Rob couldn’t manage to get a decent night’s sleep if he tried.

It was always the same—the instantaneous fallout into a deep sleep, then the light semi-sleep state he seemed to dwell in for the rest of the night. 

He had finally begun to accept that the day was beginning, when he felt Jane’s body rolling over as well, positioning herself to where she could clearly see Rob. And from the look on her face, she was definitely feeling as shitty as he was. The stresses of the tour, as always, seemed to be taking a deadly toll. 

His mind was lost in a fog, in the moment—her words falling on his ears as they had so many times, but he somehow found himself not thinking so much. Not processing her emotions as they came to him. The way he had always done before, perhaps, felt much less apparent in the present moment. He had been quickly pulled aside by her only moments after accepting the day had begun, and already here was another slew of apologies.

Was he cruel for thinking so? Probably so. He couldn’t hardly blame Jane for taking the time for apologizing—he was thankful for it, in all honesty. But the consistently of a morning wakeup call—the quick apologies just after the haze of the night, in sleep or in wait, felt so very tired to him regardless. 

It was too much. That much he was sure of. Too much for him to think of now, when his mind wandered so little in this moment. It only wanted catharsis. A moment of escape. Refuge to anything other than this moment.

And yet, that was the same as what Jane had done. What she had given to him yesterday. For him to be so mad at her for this, and wanting to leave, was also the very thing that had gotten him mad in the first place. 

He couldn’t just walk away from this—no matter how hard he wanted to. And she was, in fact, approaching him. Maybe in a way he wasn’t the biggest fan of—but in her own way nonetheless. 

And through it all, he still loved her. 

That much was enough to fight his bitter nature. 

Without so much as a word, Rob slipped forward, towards Jane, and pulled her close to him. He laid back down onto his back, gently maneuvering her body atop his. 

“Hey,” he whispered, “You can’t go back. Neither of us can. The best we can do is deal with what’s been done.”

Simple words with little more meaning than the sum of their parts, perhaps, but it was what Rob had to offer her. 

“Let’s try to start this over, alright?” Rob said. He glanced at the time on his phone, before turning back to her. “We’ve got thirty minutes until we really should be getting up. Let’s just, relax, alright? Thirty minutes of quiet. Then we’ll deal with whatever the fuck’s on the other side of this curtain.”

It felt like a decent compromise; the soft spot between his new-found drive to fix the damage that had been done, and his fight-or-flight response telling him that laying in bed was surely the safest option. Plus, he just gave himself what he always felt like he lacked—more time. 

Rob wrapped his arms around Jane and closed his eyes again.

And this time, if only for a few minutes, Rob slept soundly. 

—

An hour later, most of the band’s entourage sat comfortably in a waiting room in Vienna. The venue here was stark and cold—the walls seeming as if they had never heard music within them, even if it were false. Crumbled papers labeled “Vicarious - Waiting Room” sat in the trash. Tonight would be a solo show. 

Rob fiddled with his coffee (his second that morning already) and stared blankly into the conference phone as Harold walked the group through what was happening stateside: 

“It’s bad, but maybe it’s fixable,” Harold said. If Rob had done the math in his head correctly, it was most likely late at night for Harold. “Rob, thanks for that press release. I never got a chance to tell you. It definitely bought us some time to think.”

“Yeah,” Rob said, staring into the brown liquid. “I’m no poet.”

“You don’t have to be,” Harold said. “It worked fine.”

There was silence in the room before he continued.

“I got in touch with Vicarious, but they’re not giving me any clear answers. So, for the time being, we’re going to be following them, one day behind. They’ll play in Naples tonight while you play in Venice. Tomorrow, you’ll play in Naples while they play in Rome. You’ll play Rome while they play Monaco, and so on. Until I get further word from them, that’s what I’ve told the Venues to do. We’re playing on schedule, so we’re not interrupting any other bands, but since Vicarious is ahead of us a day, they seemed to be sharing a few of their setlists with other local acts.”

“You think they’ll be alright with it?” Lyla asked.

“I don’t think it’ll last,” Harold said, “but I don’t think they’re going to come back onto the set as scheduled. As for us, we need to make a press appearance.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you want us to say, dude,” Austin cut in. He fiddled with his own drink—a beer. “We’re not trained for this shit. We don’t know what you want from us.”

“Then play that up if you have to,” Harold said. “Say that this is all new to you. That all you really want to do is play music. Rob started that angle, and I intend to stick with it, for now.” 

Rob’s eyes scanned the room to Jane. Her eyes seemed tired, but he wasn’t sure what else she had been thinking of since this morning. 

“Did you schedule an interview?” Rob asked, still looking to Jane. 

“Not until I figure it out with you guys,” Harold said. “Look—clearly there’s been some shit happening over there. I get that. I’m not going to get mad about what’s out there, because they’re nothing that I can do about it. But what I [i]can[/i] do is make sure we’re all on the same page from now on. That’s why we’re all meeting now. So?”

Rob looked around to his bandmates. For all his forward thoughts on what they should do, the idea of another interview petrified him. He opted to simply sit and wait—and hope somebody else spoke for him.