Chapter 31

As soon as we got in the car, Sydney and I passed out in the back seat. We’d both brought a change of clothes and changed in the school bathroom before leaving, since neither of us wanted to make the drive in what we wore to the dance.

When we finally got to my hotel, I felt kind of bad for Sydney’s mom. She’d driven the whole way by herself, since Sydney and I were asleep the entire time. I woke up with her curled up into my side, her head tucked into my chest. I’d apparently put my arm around her at some point, but I don’t remember doing it.

I had a second of panic as my brain was trying to remember where I was, looking around, until I caught Sydney’s mom looking back at us in the rearview mirror.

“Are we there?” I asked, realizing we’d stopped moving and were sitting in front of a hotel.

“Yeah. You two looked so cute; I didn’t want to wake you up. You said they are in room 122, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking out the window and seeing we were in front of the door. “Sorry, we crashed like that. She kept me on the dance floor all night. I was about to drop but I swear she could have gone for another hour.”

“She does love to dance. It’s late, so you should get inside and get some sleep, since you have another big day tomorrow. Of course, now you’ve got to get yourself untangled,” she said, nodding her head towards her daughter, who was half on top of me, using me as a pillow.

I opened the door and tried to scooch away, but she put her arms around me and pulled herself tighter into me.

“Hey. We’re here. I need to go into the hotel,” I whispered to her, trying to remove her arms.

“Really?” she said groggily, pushing herself off me, although still leaning towards me. “So soon?”

“It’s three a.m. It’s not all that soon.”

“Fine,” she said, stretching.

She looked amazing, her hair tousled and her face scrunched up. I’d realized, as we fell asleep and she lay against me, that she’d decided to not wear a bra when she changed, but it was really evident now as she stretched. Knowing her mom was watching through the rear-view mirror, I looked away.

When she leaned forward, lips pursed, inviting a kiss, I panicked and looked at her mom. She smiled and looked away. I took that as permission and gave her a quick peck on the lips before getting out of the car and grabbing my bag out of the trunk.

“We’ll see you at seven-thirty,” her mom said through her open window as I walked around the car and began banging on the hotel room door.

“Sure,” I said, giving a wave as a half-asleep, grumpy-looking Seth opened the door.

The alarm was set for seven, but it felt like I’d only just laid down on the blankets they threw on the floor for me when it went off, instead of the four hours it had actually been. We rushed through showers, got dressed, and packed up. I was at least comfortable now. I’d started wearing jeans and t-shirts when playing gigs, instead of slacks and button-up shirts that I’d worn playing with Willie, mostly because Lyla refused to dress any other way, and it looked weird for me to be standing next to her in her ripped-up jeans and the rattiest shirts I’d ever seen, while I looked like I was going to church. Since a lot of singers dressed down like that, especially in rock, the label didn’t mind much, so it was a win-win for me.

Our little caravan pulled up to the venue, and it took us a few minutes to get in. The gate guard had the list of people who were allowed into the vendor and musician area, which was blocked off from the rest of the parking area for ticket holders. The fact that there was just yellow caution tape blocking off someone like Ronnie Ralston from just random people seemed strange to me, but maybe they brought her through a different way, and this was just for the smaller acts.

The fairgrounds themselves were less impressive than they’d seemed to me when I looked at pictures online. Although there were paved walking paths, most of it was just green grass and dirt, and I could imagine it would be a nightmare when it rained, especially out in the parking area which was just a field with a little gravel thrown around. It was big though, and I could already see people pouring in.

I gathered up our group and we headed towards the back entrances. I couldn’t help but notice that the majority of our group were my guests and felt a little bad about it. Seth and Marco never brought people out and I always seemed to have an entourage. I knew Seth wasn’t close with his family and Marco never talked about his, but it still felt out of character for me, since I’d never considered myself an ‘entourage’ type of person. Warren continued to be on top of his job, since everyone was on the list and we didn’t have any problems getting in.

Unfortunately, the one person who couldn’t be there was Warren himself. He was still transitioning off some of the work he’d done for the previous band he’d been assigned to and this gig had come up so quickly that he wasn’t able to move stuff around in time to be here. I knew he wasn’t going to make it, but now I really missed Hanna. Even at the shows Brent had shown up at, she’d still handled finding out where we needed to go, where the green room or holding area was, and the exact itinerary, including the spring break festival in Raleigh.

Thankfully, Seth didn’t have to bring his drum kit, since the organizers didn’t want to waste time in between acts with setting them up and breaking them down. We wandered around for a few minutes until I saw a group of people huddled together, including several wearing headphones with mics attached. While we hadn’t had anything like that at most of our gigs, for both the opening for House of Grace and at the festival in Raleigh they’d had miced up stagehands helping organize things, so I figured they’d be able to tell us where to go.

We stopped just short of the group, with everyone else giving me a little space as I walked up to stand just outside their small circle. I didn’t want to intrude, since they looked pretty intense about whatever they were discussing, and hoped they’d notice me at some point. It wasn’t until I stopped that I recognized Eli Sampson, the lead singer of Nightshade. I’d actually only started listening to their stuff last year, since they were a favorite band of Megan from the lunch group, who played us clips from their shows all the time. They did this interesting combination of rap and rock that I hadn’t heard before. I’d heard a fair amount of rap and R&B mixed, but extended guitar solos mixed with almost alt-rock verses and sections of rapped lyrics was new to me. I wasn’t normally a big rap guy, so didn’t know how well he compared to well-liked rappers, but it sounded good to me when he did it.

