:: chapter eleven ::

As the convoy of buses crossed the border from Vermont into Maine, I could feel my spirits lifting considerably. While Maidstone would probably always be my home, in all my visits back to England I hadn’t felt any sort of spark of excitement from seeing the place where I’d spent the first four years of my life. Like Tulsa was for Taylor, anytime I returned to Maine I felt a lot more alive. The city of Eastport was where I had grown up, and was where the rest of the United States branch of the Reynolds family still lived. I was the only member of my family who had struck out beyond the state line for anything other than a vacation.

But Eastport wasn’t our destination this tour. Portland was to be our base for four days – a concert was scheduled for the evening of the fourth of September, as the final show for the United States leg of the tour, and we would be making the trek to New Brunswick on the sixth. From there we would be making a lightning run across Canada, taking in thirteen cities in just fifteen days. The final Canadian show was to be played in Vancouver on the twenty-first.

“So is this where you grew up?”

I looked over from checking my email on my BlackBerry at Taylor, who was staring out of the window of our bus with his nose just touching the glass. It was still very early, so what he hoped to see was beyond me.

“No, not quite,” I replied as I returned to reading the most recent email from Samantha. It had landed in my inbox the night before.

Hey Bel,

Just thought I would let you know that I’ll be at 51 Wharf from around 12 o’clock on the fourth of September onwards. There are a few errands that I need to run before that, so if I’m not there when you two arrive I probably won’t be too far away.

Also, Mum showed me the photo of Taylor that you sent to her a couple of days ago, and I have to say that I definitely approve – he looks like quite the catch! Can’t wait to meet him.

Love Sami

Once I was done reading I clicked out of my inbox and dialled up Google Maps, tapping eastport maine into the search field when the site had loaded. “This is where I grew up,” I told Taylor, showing him the map with Eastport highlighted. “It’s small, but it’s always going to be home. Schuyler and I usually head back up that way for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. It’s about the only time I get to see my parents.”

“Are you planning on it this year?”

I looked over at Taylor. “Well, yeah. I haven’t seen anyone in my family since last New Year’s, so I’d kind of like to spend a little time with them. Why do you ask?”

He dropped his gaze and seemed to study his shoelaces. “It’s just that I was hoping you’d come back home with me for Thanksgiving,” he replied with a shrug. “That’s all.” He looked back up at me and gave me a small smile. “You don’t have to, of course.”

I put my BlackBerry down to one side and shifted closer to him. “How about we talk it over when we’re settled in our new place?” I suggested. “It’ll be easier to make plans once we have a bit of time to ourselves.” I took his hand in mine and squeezed it gently. “Okay?”

This time, his smile was much wider. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed, before tipping his head slightly to the left. “You know, I think both of my grandmothers would have loved you,” he said. “Same with my pop.”

“‘Would have’?” I asked, a split-second before the reason for that particular wording hit me. “Oh Jesus, I’m sorry,” I apologised.

Taylor’s smile had now vanished, and he nodded, answering my unspoken question. “Nan died in 1994,” he said quietly. “Grandma and Pop both passed last year.”

“You miss them, don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, and yet Taylor responded anyhow. “Like crazy.”

We spoke no more of the subject after that. I went back to my email, while Taylor disappeared back to the bunks. He returned with a bottle of water and one of his pill bottles, and set about taking his medication.

At about five minutes past twelve, the two of us arrived at 51 Wharf, the restaurant where Samantha had arranged to meet us for lunch. We had left Ratchet back at our hotel under Jessica’s watchful eye, even though we knew Taylor’s dog would have been allowed inside with us. I spotted my sister standing just outside the restaurant’s doors as we stepped up onto the footpath.

“Sami!” I called out, and my sister looked in our direction almost straight away. The grin on her face when she spotted us was truly a sight for sore eyes.

“Damn I missed you,” she said as she hugged me tightly. I felt her looking back over my shoulder as she made to release me. “And who is this?”

I stepped back out of Samantha’s embrace and up next to Taylor, lacing his fingers with mine. “Sami, this is my boyfriend Taylor Hanson,” I said, making introductions. “Tay, this is my oldest sister Samantha Walkinshaw.”

Taylor extended his free hand, and Samantha grasped hold in almost an instant. “It’s good to meet you, Taylor,” Samantha said as the two of them shook hands. “Bel’s told me quite a bit about you.”

“All good, I hope,” Taylor said.

