Perhaps sober Shay would’ve pushed him, but this version of him seemed as lost as Ollie felt. Unable to resist a last jolt of sensation, Ollie kissed the very tip of his nose. “You want me to walk you back to the bar?”
“Nah.” Shay rubbed his hands over his face. “I think… I think I want to sleep.”
Ollie folded his arms tight around himself. “Come on, then. I’ll take you back to the bus.”
* * *
Shay sleptthe entire journey from Belfast to Edinburgh. Ollie knew this because he checked every six seconds to see if he was awake yet.
The rest of the band checked on him too. On the ferry crossing, Larry came past and tucked another blanket over him. At Inverness, Mara bent over his bunk and did something Ollie couldn’t see.
At a service station, Ollie fled the bus to catch a smoke to calm his nerves. Being hung-over and dog-tired had distracted him from being on the road, but as his head cleared, it found new ways to kill him.
Ben joined him in the smoking shelter.
“It’s nice,” Ollie said. “That you all look after Shay.”
“We all look after each other in this band, mate.”
“That’s nice too.”
Ben chuckled. “Shay does make it easy, though. I mean, the last band I was in, we were like brothers, man, but this lot were wild when we first started out. Took me and Larry a while to help them see life on the road was far easier if we took care of each other. Just so happens Shay needs it more than the rest of us sometimes.”
Ollie liked Ben. The fiddle player always seemed to know—and say—exactly what people needed to hear. No padding or bullshit. “Is he okay?”
“Shay? Yeah, course he is. Kid’s tired, that’s all. He leaves his heart on the stage, and it takes it out of him when he’s got no proper bed to go home to. He’ll be right as rain by this afternoon.”
Ollie believed him because he had to. Ben knew Shay—and life on the road—far better than Ollie, but guilt that he might’ve upset Shay gnawed at him. And then came scathing self-loathing. Shay had played two packed-out shows in a row, on top of media commitments, and working with Ollie. Add in a hangover, and it wasn’t hard to see why he’d slept the day away.He probably doesn’t even remember last night.
But even as Ollie thought it, he knew it wasn’t true.Olliehad been off his nut last night, and he recalled every millisecond of Shay’s lips on him. His taste, his smell. His hands ghosting where Ollie wanted them most but in the same breath couldn’t bear them to be.
He’ll remember.
The certainty stayed with him through two piggybacked cigarettes and carried him back to the bus, but when he boarded to find Shay not only awake, but up, dressed, and picking idly at his favourite guitar, the bland smile that greeted him chased the feeling away.
It was the same smile Shay had given him the day they’d met. The same smile he gave anyone who didn’t truly hold his attention. Whether he remembered last night or not, perhaps Shay had made a conscious decision to forget.
* * *
Ollie wokewith a jump. Instantly, silence surrounded him, making the pounding of his pulse even louder.Fuck.He sat up and pressed a hand over his chest. His thumping heart wasn’t as fast as it sounded in his head—it never was—but disquiet crawled under his skin all the same.
Pushing the books he’d fallen asleep with off his torso, he absorbed the claustrophobic box that was his makeshift bedroom. Despite it being the middle of the day, he was cloaked in darkness. The blackout curtain had been pulled around his bunk—by whom, he had no idea.
Embarrassment joined the creeping sensation in his veins. He hadn’t meant to knock out, but ten days of living on his nerves had finally caught up with him. When the band had left for their Edinburgh gig the night before, he’d settled on his bunk to finalise the information he planned to reveal to Shay in Glasgow. Last time he’d checked his watch, it had been a little after midnight. Now it was ten o’clock in the morning, and drawing the curtain open confirmed that he’d missed the band coming and going.
He was alone.
Relief and disappointment fought for dominance. Ollie had hardly set eyes on Shay since their drunken fumble in Belfast, but the growing anxiety in his bones made him crave solitude, a limiting habit he’d never tried that hard to kick. He missed the bustle and noise of the band bickering over breakfast. But he didn’t miss curious eyes on him—Shay’s curious eyes.
Loser.
Fuck it.
I don’t care.
For a long moment, he almost believed it, but then the bus door opened and the band piled in: Larry, Mara, Jumbo, and Ben. Shay was last, head bowed, scribbling in a notebook. He didn’t look up as he shuffled down the aisle and flopped on his bed, and the lack of eye contact—of any contact—flayed Ollie.What do you expect? You snogged him, then shoved him away.
But so what if he had? They were both adults. There was no need for Shay to blank him.
