“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Is that my future wife?”

I’d been standing outside the bus, watching as my brother stashed my suitcase into the lower compartment of my temporary home for the next five weeks when the words pierced the Massachusetts air. I groaned, recognizing the voice that had been tainting my life for over twenty years. Then I turned.

Mason had his long, tattooed arms stretched in my direction, smiling like the demented fool he was and still more handsome than any jerk should ever be. “Come here, my bride.”

I snorted and shook my head, already heading toward him. “Hey, you.”

Even though we’d been friends since before I even knew what a training bra was, Mason had been telling me we were going to get married for as long as I could remember. Eli said it’d be a cold day in hell before he ever let that happen, and I couldn’t help but agree. I’d been Mason’s pretend-girlfriend at least a hundred times, his sister, wingman, wrangler, voice of reason and prom date.

That was just the tip of the iceberg with our history.

When you know the worst things about the people you care about and still managed to love them anyway, it sometimes turned into a brotherly type of affection. At least that was the case with this guy. Not that it stopped me from thinking Mason was attractive.

Because he was. Good gracious, he was. It was undeniable.

I felt his arms wrap around me and squeeze; all I could think about were his perfectly sculpted biceps.

With sky-blue eyes and a haircut that left him looking like a clean-cut Calvin Klein model, Mason was the reason why the band had so many female fans. If you asked my mom, she’d insist Eli was the attractive one, but yeah, no way. Mason was around my brother’s height, muscular enough but not as bulky, and he had this grin that was deceptively sweet. He’d also slept with more women than I could count, smoked weed at least once a day, and showered only when he felt like it, which wasn’t often enough; yet somehow he managed to pull off being a vagina magnet despite his hygiene issues.

And today was my lucky day because by the way he smelled—or I guess didn’t smell—he’d taken a shower recently. Praise Jesus.

“I just about shat my pants when I heard you were hopping on tour with us,” he murmured against my hair. Hugging me to him again, he pulled on my ponytail just like old times.

“According to E, I don’t have anything better to do this summer.” I laughed but it was a little forced. The reminder that I didn’t have a job, my own place or even any prospects for either was like a nail right to the eye.

Mason pulled back and grinned down at me. “I haven’t seen you in forever. Have you been hiding at the Chocolate Factory again with your Oompa—?”

I poked at his nostril with my index finger. At five-foot-two, I’d heard countless jokes about my height for the last ten years. “You’re an idiot.”

His only response was an unapologetic shrug.

Eli yanked on my belt loop a second later, distracting our conversation. “Your bag is in the bus. Let’s go sell some shit. Gordo’s phone is dead, and I bet my fucking balls he’s been giving out the wrong change for the last hour without his calculator app.”

I nodded, remembering the time I’d witnessed Gordo trying to give a cashier change at the gas station. Painful didn’t even begin to cut it. I’d ended up giving the poor lady money out of my own pocket to put her out of her misery.

Mason laughed. “You know he only volunteered to go out there so he could scope out the sausage scene in the audience tonight.”

My brother groaned. “Let’s go, G.”

“I’ll see you later, Flabby. Make Daddy some money tonight,” Mason winked with a laugh, pulling on my ponytail one last time before he made his way toward the front of the bus.

Following after my brother, he led me through the building’s rear entrance, which opened to the venue’s floor. As soon as we walked out, insanity ensued and it caught me completely off-guard. I was more than familiar with the kind of crowds Ghost Orchid brought out, from traveling with them in the past. Since then, my parents, my older siblings and I would drive out to any of their shows within a five-hour trip from Dallas. I thought I’d seen it all.

This time there were so many more people than I ever remembered seeing in the past. The place was already packed. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they could draw a crowd; it was just rare so many people would show up hours before the main act.

Eli elbowed me. “Crazy, huh?” He could sense my surprise at the hundreds of people crammed into the venue so early in the evening. More often than not, he and I didn’t need words to communicate. “We got really lucky they chose us for this tour.”

“Who’s the headlining band?” I finally asked, putting my hand on his shoulder to follow him through the crowd. The last few hours had been so hectic I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask, not that it really mattered anyway. I’d gone with them back when they’d played with everyone from a rap-metal band to a straight-up indie-pop group.

People stared as my brother made his way through the crowd ahead of me, apologizing to each person he shouldered past. It had always seemed strange to me that people would get stars in their eyes when they saw him in person. Because this was my Eliza. He wasn’t anything special or better than any other person. His crap smelled just as bad, if not worse, than anyone else’s, and I had a million other humbling stories about him if anyone wanted to hear them.

“The Cloud Collision,” he answered.

