No Chance by Lisa Suzanne

CHAPTER 8: BRETT

The good news is that when I fuck up a song, I usually recover pretty easily. We’ve practiced mistakes so we know how to come back from them. It’s part of being a professional musician.

But the bad news is that tonight, I’m recovering more often than usual. I’ll catch some shit after the show, but whatever. I’ve got bigger issues to deal with.

It’s hot as fuck in here. We’re at an indoor arena in Phoenix in the dead heat of summer, and when you’re playing your heart out and beating the fuck out of your drums under bright stage lights for over two hours, it doesn’t really matter if you’re indoors or outdoors or if the air conditioner is at full blast.

I tear my shirt off between songs and toss it behind me—something I do every show to try to cool down, and just like most nights, it doesn’t really help. I hear an extra roar of the females out in the crowd who appreciate the physique that comes from beating on my instrument and the occasional run—sometimes the only way I get to see a city when I’m in town for fewer than twenty-four hours.

I’m not focused. I can play these songs in my sleep, sure, but when I’m distracted by some life-changing news, it’s hard to keep my rhythm intact. In fact, I’ve had to use the set list taped to the floor next to me four times. I should know the order of songs in my sleep, and this is the first show of this tour, so critics are watching. They watch every night, but opening night is different. It sets the tone for the entire tour.

It’s a hell of a night to be fucking up the way I am, but it is what it is.

And it’s during the second to last song in our set that a realization snaps in my brain. Tommy sings the words to “Evading,” a song he and Tyler wrote about pushing off all your responsibilities in favor of a good time.

For a long time, that was our life.

And even though we still sing about it, we can’t really escape anything. We can run away, and we can evade, but it won’t go away. I can push off this choice, or my own actions, or my decision on what to do...but it’ll still be there when I wake up in the morning.

I know what the right thing to do is.

I’m just scared to do it. I’m a thirty-year-old man. I’m not supposed to be scared of shit at this point. I’m supposed to be strong and stand up to my demons.

I get it. I know what I should do. But actually doing it is different. And wanting to do it is a whole other ballgame.

We head back toward the green room after the show. Usually this is when we celebrate. We pop open a bottle of something and get drunk. We party with whatever ladies we find. We have sex somewhere, sometimes at an afterparty if there is one and sometimes on the bus.

But tonight, none of the usual shit is in my plan.

Tonight, I need to talk to Hannah.

The entire time I was on stage, she plagued my mind. Where is she? Where’s the baby? Is she at the bar? Shouldn’t she have taken the night off? She just lost her sister. She’s got a kid she has to care for. That’s a fuck ton of heavy weight on one person, and even though it isn’t what I want out of life, Dustin’s words come back to me.

There were two people that created this kid.

Whatever happened, I had a part in it. Brianna had her reasons for keeping it from me, something that really only hits me now in this moment, but she’s gone now. She can’t tell me why.

But her sister might be able to.

Women are already waiting in the green room.

I bypass the room. Fuck our post-show traditions because I have something I need to do.

I wind through the hallways and find my way out to the bus lot. I climb onto the bus I share with Tommy, trying to picture what the hell this bus might look like tomorrow.

Maybe exactly the same.

But maybe not.

He’s going to kill me, but my hands are tied. For maybe the first time in my life, I feel like I need to make the right choice here.

It’s a little after eleven. I only left the stage four minutes ago. Sweat still slicks my skin. I’m still not wearing a shirt. I need a shower and a few cold ones, but tonight we’ve got a hotel to return to since we’re not leaving for our next city until the day after tomorrow.

That gives me over twenty-four hours to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do.

It’s not much time.

I can think on this from every different angle, but I don’t have time to. And so I act.

I press the Mousy Chick contact in my phone. I need to remember to change her name. I know it’s late, but she’s a bartender. If she’s got an eight-hour shift, she might still be working.

It rings five times, and just when I think it’s going to voicemail, she answers. “Hello?” Her voice is groggy.

“It’s Brett.”

She sighs. “I know. My phone has this handy feature where it tells me who’s calling. You should get one.”

I can’t help a tiny chuckle at her sass. “Did I wake you?”

“Yeah.”

I guess I appreciate her honesty. “Sorry. Can we talk?”

She clears her throat. “About what?”

I blow out a breath before I say the words I spent the last two hours rehearsing in my head. “We leave for Salt Lake City the day after tomorrow and I want to bring the kid with.”

“First off, no, and second, the kid has a name.”

It’s only then that I realize I haven’t actually used his name...not even in my own head. I guess it makes him less real that way, but this appears to be a reality I need to deal with. I’m just trying to figure out how.

“What do you mean, no?” I ask instead of responding to the second part.

“Pretty much exactly what I said.” She sounds tired, yet she isn’t backing down from this fight.

Something about that is...I let that thought go. It’s nothing. It can’t be anything. She’s a decade younger than me and she’s my son’s aunt and there’s way too much that’s complicated about this situation. Her tight jeans that showed off her pretty little ass flash through my mind, and I shake the thought away.

“You can’t just take him away from me,” she says. “I’m all he has left...and, well, he’s all I have, too.” Her voice breaks a little on the last part, and a pang hits me right in the guts for everything this poor girl has lost over the last few days.

“Then you come, too,” I say before I have a chance to think it through.

She’s quiet a beat, and then she says, “I can’t. I’m in the middle of a semester. I have a job. I have an apartment. I can’t just pick up and leave. There are too many logistics to think about.”

“So I’ll fund online courses and you can keep working toward your degree. I’ll need someone around here to care for the kid—er, um, for Chance, and I can pay you to be his caretaker.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Her tone is full of skepticism.

“Is it?” I ask, and maybe she’s right. I should’ve thought this through more. “You got some better offer?”

“You’re not used to anyone telling you no, are you?”

The truth is no. I’m not. But I’m not about to admit that to this chick, and since she’s here with boxing gloves on, I pull mine on for a jab, too. “Look, you’re the one who came to my meet and greet to tell me what was going on, which, by the way, I still have many questions about. But the point is you looked me up. You found me, crashed into my life with this news, and you also told me what my options are, options that are seemingly pretty limited. I can’t bow out of this tour, and you want to be close to the kid—to Chance—so this is what I’m offering. Take it or leave it. The ball’s in your court.”

She heaves out a long breath. “I’ll think it over. I have class early in the morning but I’ll get back to you after.”

“Fine,” I say, and then, to be a little more gentlemanly after what’s been a fairly rocky start, I add one more thing. “If you want to make arrangements for your sister, please allow me to pay. Whatever the cost.”

“Thank you,” she says meekly, and then she ends the call there.

So after an entire night of wrestling with what the fuck I’m supposed to do, that’s where we leave it.

I still don’t have answers.

But at least I’ve done my part.

And now comes the really fun part: telling Tommy that I offered a stranger and a kid a free trip on our bus.