The next two weeks went by before I could ask what the hell I had gotten myself into.

One day we were in Boston and the next thing I knew, we’d gone through Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri. The routing made absolutely no sense but it never had. Booking agents usually didn’t care how long the drives were between dates as long as they scored bands the highest guarantee possible.

A handful of fans had asked me so far, “How awesome is it to be on tour with them?”

With them. Them. Eli, Mason, Gordo, Sacha, Isaiah, Julian, Miles, Mateo, Carter, Freddy and Bryce. Ghost Orchid, the members of The Cloud Collision, their merch guy, front of house slash tour manager and their lighting guy.

I showered in gas stations. I had some kind of fungus thing on the bottom of my toes from the one bloody shower I took without flip-flops. I’d eaten more pizza over the course of two weeks than I had in my entire life.

On top of all of that, summertime was a vengeful, rude bitch that didn’t care about your comfort.

I sweated all the time. I stunk at the end of every night. I spent countless hours rolling around in a bus from town to town, and I hung out in venues for nine hours a day minimum. I lived in a bus with ten men who were like every other twenty-something-year-old guys in the world. They farted, they burped, some of them had smelly feet, some of them didn’t brush their teeth enough, or the only thing that really drove me nuts: some didn’t cover their food in the microwave.

This life wasn’t glamorous. At. All.

On the other hand, to be fair, no group of people made me crack up like they did. It had been a long time since my stomach had cramped from how hard I laughed at or with them.

Eli and I had been acting more like conjoined twins than fraternal twins, as if we were trying to make up for all the time we’d spent apart over the last few years. I’d met a lot of twins in my life; some were close and others couldn’t stand each other. We weren’t like that, though.

Before high school, we’d been inseparable. Two peas in a pod. Each other’s security blanket. My mom liked to tell people that when we were toddlers, sometimes she would walk into a room to find us on opposite sides, totally silent, as if we were having some kind of telepathic conversation. What she wouldn’t tell everyone was that if she stood there long enough, we’d randomly start laughing our butts off for no apparent reason, which in turn scared the crap out of her. Yeah, I didn’t blame her.

Even during high school, there was never any doubt that we were still more than best friends. We didn’t spend as much time together by that point, but it didn’t matter. I’d woken up plenty of times in high school with Eli on my bed, his feet way too close to my face as he slept on top of the comforter with his own blanket over him. We might not have come from the same egg, but no one knew me, understood me or made me feel as comfortable as my brother did.

I guess I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed having him around over the years as we’d each gone our own ways.

When we were in the bus, I was constantly with Mason, Gordo or Carter. When we were off of it, Eliza went everywhere with me. I’d spoken to the guys with The Cloud Collision a few times, but we hadn’t been anything more than friendly in passing. They were all always on their phones or their computers, so I didn’t take it personally. We had three months ahead of us to get to know each other; it wasn’t a big deal.

I was enjoying my time, and that was all that really mattered.

And besides the couple of times a venue had been playing one of Brandon’s songs between sets, I hadn’t thought about killing that piece of crap once.

---

“Shouldn’t you go eat something soon?”

I finished setting the last cymbal on the stand and tightened it down, glancing at my brother over the top of his drum kit. He was closing the travel cases since we were mostly done setting up his stuff. We usually tag-teamed putting together his drum kit to save time; I’d done it so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. Most of the time he helped me bring most of the merch into the venue right after we got to wherever the tour package was playing, and then I’d help the guys set up their equipment to do soundcheck since it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. There was usually so much time before doors opened that I’d rather keep busy than sit around.

But today we’d gotten to Little Rock almost three hours late, thanks to a major accident. Now, everything and everyone was running behind schedule, including soundcheck.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and took a peek at the clock with a wince. Doors were opening in two hours. “Damn it, I didn’t know it was so late.”

Eli turned to look at me over his shoulder from where he was kneeling. He raised his eyebrows. “I mean, you could go without a meal or two—”

He should have known better than to talk shit when he was on his knees. I shoved him.

“Whore!” he cried as toppled over like a chopped-down tree.

“Your mother,” I muttered as I kept right on walking past him to sit on the edge of the stage before hopping down. By the time I was back on my feet, Eli was again on his knees, glaring over in my direction. “I’m going to grab something to eat.”

He was still giving me a dirty look when he said, “I can’t go with you. We gotta do soundcheck.”

I shrugged both shoulders; it wasn’t like I didn’t already know that. “Okay. I’ll be back.”

He blinked. And then he simply raised a fist with his middle finger fully extended.

I stuck my tongue out and went to look for the only other person that might be able to go out to eat with me.

The venue hadn’t provided us with food and instead had opted to give the tour members buy-out money to fend for ourselves. The TCC tour manager, who was also doing sound for them and Ghost Orchid, had walked around a few minutes earlier and passed out everyone’s cash. For once in his life, Eli had been right. If I waited any longer to go on the hunt for food, I wouldn’t make it back in time for the start of the show. According to Mason, I had something called a job. Like I didn’t know what the hell that was.

In no time, I found my new friend Carter, the TCC merch guy, sitting outside of the trailer surrounded by a huge pile of boxes. Clenching a clipboard, he shot me a tight smile, scratching at one of the legs of the knee-length cutoff skinny jeans he’d put on that day.

“Still busy?” I asked, looking at the cardboard boxes that had been waiting outside when the bus had rolled in an hour ago.

