Chapter Eighteen

WHEN SHE WAS fourteen, Sydney learned how to sew.

It was to make her first of many battle jackets.

She agonized over patches, band logos, and set lists cut out of secondhand tour shirts. She spent hours comparing thread colors and learning different stitch patterns and then many more hours constructing it.

After a summer of work, the denim vest was a riot of color and logos, song titles and lyrics, glimmering with buttons and paint and enamel pins—a loud and undeniable encapsulation of her . She loved it. And she refused to take it off for months afterward.

It was that summer that Sydney realized how customizable clothes could be. For a while, every piece of fabric in her closet had seen her scissors, her needles, or both.

Now, she’s not quite so insistent about personalization, at least not day-to-day. But when they’re on tour, she winds down in her bunk by embroidering little skulls on the cuffs of her jeans or sewing floral patches on the elbows of her jackets or adding colors to the buttonholes of her coats.

Tonight, though, Sydney has Matts’s Hell Hounds jersey spread out on the bed. Red and black backgrounds a white tape name and number.

She holds fabric scissors in one hand, her sewing kit in the other, paralyzed with indecision when Devo slides past her on his way to his own bunk.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Am I ever?”

“Rephrase,” he agrees. “Is there a reason you’re standing in the middle of the bus holding scissors like a serial killer?”

“I’m thinking about making a statement. During the second Nashville concert. When Matts is there.”

“ Are you.” He’s looking at her like he knows something she doesn’t.

Then again, that’s his default expression most of the time because he’s an infuriating older brother, and he usually thinks he knows more than her even when he doesn’t.

“A wearing-his-jersey-on-stage kind of statement?” Devo clarifies.

“I mean, not the way it is. I want to give it some pizzazz first.”

“If your fans knew you used the word ‘pizzazz,’ they’d think you were a lot less cool.”

“I probably am a lot less cool than they think.”

“Well, it’s not as funny if you admit it,” he grouses, pulling himself up into his bunk. “What are you doing to the jersey?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll cut off the sleeves, obviously. Maybe do pins down the sides.” She reaches out to touch the M of the Matthews. “Gotta keep the name intact though.”

“Well, yeah, obviously. Does Matts know you’re planning to make a statement?”

“No. But I think it’ll be a good surprise. Maybe. He’s been tagging me in things. And he’s said he’s fine being public. He’s not—”

She’s thinking about Bryce.

Judging by Devo’s face, so is he.

They don’t talk about Bryce though. Not since the day that Sydney came home with tear-swollen eyes, and a few hours later, Devo came home with punch-swollen knuckles.

“Anyway,” she says. “I think he’ll like it.”

“He’ll like it. He’ll be insufferable about it. Which—can I just say how annoying it is, trying to be friends with someone who’s grossly in love with you? Because it’s annoying. Very annoying.”

“He’s not in love with me,” Sydney mutters. “I’m not even sure if he’s my boyfriend.”

“Here’s a novel idea,” Devo says. “ Ask him.”

“Pass.”

He taps his phone against the wall next to his bunk. “No. Here, we can act it out for you.” He raises his voice. “Sky! Come be Matts for a second.”

Sky, at the front of the bus, arguing with Paul over the Scrabble game they’ve been playing, vaults over the back of the couch and into the sleeping area.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m a brick shithouse of a man with weird hair, an incredibly symmetrical face, and an ass that won’t quit. What can I do for you?”

“Hi, Matts,” Devo says. “I’m Sydney. Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

“That would bring me the utmost joy,” she says seriously. “Like equal or greater joy to winning the Stanley Cup. Probably greater.”

“You’re insufferable,” Sydney tells them. “Go away. I want to call the real Matts.”

Sky bows as she exits, and Devo rolls his eyes, pulling the little curtains around his bunk closed.

Sydney sets the sewing kit and scissors aside, climbs into her bunk, and pulls her own curtains closed. She traces the white Matthews tape as the FaceTime call rings.

“Sydney!” Eli says when the line connects. “Matts is in the bathroom; he’ll be right back.”

Sydney squints against the reading light reflecting off her phone screen. Eli has a green-toned rice paper mask on his face. “Do you have him doing skincare ?”

“I’ve got Alex regularly using moisturizer, and Kuzy is moisturizing and using a vitamin C serum. I figured it was time to start working on Matts. He’s just had his first-ever facial and only complained a little. He’s picky about smells, so we had to find some unscented products, but now that we have, he’s glowing like—I don’t know. My head hurts. Something that glows.”

“The sun?”

“The sun . Yes.”

“Well, you have my thanks.”

“You know, I asked him how he washed his face, and he answered—”

“—with his body wash,” Sydney finishes. “Because his face is part of his body. We’ve had the same conversation. But hey, at least he uses sunscreen.”

