On the Road: A Tour Bus Romance

Rule number one of being in a band: don't fuck your bandmates.

It's right up there with don't date fans, don't do interviews drunk, and for god's sake don't read the comment section. These are the rules that keep a band alive, that stop the music from being destroyed by the messy human drama that lurks beneath every collaboration.

I've followed this rule for five years. Five years of rehearsals and recording sessions and tour buses and hotel rooms. Five years of watching Theo Martinez move across stages like he was born there, fingers dancing over guitar strings, body swaying in ways that made me forget the words to songs I wrote.

My name is Jake Brennan. Lead singer of The Aftermath. And I've been in love with my guitarist since the day we met, and I've never said a goddamn word about it.

Tonight is show forty-two of a sixty-date tour. We're somewhere in the Midwest, a sold-out theater that holds two thousand people, and the crowd is screaming so loud I can barely hear myself think. Theo is three feet to my left, bent over his guitar, absolutely lost in the music. When he looks up and catches my eye, grinning like we're getting away with something, I almost miss my cue.

This is getting harder. Every show, every night, every time I wake up on the bus and he's asleep in the bunk across from mine—it's getting harder to pretend.

The show ends at eleven. By midnight, we're back at the hotel, and by one, everyone else has gone to their rooms. But Theo knocks on my door at 1:15, two beers in hand, still buzzing from the performance.

"You were amazing tonight. That last song—you hit that note and I thought the roof was going to come off."

"You were pretty amazing yourself."

He grins, settles onto the end of my bed like he belongs there. We've done this a hundred times—post-show debrief, picking apart what worked and what didn't, planning adjustments for the next night. It's the part of touring I love most, these quiet moments when the adrenaline is still flowing but the crowd is gone.

It's also the part that's killing me.

"You seemed distracted up there. A few times I looked over and you were staring at nothing."

"I was in the zone."

"Bullshit." He takes a drink of his beer. "Something's been off with you for weeks. Since before we left, actually. You want to tell me what's going on?"

"Nothing's going on."

"Jake." His voice softens. "We've been doing this for five years. I know you better than anyone. Something's eating at you, and pretending otherwise is affecting the shows."

He's right. I know he's right. The tension I'm carrying is bleeding into my performance, making me careful when I should be wild, distant when I should be connecting. The fans probably haven't noticed, but Theo has. Theo notices everything about me.

"I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because it'll ruin everything."

"Jake." He sets down his beer, moves closer. "There's nothing you could tell me that would ruin this. The band, our friendship—it's survived label drama and shit tours and that time you got food poisoning in Cleveland and threw up on stage. It can survive whatever this is."

"This is different."

"How?"

Tell him. Five years of silence. Five years of wanting. Just say the words and deal with the consequences.

"Because I'm in love with you."

The silence stretches between us. Theo's face is unreadable, frozen in an expression I can't interpret. I watch him process, watch the words land, and wait for the rejection I've been dreading since the day we met.

"How long?"

"Since the beginning. Since the first rehearsal in your garage when you played back my song and made it sound like something real."

"Five years."

"Five years."

"And you never said anything."

"Rule number one."

He laughs—a short, sharp sound that could mean anything. "Rule number one. Right." He runs a hand through his hair, stands up, paces to the window and back. "Jake, do you have any idea—"

"Please don't make it worse. I know you're straight, I know this is awkward, I just needed to—"

"I'm not straight."

I stop mid-sentence. "What?"

He crosses back to the bed, stands over me, and there's something in his eyes I've never seen before. Something that looks a lot like hope.

"I'm not straight. I'm bi. And I've been following rule number one just as hard as you have, for just as long, for exactly the same reason."

"You—"

"Five years, Jake. Five years of watching you up there, singing songs I know are about me even if you've never admitted it. Five years of sharing hotel rooms and pretending I didn't want to cross the three feet between our beds. Five years of rule number fucking one."

He sits down next to me. Close. Closer than he's ever been.

"So what do we do now?"

We kissed for the first time at 2 AM in a hotel room in some Midwestern city I can't even remember now. It was messy and desperate and five years overdue, and when we finally pulled apart, we were both shaking.

"We should talk about this."

"Later."

"The band—"

"Later."