I wracked my brain for recognition of the name and only barely came up with a vague mention in the past. The band had to be well known if they were the headliners, but I still couldn’t come up with a solid memory. Not a song title, album name, band member, or even what they sounded like. Anonymity wasn’t necessarily unheard of for bands that weren’t mainstream acts. There were easily tens of thousands of bands that wouldn’t be known by the masses. Groups didn’t need to be played on the radio or television to be successful, even if they were considered unheard of.

It didn’t help that I’d really fallen off the bandwagon of searching out new music in the last couple of years. I’d been so busy with school and a full-time job that I hadn’t really kept up with almost anything.

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” I admitted.

He shrugged his big hammy shoulders as we kept walking. “You’ll like them. They’re good; Sacha’s spot on every night too.”

Sacha? I felt myself brighten up a little. “Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know there was another girl on tour.” She might be a raging bitch, but maybe not.

I missed the way Eli slowly turned his head to look at me, this weird expression on his face. Slowly he nodded, like you would nod at someone who asked a stupid question.

That had me frowning. “What?”

“Nothing.” He made his eyes all wide, like I wasn’t familiar with each and every one of his facial expressions and what they meant.

“Why are you making that face?”

“No reason, Flabs. I’m not allowed to smile?”

“No.” I stared at him a little longer, suspicious.

But my brother just shrugged and didn’t say another word.

I’d keep my eye on him. I knew he was up to something.

In no time, we were at the merch table where Gordo looked like a deer caught in the headlights. A small group of people surrounded him, half of them wanting to buy something and the other half wanting nothing more than to talk to the singer and guitar player of Ghost Orchid. A blind person could tell how uncomfortable Gordo was. The poor bastard had sweat running down his temples and he looked twitchy. As soon as he spotted his bandmate and then me hovering behind the overgrown human sausage, he visibly sighed in relief.

I’d never totally understood how Gordo managed to put up with my brother and Mason. He was the sane one. The thinker. Soft-spoken. He was the kind of guy who didn’t talk much or relish getting into trouble. He was usually the voice of reason, where the other two morons acted first and thought things through second—if ever. When we were younger, Gordo and I would usually sit back and watch the other two get into all kinds of shit while we shook our heads and judged them the entire time.

After a quick hug, an explanation of how to use their credit card swipey-thing, how much each shirt, poster, drink koozie, CD and tab book cost, I was left on my own to face a firing squad who wanted to buy something. Eliza and Gordo disappeared as quickly as they could to go warm up backstage. Even though I hadn’t sold merchandise—or merch, as it was shortened—for them in years, it was like riding a bike. You gave the fans what they wanted and they gave you money. It was that easy. Knowing that I’d get paid depending on how much merchandise was sold, I may have brushed the cobwebs off my best flirtatious smile and purposely not pulled my shirt the inch higher it could have gone. I wasn’t one to usually show off Lucy and Ethel because I was self-conscious of them, but money was money.

A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Plus, selling merch had gotten me my girls, so I wasn’t going to hate on the job that had given me so much.

As soon as the line dwindled down, I finally turned to look in the direction of the table next to mine. The set-up mirrored the one I was manning. A large, collapsible table was set up with a flat metal rack leaning against the wall behind it. On the rack were T-shirts and zip-up hoodies pinned to it. On the table were stickers, CDs and vinyl. Cluttering the floor and stashed below the table were boxes and containers filled with the products on display. The band name, The Cloud Collision, was printed on a large banner that was mounted above the rack.

I plopped down onto one of the large plastic bins where some of the T-shirts were stored, and took in the guy working behind the other band’s table. He was possibly a few years younger than my twenty-six. He was slim, with long straight hair in the front and a buzzcut from ear-to-ear in the back; he was busy at work with a line that was ten people deep.

The moment he got through with the line, just as the local opening band went on stage to start setting their instruments and gear up, he turned to look at me and gave me a shy smile—small and cute, highlighted by a hoop lip ring at the corner of his mouth. Worming his way through the maze of plastic bins and boxes that separated us, he thrust out a hand.

“I’m Carter,” he introduced himself. Now that he was up close, I realized he was possibly half a foot taller than me. He also had another piercing through his eyebrow, a black ball, that I hadn’t noticed initially. “You’re Eli’s sister?”

I nodded, shaking his hand. “Yeah, I’m Gaby. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.” He gave me another shy smile, even blushing a little, before pointing at me. “If you turn around, I can take the sign off your back.”

The sign…?

“Ah, Gordo taped it to your back when he gave you a hug,” he explained.

I groaned, not surprised at all, and turned around to let him pull it off of me. Gordo was the quiet one, sure, but he was still a prankster. How else would he survive with the other two if he didn’t have any in him? The guy named Carter handed me the bright yellow Post-It note lined with the same clear packaging tape I’d seen in one of the bins I’d rummaged through. In Gordo’s awful cursive, the note said:

Hi, my name is FLABBY.