“There is that. How are you? How’s the band? The family. The”—Eli shudders dramatically—“horses.”

“I’m excellent; the band is good. Paul has settled into tour life like the pro he is, and my parents are healthy enough. Also, I still don’t understand how you kiss goats on the mouth but have an issue with horses.”

“That’s because goats are bouncy puppies with hooves, and horses are freaks of nature who can see ghosts. Your horse, in particular, looked like he wanted to eat me the whole time I was in that barn.”

“Horses are herbivores,” Sydney points out.

“Then why was it looking at me like it wanted to eat me?”

“Anyway. The horses are good too.”

“How nice,” Eli says in a way that seems to mean the opposite. “Oh, hey, lover boy. Your girl called.”

“Sydney?” Matts says, taking the phone from Eli. “Are you okay?”

“Totally fine. I just wanted to see your pretty face.”

And ask if I’m your girlfriend , she doesn’t say. She’ll get to that. Eventually.

Matts wrinkles his nose.

“What?”

“I’m handsome, sure, but no one in their right mind would call me pretty.”

“Ah, that’s probably it, then,” Syd says wisely.

“What?”

“I’m not in my right mind. As at least two psychologists can attest. But I do think you’re pretty.”

He grins at her, soft and familiar, as he takes her into the guest bedroom and closes the door. “Why are you like this?”

“Worry about your own issues. You’re the one that wants to sleep with me. How embarrassing.”

His face goes serious. “Hey, no. That’s not funny. Don’t say self-deprecating shit like that. No one gets to talk bad about my girlfriend, not even my girlfriend.”

Well , Syd thinks. That was easy .

“Girlfriend, huh?” She’s aiming for suave. It comes out far more giggly than she would prefer.

“If that’s cool,” Matts says stoically.

“It’s very cool. The coolest.”

“Good.”

“Good.” She clears her throat. “Anyway.”

Sydney still doesn’t know how they got here. How they went from an awkward party encounter to daily phone calls and flights marked on calendars and words like “girlfriend.” It doesn’t feel real, even though it must be.

She’s started dropping random observations about herself into conversation. Not because she’s afraid she’s going to scare him off, exactly, but if she is, she’d rather do it sooner than later.

Tonight, what comes out of her mouth is: “You know I can’t have kids, right?”

“Yeah?” Matts says, ignoring the abruptness of the subject change. “The whole…not having a uterus kinda clued me into that.”

“Points for using correct anatomical language.” She yawns. “Just checking. I was talking to someone this morning who thought being on HRT made me grow one.”

“That’s—wow. Okay.”

Sydney laughs along at the incredulity in his voice but then sobers. “Even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.”

“Even if you could grow a uterus?”

“No. I definitely don’t want a uterus. From what I’ve heard, they cause a lot of problems. I mean, I don’t think I’d want to have kids. I could maybe be talked into adopting, but like…that’s a strong maybe.”

Matts is quiet for a moment, and the worry starts to claw its way up her throat before he says, soft and careful, “I wouldn’t.”

“What?”

“Not to make assumptions or anything, but if I were the hypothetical person in this scenario, talking you into adopting, I…wouldn’t want to talk you into it.”

“Oh.” The relief is palpable. “Okay. So, no interest in kids, then?”

“None. At all.”

“Well. Good.”

“Good.”

There’s noise in the background, and Matts turns to face the door before looking back down at her. “Hey, Alex just got home with dinner. Can I call you later? I’ve got some exemplary cursed knowledge for you.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I miss you,” he says because he’s braver than her.

“Two more weeks,” she says.

“Thirteen days,” he corrects.

“Thirteen days,” she agrees.

*

WHEN SYDNEY GETS dressed for the Nashville concert, she takes her time. Leather pants, shitkicker boots, the jersey—cut and stitched and ironed. She chooses necklaces at random from the tangle that sits in her travel box, six standard rings, the bracelet she never takes off. She rubs coconut oil down her neck and arms and the exposed parts of her ribs to make her tattoos dark and her skin shine. Sydney lets Sky paint her face with gold on the crests of her cheekbones and eyelids, black wings of eyeliner, and gloss on her lips.

She looks good. She feels good.

The opener is wrapping up their set when Devo sticks his head in the green room and says, “Special delivery for Syd, but also, you’re on in five, so don’t get distracted.”

It’s Matts.

She knew he was here. He sent her a series of selfies from the plane, sitting next to a mom with a toddler. He let said toddler carefully place stickers all down one arm to keep the kid occupied while her exhausted mom took a nap.

Still don’t want kids, he texted her . To be clear. But they’re not terrible in short doses. Also, look at these kickass dinosaur stickers. They have feathers!

