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Bobby groaned as his eyes fluttered open to find his bedroom still dark. His alarm only read 4:45 AM, and he knew once he was up, he would be up. Especially on a day like today. Today was Orpheum Day, and as soon as his brain registered being awake all of the excitement and anxiety over everything that would happen today came storming back in. No way was he going back to sleep now. Giving in, Bobby kicked the covers off, stopping when his foot kicked against something hard.
“Hey!” Came a tired protest.
“Reggie?”
Rolling over, Bobby found the bassist in his bed, buried under a blanket next to him. Reggie was still wearing the red flannel he was wearing the day before, his hair was a mess from tossing and turning and his pale face lacked its usual brightness. His chest tightened, knowing what all of these signs meant. Normally, the bassist was a pro at being able to sleep anywhere, even if just on a bean bag in the loft. Or with his head down on the table at lunch, or huddled in a staircase while he waited for Bobby to finish detention, or flat on his back in the sand. If Reggie actually wanted to sleep in a real bed, something was really bothering him. Mostly likely in the form of his parents’ fighting getting even worse.
“Hey Bobby,” Reggie breathed, his eyes softening, embarrassed even though they had been through this a hundred times.
Reggie knew it things got too bad, he could always sneak in. Bobby knew it got a bit much out there in the studio sometimes, and he and Reggie had an understanding that he could always bunk with him if he needed quiet.
Laying face to face, the two friends stared at each other. Reggie shifted uncomfortably, his arms tightening around the pillow his head lay in. He looked so much younger than seventeen like this, Bobby thought. Whatever demons Reggie wrestled with, it was rare that he let anyone in, instead always overcompensating with his jokes or being there instead for everyone else. And truthfully, so much had happened, so much had changed, this past year that maybe Bobby hadn’t been paying enough attention to his friend- but he had been noticing that something was off with Reggie. For one, Reggie's grades started slipping for the first time ever this school year. Normally Reggie thrived during exam periods. The guys would find sticky notes all over the studio with all kinds of trig equations he was practicing, he’d recite Shakespeare in his sleep, and would make strict study schedules for them to follow so he could balance his own school with tutoring them and band practice.
This semester, Alex had to bribe Reggie with movie tickets and pizza nights just to motivate him to study for at all.
Bobby was pretty sure the stress of dealing with Luke and Alex leaving home, combined with the band taking off and their upcoming tour was getting to the bassist. It had been a lot of pressure. While Reggie seemed a little less off after school ended, he had been staying over more and more. So much was going on with the guys' and the band it was like he quietly moved in, without them hardly even noticing. Maybe they had assumed with rehearsing and gigging so much, combined with home not exactly being a comforting place right now, it was just natural that Reggie would start staying with the guys.
“Did you sleep at all?” Bobby asked, his voice sounding small in the dark light of morning.
Reggie shook his head.
“I was too wired up,” he explained quickly. “It really wasn’t anything…today’s just a big day.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how any of us were supposed to sleep.”
Rolling over onto his back, Bobby let out a sigh and slipped his hands behind his head.
“I kept having the weirdest dreams,” Bobby confessed. “I would show up to the wrong venue and you guys weren’t there, or Alex would be sick and suddenly I’d have to play drums and I’ve never played before.”
“Oh man,” Reggie grinned, laying on his back now as well. “Alex would die and come back as a ghost drummer before ever letting you touch his drums.”
“Yeah,” Bobby snorted. “Then in one, Luke kept changing the setlist last minute and I kept playing the wrong songs because I was confused.”
Reggie let out a bark of laughter, holding a hand over his mouth to try to stay quiet. Beaming at him, Bobby shook his head because they both knew why that particular nightmare would haunt him.
“We’re still closing with ‘Now or Never’ right?” Reggie teased. As though they hadn’t gone over their setlist fifty times the day before.
“As far as I know, dude.”
The blanket shifted beside him, and he noticed Reggie’s fingers were twitching, playing chords in the air absent-mindedly. His face was scrunched up, like he was half delirious from not sleeping, half wrecked with nerves. The guys had been on cloud nine for a month now, had rehearsed endlessly, had written and re-written dozens of new songs in anticipation. The date had been looming over them for weeks, and now that it was here it felt surreal. Bobby knew it would do neither of them good to spend the rest of the morning tossing and turning anxiously. He had to do something.
“Well, I’m up,” Bobby announced, combing a hand through his hair. “Come on, I have an idea.”
“Does it involve food?”
His own stomach was in knots, churning at the very thought of eating anything he was so nervous, but he knew the only thing worse than Alex before he had caffeine was Reggie before he had any food.
“Yeah man, we’ll get McDonalds on the way.”
“Sweet!”
Bobby really didn’t have anywhere in particular in mind as he started up the van and pointed them in the direction of the beach. Reggie was all smiles now, window down and drumming his fingers along with Billy Ray on the radio. Shaking his head, Bobby bit back a laugh as Reggie put on his “country music” voice and belted out “Achy Breaky Heart”.