I burst out laughing.

“He would,” I mumbled to myself, pressing the adhesive to the top of the lockbox for a memento. Glancing up at the other merch guy, I shot him a smile. “Thanks for taking it off, otherwise it would have stayed on there all night.”

Carter nodded and lifted his thin shoulders. “Anytime.”

I smiled at him. And then, we just stared at each other for maybe ten seconds. I didn’t know what else to say and neither did he.

“So… is this your first tour?” I finally asked, raising my voice a little so he could hear me as the band members onstage banged their equipment around in preparation for their set.

“No. This is my… twelfth one.”

Twelfth? He looked fresh out of high school. “Whoa.”

“I like touring,” he explained simply. “It’s good money, too.”

He had me there. I grinned at him just as the band onstage started their soundcheck, making talking nearly impossible unless you were yelling. No thanks.

It was then that it hit me. I hadn’t grabbed any earplugs. A dumbass. I was a dumbass. Not wearing earplugs for the duration of a concert was a newbie mistake. You were asking for severe hearing loss without them night after night; I’d never forgotten before.

Out of my peripheral vision, a hand waved. Carter held a balled-up fist out in my direction, a “take it” expression on his clean-shaven face. I got to my feet and opened my palm under his as he dropped two orange foam earplugs in it. I mouthed “thank you” to him along with a thumbs-up with my free hand.

Not even a minute after those puppies had gone in, the guitar player on the stage accidentally hit a note that screeched through the speakers, making everyone in the audience cringe. What followed was some of the longest twenty minutes of my life. I made it through two songs before I took my phone out and started to send Laila, my best friend, a text message before more Ghost Orchid fans approached the table, and I gestured my way through a few sales.

Once that band finished their set, my favorite three idiots on the planet went on. Eli brought pieces of his drum set onto the stage while Gordo and Mason carried their guitar and bass, along with their power amps, cabinets, pedals and cables. Gordo adjusted his microphone, and the band went through a quick soundcheck despite the earlier one they’d already gone through.

Ghost Orchid began playing.

The group had been together since freshman year, annoying everyone in the neighborhood when they practiced in our garage most days of the week. They’d driven me nuts back then, especially when I couldn’t hear myself think while I was trying to study. But I’d faithfully gone to every show and dragged my friends along with me. Back then it would have been considered a good show if there were twenty people in the audience, even if they were all family members.

Eleven years later, here they were. Playing in front of what had to easily be around nine hundred people cheering and screaming.

I couldn’t help but smile through the entire forty-minute set.

Fifteen minutes after they went offstage, nothing could have prepared me for what came on.

I didn’t believe in love at first sight.

Lust at first sight? Sure. I’d seen Michael Fassbender in X-Men: First Class. Hello.

But what happened fifteen minutes after Ghost Orchid got off the stage, after I’d screamed my throat raw cheering for my brother behind the drum kit, Gordo on guitar, and Mason on bass, was unexpected.

I fell in love with the voice in the dark. No joke, no exaggeration. It was a pure, raw love.

The stage had been cleared when the headlining band’s sound guy

scurried about one last time, checking on the two guitars, bass, a microphone and a drum kit that had been set up hours ago. When the lights darkened, the crowd that had swelled to fill the venue’s capacity, at what I estimated to be over a thousand people by that point, went bananas. They were animals, and it was as scary as it was exciting. In the pitch-black auditorium, a wispy voice began singing softly, making the fans shriek even louder.

With a flash of elaborate, multicolored LED lights on a huge panel behind the massive drum kit, the stage lit up like fireworks in July, illuminating two guitar players who had come out of nowhere, a bass player and a drummer already onstage.

The lyrics and the song floated through the air in a whisper, the notes the singer was hitting unidentifiable, and it was over—in an emotional sense, that is.

While Gordo had a good, deep voice that was rounded and almost hoarse, the singer onstage was the complete opposite. His tone was slightly higher, breathy and incredibly strong, piercing through the air with its clarity and tone. And the range he had… good grief.

I could only see an outline of a man walking on the stage with an energy and charisma that every person in the audience including me, couldn’t tear their eyes away from. I focused on everything going on: the explosion of yellows and reds on the LED panel behind all the music equipment, that beautiful melodic voice and the catchy instrumentals that flared after the opening verse.

It was love. Plain, easy, uncomplicated love.

Unfortunately for me, a ton of fans decided to come buy merchandise during the set. Trying to hustle about and sell as quickly as possible, I kept an eye and an ear out for the singer’s dynamic presence. He was so good. Well, the entire band was. Catchy, a mix of pop rock, indie and prog—they were a genre of their own. During the quick glances I could take when I wasn’t busy, the long, sinewy figure in black dress pants and a gray button-down shirt and tie moved and jumped in time with the rhythm constantly.

