| CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
| I'll take it as a promise

ᴏᴀᴋʟᴇʏ ᴄᴀʀʀɪʟʟᴏ

The morning before I left was slow. My mom had made me some breakfast as my dad was too tired from working late the night before, and my sister made sure I didn't leave before remembering to get her stuff from every state.

The leaving part turned out not to be that difficult. The fact that I wouldn't be seeing my family for two months again only settled in once I was on the plane to Washington, where I met up with the rest of the crew.

After our first show in Tacoma, we started taking the bus everywhere. This was fine at first, but as always when the band was paired up together, people started getting tired of each other quickly.

"Oh come on. We haven't even been driving for an hour yet. Who decided it was a good idea to start microwaving fucking mac and cheese right now? I swear to god, it's Danny, isn't it?" Maurice said. He looked at me. "Does this not bother you?"

Danny turned around to Maurice and stuck out his tongue like a child, to which Maurice rolled his eyes.

"What are those?" Danny asked when he came to sit down next to me. I was eating one of the cookies Nolan made. He'd given me a jar full of them to take with me. I'd been taking care of them religiously.

"They're mine," I said, savoring the deep, but light chocolatey flavor of the cookie with my tongue. "If I count any less than twenty two in my jar, you're fucked."

"Did your dad make these?" he asked, snatching half my last bite away from my fingers, crumbling it all up in the process. He poured the crumbs into his mouth anyway.

"Didn't I tell you not to touch?" I asked.

"Then give me one? Please?"

"No. They're custom made," I said, eating the last bit left between my fingers.

"So rude," he said, getting up from his seat and walking away towards the bunks. He lied down on the top bunk and dramatically closed the curtain. Kaia's head stuck out from the bunk underneath him.

"What about the mac and cheese you just made the entire bus smell like?"

"I'm upset," he said from behind his curtain.

"Are you high?"

His head and a hand now stuck out from behind the curtain, holding up a lit joint.

"Are you kidding me, Danny?"

"I'm an adult with a window," he said. "I do whatever I please."

"Yeah, until the bus is on fire. Stop being stupid," Kaia said, reaching up to try and slap him in the face.

"Can everyone just shut up?" I asked, which seemed to do the trick for at least five solid seconds. I didn't realize something more was going on than just them being stunned until Kaia and Maurice looked at each other with anything other than annoyance in their facial expressions. "What?"

"Nothing," Kaia said, turning back to her phone where she'd been binge watching some show.

I looked at Maurice who had a fake confused look on his face, which I knew was fake because he always tensed up as he lied, rarely ever able to hide it.

"They're afraid you're gonna be mood-killer-Carrillo again," Danny said without any care.

"What? I'm not a mood killer," I said. They'd never called me that before, so why was this suddenly a thing?

"Not always," Danny said, jumping down from his bunk. "Just sometimes. And when it's bad, it's bad."

Surely I had my fair share of moments in my career so far in which I could've been a little gloomy, but I wouldn't say I'm a mood killer. I liked keeping those feelings to myself.

"It's either that or the full one-eighty where I keep thinking you're high," Kaia added to Danny's remark. She moved out of her bunk for the first time in three hours, throwing her phone on her pillow as she stretched her limbs. "You're a pretty complex person."

"Every human being on this earth is a complex creature," I said.

"Danny exists," Kaia said, not needing to elaborate. Not to me or Maurice, at least.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Danny asked, launching one of those decorative cushions at her.

"See? You don't like something and immediately resort to violence. Simple brained."

He crossed his arms and jumped down from his bed, took his pillow, and lied down on the seats next to me right before Kaia got the chance to sit down, using my lap as a foot bench.

"We're gonna have so much fun guys," he said. "I know what I said about last tour, and I know I was wrong, but this tour... I can feel it in my gut. It's gonna be the best one yet. I mean, did you guys not feel the crowd's energy tonight? It was..." he kissed the tips of his fingers. "...phenomenal."

Kaia and I looked at each other. Between the smell of the weed, Danny's feet and his forgotten mac and cheese, I really couldn't be bothered to argue with him.

