Everything Went Numb

A week had passed, shows had been played, booze had been consumed, and Amber had stayed by my side as she was told. We were lounging around on the tour bus, headed for Nevada, when Brendon looked up from whatever he was doing on his laptop, and asked me.
“Do you think we should bring her to my parents?”
“Uh I’m not sure if that would be a great idea, I mean, you just found out, and your still trying to get the idea of being a dad settled in, it might be better to wait a while Brendon…” I answered, using the excuse that I had been waiting to use since the tour started.
“Oh… alright,” he replied, face falling.
“Well maybe they could meet her… just not as their granddaughter…” I said caving in on his sadness, damnit I’m a sucker for him…
“Really? That’d be great!” he said, eyes brightening up again. I felt the bus lurch to a stop, and knew where we were immediately, and so did everyone else on the bus.
“MCDONALDS!” all five boys, and Amber yelled dropping what ever they were doing, and racing for the door.
'I am going to be bigger then a whale by the end of this tour…’ I thought miserably. The only time we stopped unplanned was when it was meal time, and that was either at a McDonalds, or something else horrible unhealthy, like Dairy Queen, or a waffle house. I think, although it’s impossible, that Randy distastes eating at McDonalds every two seconds as much as I do. Randy was last one off the buss after me, and as we made our way across the parking lot his feet dragged, and his head hung low.
“What’s wrong Rancid?” I asked playfully.
“Oh nothing… I guess it’s just tour is kind of getting to me…” he answered. It was a legit excuse, a lot of people deal with touring in their own ways, my first summer, I suffered terrible home sickness. I checked my phone to see what time it was, and calculate what time we would have to be back on the road, if we wanted to make it back to our houses in southern Nevada before dark, when my eye caught the date. Claudia. It was the day that she had left Randy and killed herself. She was his only love, and my only good friend that was a girl. She had been beaten and broken in her last relationship. Although she tried to hide her pain, we could all see it was still there. One night I got a phone call from Randy, telling me that she had hung herself, he and I both were devastated, and even though her pain was evident, we thought she was making progress, I guess not.
I leaned over and put my hand on Randy’s shoulder, rubbing tiny circles into it with my fingers. He looked over at me and gave me a sheepish smile.
“She’s happy now, remember that” I told him.
“Mhm,” he mumbled not convinced. I decided to leave it at that, and let him be.
Later that night when everyone had gone to sleep, Amber sleeping in one of the guys bunks, I pulled back the curtain to Randys’ bunk, as he lifted the blanket for me, and I crawled under, lifting his head to lie on my shoulder and cooing, “Shh, shh, its alright, shh, go to sleep,” as he wept.