And we were on track to pull it off. The tenth-anniversary angle and the strength of the songwriting that Seth and Jessa Mayes had brought back to the band were proving a major win with the fans and the industry atlarge.
I felt hopeful about the future, in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a longtime.
Hopeful forDirty.
Hopeful for myself and forZane.
We still weren’t together. But my feelings for him hadn’t changed. By now, I knew how I felt aboutZane.
I wasn’t even gonna try to kid myself about itanymore.
I wasn’t with anyone else, had never even wanted to be with anyone else since I married him, so I had no intention of being with anyone elsenow.
And I knew he wasn’t with anyone else,either.
The girls were still all over him; they always would be. And who could blame them? Everywhere Zane went, Shady was constantly having to peel themoff.
But he wasn’t messing around—with me or anyoneelse.
I knew this because Talia had pretty tight tabs on him, considering she was managing his schedule. She was doing an incredible job, researching every city we were playing in advance to find AA meetings and convenient gyms for his workouts, and even picking up healthy snacks for him. She’d consult with me and I’d help organize his day, making it easy for him and Shady to navigate where they needed to be and have proper meal breaks and downtime.
Zane spent a lot of time with Shady, actually, and not just because he had to. The two of them had grown reallyclose.
It was nice tosee.
Shady was in his forties and seemed to be playing the role of a laid-back older brother in Zane’s life. A brother who made him laugh, watched his back, and genuinely cared abouthim.
I loved Shady forthat.
And I loved Jude for hiringhim.
Zane spent a lot of time with Jude, too, and Seth. He also spent more time with Jesse, and one of the incredible side effects of Zane giving up pot? Jesse Mayes found him far more tolerable a companion than he did when he was getting stoned all the time. Whoknew?
Jesse and Zane were now hanging out together like I hadn’t seen them do in years… maybe since before Jesse hooked up with Elle and tensions in the band started runninghigh.
Dylan had become Zane’s workout buddy, and instead of lazing in bed with Amber all morning, our drummer was getting up and hitting the gym with Zane. Dylan usually worked out in the afternoon; he liked to work out before he went onstage, because he was an animal like that. But he’d changed that up to fit Zane’sschedule.
As for Elle, she was coming around a lot, checking on Zane, just sitting with him andtalking.
That actually did make me cry, once. Seeing him like that—spending time with a female friend he wasn’t trying to fuck, just talking about her pregnancy and whatever else she wanted to talkabout.
Katie did her part, too. She baked Zanecookies.
When Dirty played Minneapolis, Katie and Jesse stayed with a friend of Jesse’s, and Katie used their kitchen to make Zane a bunch of healthy cookies with seeds and nuts and dried fruit in them.Rock god power cookies, she called them. Apparently she made them for Jesse at home, because he wouldn’t eat all the sweet stuff shebaked.
They weredelicious.
Really, it was incredible to me how the whole Dirty family was pitching in to support Zane, in ways I never would’veexpected.
The sense of love and care wasoverwhelming.
Sophie, who was younger than Zane, had seemed to take him under her wing like some doting aunt. She drank virgin Caesars with him in the mornings before he hit the gym, and soon became his unofficial hair stylist. The girl could sell merch like nobody’s business, but she definitely had some serious talent with hair; hers was always in some fabulous 1940s-era updo. She’d even managed to convince Zane to let her style his fauxhawk into a victory roll for a photoshoot.
Actually looked reallycool.
Then she shaved a little heart into the short hair behind his ear, and Jesse informed him that Sophie was turning him into a pussy. I disagreed. The heart was cute. And of all the guys in the band, Zane was the only one who’d ever even tried to pull off eyeliner or nail polish, and he’d succeeded. When you were as badass as Zane Traynor was, even makeup didn’t change that. Heart or no, Zane was stillbadass.
Losing weed definitely hadn’t made him lose hiscool.