“Okay, that’s enough!” Bobby pleaded, switching the radio as the song changed to Martina McBride. “You got your music, now I get mine.”
Driving was calming his nerves in the way Bobby had hoped, and it seemed to do the same for his friend as well. This is exactly what they needed, he thought, just a nice cruise toward the sunrise.
They reached the beach right in time to catch the soft baby blue rays peering from over the ocean. Bobby felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he lay in the sand with his hands tucked behind his head, taking in some deep, calming breaths. Reggie was all smiles as he babbled on about facts about the sunrise, what made different colors appear, moving on quickly to talking about ocean tides. Initially he thought he might try to have a heart to heart with Reggie, but he was full of so much nervous energy and excitement that Bobby didn’t have the heart to bring him down. If going into fun fact spirals about the beach was enough to bring him peace for now, who was Bobby to interfere? A bemused smile lingered on his face as Bobby listened to his fun facts.
“Hey Reggie,” Bobby interrupted suddenly, cutting into a story Reggie was telling now about the best ways to build sandcastles.
“Yeah?” Reggie replied casually, not even the least bit breathless after talking for so long.
All Bobby could think was that he could only hope that in a few years, when they were well past the success of their first album and racing from city to city on buses and private planes, that Reggie would be right there with him along the way. He laughed to himself, imagining a grumpy Alex trying to sleep in the back of the bus while Reggie talked senselessly at two in the morning about a hundred facts about Houston or wherever they were off to next. Bobby couldn’t wait.
“Never change,” Bobby announced.
He smiled over to his friend and Reggie was beaming back at him, even though there was this odd flash of sadness in his eyes.
“I mean, I want you to like, grow and stuff,” Bobby corrected quickly, “but like…always be you."
“You too…never change Bobbert- dogs!"
Bobby blinked, taken aback by the abrupt change in subject but Reggie jumped up, running off after a dogwalker struggling to walk five different very excited dogs and he just shook his head. The dogs all seemed just as happy to meet Reggie as he was to meet them, and Bobby bit his lip, trying to not grin like an idiot as the bassist actually volunteered to help the poor dogwalker walk them. He was pretty sure the girl, who was definitely too old for the bassist, thought he was hitting on her but Bobby knew Reggie’s obsession with dogs. Reggie knew all the prime dog-watching times at the strip of beach in front of his house, and he really shouldn’t have been surprised that he so easily found doggie friends at this random section of beach they found. He giggled as Reggie said his goodbyes to the dogs (not the pretty college student, the dogs) and ran back over.
“This is literally the best morning ever!” Reggie declared as he plopped back down to the sand. “I can’t wait until we’re rich enough to own mansions and I can own like twenty dogs and they each get their own room.”
Bobby snorted.
“You’re going to have a twenty plus-room mansion?” He challenged.
“Yes, and that will just be my L.A. mansion,” Reggie boasted. “And you guys are still going to be my mansion neighbors, right?”
“Yeah Reg, me and my wife and my actual human children will always live right next door to you and your twenty dogs. Promise.”
“Good.”
He shook his head incredulously as Reggie’s laugh danced through the air and the waves crashed nearby. If he closed his eyes, he could just picture Reggie running down the beach with his twenty dogs, stopping and posing for photos, signing autographs like it was nothing, and going about his way like he was a regular person and not a multiple mansion owning rockstar.
"You know I'm always here, right?" Bobby asked. "Any time anything's going on or it gets to be too much, you can always talk to me. This whole becoming famous thing...we're in this together. I know it's a lot of pressure."
Daring to look over, Bobby's heart did flip-flops at the sight of Reggie's face falling, his whole body tightening, hesitant, like maybe he did have something to say.
"Thanks, Bobby," came the quiet reply instead. "'m going back to sleep. Wake me up if any more dogs come by."
Reggie curled up on his side and let his eyes flutter shut, right there in the flurry of early morning beach activity. Even if Reggie wasn't ready to talk right now, at least that line of communication was open. It was still early, after all, and though he was pretty sure Reggie was using sleep as an excuse to not talk he did look exhausted. They both needed to take advantage of the day's quiet moments while they could. Bobby let the calm push-pull of the ocean waves drown out his anxieties about today, about their future, as he lay there watching the last of the sunrise while Reggie napped next to him. When Reggie woke up, they would have to head back to the studio and it would all begin. Luke had pumped them up the night before, going on about how they would remember today for the rest of their lives, and Bobby knew he was right. Deep down, he worried that they weren’t ready for what was about to hit them- the contracts, the fame, the pressure, the press. But as long as they could keep having moments like these, Bobby thought they might make it.
He stole another glance toward Reggie, smiling at the sight of his friend resting peacefully, the sunrise casting a warm glow over them as Bobby soaked in these last few minutes of normalcy, knowing after tonight their lives could change forever.
This was going to be the best day.