I groaned as I woke up out of a nap I hadn’t meant to take, to the feeling of the bus swaying around me and something digging into my back. “What the fuck, man.” I twisted around and reached under me and found what it was: an Xbox controller. I threw it onto the floor of the rec area and sat up.
“Yo, Jules,” Nick said, coming into the area. “What’s the haps, man?”
“Fell asleep,” I admitted. I looked up and saw that he was filming me. “The fuck, man?” I smirked at the camera. “This is like the fourth time you’ve come to film me. You got a fucking crush on me or something?” Nick laughed.
“Looking for fascinating tour journal material,” Nick said, throwing himself down into one of the chairs. He continued filming. “What do you think about the show in Orlando tonight?” I shrugged.
“It’ll be a show,” I said. “Hopefully this time we get through it without Alex slipping and falling on his ass in a pool of glitter.”
“If they’d given the techs a chance to clean up, that wouldn’t have happened,” Fran said, coming into the rec room. I scowled at her; it had been a week since we’d played the first show of our “partnership” with Juniper Woolf, at Bardot, and while I didn’t exactly hate her anymore, I didn’t think I’d ever be her biggest fan.
“If you didn’t throw around glitter all the time there wouldn’t be anything to clean up in the first place,” I pointed out, keeping my voice as level as possible—I remembered at the last minute that Nick was still filming.
“And now,” Nick murmured in a nature documentary narrator voice, “we watch as the two apex predators confront each other at the watering hole.” I rolled my eyes at Nick’s comment, smiling almost against my will.
“Everything’s cool,” I said, sitting back in my seat. “Fran and I are the best of friends these days, right Frannie?”
“Practically siblings,” Fran said, sinking down onto the couch. She must have gotten her hair touched up before we got on the bus that morning; the deep violet-purple was more vivid than it had been before. Nick turned the camera onto her, and I could see him smirking behind it.
“So, Fran Chambers: how’s the first…three hours of touring life with Molly Riot?”
“Pretty damn good,” Fran said, reaching into a pocket in her skirt and taking out a pack of Pall Mall blues. She shook one free and found a lighter from somewhere else to light it with. One of the rules we’d set was that smoking—pot or cigarettes—should only happen in the rec room. Like a trained monkey, I reached for my own pack and lit up, too. “Looking forward to the show tonight.”
“What about you, Jules? Going to get crazy up on the stage in Orlando?”
“We always do,” I said, shrugging.
“This is boring,” Nick said, ending the recording and standing up. “I’m going to see if I can catch Mark jerking off.”
“That’ll be good for the site,” I half-muttered, taking a drag of my cigarette. I glanced at Fran as Nick stepped through the curtains separating the rec area from the rest of the bus. We were alone, together. Great.
“So,” Fran said, rocking a bit in her chair as she found an ashtray without looking, “I figure now that we have a few moments at least semi-alone, we can hash out whatever the fuck our problems are with each other.”
“That’s direct,” I said. I blew the smoke out of my lungs. “Okay, you first, since this is your big idea: what’s your problem with me?”
“I only get one?” Fran grinned and took another drag of her cig. “Honestly, I just jumped on board the shit-talk train because you said that bullshit in New Times.” I frowned.
“What bullshit?” I knew I’d talked a lot of shit about Juniper Woolf in general and Fran Chambers in particular, but I couldn’t remember specifics.
“And I quote,” Fran said, tilting her head back; her neck was longer than I’d ever noticed—and the neckline of her blouse was lower, too. “‘Fran Chambers is nothing but a fucking shill.’”
“Oh,” I said, grinning wryly. “That bullshit.”
“Hurt my feelings,” Fran said sarcastically. “If I’d known you were going to be such an asshole about getting a little glitter to the face I’d have at least made it worth my while—thrown something that’d do some real damage.” In spite of myself, I laughed.
“All right, fine,” I said. “So, your problem with me is that I told New Times—”
“And everyone else who would listen,” Fran cut in.
“Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes at her. “I told them you’re a fucking shill.”
“That started it, yeah,” Fran said, grinning slightly.
“Well for that I am deeply fucking sorry.” Fran giggled, and I had to admit that it was actually kind of cute.
“Your turn,” she said. “Anything other than me throwing glitter at you and piling shit talk in the mags that you have against me?” I thought about it. What did I really have against her? The glitter thing sounded petty the more often it came up. The shit-talking had gone both ways.
“That about covers it,” I told her after a moment. Fran nodded.
“In that case, I regret throwing glitter at you, and I am so very sorry that I let myself descend to your level in shit-talking.” I snickered.
“Okay, we’re done talking about this, right? Water under the bridge?”
“So far under it, it’s basically out to sea right now,” Fran replied. She stubbed out her cigarette and looked at me. “You know—no bullshit here—you’re actually kind of cute when you smile.” I raised an eyebrow at that, but before I could say anything to counter it, Fran stood up and skipped out of the room, calling out a question to her band mate Kieran about whether they had any more Cheez-Its left.