Meet You There

Meet You There - Chapter 4

Chapter FOUR

We drove for awhile until I didn't recognize where we were. It was at least half an hour before I suddenly I realized we were driving the back roads to Bellport. I hadn't been there since I was fourteen, when my life was completely flipped upside down. I missed it, bad. I missed my friends and my old life, when things were good and normal.

   I was in tears when Caleb pulled into a parking lot of a little building. It wasn't far from where I'd gone to middle school. The building, I remembered, used to be a art gallery. I had no idea what it was now.

   "Are you crying?" Caleb asked me, suddenly freaked out.

   "No," I shook my head, wiping a tear that fell to my chin.

   "Okay."

   "This is my hometown," I said stupidly.

   "I know."

   "Where are we?" I wanted to know, wiping my eyes again.

   "I bought this building, last year when it went up for sale," he began. "With my girlfriend. She's a musician, too. We spent six months turning it into a recording studio..."

   "Really?" I asked, surprised. "That's amazing."

   He nodded. "We recorded a bunch of songs together, with our band. But... I haven't been out here in awhile."

   "Why not?" I asked, wanting to know the story.

   "She left. She went on tour, a month ago."

   "Tour?"

   "Our band got signed. Sort of. It's a small label, but it was big deal, and they wanted us to get on the road right away." He was just looking out his window.

   "So, why didn't you go?" I asked.

   He opened his mouth but didn't answer. A moment later he said, "Do you want to go check out the studio?"

   We went inside, and it was amazing. He let me go into the recording booth, put on the headphones, listen to play back. I felt like a rock star for a moment. But as I looked around, it suddenly hit me. The reason Caleb didn't go on tour with his girlfriend. I hung the headphones back up and went right back over to him.

   "You didn't go on tour with your band because of me," I accused him.

   "It was just... the timing was bad," he said, then shrugged like this was no big deal.

   "I can't believe you agreed to let me come to live with you in the first place, and now I find out you ditched your tour and your girlfriend -"

   "Iris, relax," he said calmly. "Yes, I was going to go on tour. We just found out about it a couple weeks before you called."

   I shook my head, still not believing this.

   "But honestly, I was terrified. I've always been a musician, a writer... but going on tour, selling shows, merchandise, it's not really me," he went on.

   "For real? Isn't that the dream?" I asked, still feeling embarrassed about this.

   He grinned. "It's supposed to be. And for Fox, it absolutely was -"

   "Fox?"

   "My girlfriend. Her name is Francis Fox. Everyone just calls her Fox."

   "So... how mad was she? That you weren't going?" I asked.