Never Been Shipped

Chapter
One

John didn't need new strings. He could've easily bought them in the month he had before the cruise would set sail, could've ordered them online and had them waiting at the house by tomorrow morning. Hell, he probably had several unopened packets of strings already in his guitar case, or shoved deep in his underwear drawer, or slid carelessly somewhere under his bed.

It was a delay tactic. He knew it, and he didn't care.

The bell on the door to the music shop tinkled overhead as he stepped in, already comforted by being surrounded by instruments-the wall of electric guitars hung up for display, the row of amps to test out, the drum kits and xylophones and keyboards set up where kids wouldn't be able to help themselves when they walked by. The only downside was that his favorite clerk wasn't behind the counter, but that was okay. He'd be in and out.

Except John had never made a quick trip to a music store in his life, and he certainly wasn't going to start today, when the whole point was to put off the inevitable. He wandered over to the guitars, his eyes drawn to one with a sunburst paint job and a fifteen-hundred-dollar price tag. He took it down from the wall and plugged it into an amp.

"Sir?" The freckled clerk-he couldn't have been more than eighteen years old-came over before John even had time to play the May I help you? riff. "I'm sorry, sir, you're not supposed to touch the guitars."

John knew that. There was an index card with that very message printed on it, stuck between the strings. Sometimes John played around it if he was just looking to fuck off for a second, other times he removed it entirely if it was interfering with his ability to play.

"Sorry," he said. "Usually I come when Gary's here, and he always lets me get them down myself."

The clerk's face brightened for a second at the mention of Gary's name, then dropped again. "I get it, but customers really aren't allowed to-"

And then the clerk's face changed completely, and John knew with a sinking feeling exactly what was coming. As a teenager, John had been in a band that had released a couple albums, toured the world, and, most memorably, performed a song onstage at a fictional prom for fictional shapeshifter characters in a TV show that aired at eight, seven Central.

"Wait, aren't you-I mean, weren't you-" The kid wouldn't be able to remember John's name. Probably he'd never known it. But that was the problem with appearing in a single episode of a popular TV show fifteen years ago, and also the problem with having his distinctive black curly hair. John got recognized a few times a year, which wasn't too bad, definitely wasn't as bad as it used to be, but was still a few times too many as far as he was concerned.

There was no point in denying it, though. John had tried that tactic a few times, and it was seldom convincing and only made him feel like a dick.

"John Populin," he said, reaching out his hand to shake the kid's. "I played guitar in ElectricOh! back in the day."

"You played Nightshifters prom," the kid said. "That song-"

And then, to John's horror, the kid started singing it. "If Only," the one hit from his one-hit-wonder band. The big, surging high notes all came in the bridge, but it was a low note at the end of the first verse that John had always thought was the sneaky hard one to nail. You almost had to half speak it, and done badly it could sound discordant, like you'd made a mistake.

When Micah sang it, it had always sounded like a warm, intimate purr directly in his ears, like he was listening to her voice through headphones even when she'd been projecting to the back of the venue.

"Yup, that's the one," John said now, cutting the kid off before he could get to the lyrics that still felt like a stab to his gut, even all these years later. "Surprised you watched that show. Seems a little before your time."

"Everything's streaming now. And my girlfriend watches all that old teen crap. The one about the brothers who hunt supernatural shit, the one about the brothers who play basketball, the one about the brothers who live in that sick house and the guy with the eyebrows plays their dad . . ."

"That's right, I'd forgotten Ryan got adopted."

The kid blinked down at John. "Huh?"

John didn't know why he was letting himself get drawn into this conversation. "That's a lot of brothers," he said instead, then gestured down at the guitar he was still holding. "Is this the only finish you have in stock for this one?"

"What you see is what we have," the kid said, which of course John had already known. He wasn't in the market for a new, expensive guitar anyway. John got by-he was still living off his royalties from "If Only," which he had a co-writing credit on, and then supplemented that income with various corporate events and weddings he played with one of his cover bands. He lived with housemates to split the rent, he stayed home most nights he didn't have a gig, he kept his wants and needs small enough that they didn't take up too much room.

He set the guitar carefully back up on the wall. The Please ask a sales associate for assistance card was a little askew, threaded between the strings, and so John nudged it straight again. Strings. He had come there for strings.

He didn't wear a watch and didn't feel like taking out his phone, but he probably only had forty-five minutes before the meeting at the record label's offices started, and he really didn't want to be late. He hated being late.

"Can I just get a couple sets of tens?" he asked the kid.

"Of course," the kid said. "Electric? We have D'Addario nickel-wound, we have-"

"That's fine."

The kid led him over to the front of the store, where he grabbed a couple packets from behind the counter and set them next to the cash register. "What are you playing now?" the kid asked as he started to ring John up. "Let me guess. A custom Fender? A Les Paul? Wait, wait, one of those boutique brands, like a-"

"A Squier Telecaster, mostly."

The kid reacted to that like John had given him something sour to eat. A moment of surprise, then disgust, and then a badly masked neutrality like he wanted to spit it out but knew it wouldn't be polite. Probably the kid hadn't expected a rock star-even a former rock star-to admit to playing what was essentially a student guitar. The thing had come with a mini amp and a chord book, and had cost three hundred fifty-nine dollars after tax. John should know. It had taken him an entire summer of mowing lawns to save up for it.

