Page 8 of Heartstring

Do I voice my thoughts? Fox is right. Kay and I are too far from our family. But how do I make them understand?

“Do you remember when Tony introduced me to you?” I ask. “The three of you stared at me like, who the hell is this guy?”

“Stone said you were too blond,” Fox says.

“And too tall,” Bastian adds with a laugh because Stone has always been the shortest in the band, even though he’s not short. Something we tease him about with little mercy.

“Remember what happened as soon as we picked up the instruments…” I let my words sit because they know what happened.

Bastian looks at Fox. “I was like coming home. You fit perfectly with us, as if we’d been playing together for years.”

“That’s exactly how I felt when I saw this place,” I explain. “Don’t ask me to understand it because it’s something I just felt. It’s as if the wind just blew me in this direction.”

Bastian, who’s always been a little more superstitious than the rest of us, raises his feet onto the bare coffee table in front of him.

“I gotcha, man. I hate that you’re so far from us, but I get it. It must be fate, and you don’t want to mess with that.”

“Or sheer stupidity,” Stone says, returning from the kitchen with a bag of chips. “Dude, you have no food. I just fixed your heating. Order us some food for my trouble.”

I laugh.

“Good luck with that.” They all stare at Kay and then each other. “This place is such a backward hell hole it doesn’t even have a place that does takeout.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. We just haven’t found it.”

“I don’t care. I want to move and live close to everyone.” She stands and leaves the room.

“Kayleigh…”

Bastian, who has always taken the lead with the band, crosses one leg over the other and rests his hands behind his head. “What can we do to help?”

“We can help you pack. You know we have a couple of spare rooms at our place,” Stone says.

“You mean my place,” Bastian says, even though he doesn’t mean shit. His place may as well be home to all of us for all the time we’ve spent there over the years. Even his family has become a family to us.

“Plus, the studio,” Nikko adds. “Yeah, you’re meant to be on a break, but you know Daisy will start hounding you for music in the new year. I already have some ideas for next year’s tour.”

“That’s months away. We’ll figure out a way to write the music and practice, but Kay needs more than living permanently with five single middle-aged men.” I hate that I need to say it, but it’s true. I’ll never regret raising her on the road with us, but it’s not sustainable. For either of us.

“Who are you calling middle-aged?” Stone asks.

“Dude, you just turned forty. You may be the youngest in the band, but you’re definitely no baby anymore,” Bastian says.

“You take those words back. I will always be young.”

“Hey, I’m only thirty-five, you geriatrics,” Nikko says, reminding us that even though he joined us as our tour manager about ten years after we started, he’s still very much part of the band.

“Regardless,” I say. “Kay needs a stable home. Since we agreed we’re not touring over the next year, I thought we’d try being a more traditional family.”

Stone laughs. “Dude, that girl learned to walk on stage. Her first words were ‘louder’ and ‘rock it.’ You can’t put the cat back in the bag.”

“No, but I can show the cat there’s more than one way to drink milk.”

Fox gets up from the couch and is quickly replaced by Stone, who lies sideways, resting his head on Bastian’s legs.

“Let me speak to her,” Fox says before disappearing under the archway toward the bedrooms upstairs.

I let out a tired breath.