He’s not wearing dinosaur stickers anymore though. What Matts wears is…black. Head to toe. A too-big T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, skinny jeans ripped down the thighs to his knees, and thick-soled lace-up boots. His nails are painted black too. Her ring is in its now-customary place on his pinky. It takes Sydney a second to return her attention to his face because it gets caught first on the ring and then the tendons in the back of his hand and then his tanned forearms and the one vein in his bicep that’s pressed close enough to the surface of his skin to be visible, like a faded blue watercolor stroke. Eventually, Syd does look at his face again, at the fresh-shaved sides of his hair and the curls falling in his eyes and— Is he wearing eyeliner ?

“Holy shit,” she says.

They stare at each other for a moment, and she remembers she’s also wearing something unexpected.

“Jesus,” he says, taking a faltering step forward. “Is that my jersey?”

Sydney does a little spin for him. “It was your jersey. I improved it. Do you like it?”

“I do. Are you…wearing that on stage?”

“That was the plan.” Sydney doesn’t want to ask, but she’s run out of bravery at the moment. “Is that okay?”

“Yes,” he says, and it sounds a little strangled. “Please.”

She grins. Stupid and in love and feeling okay about it. “What about you! You look like you belong on stage with us.” She closes the space between them so she can press her hands to his chest, go up on her toes, and say, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “Are you trying to seduce me?”

“Is it working?” he whispers back.

“I mean, yeah.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Devo calls. “Let’s go.”

“Duty calls,” she says.

Matts salutes her seriously, and she salutes him back as Sky grabs her arm and pulls her away.

Sydney can tell it’s going to be a good concert as she runs out onto the stage, waving. As the lights flare, and the hum of speakers and the whir of smoke machines drown out her racing heartbeat. As the crowd screams and screams and screams.

There are some concerts that are magic. When everything comes together just as it should. No technical difficulties, no mistakes, no stress, only a shared euphoria because they’re here, together, and they’ve come so far, and they’re here .

This is one of those nights. Sydney’s overflowing with a bursting tension she can’t explain. It’s as if her blood is full of the music she’s playing. There’s something inside her she’s barely restraining, but she can channel it through her hands and her fingers and her voice. And rather than destroying her or obliterating her completely, the thing inside her casts a spell on the audience. Suddenly, the thousands of people in the undulating mass can understand her, can feel her. It’s nights like these she wants to bottle, keep on a shelf, and take down when she’s older, when she can’t stalk and prance and shout anymore, but the tension is still there inside her, still trying to find a way out.

If memories are all she’ll have one day, she’ll make them good. So, Sydney revels in the lights and the smoke and the unbridled fervor of the audience. With Matts’s jersey on her back and his eyes on her, she throws her entire body into the music and sings like God might be listening.

And it’s magic.

They’re coming to the end of the set, only two songs and the encore left, when Sydney crouches to grab one of the water bottles littered across the stage. Rex pulls his mic off the stand and wanders toward the front, and she falls back into a sit, taking a drink, waiting for Rex to start his spiel about how honored they are to be here and what a great crowd the audience has been.

Except he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “We have a special guest tonight.”

That’s news to Sydney.

She pauses mid-drink to look at Sky, then Paul.

They’re both grinning at her, assholes.

“And the reason Syd looks so stupid right now is because we’ve been keeping it a secret from her,” Rex continues.

Sydney is so completely lost. She flips him off for appearances though.

The audience enjoys this.

“So,” Rex says. “We’re going to ask Sydney to sit this next song out. And we’d like your assistance in welcoming to the stage—Justin Matthews, center for the Houston Hell Hounds and, at least for the next five minutes, our interim lead singer and guitarist.”

And then Matts walks out to raucous cheers.

He’s got his guitar slung around his back and earpieces around his neck, and he’s carrying a chair that he sets a few feet away from Sydney before offering her a hand.

She lets him pull her to her feet. Slowly.

“What the fuck is happening right now?” Sydney asks.

But Matts isn’t looking at her. He’s looking at the crowd, clearly nervous and trying to hide it, as he pulls her forward to sit and then stands behind her for a moment, hands on her shoulders, squeezing. He ducks to kiss the side of her head. Once. Twice.

“Please don’t kill me for this,” he says, barely audible over the anticipatory screams of the audience.

He squeezes her shoulders one last time, and then he approaches her abandoned mic stand and pauses to extend it because he’s a giant.

“Hi.” Matts shades his eyes with one hand. “Holy shit, the lights really are blinding. So. Hi.” He waves in the general direction of the audience and gets a louder cheer in response. “I’m Matts. And Syd didn’t know about this, but the band was cool enough to help me out with a surprise for her. And, uh, the surprise is that I wrote a song for Sydney.”

