wrapped around his bare shoulders, his hair wet from having been washed – in the bathroom, of course, head under the faucet. Good, too, because his hair was getting pretty disgusting. He's got his notebook and he seems to be in the middle of writing in it, but then I walk in and he sees me and I can't hide.
"Hey," he says, smiling my way. He looks soft the way he did that morning in Paris, when I let myself slip into a world only meant for us, and I need to erase the memory of that. "You been shopping?"
