Mason laughed. “You know he only volunteered to go out there so he could scope out the sausage scene in the audience tonight.”
My brother groaned. “Let’s go, G.”
“I’ll see you later, Flabby. Make Daddy some money tonight,” Mason winked with a laugh, pulling on my ponytail one last time before he made his way toward the front of the bus.
Following after my brother, he led me through the building’s rear entrance, which opened to the venue’s floor. As soon as we walked out, insanity ensued and it caught me completely off-guard. I was more than familiar with the kind of crowds Ghost Orchid brought out, from traveling with them in the past. Since then, my parents, my older siblings and I would drive out to any of their shows within a five-hour trip from Dallas. I thought I’d seen it all.
This time there were so many more people than I ever remembered seeing in the past. The place was already packed. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they could draw a crowd; it was just rare so many people would show up hours before the main act.
Eli elbowed me. “Crazy, huh?” He could sense my surprise at the hundreds of people crammed into the venue so early in the evening. More often than not, he and I didn’t need words to communicate. “We got really lucky they chose us for this tour.”
“Who’s the headlining band?” I finally asked, putting my hand on his shoulder to follow him through the crowd. The last few hours had been so hectic I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask, not that it really mattered anyway. I’d gone with them back when they’d played with everyone from a rap-metal band to a straight-up indie-pop group.
People stared as my brother made his way through the crowd ahead of me, apologizing to each person he shouldered past. It had always seemed strange to me that people would get stars in their eyes when they saw him in person. Because this was my Eliza. He wasn’t anything special or better than any other person. His crap smelled just as bad, if not worse, than anyone else’s, and I had a million other humbling stories about him if anyone wanted to hear them.
“The Cloud Collision,” he answered.
I wracked my brain for recognition of the name and only barely came up with a vague mention in the past. The band had to be well known if they were the headliners, but I still couldn’t come up with a solid memory. Not a song title, album name, band member, or even what they sounded like. Anonymity wasn’t necessarily unheard of for bands that weren’t mainstream acts. There were easily tens of thousands of bands that wouldn’t be known by the masses. Groups didn’t need to be played on the radio or television to be successful, even if they were considered unheard of.
It didn’t help that I’d really fallen off the bandwagon of searching out new music in the last couple of years. I’d been so busy with school and a full-time job that I hadn’t really kept up with almost anything.
“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” I admitted.
He shrugged his big hammy shoulders as we kept walking. “You’ll like them. They’re good; Sacha’s spot on every night too.”
Sacha? I felt myself brighten up a little. “Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know there was another girl on tour.” She might be a raging bitch, but maybe not.
I missed the way Eli slowly turned his head to look at me, this weird expression on his face. Slowly he nodded, like you would nod at someone who asked a stupid question.
That had me frowning. “What?”
“Nothing.” He made his eyes all wide, like I wasn’t familiar with each and every one of his facial expressions and what they meant.
“Why are you making that face?”
“No reason, Flabs. I’m not allowed to smile?”
“No.” I stared at him a little longer, suspicious.
But my brother just shrugged and didn’t say another word.
I’d keep my eye on him. I knew he was up to something.
In no time, we were at the merch table where Gordo looked like a deer caught in the headlights. A small group of people surrounded him, half of them wanting to buy something and the other half wanting nothing more than to talk to the singer and guitar player of Ghost Orchid. A blind person could tell how uncomfortable Gordo was. The poor bastard had sweat running down his temples and he looked twitchy. As soon as he spotted his bandmate and then me hovering behind the overgrown human sausage, he visibly sighed in relief.
I’d never totally understood how Gordo managed to put up with my brother and Mason. He was the sane one. The thinker. Soft-spoken. He was the kind of guy who didn’t talk much or relish getting into trouble. He was usually the voice of reason, where the other two morons acted first and thought things through second—if ever. When we were younger, Gordo and I would usually sit back and watch the other two get into all kinds of shit while we shook our heads and judged them the entire time.
After a quick hug, an explanation of how to use their credit card swipey-thing, how much each shirt, poster, drink koozie, CD and tab book cost, I was left on my own to face a firing squad who wanted to buy something. Eliza and Gordo disappeared as quickly as they could to go warm up backstage. Even though I hadn’t sold merchandise—or merch, as it was shortened—for them in years, it was like riding a bike. You gave the fans what they wanted and they gave you money. It was that easy. Knowing that I’d get paid depending on how much merchandise was sold, I may have brushed the cobwebs off my best flirtatious smile and purposely not pulled my shirt the inch higher it could have gone. I wasn’t one to usually show off Lucy and Ethel because I was self-conscious of them, but money was money.
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Plus, selling merch had gotten me my girls, so I wasn’t going to hate on the job that had given me so much.
As soon as the line dwindled down, I finally turned to look in the direction of the table next to mine. The set-up mirrored the one I was manning. A large, collapsible table was set up with a flat metal rack leaning against the wall behind it. On the rack were T-shirts and zip-up hoodies pinned to it. On the table were stickers, CDs and vinyl. Cluttering the floor and stashed below the table were boxes and containers filled with the products on display. The band name, The Cloud Collision, was printed on a large banner that was mounted above the rack.
I plopped down onto one of the large plastic bins where some of the T-shirts were stored, and took in the guy working behind the other band’s table. He was possibly a few years younger than my twenty-six. He was slim, with long straight hair in the front and a buzzcut from ear-to-ear in the back; he was busy at work with a line that was ten people deep.
The moment he got through with the line, just as the local opening band went on stage to start setting their instruments and gear up, he turned to look at me and gave me a shy smile—small and cute, highlighted by a hoop lip ring at the corner of his mouth. Worming his way through the maze of plastic bins and boxes that separated us, he thrust out a hand.
