Now she was suddenly resurfacing? After all this time, she was here? At one of my shows?
“I can’t believe I fucking missed her,” I said. “She was right here, at my fucking show, and I didn’t see her.”
“At least she was here,” Carter pointed out, trying to comfort me.
It didn’t have exactly the reassuring effect he wanted it to, but it did make me think.
“You know what? You’re right. She was here.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, sounding slightly confused. “That’s what I just said.”
“No, I mean, she was here.” I pointed down at the floor. “Not just at a show, but at this show. I highly doubt she just randomly decided to travel some far distance to see us play. That means she has to live around this area, right?”
“I guess that makes sense,” Carter said. “She did rush out of here pretty fast and didn’t want to see any of us. I’d think if she made a trip to see the show, she’d at least want to hang out and say hi afterward. It must have just been close by and easy for her to get here.”
“Exactly,” I said.
I pulled out my old, battered laptop and started searching. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for, but I dug and dug, following every lead I could think of. It took me all the way through the concert, and the lead singer of The Monsters poked his head into the room.
“Hey guys. Great show. We’re going to go hit up some of the local bars. Want to come?” he asked.
Carter and Luke immediately agreed, but I shook my head.
“Thanks for the offer, but I can’t,” I told him, then looked at Carter. “You guys go ahead. I’m just going to pack up and go back to the hotel to keep doing this.”
“You sure?” Carter asked. “I could stay with you.”
“No. It’s fine. You go blow off some steam and have fun.”
I kept searching through the night until I couldn’t stay awake any longer. When I woke up, I went right back to the search. I narrowed it down further and further until I stumbled on an old county phone book. I looked up her last name and found only one entry. Hoping it was the right address, I jotted it down and put it through my GPS. She was nearby.
The other guys were still asleep, so I slipped out of the hotel without waking them up. I hopped into the rental car we got to help us get around during this most recent cluster of shows and headed out. By nine that morning, I was pulling up to a small, well-kept house in a rural town.
28
Leah
I didn’t know of anywhere else in the world where the paperboy knocked on every door to deliver the paper rather than just tossing it onto the front porch in the morning. But that’s the way it was in Dixon. Sometimes on the weekdays, he would go old-school and we’d start the day with the sound of the paper thudding into the middle of the door or dropping onto the sidewalk. Not on Sundays. Every week when the time to deliver the Sunday paper rolled around, Steven would walk around going door to door. He greeted each family by name and handed them their paper. It was a nice touch that I was sure earned him a lot of tips. At least one, I knew for a fact, since I was the one to give it to him.
So, when I heard the knock on the door Sunday morning, I wasn’t surprised. It was later than usual, but at least he was there and I’d have the paper for coupons for the week. I went for my purse and grabbed out his usual tip, then opened the door without bothering to check through the window. But it wasn’t Steven standing on the doorstep with his big smile and a newspaper in his hand.
It was Jayson.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Stunned by finding him outside my door, I just stood there, gripping the money and staring at him. There was really nothing else I could do. My brain had gone blank the moment I laid eyes on him, and I no longer had the ability to process cohesive thought much less put together enough of a logical progression to do anything. He looked back at me, finally cocking his head slightly to the side before he spoke.
“Hello, Leah,” he said.
Just like that. After all this time and him showing up unannounced on my porch, that was all he could come up with. “Hello, Leah.” But at least the words startled my brain back into functioning and the thoughts started flowing again.
What was he doing there? How did he even find me? What the fuck was I supposed to do now?