I was relieved—but also for the first time, I found myself wondering about what really would happen after the tour wrapped up. Before the incident with Darrel, I hadn't thought about it much. Everything was going so well between me and Jax that I'd just been taking it one day at a time. But after almost losing him, I knew that he meant more to me than any guy I'd ever met.
Yet Jax's strange mood compelled me to keep my mouth shut, and not bother him with details when he was still struggling with whatever was troubling him. I wanted to focus on getting him better first—then I'd worry about us.
So we settled down to wait for the festival. After two days of hanging out on the bus, which was still parked at the Roman, everyone was bouncing off the walls—and had noticed Jax's strange moodiness.
Luckily, Reed came through by putting together some promo work for the band to do. Some interviews, photo shoots, and the like. Not as exciting as playing a rock show, but it was something. And when Sky heard that we needed to head up to San Francisco for an interview, she had a brilliant idea: road trip.
A day later, we were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, taking in the scenery.
"Pull in there! This looks like a good one!" Sky pointed toward a roadsign marked 'State Park-Beach Access.' Just beyond, the waves of Big Sur crashed onto a sandy expanse of shore.
From the front seat of the red rented convertible, Chewie tapped his sunglasses in acknowledgment. "You got it," he said, turning the wheel left. "One sunny Big Sur beach, coming right up."
Sky had been the one to propose taking the scenic route—and renting the convertible was all Chewie's idea. They said it was for a change of scenery, but the quiet glances back and forth told me everything I'd needed to know: they were as worried about Jax as I was, and wanted to get his mind off the disastrous show and its aftermath.
I looked next to me, where Jax was playing a game of Threes on the iPad, nervously flicking his finger back and forth over the screen. "Hey, check it out, Jax." I nudged his arm as Chewie drove slowly onto the park road. "It's gorgeous out there."
Outside, the scenery was pitch-perfect—but Jax's eyes were still fixed on his game. "It's a beach," he said, without looking up. "They're all the same, and we've already been to three today."
Sky and I shared a look: What can you do? It was par for the course on the trip so far. I'd given Jax the iPad to help bring him back into the world, but my plan had backfired. Instead, he was using it to check out completely. The trip up the Pacific Coast Highway was one of the most beautiful drives I'd ever seen, but whenever we passed a fabulous rock outcropping or a celebrity house, he was gritting his teeth, too wrapped up in the tablet to notice anything around him.
As Chewie parked, Kev put on his sunglasses. "Everyone out!" he said.
Sky climbed out of the back seat, her blonde hair blowing in the wind as her sandaled feet emerged onto the parking lot asphalt. "Ahhhhhhh!" she said with a dreamy sigh, stretching out her arms in the salt breeze. "God, I love California."
She looked back to Jax and me expectantly. I got out in a hurry, but he dragged behind, tablet still in hand.
I nervously considered asking him to leave the iPad behind. At first, I'd wanted to take his newfound tablet obsession as a compliment to my gift-giving skills: he clearly really liked the gadget I'd given him. But the more he'd played, the more it became clear he was irritated and withdrawn, his expression more compulsive than entertained. But how could I tell him to stop when I'd given him the gift in the first place?
"Hey, guys, babe with blue hair at six o'clock," Sky said, breaking me out of my reverie.
I swiveled around to see a park-uniformed woman with short, electric-blue hair walking backwards as she gestured toward a group of fifty-something tourists with binoculars. As she turned toward us, I saw that she was holding a large device connected to an antenna.
"Aw, man, this is perfect!" Chewie's voice was awed. "That's the Plasmatic XL, the best ghost detector ever made."
Kev squinted. "Isn't that the same one we have?"
"No, doofus," Chewie said, rolling his eyes. "We have the Plasmatic. That's the XL. And that has got to be the girl of my dreams."
A ghost detector in a state park? It seemed pretty unlikely to me. Sky, judging by her dismayed look, felt the same way.
Chewie, deep in conversation with Kev, didn't seem to notice either of us. "I'm going in, man, back me up."
"Always the wingman, never the wing." Kev chuckled, shaking his head as he followed Chewie toward the building marked 'Discovery Center,' which the tour group had just disappeared into. "Just remember to invite me to the wedding."
I looked back to Sky and Jax, uncertain whether we should go with them or walk down to the beach. If Jax had heard any of Chewie and Kev's conversation, he wasn't showing it. It was like there was a wall between him and the outside world and nothing was getting through. Sky looked to Jax, then toward the building, and frowned.
"Maybe we'd all better go in there and keep an eye on them," she said. "I've seen Chewie like this a couple times before, and he needs all the help he can get."
I nodded as Jax grunted his assent. "Sounds like a plan."
***
The Discovery Center was a dark wood-stained building with large glass windows. When Sky, Jax and I walked in, we saw Chewie and Kev deep in conversation with the blue-haired woman, who stood underneath a display of posters full of birds and their eggs.
"Of course, conservation efforts have been quite—" the woman cut herself off as we approached, calling out, "Hello there! I'm Camille."
"Hi! Riley," I said, extending my hand as I marveled at the photos of vultures that lined the walls. With a nod to Chewie, I asked, "Find any ghosts yet?"
"Yeah," Sky said sardonically. "Careful with that thing or you'll summon the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man."
Chewie's face contorted into a sheepish grin. "Ghosts?"
Sky squinted at him. "Um, yeah? Remember the ghost detector?"
"That's not a ghost detector," he said quickly, as if we were being ridiculous.
Kev grinned. "Yeah. You guys will believe anything. This is a. . ." He looked back to the woman. "What was it called again?"
Camille flashed a wide smile—she was beautiful, and it was clear that Chewie and Kev were hanging on her every word. "It's an advanced radio-frequency tracking system," she said, then turned to me with the device. "Do you want to hold it?"