Salem, who hands me the wheel and means it. He lets me steer without sulking and takes my notes without turning them into a fight. He is chaos on a leash that he’s finally holding, and he gives me the leash when I ask.
I’ve never had any of that. Not from a man. Not from anyone.
There’s mutual trust. There is respect. It’s simple. I’ve never had simple. It makes me greedy. I want it to last.
But they are about to go on tour. Tours kill things. I know because last time I chased a musician onto a bus, my life fell apart. My inbox went stale. My clients slid away. My identity turned into someone’s plus-one. I don’t want to repeat a loop just because it’s familiar.
So I don’t wait to see what they’ll offer. I cut into their conversation, because I don’t wait for answers anymore. “What do you want me to do when you go on tour?”
Three heads turn. Knox sets his fork down. “Come with us. Be on the road. Be in the rooms. We work better with you near.”
“But I can’t work on the road in a busy tour bus or plane.” I breathe in slow. “Last time I followed a musician, I lost my life. I can’t be the tagalong who waits in a green room. I need space and bandwidth and a door that locks that isn’t someone else’s door.”
“Okay,” he says, not defensive. “That’s fair.”
Salem leans forward. “Then don’t follow. Fly out every couple of cities. Come for three days, go home for seven. Ping-pong. You keep your life and still see us. We get you without derailing you.”
“As much as I’d love that, dropping into your process mid-run yanks you off your track. It would yank me off mine. You hate interruptions in the middle of a build. So do I. It sounds romantic, but it’s not stable.”
“True,” he says, conceding cleanly.
Houston taps the edge of the table, thinking the way he does with his hand. “Tour with us. But not on our bus. Take your own. A small bus if you want wheels. A plane, when we jump across the country. You have your own desk, your own bed, your own call sheet. You can come see us when you want to. You can shut your door when you need to. You can do your job and still be with us.”
I don’t answer right away because my brain goes to budgets and logistics and whether I’m going to turn into that person who requires a private anything. “That’s expensive.”
Salem shrugs. “We pay you. You’re our Creative Director. You do the visuals and the mapping and the behind-the-scenes cadence and the merch drops and the venue looks. You’re not a guest.”
Knox nods. “And you’re our advisor. You’re good at listening, and at telling us when we’re being dumb. That’s a job.”
Houston adds, “And our backup singer, since you worked on ‘Locket’ and I used your vocals on a couple of other tracks without making a fuss about it until now.” He gives me the small guilty smile he uses when he knows I’m going to call him out and love him anyway.
I sit back. Flabbergasted is a dumb word. It fits. I think out loud because I don’t want to build a fantasy in my head before the facts are out on the table.
“It’s one thing to be the girlfriend who tags along and waits while you do the real work. It’s another to be a full participant on a tour. If I’m going to have a bus, I’m not going to pretend it’s because I’m delicate. It would be because I have a job. Several jobs. Creative Director. Advisor. Backup singer. That is a lot of hats and more than one paycheck.” I smirk. Can’t help it.
They snicker, not unkind. “We are not paying you in pizza and vibes,” Salem says. “We pay you for every job you do. We should have formalized it earlier.”
Knox is already in his head making a list. “Creative Director retainer monthly. Per-deliverable fees for assets. Advisor fee baked into the retainer. Performance fee per show for backup vocals. Per diem. Travel. Crew pass for your assistant if you hire one. Bus lease is billed to us through management if we go that route.”
Houston adds, “And a clause that you can go home when you want to without penalty. This only works if you’re not trapped by our calendar.”
I laugh once because it’s insane. It’s big and simple and exactly what would have saved me five years ago. “You’re offering a whole life.”
“A whole life with us. If you want it,” Knox says.
My throat catches. I drink coffee to make it stop. It doesn’t.
“Tell me the other side. Tell me the part where this goes wrong.”
Knox doesn’t sugarcoat. “We travel. We get tired. We get short with each other. You’ll hear us fight. You’ll be in rooms that aren’t made for your work. You’ll be bored sometimes. You’ll be overbooked other times. The bus will break. A projector will die. A venue will say no to your request because they hate being told what to do by someone who isn’t on their payroll.”
“Fans will talk,” Salem says. “You know that part. They’ll DM you dumb and worse. They’ll assume things. They’ll call you names. They already do.”
Houston says the thing I need someone to say out loud. “And we have to keep doing the work we promised each other. No barking. No minimizing. Halt means halt. You say you’re not safe, we stop. You say you’re fine, we believe you. We mess up, we fix it. Not in public. In our room.”
I look at them. Three men who didn’t ask me to be less. Three men who keep asking me to be more. Who keep expecting more of me. Who don’t see me as a liability, but an advantage.
“Okay. Here’s what I want if I say yes.”
