But I got there first.

“When Jesse gets up here, you’re going to be very cool with him, find some gentle way to share you need to get back to Indianapolis as soon as possible, and that your life there is such, you’re uncertain you can carry on a long-distance relationship,” I ordered. “In the sense you’re ending the long-distance relationship you have with Jesse but doing it as cool as you can manage. Is that understood?”

She stared at me.

“Cynthia, is that understood?” I pushed.

She nodded.

“Maybe it’s better, once you get dressed, you meet him down there so you can share all of that in private, yes?” I suggested.

She nodded again.

“Dress quickly,” I urged.

She did that.

She was still pulling down her ripped-up rocker tee when I said, “Go.”

She skedaddled.

Once the door clicked, I drew in breath, walked to an unused chair to dump my stuff and then asked the room at large, “Does anyone know where the room service menu is? I think Preacher’s hungry.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then Tim (Jim?) and Dave (?) burst out laughing.

I felt a hand warm on the small of my back, there and gone, and I looked right.

To Tom.

“I handle room service for the boys, darlin’,” he said. “But I’ll find you the menu and you order whatever you want.”

My grin I could feel was wobbly.

The smile he returned was not.

Jesse:

So, Cynthia dumped me, and I knew when she did, she wasn’t the one because I wasn’t all that broken up about it.

I called up to the big suite, got Tom, told him Cynthia needed to get back to Indy and he asked my room service order and told me to tell her to wait for him in the lobby. He’d take care of her.

It was a record, I think, that it took Dave a whole week to spill that it was Lyla who sent her packing.

[Grins]

From the beginning, I tell you, that woman was the shit.

The beauty of this is, no one knows it, until now.

No one who was there would blab about it.

So, it was all Preacher’s and Lyla’s, and yeah. The band’s.

And it kinda sucks to be telling you but I also kinda dig it.

Because it was righteous, and you’re here because they’re legend. They didn’t go quietly into the rock night. Everyone knows about them.

So, people should know this.

That first time they spent any real time together was pretty fucking funny.

I wish we had phones with cameras back then because I would have videoed pretty much every minute.

Tom did have a VHS camera and he did a lot of taping of our shows.

So, we have some video of them.

But it’s mostly them cuddling or being lovey.

[Shakes head]

But man, I gotta tell you, when Preach got a serious dose of Lyla, he had no idea what hit him.