Justin looked at me and smirked, returning his attention to Sienna a few seconds later. “Oh, I noticed how good you smell. Tell me, Sienna, do you smell that good all over?” Justin cocked an eyebrow with a sexy grin.
“You’ll never know, you pig.” Sienna laughed as she threw a pillow at Justin’s head, who didn’t seem to take her comment as an insult at all. Instead, he caught the pillow and propped it behind him as if she had been passing it to him for his comfort.
***
Sienna and I woke the next morning to guitar playing from the front of the bus. We had both fallen back to sleep after the bus change and I was surprised that we had slept until almost eleven.
I walked out from the only private bedroom on the bus and watched as Sienna pulled the covers over her head as I exited. Clearly she wasn’t going to join me for my morning coffee.
“Hey,” I said to the guys as I walked directly to the coffee pot and pulled out a mug.
I plopped myself down on the end of the couch and listened to Justin playing a riff that was familiar, but I wasn’t quite sure of the song.
I sipped my coffee and listened contently until he finished. “That’s nice. What song is it to?”
“I think I’m going to call it Fate,” Justin replied, his eyes catching mine.
Then I remembered the song he had played in the bar that night, the one I could have sworn he had sung to me about me being his fate. I felt my face blush and just nodded at Justin, not knowing how to answer.
***
Before the show, Vince called with an update on the bus situation. Apparently, whatever had broken on the bus hadn’t been repairable and they had to order a few parts. They had overnighted the parts, but it would be another day and a half before the bus would be drivable again and be able to catch up to the tour. It wasn’t really too cramped with the extra people on the bus, but in the pit of my stomach I knew Jack wouldn’t be happy with the new sleeping arrangements when he found out.
An hour before the show, my suspicion was confirmed when I called Jack to say goodnight. I knew it would be the middle of the night in New York by the time the show ended, so I made my nightly call before we went on. The bus was finally quiet since most of the guys had gone in to do a sound check, something Sienna and I had done a few hours earlier.
“Hey,” I smiled, hearing Jack’s voice on the other end.
“I was just going to call you. I think Mateo took a short cut to go around some road construction and now we’re about twenty blocks further than we started.” Mateo was Jack’s driver and I pictured Jack telling him what streets he should take to get back to where they were headed. Of course Mateo knew exactly where he was driving, but that wouldn’t stop Jack from giving him direction on the best route anyway.
I chuckled into the phone. “Are you harassing Mateo?”
“No, but if he would have taken 79th instead of 77th, as I told him, we wouldn’t be stuck in this traffic.” His voice was loud, clearly making his point to both Mateo and I as he spoke. I smiled to myself, thinking how well I knew Jack’s personality.
“Listen, we had some bus problems and we are all packed into our bus for the next day or so.”
“I heard.”
“You heard?” At first I was confused, but then I realized of course he had heard. Arminio, our new security, probably reported every step we took to him. The security detail turned out to be less intrusive than I had imagined. Arminio kept his distance and didn’t get involved in our business — or at least I had thought he didn’t until then.
“Is your admirer keeping his distance?”
I knew he was referring to Justin, but I wasn’t going to give Jack the satisfaction of pretending it was obvious. “My admirer?
“You know, the one with the tattoos that sings songs to my girl and wants in your pants?”
“Very nice, Jack.”
Jack chuckled. “Well, if you’re going to pretend you don’t know who your admirer is, I need to be more direct then, don’t I?”
“Direct is your strong suit,” I replied sarcastically.
We talked until it was almost time for me to go on, and I told Jack I would call him the next morning.
“Lock your bedroom door.”
“Yes, Jack.” I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see me.
“Stop rolling your eyes at me and say goodnight, Syd.”
How did he do that? I shook my head and said goodnight in a frustrated tone, which made Jack chuckle even more.
***
It was a beautiful night and our post-show party ended up taking place right outside of the bus rather than moving to the nearest bar as we occasionally did. A few excited fans were allowed to join us, who I noticed were all attractive females wearing tight clothes.
Some of the girls were nice, asking for Sienna and I to pose for pictures with them and Justin and Kyle, but others must have viewed us as threats to their chances of hooking up with the guys, and gave Sienna and I attitudes.
When it was finally time to pull out, our bus became a rolling party on wheels. Adding four men to the bus completely changed the dynamic from the usual post-show bus ride that Sienna and I would have had alone.
Sienna and I took on Kyle and Justin in a Rock Band drinking game that we’d created, where the team with the lowest score at the end of each song had to do a shot. Perhaps Sienna and I should have thought about the fact that both Kyle and Justin were professional guitar players before accepting the challenge. By the end of the fifth song, I was slurring my words and definitely feeling no pain.
Lucky for me, I knew my limit was rapidly approaching and pulled out of the game while I could still walk. Sienna, on the other hand, was never able to walk away from a challenge, and Kyle’s constant goading only made her more emphatic that she would win. Which never happened.
Eventually, Sienna stumbled to bed and I watched Kyle take the hand of the groupie who had been parked patiently next to him all night and lead her to the back of the bus. I knew there were groupies, but seeing it firsthand still shocked me. They would get on a bus filled with men they really knew nothing about and spend a night, only to be dumped at a rest stop the next day, usually hundreds of miles away from where they had started, when they were no longer needed.
I looked to Justin, who was sipping a beer and staring out the window at the other end of the couch. We were suddenly alone and the room was quieter than it had been since they had all joined us.
“Doesn’t it bother you guys to sleep with women that have no idea who you really are? They want the rock star and don’t seem to care who the man is.”