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I can’t help but worrying though how he will do being back out surrounded by crowds of people.
Both sets of management involved in the tour have assured us they have tightened security measures beyond what would be normal for concerts, but it was the only way we were gonna agree to sign onto this tour. Well, that and the lawsuit threats.
“Just ready to be back out there,” I answer, clapping him on the back. I catch a glimpse of guilt twisting the corner of his mouth, so I move quickly to shut it down.
“Nothing wrong with the break. You needed it. We all needed it,” I say, huffing out a sigh. “And I wouldn’t change our decision. It was the right one. But I can’t say I’m not anxious as fuck to be back playing every night, falling asleep in one city and waking up in the next. Hell, I’m even ready for the cramped bus bunk beds and living with the guys again. Like the good old days.” I nudge his shoulder, earning a smile.
“You’re gonna eat those words when Nikolai’s spinach rots at the back of the fridge from the juices he claims he’s going to make and then gets buried behind takeout and beer.”
My nose wrinkles, having forgotten about the three bags that sat at the back of the fridge for months on our last tour. Sure, it smelled like hell on the bus, but after years of us on the road together, we got used to the bus smelling like shit. But it wasn’t until one of Reid’s hookups tried to cook us all a late night snack after a show one night and did some digging, only to find three brown, rotting, dripping bags of spinach. There was a strict no-greens policy enforced for the remainder of the tour following that.
“The girl replacing Kerra here yet?” Nikolai asks, strolling in, long blonde hair mussed from the wind or someone’s hands. Hard to tell with him.
“Nope. We’re the first ones here,” Hayden answers, flicking the rim of Nikolai’s sunglasses that he’s wearing. “When’d you start wearing sunglasses inside? You’re not that famous.”
Nikolai leans back on the metal rail on the opposite side of Hayden, unfazed. “When I woke up this morning with a massive fucking hangover.”
“I did the same shit earlier grabbing a coffee on my way back to the hotel,” I say. “But it’s just like you pretty boy to show me up.”
“You’re both tools,” Hayden mutters, although a smile crosses his face as he does.
He gets two middle fingers from me and Nikolai in response.
I take in Nikolai, having not seen him much over our hiatus. He spent much of his time partying, traveling, hiking in the desert, pretty much anything but relaxing at home like Hayden. His fair skin has a golden tan to it, weathered from months spent out in the sun and further exaggerated as he stands next to Hayden, whose pale skin hasn’t seen Vitamin D in quite some time.
“Reid with you?” I peer around Nikolai, looking around for our guitarist. He, like me, is always on time. Even more of a stickler than me about it.
Nikolai shakes his head, pulling out his phone to answer a call. His expression shifts, even behind the shades, darkening as he sees the name on the caller ID.
Lauren. Here we go.
I make eye contact with Hayden as Nikolai walks off, his stride never straying from the casual confidence he holds himself with, no matter what’s on the other end of that phone call.
“I was hoping this shit was done before the tour started.” Hayden wipes a hand down his face. “One less tainted situation to start with would have been nice.”
To be honest, I’m still a little shocked that I was able to pull everyone together and get us on tour. Yeah, the lawsuit threats were a strong motivator, but getting Hayden to leave the house again, Nikolai to clean himself up enough to be responsible, and getting Reid to go along with any idea that isn’t his—it’s taken a lot to get here.
“Aye, fuck faces!” a deep voice reverberates around the stadium, loud enough I hiss as both Hayden and I clap our hands over our ears. My attention is pulled to the stage ahead of me, where Boone Maxwell has climbed up on one of the speakers with a microphone in his hand.
The man we’re co-headlining this tour with. Boone’s a DJ, making mostly progressive and electro house music. We collaborated with him back toward the start of our career and that song helped us reach a whole new audience with our music, one that we never would’ve been able to reach on our own as a pop rock band. We’ve kept in touch with him over the years, always promising more collaborations but between our tour schedule and his, ideas have stayed just that—ideas.
However, when we were finally beginning to plan this new tour, we knew we didn’t need all the pressure that came with a solo headlining tour of just Whisper Me Nothings. We’ve done plenty of those in the past, but after everything that happened, we needed to ease back into things a bit. When Boone and I met up for dinner last summer, he was talking about how he was trying to adjust his next tour so it was more of a bus tour, like bands do.
The poor bastard. I used to think our schedules were bad until I met him. He spent years hopping on a plane and doing multiple shows in one day across different countries. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
As soon as he mentioned trying to schedule a bus tour across the country this year, I immediately called Arun to see if we could do the comeback tour co-headlining with Boone. It’s safe to say that Arun would’ve been sold on almost anything as long as he could get the four of us back out on the road.
As soon as we got the greenlight from Arun and Vik, Boone’s manager, we got the dates on the book and here we are. A pop rock band and a house DJ co-headlining a tour across North America. There’s supposed to be a third act as well, but Kerra, a singer/songwriter from Ireland, had to drop out just two weeks ago. Still not sure what all went down with that, but something about some copyright infringements.
Yeah, not touching that one.
“Y’all gonna get your asses over here or what?” Boone yells in the microphone, clearly unaware of the volume the speakers have in an empty arena.
Maybe he has some hearing loss from all of the years behind the decks. He may only be thirty, but he’s been DJing since he was thirteen.
“Let’s go.” I wrap my arm around Hayden’s shoulders, the two of us strolling toward the front of the stage. “Ready to be roomies?” I yell to Boone.
He not-so gracefully jumps off the speaker and sits at the edge of the stage, his stocky legs dangling in front of him.