I didn’t miss the gleam in Samantha’s eyes as she replied, “Oh yes, all good.” She nodded toward the doors. “Well then, shall we? I’m sure you’re both starving.”

Almost as soon as we had been seated, Taylor excused himself from the table, and Samantha leaned across the table to me. “Now remind me, Bel – he’s the one whose brothers I hate, right?” she asked, sounding slightly panicked.

“Yes, Sami,” I reminded her. “His brothers are in Hanson. And for the love of God, don’t confuse him with Mark. It annoys the shit out of him. Just keep in mind that that Taylor has long hair and doesn’t wear a watch, and that should make things relatively easy for you.”

Samantha nodded and settled herself back in her seat. “Gotcha.” As she busied herself looking through her menu, she asked the one question I had been dreading. “And he doesn’t wear a watch because…?”

I closed my eyes briefly. I took my promises seriously, and I knew that if I told Samantha the true reason why Taylor didn’t wear a watch I’d be on my boyfriend’s bad side faster than I could blink. So I did the only thing I could do.

I lied.

“He doesn’t see the point,” I replied with a shrug. “He always has his phone with him, and to him that’s just as good as any watch. Doesn’t much help him if the battery runs out of juice halfway through the day, of course.”

Taylor returned to the table just as I had decided what I wanted for my lunch – I’d chosen a grilled chicken sandwich, and planned to ask for no lettuce when the time came to order. Samantha for her part had decided on bruschetta.

“So where are you all headed after you leave here?” Samantha asked as Taylor looked over his own menu.

“New Brunswick,” Taylor replied without looking up. “There’s going to be concerts in Saint John and Moncton on the sixth and the seventh.”

“Looking forward to it?”

“Yeah, definitely.” He put his menu down. “Though I’m looking forward to getting home more than anything else.”

“I rather think you would be. You’ve been on the road for about three-and-a-half months, haven’t you?”

“Thereabouts, yeah.” He put his left hand atop my right and interlaced our fingers. “But I’m mostly looking forward to it because Bel and I are going to be moving into our own apartment in October.” I caught his eye and he smiled before leaning across to kiss my forehead. “We signed the lease and paid a deposit last Monday.”

“We’ll give you our address and phone number before we leave,” I promised. “We don’t officially move in until the fifteenth of October, though, so you should probably call my cell or send me an email if you want to get in touch before then.”

Samantha nodded. “Gotcha.”

It wasn’t long before we’d placed our lunch orders, Taylor having decided on Caesar salad, and soon talk turned to what I knew my sister considered to be a very important question.

“So how long have you two been dating?” she asked.

“It’ll be six months on the fourteenth,” Taylor replied. With laughter bubbling up in his voice, he added, “I asked her to be my girlfriend on my birthday, actually.”

“We met at work, at the end of January,” I added. “I was interviewing his brothers for the magazine, and Taylor was doing photography for them. He invited me to a concert the next day.” I shifted a little closer to him and leaned my head on his shoulder. “We’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since.”

“Very sweet,” Samantha said, her tone devoid of even a hint of sarcasm. “Might there be a wedding on the horizon any time soon?”

“Not at the moment,” Taylor replied. “We’re going to see how living together goes first.”

Samantha nodded. “That’s smart. Good to know that you’re covering all of your bases.”

Twelve-twenty saw the arrival of our respective lunches, and soon we had busied ourselves with eating. I found it hard to suppress a groan of delight as I bit into my sandwich, and failed to notice until the last moment that Taylor was stealing the fries off of my plate while I devoured my lunch.

“You thief!” I accused him as I pushed his hand away. “You have your own lunch, stop eating mine!”

“I’m still hungry!” he protested. Out of the corner of my eye I noted that he’d finished eating his lunch.

“Hungry or not, they’re mine and I’m paying for my lunch out of my own pocket.” I poked his shoulder. “Next time we make a stop at McDonald’s, you owe me a large fries.”

“Spoilsport,” Taylor muttered, but he left the last remaining fries on my plate for me to eat.

After lunch we parted ways – Samantha had to head back home, as she was due to collect Amy from preschool in a few hours’ time, while Taylor and I had to get back to the hotel and relieve Jessica of her dog-sitting duties.

“Take care of yourselves,” my sister said as she hugged me first, before turning her attentions to Taylor. “I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, yeah?”

“Either that or Christmas,” I confirmed.

“Well, she’s interesting,” Taylor commented as we walked back to the hotel. “Is that what the rest of your family is like?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Though Sami’s more like Mum than the rest of us are. I mostly take after my dad.”

