Epilogue – Addison
Six months later
“Can you please stop primping in the mirror? He’s seen you a bazillion times already. You dressed like a freaking groupie isn’t going to change his mind.” I was standing backstage with Katy as she made herself over to impress Edge of Black’s new guitarist. Who just happened to be my older brother.
He’d shown interest in her years ago when he visited us in college, but she wasn’t interested in my nerdy brother. Flash forward to him being a member of a rock band, and he was all Katy could see.
“He hasn’t seen me in over a year, Addison. Things could change.”
“Maybe,” I told her, because who was I to knock her dreams down a peg? She always stood by me when I harbored my crush on Asher, and look where that got me.
They were finishing up their set and would be coming back here in about thirty minutes. I was surprising Asher and Katy was along for the ride.
I’d been in New York for the last two weeks shooting a piece for the underground punk resurgence for Music Lifetime Magazine. Despite Asher’s recommendation, Angela had hired me on the spot. She had started off her interview by explaining that she wasn’t basing anything on the fact that I knew Asher. She was just a fan of his music. My work had spoken for itself.
Because of the nature of the job, I was able to go on tour with Asher, which was freaking amazing because the week away from him had been torture for both of us.
These past two weeks had been some of the slowest in my life, regardless of the chaos of the job.
“Does the article go to print tomorrow?” Katy asked me as my Dad filed into the room. He and my mom were the only ones that knew I was surprising Asher with my visit tonight. He expected to see me in Asheville the following week for the final show of the tour.
“It does. I’m a little nervous, to be honest.”
“Why?” my Dad chimed in. “I already pre-ordered ten copies.” Dad walked toward me and hugged me from the side. He hadn’t even gone on stage yet, but he was already sweaty.
“Because it’s the first article I’ve written since college and Asher is trusting me with his story. It’s a lot of pressure.”
After landing the job, Asher had suggested using one of the throne images I had taken of him and writing an in-depth article about the disorder he was struggling with. Though we’d grown to manage the symptoms, there were times when his hands were almost completely disabled.
He’d begun to work with various therapists and we were up for trying anything to keep the cramps at bay.
“It’s going to be fine. And you said Asher approved the article. You have nothing to worry about,” Katy added as a few of the groupies filed into the room. I didn’t like the way they looked at my boyfriend or my dad. It was gross.
Except I’d befriended one of them, Kira. She had a doctorate in Psychology and had been working with Asher virtually on how to manage his stress and feelings about the disorder. He insisted I sat in on all of them. He didn’t want to keep me in the dark about the things he was feeling. It was kind of sweet, actually.
“Mom.” I pleaded with her to understand my nervousness, but she just smiled.
“It will all work out.”
“How has Ryan been adjusting to everything?”
When he joined the tour, he had just been this mysterious man on stage with Edge of Black. There had been confusion as to why Asher wasn’t playing any longer, but the PR team had issued a vague statement that Asher had injured his hand hiking the mountains near his secluded cabin. But it didn’t take long for fans to realize that he was the son of Harlan Jax. In the last month, Ryan had grown in popularity, but he had been too shy to draw away the attention from Asher and the rest of the band. Too bad the fans didn’t care.
It helped that he was a blond version of our dad. The women clamored for him. Katy was going to have some competition.
“You know how he is. Such a soft-spoken kid, but I think Asher has started taking him under his wing while you were gone. He seems to be growing more accustomed to the stage and the fame that came along with all of it. And maybe understands a little bit more about why we tried to shelter you guys from it,” she explained.
As someone on the other end of celebrity, the person that took photos for a living, I knew what kind of nasty people my mom tried to shelter us from. Hell, it took a C and D to have my ex-boss keep from printing those pictures.
I suspected my dad and Uncle Jameson had something to do with that. He was a software genius and I’d heard from an old co-worker that Dan’s entire system crashed and the IT department couldn’t figure out how to restore any of the images or documents. Even the external hardware had been wiped.
Uncle Jameson received a delivery of my favorite whiskey directly from Ireland when I found out.
“They’re coming,” an assistant said, peeking his head inside the door. His headset caught as he tried to exit and Katy and I laughed nervously.
“He’s going to be happy to see me, right?” I asked my dad, who was pretending to eat some of the crackers on the table. Except I knew that he never ate food in the green room.
“He’d be an idiot not to be. I can still kill him if you want.”