“Yeah. Well. He’s not alone.” Natalie took a deep breath. “I told him I loved him today. Look, I know I’m not an easy girlfriend. I’m touchy. And I’m weird and messed up and he’s so mellow. But he...he’s my safe place. He had just been so sweet and he was nervous and I was touched and realized I needed to tell him what he meant to me.”

“I love how you say that like we’d be surprised.” Tuesday looked up at Mary, laughing. Mary snorted and rolled her eyes.

“It’s pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that you’re in love with him. And that he feels the same.”

“I think so, yes. But stuff is coming up and I’m wary. Not that he’ll give in to temptation backstage. I can’t worry about that. I just can’t. If he’s going to cheat, he’ll do it no matter if he’s on tour. But it all seems so chaotic. I don’t think it’s a secret that I have some control issues, and all that sort of unbridled insanity makes me anxious. I know it’s stupid.”

Mary waved that away. “It’s not stupid. I’ve been backstage. It’s crazy sometimes. I went with them on this last tour as their chef. They’ve already insisted on a short schedule because Damien absolutely doesn’t want to be away once the baby is born, and I want to be home for a few months afterward. I don’t mind traveling with the baby. Our friends have young children who travel with them on tour, so it’s possible. But I want to be here when the baby is very young. I want to be totally selfish and cocoon with my husband and my friends and family.

“Which is a tangent, sorry. Back to the subject. Tour is an anomaly. Do you know what I mean?”

“Maybe.”

“They’re not normally on tour. It’s this thing they do to push a new album dropping and because they love their fans and playing live for them. But it’s not normal. It’s like reality is distorted when they’re out on the road. They don’t get enough sleep. They’re not in any one place very long. It’s all about their public persona, like, all the time. Everything is catered to them. They have every bit of their lives planned by other people, taken care of by other people. Literally, every single day a sheet of paper is given to each one of them with a detailed schedule. They put all their energy into performing, and it gets frenetic, yes. Especially as they head into the last third or so and they’ve been away from home long enough to feel it every time they stop. It’s hard not to sort of fall into the lure of that. To be a different person on the road.”

“So you know you’re not actually helping, right?” Tuesday peppered her ziti.

Mary laughed, and the knot that had been tightening in Natalie’s belly eased a little. “I’m getting to that part. But I went with them. I was there every day with Damien. I brought home with me. I fed them, which kept me busy, and having me there reminded them they had lives away from hotels and backstage and groupies.”

“So it’s insanity but temporary insanity?”

“Partly. They still remember Ezra’s meltdown. That’s part of who they are now as a family and as a band. I think they all came away changed. What do you think about going? Not for the whole tour. I know you have a job. A reminder of home is good and maybe you’d feel better, too. To reconnect with him.”

“So I have to babysit him?” This was her fear. That he’d be debilitated in some way, and she’d step in to help, to ease his burden, and slowly she’d end up resenting him and hating herself for doing it again.

“Nope. They play their hearts out every night across the country and back. It is wild back there. That part of their world is part chaos, part machine. It’s controlled chaos, I guess. You can go and experience it with him so you can understand it that way, find a way to process it and accept it. You can wait at home and understand that you will see horrible stuff that makes it look like he’s banging every woman he comes across—and you can understand it’s part of that machine. That celebrity media machine that exists to create caricatures to try to both satisfy demand for celebrity news and create more clamor for it all at once. But he’s still who he is.”

Natalie blew out a breath.

“Essentially, what you and Paddy are? That’s not going to change because of whatever happens on tour. He knows how to manage his shit. He’s a multi-millionaire leader of one of the most successful rock-and-roll bands of all time. Right? Oh, sure, he’s pretty and sexy and charming. He comes off laid-back but you know what? None of those boys is laid-back about their business. Touring is part of it. There are things I don’t like about their world, but I had to weigh it all against how much I wanted to be with him. This is a hugely tangential way of saying go if you want to see it for yourself. In my case, it helps because I hate being away from him for months at a time. Travel is fun. It’d be even more fun if you came, too, and I had a tour buddy. Man, I can’t keep coherent and on topic to save my life of late.”

Natalie laughed. “It’s fine. I get it. Sort of.”

“They’re going to do some dates to try out the material in front of a live audience. It’s sort of a brunch version of what it’s like out there. Maybe try that to see? I really can’t do justice to what it’s like. Good and bad. It’s pretty amazing to see how they put a show together. They’re really good together onstage, too.”

Natalie nodded. “Makes sense, I guess.”