The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys 1)

We didn’t plan for this to happen so soon. Violet still has her residency to complete, but Brenda from Helping Hands International called me and said it was an emergency. The foster family that Sam had been staying with was moving and they weren’t taking him with them.

I could only imagine how that felt. Like a family pet left behind, too inconvenient to take with. It wasn’t the foster family’s fault, necessarily. That’s how the system works; people coming and going in Sam’s life so that he knows not to get too attached. But Jesus, he’s eleven years old. He shouldn’t have to protect himself like that.

That’s a parent’s job.

It was supposed to be temporary, until the agency could find a permanent placement for Sam. But it became pretty obvious, pretty quick that Violet wasn’t going to let him go.

I can’t either, but God, I love how she loves him. We’re young and she’s busy as hell, working her ass off at UC San Francisco, but she made room for Sam in our home and in her heart immediately.

She’s still on track to be an endocrinologist, even though the transplant I received from my dad essentially turned me into a former diabetic. But Vi didn’t change her course solely for me, anyway. She just found her passion. I like to joke that she started med school when she was thirteen, taking care of me. I know she’s going to be an incredible doctor, and I have been doing everything in my power to make sure that her runway is as free of obstacles as possible.

After the Seattle concert three years ago and my hospitalization, I took a lot of time off. The plan was to stay in Texas while Violet finished her studies at Baylor, but she missed Santa Cruz too much. Reluctantly, she allowed me to take over her tuition so that she could go to UCSC just like she’d always dreamed. She finished her undergrad and then began medical school in San Francisco. We got a place in the Marina district with views of the Bay and Alcatraz, and I wrote an album. If you can call lyrics scratched into a notebook an album. But that’s how I started too. Thirteen years old, putting Violet in my music.

I quit touring to recuperate from surgery and my dad kept his promise. Once the surgery was over, he went back to Oregon to be with his wife. We email now and then; he likes to joke that he’s checking in to see how his internal organs are doing and scold them if they’re giving me a hard time. For the most part, they’re not. I have to take immunosuppressant drugs, but he was a near perfect match. Thanks to him, my life has become vastly easier. A tremendous gift and a bridge toward the two of us maybe someday having a relationship outside of an email or two.

But there’s no rush. I’m taking my time and letting it unfold as it should. Not holding back but not throwing myself forward either.

When I was well enough, and when the songs I’d been writing began to take real shape, I flew down to Los Angeles to record an album. But no touring. This festival in Mountain View, California is the first performance and the last performance I’ll give for a while.

I can’t just takeoff now. I have a family to think of.

The thought nearly makes me burst out laughing with crazy fucking happiness into the mic before I greet the crowd. I look down at Violet standing with Sam and a huge swell of love washes over me. Love mixed with fear, the kind that prompted my father to come out of hiding to help me. The love of a father for his son.

From under her big floppy hat, Violet gives me a knowing smile as her arm goes around Sam’s shoulders. I wonder how I’m going to make it through the set.

Me and the guys, my band that had toured with me three years ago, play a set of songs off the new album mixed with some old standbys. I don’t sing “Wait for Me” much anymore. I don’t need to.

Our set ends, and it’s clear three years of relative quiet didn’t diminish the enthusiasm of my fans like I thought it would. They stuck with me through that quiet time of recovery and I’m so grateful for that. I’m finally able to appreciate everything that comes with this crazy job. I give them everything I have on stage, but they give it back to me, tenfold.

A bunch of the other guys are going to hang around and watch the other bands.

“Do you want to come?” Antonio asks. “There are some killer acts here.”

“No doubt,” I say, “but I have plans.”

A ball of tingling excitement expands in my chest, completely different than anything I’ve ever experienced before, and more powerful than what I feel when I take the stage in front of twenty-thousand fans.

I slip out from behind the stage tent into a hot afternoon, and my security team and assistants hustle me into a waiting car to take me to the hotel.

“Who’s got Vi and Sam?” I ask Franklin, my head of security.

“Morris is going to drive them over, ten minutes behind you.”

“Awesome. Thanks, man.”

At the hotel, Tina meets me in the lobby and she’s already beaming. Tina became my indispensable right hand now that Evelyn is off working her way up in a PR company based out of Los Angeles. I have no doubt she’ll will be a huge success. She has a way of bending the universe to conform to her will.

Inside the hotel room, a gift wrapped in blue paper with a green ribbon sits on the coffee table, a thick white envelope on top of it.

“It’s the kind he wanted, right?” I ask Tina.

“Canon EF 24,” she says.

I nod and rub my hands together to give them something to do.

Tina reads my nervousness and wordlessly hands me a bottle of water. “He’s going to love it.”

“Thanks, Tina. I hope so,” I say, but it’s not the camera lens that’s making my stomach tie itself in knots.