Growing up, I’d been Flabby Gaby. Well, it should be said that I’d been Flabby Gaby even up until the last time I saw them during Christmas. Except now they’d graduated past pulling on my ponytail constantly and intentionally doing things to piss me off. At this stage in our lives, they usually settled for just teasing me, but I wouldn’t expect anything less.
The point was, you could love someone and still dread traveling with them, especially when it was going to be for three months straight.
It’d be fine. It really would be fine.Right. It sure would.
Yeah, I couldn’t even find it in me to completely believe it.
I was wringing my hands nonstop on the cab ride to the venue, and I hoped like hell that my deodorant would hold up through the rest of the night. Glancing at my watch, I realized it was after seven. Eli had told me they didn’t go on stage until at least nine.
When the cabbie dropped me off at the end of the block, I called my jackass of a brother.
He answered on the second ring. “Are you here?”
“No, I’m in Antarctica.” I was already pulling my suitcase down the block.
The marquee was mounted on the opposite corner but I couldn’t miss the lettering.
TONIGHT
THE RHYTHM & CHORD TOUR
SOLD OUT
Eyeing the massive bus parked on the street about thirty feet away, I couldn’t help but remember Pepe, Ghost Orchid’s old van. On the tours I’d gone on with them before, we’d stuffed ourselves into their Chevy fifteen-passenger van and their faded red cargo trailer. With peeling paint, duct-taped seats, and sketchy-looking rigged up doors—you couldn’t help but love Old Pepe. He’d racked up more than two hundred thousand miles before he’d been retired. Some of my fondest memories came in thanks to his loyalty. Now that the band was making money, they’d upgraded to nicer things.
I couldn’t say I wasn’t excited to not have to sleep on a bench seat and pray every day that one of the guys wouldn’t fall asleep behind the wheel on overnight drives, though.
“Flabby!” a voice that had begun haunting me from the moment I’d been born hollered.
I groaned but couldn’t help but smile, excited to see my twin for the first time in more than five months, the longest time we’d ever been apart by far. His bulky and gigantic head popped out from around the corner of the green, silver and black touring bus as he made his way toward me in aqua-colored swim trunks, a white tank, and a flat-brim baseball hat. With hair the same shade of black-brown as mine except it was straighter, the same green eyes, and peachy-colored skin, Eli grinned like he’d just found out Sam Adams was endorsing him.
“Eliza,” I sang out, calling my brother by the nickname I’d bestowed upon him at the age of four.
He flashed a big smile and held his tree trunk-sized arms forward, crooking his fingers in my direction. “Come to me.”
I took Eli in for the first time in almost half a year. He still looked exactly the same… except it looked like he had a hint of a beer gut growing. That was only a slight surprise.
Ever since we’d been sophomores in high school, I’d sworn he used steroids but it didn’t matter how much I looked, I never found any on him. Eli was built slightly shorter than six feet tall with biceps the size of my head and a neck I couldn’t attempt to try to choke because it was too thick. I used to ask him when he was making his professional wrestling debut. He’d then ask me when I was planning on becoming the newestExtreme Makeovercontestant. Jackass.
But the thing about him that was the most apparent was how clear his eyes looked. He hadn’t started drinking yet—one of the stipulations I made when I agreed to come on tour.I don’t want to see you shit-faced, I’d told him, and surprisingly, he’d agreed without arguing.
The instant we were close enough, we hugged and then hugged each other some more.
He held me against him for another minute before finally pulling away, resting a palm on each of my shoulders. “When was the last time I saw you?” he asked, eyeing me carefully.
I frowned before slapping his pooch with the back of my hand. “Five months ago, you douche.” He’d been living in Portland for almost a year, and the last time we’d seen each other had been during New Year’s.
He winced. “I’ve missed you more than I’ve missed Rafe,” Eli offered with a smile before hugging me close again, a little roughly, a little too aggressive, and just like him and our relationship.
I snickered into his shoulder. “I’m going to tell her you said that.”
He snorted, another trait we shared; our mom thought his snorts were cute while mine she considered disturbing. It was a real confidence-booster.Thanks, Mom.“I’ll deny it.” He would. Rafe was short for Rafaela, our older sister, who had terrorized us when we were kids. Hell, I think she still scared both of us.
Rolling my eyes, I squeezed his middle. While it was easy to get through day-to-day life when I didn’t have a constant reminder that I missed him, now that I saw him, I realized how much I had. Being near him felt like home. “You’re a little bitch, but I’ve missed you enough not to care you don’t have any balls.”
He hugged me back a moment longer, and then kissed my cheek unexpectedly before shoving me away. I didn’t let the surprise of his affection register on my face. “Well, c’mon. Let me show you where the bus is. I still gotta warm up.”
Pulling me in the direction of the bus’s door, Eli explained what happened with Zeke. He’d been Ghost Orchid’s merch guy for the last two years since my retirement. Apparently Gordo had began noticing that the band was occasionally a bit short on cash a few times in the past, but they hadn’t thought too much about it until the same thing happened on the very first day of their current tour. Not a lot of money went missing but enough that Gordo, who was anal retentive about keeping track of their merchandise, noticed. That morning, Mason found that they were short more than three hundred dollars. According to the merch guy for the other band they were on tour with, he’d seen Zeke slipping bills into his laptop case.