And exactly as I expected, that night's show was far from phenomenal. I somehow ended up forgetting some lyrics to two of my songs. People sang along loudly, sure, but even from their side, the energy was off. Likely because touring twice every year meant people didn't have much to be excited about anymore.

"Well, I can't wait for all this shit to be over," Maurice called over from his bunk below Danny's late that night when the bus was finally moving again. And I agreed. Neither could I.

•••

We reached our next destination in the early hours of the night, which meant we had a solid day to get some rest before the concert this time. This meant we got a proper night's sleep in a hotel tonight.

The hotel wasn't very special. My room was the biggest, as always, with a king bed, even after I requested a queen. But other than that, it seemed quite homely with the warm dim lights and earthy color palate. Even the art they'd hung up in the room mostly consisted of browns and greens.

Upon entering the room with a small bag of clothes, my phone buzzed. It was Nolan, asking me about last night's show. I called him, honestly just hoping for him to have a little break so we could speak.

"Hi," he said, having picked up the phone immediately. I smiled instantly and went to sit on the bed. "I just texted you."

"I saw, which is why I'm calling you," I told him.

"Oh," he said, an awkward chuckle coming from his side. "How was your show yesterday?"

"It went pretty well. Forgot some lyrics, but things were fine otherwise." I turned on the tv, zapping through all the different channels, but nothing seemed interesting enough for me to watch, so I gave up and lied down, my nose facing the ceiling.

"How do you forget lyrics to songs you write yourself?" he asked, and I knew he was holding in his laughter.

"Sure. Like you never forget you lines."

"My lines are arguably a lot more, I don't write them myself, and isn't it a thing that things are easier to remember when put to music?"

"Shut up," I said, covering my face as I smiled. I knew in my heart that technically he was right, but I wasn't going to admit this. "How about you tell me about your day instead?"

"Right, you're trying to redirect the conversation," he said. "But if you really care, my day was alright."

"Okay, maybe I was trying to redirect the conversation," I admitted. Kind of admitted, at least. "But I also truly care about your day."

"It's not that eventful. I think you forgetting your lyrics is a lot more interesting." He let out a stifled laugh, and I couldn't help big smile like a lunatic as I always seemed to do when talking to him.

"Well, I don't care about eventful. You could count the hairs on your head out loud and I still wouldn't get bored."

He laughed making my smile grow wider. "Really, my day wasn't very eventful. I wouldn't even know what to tell you."

"Then I'll ask you something more specific. What's the dumbest thing you've said or done today?"

"The dumbest thing?"

"Yeah. Like, mine was... oh right, I remember. So we had this little stop at this gas station, and we were just sitting and talking with the bus driver. And we'd been sitting there talking for so long that when we left and started driving again, I asked everyone where the driver was."

He laughed, and I smiled. There was just something about this laugh that instantly made my mood a lot better.

"It's easy for you to say stupid shit."

"Excuse me?" I asked him, grabbing my chest dramatically. "Are you calling me dumb, Nolan?"

"Maybe I did," he said.

"I mean, you wouldn't be wrong. I can be quite dumb."

"What are you doing right now?" he asked me. I hadn't realized how tired he sounded until he yawned.

"Just in bed, watching the ceiling." the ceiling in the hotel wasn't plain white as per usual. Instead, this one had a marble-like pattern. Beige against off-white, with a solid round lamp resembling the sun.

"Ah, your favorite activity. Did you know you do that a lot?"

"Laying in bed?"

"No, staring at blank shit. The ceiling, the walls... I mean, you even put those lights on your ceiling. Most people wouldn't even look enough to notice."

"But you noticed," I said.

"I did," he said. "It's because I like you."

I smiled, still staring at the ceiling.

"Maybe you should stop doing that."

"Doing what? Acting cheesy or liking you?"

"Both," I said. "If you keep doing I'll that I might just end up writing some song about you."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

"A threat, clearly."

"Too bad," he said, followed by another yawn. "I'll take it as a promise instead."

•••