Smoke and Ink
After our day off and their trip to Canada, we had a long drive to Atlanta ahead of us. Since that was where Zac and Taylor’s wives were from, we wasted no time hitting the road so that they could spend the most time possible with their families there. I tried not to think about all that as we loaded our stuff back onto the bus when they came to pick us up. It wasn’t as though I would have to spend much if any time with them, anyway. Annalee assured me there were plenty of fun things to see and do in Atlanta, and I was hopeful that would keep me busy enough that I could avoid thinking about Zac’s wife… and his weird mood swings.
Part of the way through the drive, we stopped at a twenty four hour diner, but I wasn’t hungry. Everything that had happened in the last few days had me so confused and frustrated that I had no appetite at all. Instead of eating, I slipped back onto the bus.
As soon as I opened the door, an all too familiar smell hit my nose. I wouldn’t have called myself a stoner, but I’d been friends with enough of them in high school and college to know exactly what pot smelled like, and it was not something I ever expected to smell on Hanson’s tour bus.
I followed my nose to the back lounge and slid the door open, all too curious to see who I would find behind it.
“Shit, close the—” Zac said, eyes wide and a still lit pipe held out in front of him. He blinked rapidly for a moment, then said, “Door.”
“I’ll just, umm, I’ll just… go…” I said, staring at him with an expression I had a feeling was pretty similar to the one he was giving me. Somehow, Zac had been the last person I expected to find.
He shook his head. “No, just… just close the fucking door. Don’t let any more of the smoke out.”
Wordlessly, I followed his order. I slid the door closed behind me and collapsed onto the couch across from Zac. Once the door was closed, he pulled the pipe back to his lips and took another hit. I watched, transfixed, as his cheeks hollowed and his eyes fluttered shut. When he opened them a moment later and blew out a ring of smoke, his eyes were fixed on me.
“Since you’re here, I guess…” he said, holding the pipe out toward me. “Do you smoke?”
“Sometimes,” I replied with a shrug.
He held the pipe out further, nodding for me to take it from him. “It would be rude not to share.”
I didn’t bother pointing out how rude he had already been to me.
Well this is just between us but between us let’s get high
In pictures I have seen her and to see her is truly fine
She’s on fire
She’s on fire
I tried to ignore Zac’s eyes on me as I took the pipe from him and took a hit. It went down smoothly, because of course he was rich enough to afford really good weed, and I only coughed a little as I passed the pipe back to him. His fingers brushed against mine, and he gave me the first genuine smile I thought I’d seen from him since the night we met.
It was absolutely surreal to be sitting there smoking pot with Zac Hanson like he hadn’t been a total dick to me just a few days before. Were we bonding? Were we actually friends now? I had no clue what was happening, but I decided that I liked it better than how the last few days had been.
We passed the pipe back and forth until it had nothing left to offer us. Zac shoved it into some hidden little cubby hole under the couch that I hadn’t even noticed before. He sprayed the lounge full of air freshener, but I didn’t really think that would keep anyone from figuring out what we’d been doing. I was too mellowed out to really care what they thought, though. When Annalee peeked her head into the lounge and gave me a pointed, raised eyebrow look, all I could do was giggle.
Zac settled in to play one of his video games, and I didn’t have the energy or desire to do anything but sit there and watch him. So I curled up with my blanket and pillow and did exactly that. At some point the bus began to move, but I was only vaguely aware of it.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d sat there staring before Zac noticed. “What? Is there something on my face?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Sorry I was just… thinking…”
“About what?”
I shrugged. I was thinking about a million things, but none that I wanted to share with Zac, especially since most of them were about him. I didn’t understand why he was suddenly being, if not friendly, at least civil to me. I didn’t understand the little flashes of… pain or something… I could swear I saw in his eyes sometimes. I didn’t understand why he was getting stoned on the bus by himself as we drove to Georgia to see his wife and children. Nothing about this man made sense to me, but I couldn’t very well pose those questions to him.
“What, didn’t expect to get stoned with a Hanson?” He asked, smirking.
“I guess not,” I replied. “You just seem so…”
I trailed off, because there was really no good way to finish that sentence.
Zac rolled his eyes, but his smirk remained. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“So, is this like… a common thing?” I asked. “I mean, you don’t smoke up every night, do you?”
“Not really,” he replied, shrugging. “Sometimes. Mostly on tour, when I just need to… relax, you know? Can’t really get away with being stoned all the time at home.”
His tone was light, but there seemed to be something more than he was leaving unsaid. I wanted to know what it was but I didn’t dare ask. I had the sudden strange feeling that if I just gave him time and didn’t push, he would tell me whatever I wanted to know… and maybe some things that I didn’t.
And if I could be inside her light
I would steal enough to make my way into the night
And if I could be inside her light I might just find I’d be alright
“I kinda figured you smoked,” he admitted, giving me a sheepish look.
“What, because of the tattoos? The way I dress?” I asked.
Zac shrugged. “Just takes one to know one, I guess.”