He'd never been a rock star-certainly had never felt like one. Micah, on the other hand. She'd been a star from the moment he'd met her, with her long, sunset-colored hair and the way she lit up a room and the power she had to put everything she was feeling into her voice until you could feel it, too.

It had been thirteen years since he'd last been in the same room as her. Ten if you counted that concert in L.A.-which he didn't. He had no idea if she still wore her hair long, if she would light up when she saw him or shut all the way down, if she had anything to do with music anymore. But he guessed all it would take was another forty-five minutes or so, after he got his receipt for this transaction that was taking forever, after he jumped into his beat-up Camry and drove across town. After he arrived at the offices for the record label that made more money off his music than he did, which had cast him out like he was nothing after the band had blown up, which wanted him now to smile and play those old songs on a Nightshifters cruise in what they'd assured him over the phone was a "great opportunity." After he sat down at a table across from people he hadn't seen in over a decade, but who'd once been the most important part of his life. After he saw her, who'd once been practically his whole life.

And then he'd finally know.

CHAPTER
Two

Micah could trip into being ten minutes late for anything, but for this meeting? She'd given her rideshare driver a generous tip to let her sit in the car for the extra fifteen minutes it would take to ensure she was really late.

When Ian, the band's old rep at the record label, had contacted her about performing on this Nightshifters cruise, she'd initially said no. Absolutely not. No way. She even hung up on him, although she'd immediately felt bad and blamed it on poor cell coverage when he'd called right back. He'd assured her that the focus of the cruise would be on the show's cast reunion, and that ElectricOh! would only have to perform a few songs for the ship's "prom night," and that would be it.

"How does that sound?" Ian asked, a thread of desperation in his voice. "Take a nice beach vacation, catch some sun, sing a couple old ones, and then you're back on land and can return to your real life."

"No."

Ian had named the sum of money the band would get for appearing on the cruise, which-even split five ways. Not bad.

It had been enough to make Micah hesitate just a little bit. Her "real life," after all, wasn't nearly as glamorous as people might think. She owned an apartment in L.A., which was something-paid for with royalties from the very song that got her this cruise opportunity in the first place. But the apartment sometimes felt more like Rapunzel's room at the top of the tower, and Micah was the princess who would sleep all day and only venture out at night to roam around a harshly lit drugstore where she could pretend to be a normal person just making an emergency run for tampons.

Micah was mixing up her fairy tales. She couldn't remember the one that involved CVS.

"No, thank you," she'd said to Ian, and then offered a quick goodbye to send the message not to call back.

Of course, the next phone call had been from her father. Or not really her father, since he'd called in his capacity as band manager for ElectricOh!. She'd made that mistake before.

"You're doing this cruise," he'd said without preamble. "You need to do something with your life-and before you start, you know Hailey appreciates your help with her salon, but she can hire her own people. That's not where you belong and you know it."

The past few years, Micah had been flying back to Ohio to spend weeks at a time helping her younger sister open her own hair salon. It hadn't been particularly grueling work-slapping a new coat of paint on a wall, organizing supplies, driving around town to drop off stacks of glossy postcards advertising the salon's services. Micah had even let Hailey blow up poster-sized images showing off Micah's hair to put in the shop, which wasn't a hardship because Hailey'd always done a great job and Micah loved her sister . . . but which had still made her feel weird and sad in some indescribable way, seeing her smiling face plastered on the walls.

And that was just about some fucking pictures in a hair salon, so how much worse would it be to do this cruise, with all the renewed attention it might bring? But because Micah always felt sixteen again the minute she got on the phone with her father, she'd at least heard him out. "And consider your bandmates," he'd said. "You don't think they might be able to use this opportunity? I know they weren't happy with the way things ended, but this could be a chance to put some of that to bed. Ryder and Frankie are still in the industry, and then there's that boy who practically lived at our house-"

"Okay," she'd said finally, as much to get him to stop talking as because she knew he was right. "Okay, I'll do it."

Since then, the scope of the cruise had ballooned a little-per the contract, they were now committed to two performances, a short set and then the one song at prom night, and were also supposed to host "two (2) Activities to be named at a later date, but in no event to last longer in duration than two (2) hours each, with the Band to have final approval over the Activities, such approval not to be unreasonably withheld."

Contracts weren't supposed to be funny, but that line had made her laugh. Approval not to be unreasonably withheld. What a joke. She'd scrolled to the bottom to see the digital signatures already added-Steve, their happy-go-lucky drummer; Frankie, the bassist and all-around comforting presence; and Ryder, the lead guitarist and her ex, topping the list of reasons why she hadn't wanted to do this cruise in the first place.

Micah had at least gotten to a point in her life where just seeing his name wasn't a jump scare, so that was something. Publicly, his narrative had become that ElectricOh! broke up because no one else in the band cared about the music the way he did, which used to make her blood boil and now just made her laugh. She was glad that their romantic relationship had never been officially confirmed, so she could sidestep any questions with coy non-answers without going into all of it. How stupid she'd been to let herself get caught up in him, how stupid she still felt for not extricating herself earlier, for the sake of the band if nothing else. Maybe she could've cut out the rot before it spread.

The only ones who hadn't signed the contract yet were her and John.

John. He'd been her best friend once. Now she had no idea what he even looked like, if he bothered to run a comb through his unruly dark hair, if he'd filled out or if he was still all knobby elbows and too-long legs, if he'd ever managed to grow a beard like he used to desperately want to. "My family's Italian," he'd say. "It's my birthright."