I kissed him again, and he stopped trying to be responsible. His hands found their way under my shirt. Mine found the button of his jeans. We fumbled like teenagers, laughing when something didn't work, gasping when something did.

When he finally got me where he wanted me—on my back, his body covering mine—he paused, looked down at me with an expression that made my chest ache.

"This is real, right? This isn't just tour madness, or adrenaline, or—"

"It's real. It's been real for five years."

"Good. Because I don't think I could handle it if this was just a one-time thing."

"It's not a one-time thing. It's an everything thing."

He showed me what that meant. We showed each other. By the time the sun came up, we'd remade something between us—not destroyed the friendship, but built on top of it. Something bigger. Something that had been waiting all along.

The next eighteen shows were the best of my career.

Something happens when you stop hiding. When the tension you've been carrying releases into something productive. Our playing got tighter. Our chemistry on stage—already good—became electric. The fans noticed, even if they didn't know why. Every night, the crowds got wilder. Every night, the connection between us burned brighter.

We kept it quiet from the rest of the band for the first week. Not because we were ashamed, but because we needed time to figure out what we were becoming. Hotel rooms became our sanctuary. Tour bus bunks became a place for whispered conversations at three AM.

"We should tell the guys."

"I know."

"Marcus is going to freak out."

"Marcus freaks out about everything. He freaked out when we changed the setlist."

"This is slightly bigger than the setlist."

We told them in Kansas City, in a dressing room before a show. Our drummer Andy just nodded like he'd expected it. Our bassist Marcus did freak out, but only because he was worried about the dynamic, not because he had a problem with us being together. By the end of the conversation, everyone was on the same page: what happens off stage stays off stage, and the music comes first.

The music did come first. But for the first time, it wasn't the only thing.

📅 Tour End

Sixty shows. Three months. And when the final encore ended and the lights went down, Theo grabbed my hand on stage and didn't let go until we were in the wings.

"We did it."

"We always do."

"No, I mean—" He pulled me into a corner, away from the crew. "We did it. The tour. Us. We didn't fall apart. We didn't ruin anything."

"You sound surprised."

"I was scared. When you told me, I was so happy, but I was also terrified. What if it didn't work? What if we became one of those bands that implodes because of internal drama? This is my whole life, Jake. The music, the band—"

"It's my whole life too. That's why I didn't say anything for five years. I couldn't risk losing it." I touched his face, made him look at me. "But I was wrong. Keeping quiet was the bigger risk. We've been making music together for five years, Theo. We've been building something together. And now we get to keep building it, just... more honestly."

"I love you."

First time he'd said it out loud. First time either of us had.

"I love you too. Have for a while now."

He kissed me right there, in the wings of a concert venue, crew members walking past like it was nothing special. Maybe to them it wasn't. To me, it was everything.

⏳ Two Years Later

The new album is our best work yet. Everyone says so—critics, fans, the label executives who've been riding our ass for a commercial breakthrough. We recorded it in a studio in Nashville, living together in a rented house for three months while we layered tracks and fought about production choices and made up in ways that definitely violated the studio's insurance policy.

We came out publicly a year ago. Not with a big announcement—just stopped hiding. Posted a photo on Instagram, me and Theo, obvious in a way that couldn't be misinterpreted. The response was mostly positive. Some idiots in the comments, some dropped fans. But for every one we lost, we gained ten more. Turns out there's a huge audience for authentic queer rock, and we were filling a space no one else was occupying.

The new tour starts next month. Bigger venues, longer run, more pressure. But also more support—the whole band knows about us now, the crew knows, the label knows. No more hiding. No more rule number one.

We've written some new rules instead.

Rule one: Talk about the hard stuff before it festers. Rule two: Protect the music, but not at the cost of ourselves. Rule three: When you find something real, hold onto it with both hands and don't let go.

Theo proposed last week. On stage, actually, in front of twelve thousand people at a festival show. Got down on one knee during the encore, guitar still strapped to his back, and asked me to marry him while the crowd lost their collective minds.

I said yes. Obviously. How could I say anything else?

Five years of silence. Two years of being together. And now a lifetime of making music, making love, making something that matters.

Rule number one can go to hell. What we have is worth every risk.