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Chapter Seven
Vivi sat in one of the galley seats, which Remy was grateful to see the driver had cleaned while they were out to lunch. She flicked the overhead lights off so only the dim runners and table lights were on, more familiar with the bus than Remy himself was.
“I guess they’re more or less all the same?” Remy asked out loud, when a few moments had gone by—Vivi staring out the window at the handful of paparazzi tailing the bus, while Remy continued to stand, unsure where, exactly, he should go.
“Hm?” Vivi asked, looking back at him. She smiled brightly, an expression he was starting to suspect had little to do with her emotions and more to do with her training.
“The buses. I just meant—you know where all the lights are,” Remy said, shrugging and wondering why he chose this of all topics. He finally sat on the couch across from her because he felt a little creepy standing, looming.
“Ah, yeah,” Vivi said and nodded. “It’s actually that my bus is the same model, just a single sleeper. The galley is more or less the same, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Mine has different counters.”
Vivi turned back toward the window. Remy considered jumping off the bus entirely.
“They’re still out there,” she said, sighing. “They want to hear me say something about Noel. There’s no point in chasing someone on a bus otherwise.”
Remy had no idea what, exactly, she was talking about—if something specific had happened with Noel, or if they just wanted some general comments on Noel, or if they just wanted to hear her say his name—each of these seemed possible. He waited for a moment, wondering if she would explain it. When she didn’t, Remy realized Vivi must simplyexpecthim to know. As if everyone simply knew everything about her. He held in a snort of mild contempt.
“What?” Vivi asked.
Apparently he hadn’t held in that snort as well as he’d thought. “Do you want anything in the meantime? Water? Diet Coke? Beer?” he covered for himself hurriedly, motioning toward the fridge.
Vivi checked the time on her phone and frowned. “Too late for caffeine—water? Thanks.”
He handed her a bottle of water and took a soda—caffeine be damned—for himself. He sat down at the galley table and opened it, removed his phone from his pocket, and began to pick at it. He didn’t want to sit across from her again, implying he expected them to have Family Hour since they were stuck on a bus together—both for her sake and for his. The last thing he wanted to do was get into a long conversation, since that was where he was most likely to say something stupid and get himself in trouble. Silence was golden.
“Sorry about this,” Vivi said, finally turning away from the window. “Are the rest of the guys on my bus?”
Golden. Silence is golden. Silence is motherfucking golden, goddamn it. He smiled at her. “Yep—I was too. I ran for this one, and they stayed, I think.”
Vivi smiled a little—not the bright one, but one that only involved her lips, one that looked a little more genuine despite the fact those lips were still—were always—cherry red. “Guess I’ll take them over the dancers, huh? At least the band likes me.”
Worried his expression would give away the fact that the banddidn’tespecially like her (which made him wonder how the dancers felt), Remy hurriedly filled the space by saying, “Based on what I hear about the dancer bus, they’d be way more likely to raid your personal liquor cabinet.”
“Ha, I’d like to see them try. On my bus, they’d find sparkling water and Diet Coke. Though, oh—David might go for that bottled sweet tea.”
“Sweet tea, huh?”
“Nashville,” she admitted.
“Florida,” he replied.
She smiled again, larger this time. “Really? I didn’t peg you for Florida.”
“That’s because most of my people wear jean shorts,” Remy said, which was actually Val’s go-to Florida insult line. It made Vivi laugh, though, so he was glad to have stolen it.
Remy went on, “I lived in Nashville for a little while though, a few years ago. My brother and I moved there to record our first album.”
“It’s a beautiful city,” Vivi said.
“It is. And less country music than I thought.”
“Hey now, I started in country music,” Vivi said, feigning offense.
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Remy said hurriedly, thinking that this was exactly the sort of thing he’d been worried about saying, damn it.