I wasn’t so sure he was only talking about the pot. Hadn’t I felt some weird connection him the moment we met, too? There was just something about him, like I’d known him forever but also like there were layers upon layers to him that I wanted to peel back and get to know. But somewhere in those layers there was something… familiar. I didn’t know how else to explain it.
“Anyway, I think it will be good to have a smoking buddy on tour,” he said.
“Is that what I am?” I asked, the question tumbling out of my mouth before I could think better of it.
“Is that what you want to be?”
I wanted to be so much more than that, but I couldn’t admit that. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Cool,” he replied, then gave me another smirk. “It’ll have to be our little secret, though.”
Something about his words and the way he looked at me when he said them sent a tingle up my spine. I didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t sure I liked it, either.
Since it didn’t appear that he was going to kick me out of the back lounge again, I settled down into the couch, still not quite ready to let myself lay down completely. Whatever bond we had formed over the weed was still so new that I didn’t trust it to last. I didn’t want to walk on eggshells around Zac, but I didn’t see another option.
“Sleepy?” Zac asked, barely glancing away from his game.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I know my job isn’t as hard as yours, but…”
Zac shrugged. “It still takes a while to get used to being on the road. That’s the tiring part—all the traveling.”
Once again, I could tell he wanted to say more but he was holding back. Even though he’d been on tour for only a week, he seemed to already be exhausted by it. I only had to look a little more closely at him to see the signs, the way his smile rarely reached all the way to his eyes and the tension he held in his shoulders. Even though he didn’t even physically look as old as he was, there were times when Zac seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and struggling under a burden that ought to have belonged to a much older man than only twenty seven. I had the sudden urge to hug him, but I resisted.
“You’re really quiet,” Zac said.
“Sorry?”
He chuckled. “It’s okay. Just didn’t know if you were alright. Still feeling it?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I replied, even though I knew there was more to my silence than just the lingering effects of the weed we’d smoked.
Zac sat his controller down and looked a little more closely at me. It made me nervous and I wanted to turn away, but his stare was so intense that I couldn’t. I couldn’t move at all. After a moment he sighed. “Listen, I’m… what I said the other night wasn’t cool. I don’t know you. Like, at all. And that makes me nervous, because you get so… you just learn not to trust people, you know? And I don’t know yet if I can trust you, but I guess I should try.”
There was no sorry in what he’d said, but I supposed it was as close to an apology as I was going to get out of him. I gave him a little nod. “Yeah… well, like you said, you don’t know me. I get that.”
“If you’re gonna be my smoking buddy, then I guess I’ll get to know you,” he said. “So why don’t we start now? Tell me something about yourself. About your family. Or how you got into music. That’s good, start with that.”
“That was all because of my parents,” I replied softly. “My dad, he was… he was a lawyer, but really into music. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he was kind of a hippie, I guess. So was my mom, so they raised me on all this great old music.”
Zac smiled. “That’s the Beatles on your arm, isn’t it? Blackbird?”
“Yeah,” I replied, running my hand along the tattoo on my forearm. “It was, umm… I got it after they died.”
I watched Zac’s eyes widen for a moment then soften in what I knew was pity. I had seen that all too many times from so many people. But if Zac wanted to get to know me, that was a part of me that he would have to learn eventually.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Can I ask…?”
I nodded. “It was a drunk driver. I was seventeen, so… it’s been a few years. Well, six. I guess that’s not very long. Sometimes it feels like a lot longer, and sometimes it feels like just yesterday.”
Zac was silent then, and I was fine with that. I preferred that to the meaningless platitudes people usually showered me with more to make themselves feel like they’d done something than because they actually helped me at all. After a few seconds, maybe even a full minute, he asked, “Do all your tattoos have meanings like that? I mean, not like that. But is there a reason behind all of them?”
“Not all,” I replied. “Most. The first one, these stars on my neck, I got just for fun and to prove that I could handle the pain. After that, I guess I decided to make them actually mean something and be worth the pain.”
“Makes sense,” Zac replied. “I don’t have any. Not because of the pain or anything, because I think the artwork aspect is really cool. I just don’t know what I would want on my body forever.”
I nodded. “It’s a big commitment. You gotta wait until you find the right thing, whatever it is that just means that much to you.”
“Maybe I haven’t found that yet,” Zac said softly, his eyes clouding over.
“Maybe you will someday,” I replied. It was the sort of meaningless statement that I hated, but somehow it seemed like the thing to say.
Zac didn’t ask any more questions about me or my life after that, and I was kind of thankful. He had put me on the spot and gotten me to admit something I didn’t like to talk about with people I barely knew. I think he sensed that he’d gone too far, because he turned back to his video game and resumed playing it as though I wasn’t in the room. He wasn’t ignoring me, though; he was just giving me space.
I was thankful for that, and I drifted off to sleep easily, even with the sounds of computerized gunfire in my ears. I still tossed and turned as I always did, waking up several times to find Zac still glued to his screen. Whenever he did finally leave, creeping out of the lounge so quietly that it didn’t even wake me, it must have been very, very late.
Well it’s not just a daydream if you decide to make it your life
And this is not between us but between us let’s keep getting back to where it’s from
She’s on fire
She’s on fire
She’s on to me
And I’m over me