"That's serious," Jesper said, so quietly that only Dylan could hear.
"No one likes you when you're smug," Dylan muttered.
"Well, tonight let's do it up right," Jesper said, much louder. "We're gonna tear this place down."
Tank gave a happy whoop, and they filed out onstage, the crowd's screams redoubling as they emerged. Dylan gave Melody a fast, hard kiss just before they walked into the open.
"What was that for?" she wondered, looking a little dazed.
The words were on the tip of his tongue, but this was most certainly not the time to say them.
"Stupid sexy rock guy," he heard her grumble as she took her place on stage.
They played songs they hadn't touched in years. They performed one song which they hadn't performed since they'd gotten their first record deal, a tongue-in-cheek pro-drug anthem that Rip and Snake had written ages ago. It felt appropriate, as both a shout-out to an absent brother, and as a way to celebrate the foolishness of youth. The New Orleans crowd went wild for it. The magic that seemed to go out for Dylan a few weeks ago had returned, and then some.
"This has been a hard road for us," Dylan said into the microphone when the concert was nearly over. "You're here with us on a different kind of night. We recently lost someone very special to us, someone who left our world far too soon. Tonight, New Orleans, Saint City, voodoo children, you're going to help us." The crowd cheered their support, sparking the flame in Dylan's heart. "You're going to help us because this city knows about loss. This city knows about rebirth. This city knows how to take something awful and make it beautiful." He was deafened by screams and the pounding of feet on the bleachers. Dylan could almost feel the energy crackling all around them.
Nothing left but dust. For you, Emma.
He knew exactly what he wanted to play for her. It was a song he had written shortly after she had been born. After he'd seen her for the first time, tiny, pink-cheeked, angelic, the music had just poured out of him. It was the last track on their first album, and everyone who heard it had thought it was about heartache-but Easy to Break was all about Emma, and the effortless way he had loved her from the very first moment he'd laid eyes on her.
That song, as it came to life on stage, transcended … everything. Tank took an extra-long guitar solo, leaning back-to-back with Jesper as they got caught up in the music. Rip hit the drums with such fervor and intensity that he shattered both of his pink drumsticks. Dylan was glad; it wouldn't have been right to use them again or put them away somewhere. He sang the choruses on Melody's microphone. She leaned close as she harmonized with him, playing a sweet bluesy symphony of compassion and heartbreak on her bass. Grace hadn't wanted a funeral, but on that stage in New Orleans, Dust and Bones threw Emma a wake attended by eighteen thousand enraptured souls.
Then it was over. The crowd went wild, but no one clamored for an encore-after all, they had already played an hour over their original set list. The band limped off the stage, their emotional pain transformed into physical by the music and the effort they had expended bringing it to life.
And when they returned to the greenroom, something miraculous happened. It was like a switch had been flipped, and life went back to the way it had been. Jesper texted his girl, checking to see if she was still awake; Tank caught up on American Idol; Rip started cruising music blogs to see what the reaction had been to their concert; Melody shoved Dylan down on a couch, straddled him, and fused their mouths together for a solid ten minutes.
By the time she pulled back, Dylan was panting, his hands firmly on her ass, holding her to him. He was hard, grinding against her like a teenager. Her breath was sizzling on his mouth and she pressed a few softer, fleeting kisses there before she sat back on his thighs.
"I'm starving," she said in sudden realization, and before he could try to stop her, she'd climbed off his lap and had started flipping through her phone, muttering about pizza deliveries.
She wandered off to make a call to a local restaurant, and Tank took her place, settling next to Dylan on the couch.
"I tell ya, your girlfriend eats too much. But I'm glad she was there with you," Tank said. "You know. When Emma … "
Dylan nodded. "I honestly don't know what I would have done without her," he admitted. "Hell, she was more of a help to Grace than I was. I was useless."
"Well, you had an excuse. Besides, girls need each other," Tank said. "They have to plug into the hive brain every now and then to recharge, or something." He sighed, his expression far away. "Emma was nine," he said quietly. "My kid is gonna be twelve. I haven't fucking seen her since before she was Emma's age. She could have died, D."
"She didn't," Dylan said, placing what he hoped was a comforting hand on Tank's shoulder. "She's alive, man. Don't do this to yourself."
"It'd end me if something happened to her," Tank muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Fuckin' ruin me, man. And what am I doing? Screwing around with my life, and ruining hers in the process. She needs a dad. A good dad."
"It's not like you chose to walk away," Dylan reasoned.
"Didn't I?" Tank wondered.
Dylan opened his mouth to say no, of course he hadn't; Tank's ex had made it pretty clear at the time that he was no longer welcome in his daughter's life. And, he reasoned, she may well have had a point. They'd been partying hard back then-Tank harder than any of them. Snake may have been the one to actually land himself in rehab, but that could just as easily have been any of them over the years.
"You're clean now," Dylan said. "You haven't used anything harder than pot in … "
"A year," Tank confirmed. "But on the other hand, it's been a year, and I still haven't tried to make contact. What the hell does that make me?"
"Scared," Dylan guessed quietly.
"Terrified," Tank agreed. "Which is a pretty shitty reason for a father to stay away from his kid."
Dylan couldn't help but think of his own father, who had actually gone so far as to write him letters. Whatever his motive, he had made an attempt to reach out and make contact. He must have been scared of rejection, and since Dylan had done exactly that, he hadn't found the courage to try again. So maybe Dylan was the one who needed to be brave this time.
He looked across the room at Melody, who seemed irritated that the pizza place was closed at this hour. She was the bravest person he knew, and she made him think crazy things; she made him want crazy things. She'd been encouraging him to at least try, claiming that not knowing was worse than knowing. He wasn't sure he agreed with her, but when he thought about Emma, when he considered what life might have been like for her if she'd had a grandfather … in a strange way, he felt like he owed it to her. Emma would never have the chance to meet her grandfather, but Dylan could see his father again. He could know, once and for all, where they stood.
"You should go see your daughter, man," Dylan said, looking back at Tank. "You should go see her now, while you can. We have a break after tonight. I got some amazing new ideas for the new album and then we'll get busy again, and when that happens you'll just find a reason not to do it."
Tank nodded, though he still looked conflicted. Dylan understood the feeling. He wouldn't have been strong enough to do what he was planning to do without Melody there, helping him along the way.
"Yeah. I'm gonna try," Tank said. He punched Dylan on the shoulder affectionately, then wandered over towards Rip, who was muttering about snooty hipster bloggers.
Melody appeared before again as if he'd conjured her there. She sank down onto his lap, and he smiled and wrapped his arms around her to press her against his body.
"That was an amazing show," she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder.
"It was," Dylan agreed. "Like old times."
"Only thing missing was Snake," Rip said from behind his computer.
Dylan nodded. "Yeah. Good thing we had Mel to rescue us."
"I wouldn't call it a rescue," Rip muttered.
"What was that?" Dylan asked, sitting up straighter.
"Come on," Rip scoffed. "She screwed up more than a few times tonight."
"Actually," Melody said. "I was improvising. I thought that's what the night was about."
"It was," Jesper said quietly.
"For us," Rip said, gesturing between them. "We wrote that song. Snake has a right to improvise it. She has a right to play it exactly the way it fucking goes."
"That's it," Dylan growled. He grabbed Melody around the hips and lifted her off his lap. She squeaked as she landed on the couch beside him and he stood, rounding on Rip. "What the fuck is your problem?"