Her heart might stop. Just for a minute. But then it starts right back up again, double-time, because she needs to stay alive for whatever the hell is about to happen.

Matts glances at her, then immediately away again.

“I wrote the music, but I had some help from Damien Bordeaux with the lyrics. He’s a poet; he’s great. But, yeah, I wrote a song for Sydney. And I’m going to steal five minutes of your concert to try and make a grand romantic gesture—if that’s cool with you guys?”

Judging by the roar it produces, the audience thinks this is a very cool plan, indeed.

So does Sydney.

Rex comes up behind Matts to help him get his guitar plugged in to the house while he keeps talking. Rex winks at her from behind Matts’s back.

“All right,” Matts is saying, laughing a little at the crowd’s exuberance. “Thanks. So, this is for Sydney. Obviously. But I’m going to sing it to y’all. Because I think if I look at her, I won’t be able to do this. Okay? Okay.”

He slips in his earpieces, looks to each of the band members, skipping over Sydney in her chair entirely, before playing a quick scale.

He steps back, then pauses, leaning into the mic again. “Sorry. It’s called ‘Eurydice.’ So. Here we go.”

He nods to Paul.

And they begin.

The spotlights fan away from the stage, out across the audience, up and away. Darkness settles save the green-blue backlight behind Sky and her drums, and the arena goes eerily quiet. Waiting.

The fog machines start up, and the two guitars take their sweet time building a slow, wailing riff together as the smoke coalesces around Matts’s feet, as he shifts to butt his lips against the mic cage, as he exhales, long and slow, like it’s a lyric.

Finally, he sings:

You act like you don’t know

That I wage a holy war

Watching you sleep in my bed,

Leaving your jeans on my floor

How do I prove to you

I’m not what I was before

When all my words are crossed out lines

scattered on the floor

See, if I loved you less,

I could talk about it more

But I don’t, and I can’t,

But I’ll try this once to implore

Rex slams into the song at the same time Sky enters with a clash of cymbals, and Matts abandons his guitar to hold the mic stand with both hands, eyes closed, voice rough and deep and perfectly imperfect as he ramps into a shout at the chorus:

Eurydice, please,

I’ll get down on my fucking knees

I don’t want you

I need you

Oh God,

don’t leave me to drown

If you’re going to hell,

Take me with you

Or I’ll follow you down

He starts the next verse—something about desperation, something about being consumed—and she watches his fingers, his hands, his throat, his mouth. The feral way he’s got his legs braced and his chest curved and his guitar resting on his thigh. Sydney wants to look at all of him at once, but she can’t because too much is happening, and it’s—it’s too perfect. She wants to slow time down, to rewind and start over from the moment he walked on stage, to replay the way his breath hitches and his mouth curls in a beautiful grimace around lyrics he wrote for her. About her. She wants to live right here, sitting in this metal chair, forever, maybe.

And then Matts is coming off the second chorus with a rough hum, an exhale, cutting his eyes to look at her for the first time—dark and serious and more than a little wild.

She’s dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or maybe she’s dying. Maybe there was some freak accident during mic check, and a piece of scaffolding fell on her head, and she’s in the back of an ambulance right now while the last of her remaining neurons paint a pretty fantasy for her while she gasps her final breaths.

Paul digs into a guitar solo as Matts shoves hair out of his face, then resets his hands on the strings. He reenters with both his guitar and a wordless croon, drifting up and then down into the next (final? She hopes it isn’t final) verse:

Half agony half hope

I’ve loved none but you

I won’t look back, but I’ll beg

because begging’s what you’re due

Tell me what you want, tell me what to say

Look what you’ve done to me

I wouldn’t have it any other way

Matts slings his guitar to his back and wrenches the mic off the stand, then stalks to where she’s sitting, and then—

Then he kneels .

Right in front of her. He sits back on the heels of his boots. He looks up at her.

Eurydice, please,

I’m down on my fucking knees

I don’t want you

I need you

Oh God,

don’t leave me to drown

If you’re going to hell,

Take me with you

Or I’ll follow you down

And the rest of the band is wrapping up the song—Paul is doing some truly impressive work, she’s pretty sure, and Sky is wailing on the drums. But Matts is on his knees in front of her in a stadium full of thousands of people, and he’s breathing hard, and he’s looking at her.

It feels like déjà vu when she stands and closes the scant space between them:

Her fingers on his face, her rings against his heated skin, there’s something close to desperation in his eyes as she rubs her thumb over his bottom lip.

The crowd is in an absolute uproar even before she kneels with him, even before she tips her head and pushes forward into him, slow, inevitable, to brush their mouths together, even before his hands come up to frame her face, to pull them closer, to cling.

But after, the crowd gets even louder.