The Boy Next Door

But would there be any point in even trying to keep things going if I did go on the tour? Could we really be apart for that long and still have a relationship left alive when I finally came back home at the end of the tour? A year was a long time to be apart. It wasn’t just a quick trip or a show or two. This was months and months away from each other. It was very likely there would be times when we weren’t even able to talk on the phone for a few days at a time because of our conflicting schedules. I worried there would be no way to keep up our connection if we were living separate lives like that.

But it wasn’t just about keeping up with a relationship or having a warm body to come home to when the long stretch of the tour was over. On the other end of the spectrum, I wasn’t worried about not wanting to think about her, or the inconvenience of a long-distance relationship when I was on the road with fans throwing themselves at me. There would be women at the shows. Groupies like Trixie, new fans, devotees of The Monsters who weren’t able to get their attention so they were willing to settle for anyone who could play music. It would be easy to bed a different woman every night if I wanted to. But I wasn’t going to want to. Thinking about Leah back home wasn’t going to hold me back or keep me from doing what I wanted to do, because I wasn’t going to want to be with anyone but her.

I was in love with her. That wasn’t even a question. I knew it with every fiber of my being. I wanted to be with her and really see where this relationship could take us. The thought of leaving her behind was painful and left me questioning everything. I didn’t want to leave her, but at the same time, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. This was huge. Being able to open for The Monsters created a whole new world of potential for us. It put us in front of massive audiences that may never have heard of us in any other way. It gave us the chance to make an impression, reach out to new people, and network. This was a stepping stone to the type of success we wanted. I couldn’t just walk away from that.

I didn’t know what to do or how to handle the decision. By the time I got back to the apartment, the only thing I had decided was I couldn’t tell Leah yet. As much as I wanted to share my excitement with her and tell her all about this new opportunity, I didn’t want it to turn into the difficult, uncomfortable conversation I knew it would if I went into it without any idea of what we were going to do. She would ask questions I couldn’t answer and bring up issues I didn’t want to face.

Until I figured those things out, I wasn’t going to bring it up. I would wait until I figured out a workable solution and continue to see how things were going for us. There was still a little bit of time before the tour started. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let me think and come to some decisions. Maybe it would work out better than I thought. Just because she couldn’t get on the bus and come along on the tour with me didn’t necessarily mean we had to be completely apart for the entire year.

Leah didn’t work all day every day. She had breaks, vacations, weekends. There were times when she would be able to slip away. Some of our travel days would bring us far distances between shows, but it wasn’t always that way. There were times when we would play a cluster of several shows right around in the same area. That would make it easy for her to take a few vacation days or plan a long weekend and come be with me. It wouldn’t be the same as being able to see each other every day, but it would at least give us something to keep the relationship alive.

Even with that, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Long-distance relationships never were. I knew more than a few guys who tried to keep things up with women in different cities. Most of the conversations we had about their girls were about how hard it was to not be near them and how much they missed them. Some fell victim to the women who swarmed the audiences and crowded around the doors at the end of the shows. They had feelings for their girls back home, but sometimes that just wasn’t enough to temper the craving for a warm body and some affection. Afterward they felt guilty and it hurt their relationship, their music, everything.