It was the last show of the tour; we were playing a gig in Atlanta, and then we’d drive straight down to Miami again. It had been two weeks since I’d done anything at all with Fran. “Yo—Jules,” Mark said, coming into the back of the tour bus where I sat, working on a tour journal entry.
“What?” I didn’t look up.
“What’s the story? You’ve been more—I dunno. Pensive or brooding or whatever it’s called.” I shrugged.
“Just fucking tired,” I told him, reaching blindly for my pack of smokes. I finished the sentence and looked up. “Glad the promo tour is done tonight.”
“Be real with me,” Mark said, meeting my gaze. He grabbed a cigarette of his own and lit up. “You and Fran Chambers?” I shrugged and took a drag of smoke.
“It’s a thing. Dunno what kind of thing, but there you have it.”
“Fucking hell,” Mark said, shaking his head. “You’ve been at it two months? For real?”
“For real,” I told him, nodding with a little smile. “Did you think we were just making it up?”
“I don’t know, man,” Mark said, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I mean I know Nick walked in on you, but Christ. I thought you hated her.”
“That.” I blew smoke out of my lungs and sighed. “That is going to fucking plague me for the rest of my life, isn’t it?”
“You didn’t even want to do the tour because of it, Jules,” Mark pointed out. “You were going to turn down half a million for the sake of it.”
“We’re long past that now,” I said, flicking an ash into the ashtray. I set the laptop aside.
“So where are the two of you taking this?” I shrugged.
“We haven’t decided,” I replied. “Neither of us wants to come clean with what we want, so until then we’re up in the air.”
“No one’s walked in on you since,” Mark said, raising an eyebrow.
“Nothing’s happened since,” I pointed out. “Can’t walk in on something that’s not happening.”
“That blows.” I laughed.
“Yeah, it kind of does,” I agreed. “Hand’s getting a fucking workout.”
“She is pretty hot,” Mark said. “You’ve banged worse.” I rolled my eyes.
“Coming from you? You’d bang a fucking shoe if it was curvy enough.” Mark laughed out loud.
“Hey—don’t knock fucking shoes,” he told me jokingly. “They don’t expect a phone call in the morning and you can’t get them pregnant.” I snorted.
“So, it’s an actual thing—you and Fran?” I shrugged.
“It’s as much a thing as either of us are up to right now, even without the sex.”
“I’ll try and help a brother out,” Mark said, smirking. “Get everyone to party it up for the last night. Beg to go to the Clermont Lounge, then you and Fran can have the bus to yourselves.” I snickered.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, shaking my head. “It’ll play out just like that.” The fact was that I’d take any chance to have at least fifteen minutes alone with Fran at that point—and twenty or thirty would be even better. Maybe an hour. We had to make up for lost time, after all. “See what you can do.”
“You know Nick’s never going to let you live it down though, right?” I nodded. The other day, during one of the bullshit promotional interviews we’d had to do at yet another radio station, Nick had spent the entire time dropping hints—little comments about “how close we’re all getting as bands,” and “the need for companionship” and shit like that. It was just enough to get a sharp look from Alex.
“Yeah, I figure I’ll be getting texts about it when we’re back in Dade,” I said, shaking my head. “Whatever. It is what it is.”
“Even if you don’t know what it is, exactly?” Mark raised an eyebrow.
“Even then,” I agreed. “Let me finish this bullshit for the site.”
“I’ll come get you in a bit; Nate wants to smoke out.” I nodded and turned back to the blog post, thinking to myself what a fucking fiasco that part of the agreement had been.
From the label’s perspective, it was a huge success; getting us and the members of Juniper Woolf to update it every day had driven a lot of traffic to the site, which had resulted in people ordering merch—including our last album—and there was some kind of ruckus at the label about “generating buzz” which I didn’t understand but apparently made them happier than a pig in shit. But if we ever did anything like this again—some kind of promotional deal with another band—I was going to put my foot down to Ron and insist that we get an actual journalist of some kind, at least some kind of fucking writer, to do the work of documenting it.
I’d just finished and posted the blog to the site when I heard someone else walking into the rec area. I looked up while I closed the laptop down and saw Nate. “What’s up?” Nate shrugged, slipping his hand into his pocket and coming up with a couple of joints.
“Fran’s doing some interview thing with a magazine, so I thought I’d come back here and see about getting lit,” Nate explained.
“Feel like sharing?” Nate set one of the joints aside and I handed him my lighter.
“Sure, man.” He got the joint going and took a hit, holding his breath for a second as he passed it. It was quality shit—probably more of Fran’s stash, I thought, when I passed the crackling, smoking joint back to him. “So you and Fran?”
“Jesus how many times do I have to have this conversation? I’m fucking tired of it,” I said, coughing through the heavy smoke.
“She just normally doesn’t hook up like that. It’s weird, is all,” Nate said before taking another hit. I took the J from him when he extended it to me and took as big a drag on it as I could handle. For a second we were both silent, holding the pot smoke in our lungs to get the most out of it. We both started coughing at almost the same moment.
“Yeah, she mentioned the first time we hooked up that normally she just takes care of things herself on tour,” I said; I doubted that it was a secret to any of her band mates. Hell—everyone in Molly Riot knew everyone else’s porn preferences and masturbation schedules. You couldn’t help knowing shit like that when you spent every waking moment together. It surprised me again that Fran and I had managed to pull off keeping our thing secret for so long.
“When was that?” I raised an eyebrow.
“You want to know the first time I fucked your lead singer?” Nate shrugged. I took another hit. “Right at the start. I think Orlando probably.” Nate snickered.
“I won the betting pool then,” Nate said, before bringing the joint to his lips.
“Betting pool? You sons of bitches bet on how long it would take Fran and me to hook up?” Nate nodded before blowing out acrid pot smoke.
“If it makes you feel better, Nick said it’d take you until the last night of the tour to hook up with her,” Nate told me. I rolled my eyes.
“How much did you win?” Nate looked up at the ceiling of the bus, swaying slightly as he struggled with the math.
“Few hundred bucks,” he told me, smirking.
“Give me fifty and we’ll call it even,” I said. Nate passed the joint; we’d almost finished it.
“Soon as I collect, my man,” he said, nodding. “I’m gonna spend the rest of it at the Clermont. You going to that?” I shook my head.
“I’m getting to be an old man,” I told Nate with a little grin. “Gonna come back on the bus and sleep until we get home.”
“Frannie said the same thing,” Nate told me with a knowing smirk. “Sleep well, compadre.”