“Which I can take to mean that I’ll like your dad, then?”

“Well, considering you like me so much, I’d say so.” I raised an eyebrow at him, before grinning. “I think he’ll like you too, come to think of it.”

“Let’s just hope he does like me,” Taylor said, and for the first time I noted that he actually sounded nervous about the whole ‘meeting the parents’ thing.

“Relax,” I said. “You still have a couple of months at least before you meet my parents. That’s more than long enough to get yourself psyched up.” I winked at him. “It’ll be nothing like Meet The Parents, trust me. My dad’s never seen a polygraph in his life.”

“That doesn’t exactly make me feel optimistic, you know.”

“It should.” I tugged on his hand. “Come on. I’m sure Ratchet is desperate for her master’s company.”

As the final notes of Born In The U.S.A. sounded, to conclude the last show of the North American tour, twin roars of excitement rang out. One of them came from the audience, whose enthusiasm was tempered by the knowledge that tonight’s concert was officially the last for the year. While plans for the Halloween concert had been set in motion back in July, nobody in the Hanson camp had told the fans as of yet, and there were no plans to make an announcement until at least the beginning of October. The other erupted backstage, where the tour crew celebrated a job well done on all fronts. This one was tinged with relief that home wasn’t too far away.

I was the only one not celebrating.

I sat off to one side backstage, attention focused solely on my BlackBerry as I tapped out a text message to Taylor, who had chosen to stay back at the hotel tonight. Halfway through the Montreal concert ten days earlier he’d collapsed, the exhaustion that had been building up over the last few months having finally come to a head. An impromptu trip to the emergency room had ended in a doctor recommending strict bed rest as far as was possible. He now had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for the end of September, a few days after our arrival back in New York.

Before I sent off the message, I read it through quickly. Concert just finished, heading back soon – you feeling any better? Want me to get you anything on my way back?

His response, while not immediate, was far more coherent than I knew he had to be. It landed in my inbox just as I was following Jessica, Isla and Alli out to the minibuses that had transported us to the concert venue that morning. Feeling a bit better, just v.tired mostly – can’t sleep b/c i have a headache and my back & shoulders are killing me. :( Get me some skittles, please?

“Can we make a quick pit stop on the way back to the hotel?” I asked as I waited for tonight’s driver to unlock the band minibus. “Taylor’s asked me to get him some Skittles.”

“How’s he feeling?” Isla asked.

“He’s very tired,” I replied. “Though he’s having trouble sleeping. I might give him a bit of a massage when we get back to the hotel – I think I’ve still got some of the body lotion I bought before we left. Should help him get some sleep.”

Taylor was sitting up in bed when I entered our room, bent over his laptop with his hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and Ratchet curled up on the bed next to him. He looked up when I sat down on the end of the bed and held up the bag of Skittles I’d bought on the way back to the hotel.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he rasped out, his voice roughened from exhaustion. “Thanks, Issie.”

“How’s the back?” I asked as he took the Skittles and set them down on the night table on his side of the bed.

“Still aching like a bitch.” He rolled his shoulders. “So’re my shoulders.”

“Well, sitting like that wouldn’t help much. Did you take anything for it?”

He nodded. “I took some Tylenol about a minute after I sent you that text message. Hasn’t kicked in yet.”

“You don’t want anything stronger?” I nodded toward my shoulder bag, which I’d put down next to the writing desk. “I have some Advil in my bag.”

Now he shook his head. “I’m allergic to ibuprofen. Tylenol’s about the strongest painkiller I can take unless I can get a prescription for codeine or something like that. I can’t even take aspirin.”

I studied him for a little while. “I think I can help a little.” I got to my feet and went into the bathroom. “Put your laptop away, take off your shirt and lie down on your stomach.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“You’ll see,” I called back. I unzipped my toiletries kit and rummaged around for my bottle of lotion – once I had unearthed it, I unscrewed the cap and peered inside. It was still two-thirds full. Satisfied, I screwed the cap back on, picked the washcloth up from the vanity, and went back into the room.

Just as I’d told him to, Taylor was lying down on his stomach with his shirt off, forehead resting on his crossed arms. His laptop was nowhere to be seen. He raised his head and looked back at me as I settled myself over his knees, raising an eyebrow at me as I shook the bottle and squirted some of its contents into my left hand, rubbed my hands together, and started working at his shoulders. As soon as I began kneading out the knots and kinks that had developed he let out a low moan and dropped his head back down again.