“I swear to God this show is f•©king cursed,” a woman wearing one of the headsets said. “We don’t have time to replace you guys like we did the other groups who had to cancel, and we put you on the marketing. We’re going to have to refund some tickets from this for sure.”

“I get it, but I don’t know what you want us to do. We only showed up because we didn’t want to screw you guys over, but we’d really like to be with Brad and his family. I’ve known the guy since grade school, for Christ’s sake. Even if we did agree to stay, all of our songs are built around his guitar, man. We can’t replace him at this short notice either, and none of us can play his part.”

“You know if you guys would just keep the needles out of your f•©king arms, at least right before you have a gig, you’d be able to make it to these things without having to cancel so often,” the lady said.

Eli’s face went red and I swear he would have had his hands around her throat had the person next to him not held him back.

“F•©king bitch,” he said, fuming.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I felt bad that the show was going to have problems or maybe because what she’d just said was so unfair, but everyone in the group was now talking, or shouting, and tensions were running high when I stepped forward to stand right next to them.

“I can play his part,” I said, which caused all of them to stop what they were doing, although mostly out of confusion, since I was almost positive none of them knew who I was or even if I was supposed to be there.

“What?” the woman asked.

“I said I can play his part. We’ve worked on several covers of your songs and practiced them, and I know the solos.”

“I’m sorry kid but this really isn’t the time,” Eli said.

“Who are you?” the woman asked, ignoring him and pulling her clipboard up.

“Charlie Nelson with Charlie Nelson and the Wild Cats. We’re scheduled to go up this morning.”

“Eli...” she said, almost begging.

“What?” he said, still angry, but not ready to choke her anymore. “I don’t know this kid and I’m not going to have someone sit in and mess up our act. It’s great he has a slot, but I’d rather us not play at all than go out and sound like shit.”

“I really can play it,” I said. “I’ve been on stage every weekend for the last year and a half and we just got off a tour. Give me a guitar right now and I’ll prove it to you.”

“Listen...” Eli started before the woman interrupted him.

“Just let him try it. If he can’t do it, we’ll pull you and see if anyone can go long and start refunding tickets, but if he can play, please consider it. I know you guys have used stand-ins before when someone was sick.”

“Those were usually names, and ... You know what? Screw it. Go ahead. Let’s hear it.”

Everyone in the group all turned to look at me, waiting expectantly. I handed Kat my guitar case, since I didn’t want to set it in the dirt, and opened it while she held her arms out like a table. I didn’t have an amp, but I was sure they’d heard lots of plucking on an electric guitar without an amp. The festival was already going so it was a little loud, but they were waiting and I wasn’t going to try to find an acoustic or an amp.

I picked their most popular song and started in on the solo that led right out of the rap break after the first chorus. Thankfully, we’d played this not that long ago and it was fresh in my mind. I had also added some of the solos into my practice routine, because I genuinely liked them and they allowed me to practice speed and precision on something new, instead of the same songs I always played.

I finished and looked up at them.

“He’ll do,” Eli said, although in a tone that said he wasn’t happy about it.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to butt in, it just sounded like...”

“No, no, no,” the woman said. “You’re a Godsend. I’ll move the sets around so you guys will be up after them, followed by Little Town, and then straight into Ronnie. That way we can move a little faster on the change out so it saves us some time.”

It took every ounce of power in my body to remain calm and collected. This was a huge move for us. We’d just gone from being an opening act to performing right before the headliner and being sandwiched between the big names. Of course, they put groups like us and Little Town, which was some kind of all-girl pop group I’d heard of but didn’t know anything about, in between the larger acts to give the audience time to wander off, get food, and whatever. But it still meant there’d be a lot more people at the festival than there would be this morning. It threw our schedule off, since it meant we wouldn’t be going up until the mid-afternoon, but I’d find a way to make it right for everyone.

The woman dashed off, I guess to let people know about the changes, while Eli and his bandmates kept staring at me.

“Sorry kid, I didn’t mean to sound harsh. It’s been a tough few days and I was just on the verge of losing it. I was actually kind of hoping we’d be able to cancel, so I could get back on a plane and go home, and I think I let that affect my response. You sounded great.”

“I can tell her never mind if you still want to try and get out of here,” I said, half turning and pointing a thumb in the direction she’d gone.

“No. Our label’s already going to be pissed about Brad, since they just paid for a really expensive rehab, but if we still do the show it might smooth things over. I couldn’t get a flight out until this afternoon anyway, not with all the food and wine people, and bands, flying in and out today. It would save at best a couple of hours, and when Brad recovers, I’d like for us to still have a record contract for him to come back to.”

“They wouldn’t pull your contract over something like this.” I said more than asked.

“You’d be surprised. Studios don’t have the same attitude they used to have back in the day, before streaming and the Internet wrecked the industry. Now, if anything even whiffs of bad press, they’ll drop you.”

“Ohh. I’m really sorry about your friend. He’s one hell of a guitar player.”

“Thanks. So, we normally don’t do a lot of warm-up before a gig, but since you haven’t sat with us before I’d like to and I think they have some rooms to warm up in. I know it’s going to cut into your time getting ready, but do you want to run through our set list once or twice and make sure everything is smooth?”