“You bought a ticket and dealt with TSA to meet me at the gate?” I ask, closing my eyes as I breathe in his familiar cologne and relax into his arms.
“Of course,” he says, like there wasn’t another cheaper and less stress inducing option. He pulls out of the hug and stares at me for a moment, like he can’t believe I’m here, before snapping himself out of it.
“Here, I’ll take that.” He grips the handle of my backpack and lifts it off my back, and I slide my arms out of the straps. He throws it over one of his shoulders like it weighs nothing (it’s full of books, so it weighs a ton) before gripping the handle of my carry on. “Baggage claim?” he asks, and I nod. “This way.”
I fall into step beside him and as we wind our way through DFW, he asks what I want to do first: get something to eat or stop by the stadium and see our RV. I choose to ignore what hearing the words “our” and “RV” together does to my insides.
“It’s ready?” I say, feeling more excited than I thought I would about the idea of spending the next six months in a tin can.
“It is,” he says.
“While we’re on the subject, giving me the bedroom isn’t necessary,” I say. “It’s your RV, you should have it.”
“Too late, my stuff’s already put away, so no swapsies.”
I choke on a laugh, and he eyes me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just never expected Eric Ambrose, The King, badass and bad boy extraordinaire, to use a wordlikeswapsies.” He smiles, his dimples making their second appearance of the day, and I fight the urge to reach my finger up and poke the one closest to me.
We decide it makes more sense to head to the RV and drop whatever I won’t need there so I don’t have to lug it all to the hotel. When we get to baggage claim, Eric hoists my large suitcase off the belt and pushes it, along with my carry on, toward the doors.
I follow him through the parking lot until we stop at a very clean, blacked out Chevy truck. He unlocks it and opens the passenger door for me before walking my luggage to the bed and loading everything in.
We drive from DFW to AT&T Stadium, where a line of six RVs are parked in a neat row behind the stadium.
“Wow, that’s a lot of RVs,” I say, and he chuckles.
“We each have our own, and then there are two for the road crew and one for our assistants,” he explains.
We get out of the truck, and I follow him to a black RV with swooping gray accent lines and blacked out windows.
“Welcome home,” he says, opening the door and raising a hand, motioning for me to step inside. When I do, I’m blown away by how beautiful it is. Despite the dark windows, it’s bright and airy inside, with shiny, light gray floors and darker, more slate gray paneled walls, and recessed lighting on the ceiling and under cabinets.
The front of the RV contains the living area, which has two gray leather recliners and a high table in between them along the left wall, as well as a long couch against the right wall. The kitchen, with a marble countertop, a cooktop two-burner stove, a ton of storage drawers, a three-tiered refrigerator/freezer combo unit, and a table with two high-backed bench seats sits behind the living area.
The guest bath is behind the kitchen, and six surprisingly spacious bunk beds line the hallway to the main bedroom.
The bedroom has a queen-sized bed, a flat screen TV on the wall opposite the bed, a vanity with more drawers and closet space than I know what to do with, and a full bathroom, including a beautiful, tiled shower.
“Holy shit,” I say, turning around when I finish looking around. Eric is leaning against the bedroom door, arms folded across his chest, and smiling.
“You like it?”
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “Truly. I thought I was going to feel claustrophobic but this this is a lot more spacious than I imagined it would be.”
“It’ll get a little smaller when we’re on the road because we’ll have to close the slide-outs,” he says, jerking his head toward the front of the RV and pushing off the wall. I follow. “That means that out here, the couch, booth, and fridge will pull in to here,” he says, pointing to where the wall at the foot of the bunk beds on the right side of the RV ends.
“And back in your bedroom—”
“Thebedroom,” I interrupt.
“Right, like I said, back inyourbedroom,” I roll my eyes, and he laughs. “The bed will pull in closer to the vanity. You’ll still be able to get into the dresser drawers and cupboards, it'll just be a tighter squeeze.”
Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. I look around again, slowly taking it all in. Letting the moment of realization hit—I’m here. This is happening. I’m about to spend six months on the road with my favorite band.
Holy. Shit.
“So,” I say. “I guess we’ll need some sort of signal for when you want to bring women over after a show. I don’t want to be interrupting anything…important.”