“God that feels fucking good,” I heard him mumble, and I grinned. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Martin taught me,” I replied. “He used to throw his back and shoulders out a lot when he was on the football team in high school.” I started to work my way down his back. “So I became the unofficial family physiotherapist pretty early on. Though I will admit that I tended to use something other than lavender and vanilla body lotion when I gave him a massage.” I took my left hand off of his back for the barest of moments and waved it near his face. “I figured you might want a bit of help falling asleep, and lavender is really good for that.”

“Well I think it’s working already,” he said. By the timbre of his voice I could tell that he was already very close to sleep. I smiled slightly and wiped my hands off with the washcloth, and set about rubbing in what was already on his back further into his skin. He was dead to the world by the time I’d finished.

The next morning, bright and early, we split up. One group, consisting of Hanson, their tour manager, Alli and Isla, along with their backing musicians and approximately a quarter of the road crew, was destined for Vancouver International Airport to catch an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland. The other, consisting of Taylor, Jessica, the remainder of the road crew and myself, was headed directly to New York, our route taking us through nine cities in just three days – we would be travelling through Seattle, Spokane, Missoula, Great Falls, Bismarck, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, making only the briefest of stops to refuel or to grab a bite to eat. It would be even more of a lightning run than our trip across Canada had been.

“Please be careful,” Jessica said as she hugged each of her brothers in turn before they left for the airport. “I don’t particularly want to get a phone call from Wellington or wherever telling me that one or all of you have been stupid enough as to break your own necks.” I hid a smile as I realised she was unconsciously echoing Samantha’s own warning to me before I’d joined the tour.

Once the group bound for New Zealand had departed to catch their flight, the rest of us boarded the buses. Now that only Taylor, Jessica and I were left on the band bus, aside from the drivers of course, we had a little more room to spread out. Jessica and I already had plans for that evening that involved popcorn and Jessica’s DVD of The Notebook.

“Need any help?” I asked Taylor as he rolled up to the side of the bus and stood up very shakily, grabbing hold of the handrail just inside the door to steady himself.

“Just make sure I don’t fall back and crack my head open,” he replied, his exhaustion plain as day. With these words he started to pull himself up into the bus, pausing on each step to catch his breath. I bit my bottom lip, knowing that this was by far the sickest I’d ever seen him. And not for the first time, I didn’t envy him one bit.

“I’m going to take a raincheck on tonight,” I told Jessica as I folded Taylor’s wheelchair up. “I don’t think he should be alone right now.”

“No problem,” Jessica replied. “He could do with some company, I think – it’s what he needs most when he’s feeling like this. Aside from sleep, of course, and a tour bus isn’t exactly the best place for that.”

I found Taylor lying on one of the couches in the back lounge, his eyes closed. He opened his left eye as I sat down and carefully eased his head up into my lap. “Issie?” he asked, sounding hazy, and I nodded.

“Try and get some sleep,” I said softly, running my fingers through his hair as I spoke. “You really need it.”

“Not tired,” he protested. Even as he spoke his eye was sliding closed once more.

“You’re more than tired, I think. You’re completely exhausted. So the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you’ll feel much better.” I carefully smoothed down his eyebrows with the pad of my right thumb. “I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“D’nt wan’ t’sleep,” he mumbled – the last words I heard from him as his breathing deepened and evened out and he slipped into a deep sleep, one I didn’t even think to disturb. A few moments later I took my jacket off and zipped it up, folded it and eased myself out from under his head, replacing my lap with the makeshift pillow. A dig around in one of the cabinets turned up a thick fleece blanket that I unfolded and spread out over Taylor, making sure he was completely covered from his shoulders right down to his toes. It was one of the things that Mark had told me to do when his brother’s energy levels hit rock bottom, with the others being to let him sleep, make sure he stayed as warm and as comfortable as was possible, and to stay close by so that he didn’t freak out when he woke up.

I ended up staying by his side for the entire journey back to New York, leaving only to duck into the tiny bathroom and for meals. Anytime that he drifted into wakefulness I was quick to reassure him that I was still here and wouldn’t leave his side, and soon his eyes would slide closed once again.

He finally woke up completely just as the bus was turning into West 72nd. “Where’re we?” he asked as he sat up, pulling the blanket closer around his shoulders.

“New York,” I replied as I eased myself to my feet and sat down next to him. “The Upper West Side of Manhattan, to be exact.”

As soon as I spoke the name of the neighbourhood that he called home, he brightened up considerably. “So we’re back, then?” he asked.