The next hour and half blew by in a mix of amazing music and sales. Watching the old pickle jar on the corner of the table fill up with bills kept me shooting smiles at all the people buying stuff, even though a part of me wanted them out of my face so I could enjoy the band playing.

During brief breaks between their set, the singer would talk to the crowd, thanking them for their presence and support, or he’d introduce the next song. At one point, a bra went airborne and smacked him in the arm in the middle of a song. The singer picked it up by the strap without missing a note and draped it over the microphone stand, letting it stay there for the remainder of the set.

It was a beautiful kind of insanity watching The Cloud Collision and their audience interact. It was easy, then, between the smiles I’d share with the guy “next door” named Carter, and the screaming, earplug-to-mouth chats I had with Ghost Orchid fans, to forget about why I was going to spend the next few months of my life with my three male best friends and eight strangers.

In the madness that ensued once the band finished their encore performance, in his swanky, tenor voice, the singer thanked everyone for coming out. I relished it all. The nonstop hustle to pull shirts out of one of the bins, while making sure I marked down every sale on the tally sheet correctly, was old and familiar. Before I knew it, the security in the venue was trying to usher fans out while Carter and I packed up the bins and tore down the racks. Usually the band would be trying to load the trailer at the same time so I wasn’t too sure who was going to come and help me take the bins out. In the past, one of the idiots would come inside and help me carry everything.

Carter must have read my mind because he waved a hand as he rounded his table. “I’ll get the dolly,” he said.

Well, that explained a lot. Over the course of the concert, I’d seen the size of Carter’s wrists and biceps. I was more muscular than he was and that wasn’t saying much; I was a runner, not a weightlifter. By the amount of bins and boxes he had stashed on his side, there was no way he was going to be able to carry those things all the way to the bus. I finished tearing down Ghost Orchid’s display while Carter came back. We helped each other carry our backbreaking bins onto the flatbed dolly before he took it upon himself to wheel them out while I pushed both of the tables onto their sides and folded the legs in.

“Flabby!” Eli hollered from across the empty auditorium, skipping around the employees busy mopping the floor. “You need help?”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “You’re like thirty minutes too late. Carter and I are pretty much done.”

The asshole had the nerve to snap his fingers as if he was disappointed he missed out. “I’ll help you carry the tables so we can get going.”

As we walked out, I told him how good the show had been and even mentioned how well he played. After more than ten years of drum lessons and an intense practice routine, he really was good. Eli had somehow managed to avoid doing any actual schoolwork in middle and high school using his drumming skills as an excuse with our parents. Copying my homework when I was asleep or copying whatever girl was dumb enough to share with him, helped too. Luckily for him, it paid off. My dance classes as a kid had only afforded me the opportunity to not look like a complete ass at prom.

Once we made it outside, Eli steered us toward the huge trailer hitched to the back of the bus. My shoulders began burning from carrying the two tables in an uncomfortable position. Four other men stood inside the massive trailer, trying to arrange the protective flight cases of musical equipment in an orderly manner. I recognized two of them from The Cloud Collision’s performance and the third man was their sound guy, who had been checking their equipment before they’d played. Gordo’s presence rounded out the four men packing the trailer.

“We’re stopping at a travel center on the way out of here, so if you wanna shower, grab your shit from your suitcase,” Eli said. He leaned toward me before taking a quick sniff and pulling back with a frown. “Take a fucking shower. I’m begging you.”

“Shut up,” I laughed, taking a step away from him.

I wasn’t going to lie. I had taken a whiff of my armpits when I’d been breaking down the tables and it hadn’t been pleasant. Not at all. I had a feeling I was going to end up buying some men’s deodorant soon or I’d steal Eli’s. Whatever was easier.

Walking toward the front of the bus, I saw someone bent over at the hips, looking through the compartment where the suitcases were stashed. The bare upper body, shadow of dark hair and a full-sleeve tattoo caught my eye while I stopped behind him. “Mason.”

He stopped moving around for a second before continuing to push things over in his endless search for his luggage.

“Mason.”

Nothing.

“Mason, you dick,” I said again.

When he laughed from inside at the same time that I took a step forward, I frowned. I would swear on my life it happened in slow motion. My foot went up on its own, eyeing the target—his ass—at the same time I spotted someone stepping out of the bus. It was another bare chest with a full-sleeve tattoo and a dark head of hair. And as the tip of my foot connected with the black dress pant-covered ass, I realized that it wasn’t my supposed future husband, Mason, I had kicked in the ass.

Mase was the one coming out of the bus.