Carter let out this long sigh straight from his belly. His normally passive face was clearly exasperated. Even his ponytail was limp. We’d gotten to know each other over the hours of free time we shared at the merch tables. He wasn’t much of a talker unless you prodded him, but he was hardworking and kind. Mostly though, when the people I usually spent time with were louder than howler monkeys, I really enjoyed his company. “I’m only halfway done with inventory, and I need to get it all done before the show.” He shot me a flat look that drew his lip piercing tight. “By myself.”

I grimaced, knowing all too well how frustrated he got with The Cloud Collision guys. They all basically left him on his own to do everything. According to Carter, it was pretty normal for bands at their level to feel entitled to do that, but I still pointed at him and said “ha” when he’d first told me. It was occasions like those that made me appreciate playing the sister card on Eli.

“I was going to get food, but I can help you if you want,” I almost told him how I’d wanted him to go with me, but what was the point in rubbing the situation in? The poor guy was stuck working outside in a trailer with next to zero air circulation, counting T-shirts. That sucked.

The corners of his mouth tilted up just enough in what could be considered a sad, resigned smile. “Don’t worry about it. I can get it done; go get something to eat,” he said.

I didn’t think he was trying to do reverse psychology on me, but I’d spent too much time with people who did. “Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“Are you really, really sure?”

Carter’s smile tilted up a little more. “I’m positive.”

I felt bad but… “Want me to bring you something?” I offered.

His brown eyes lit up and he finally smiled, suddenly forgetting how irritated he’d been a minute before. “Please.” He began fishing through his back pocket for his wallet. Handing me a twenty-dollar bill, he paused and made a thoughtful face. “Who’s going with you?”

Even though we’d only met two weeks ago, apparently he was going to worry about me. I liked it. “No one. My brother’s busy, and I can’t wait any longer if I want to get back here before doors open. I’ll just walk somewhere close by, no big deal.”

“Gaby.” Carter’s long face was already telling me he thought my idea was terrible. He was only twenty-one, but he was such a mature guy, he seemed older.

“Yes?”

He shook his head. “This isn’t the best side of town. Find someone to go with you,” he insisted.

“There’s no one.” There wasn’t. The guys were more than likely about to start soundchecking.

Carter scratched at his chin, he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and though he wasn’t capable of growing in a beard—his words, not mine—he had some stubble going on. “TCC isn’t doing anything. They’re around here somewhere.”

I almost crossed my eyes. “I don’t want to bother them. Honest. I can go by myself.”

Just as he opened his mouth to argue, someone cut in.

“Where do you want to go?” The voice I’d come to recognize as Sacha’s, from our handful of conversations and from listening to him talk to the audience every night over the last fourteen days, floated through the air.

I turned to find him in his black basketball shorts, ASICS running shoes and a T-shirt. He didn’t even look like the same man who went onstage every night in a button-down shirt and dress pants with his hair gelled or moussed into perfect place. I thought he looked even better when he wasn’t in that persona, but that was probably just me.

We’d only spoken a couple of times about how the most recent show went, and he still seemed like a really nice guy who brought up nearly every day how I’d kicked him in the ass. Twice already he’d walked by me with his hands splayed out behind him like he was protecting his butt cheeks from attack. I also tended to go to bed before he did, so it wasn’t like we got to gossip in our bunks or anything.

“I want to go get something to eat,” I explained a little awkwardly, eyeing the piano keys I’d come to recognize were tattooed on his neck.

He smiled easily, making those black and skin color keys tighten. “I’ll go with you.”

What? “You will?” We’d spoken a few times but really, it hadn’t been more than ten or fifteen minutes total. There was also the fact that every time I spoke to him, I thought about how we’d met and it made my insides cringe. We were friendly but we weren’t friends exactly. At least, not like how Carter and I were. We were at the point where I knew he liked Dr. Pepper and sour candy, disliked the same music I did, and he had a girlfriend who hated him going on tour. You knew you were friends with someone when they grew comfortable enough around you to let you read psycho text messages from the person they were dating.

“Yeah,” the tall man agreed with a dip of his chin.

I didn’t miss the pleased look Carter had on his face.

Just like that, Sacha and I were walking across the parking lot at his guidance while I pocketed my younger companion’s twenty dollars.

The black-haired man walking alongside me looked down from over his shoulder, his eyes such a pristine shade of ash they were nearly a clear blue. “Are you craving anything?”

I scrunched up my face. “As long as we aren’t eating pizza again, I’m game.”

Sacha laughed, his gaze still on me. “It’s the worst, isn’t it?”

There was a reason almost everyone on the tour crossed their fingers and toes that pizza wouldn’t be the meal of choice wherever we happened to be that day. Venues were responsible for providing the tour package with food every night. Each band had a rider, or a list of requests, of items they wanted. It wasn’t anything crazy like all red Skittles, Oreos without the filling or anything. Ghost Orchid’s rider consisted of a case of Dr. Pepper, some kind of vodka, a large bag of barbecue chips, a sandwich tray and Oreos. They were a vision of health.

Apart from their riders, the two bands were either supposed to have dinner provided or if that wasn’t available, each person on the tour was given a certain amount of money to supply their own food. The problem was that when the venues did have dinner available, more often than not, it consisted of pizza. Not the good kind of pizza either, at least so far, but the kind that had cheese that tasted like the off-brand individually packed crap, suspicious-looking pepperoni, and no sauce. It made me want to puke.

If you thought there was a food you could eat every day without getting tired of it, you were lying to yourself. Everything got old.

“I haven’t had pizza on tour in almost ten years,” Sacha continued. “There’s a Thai place about five blocks away…” He trailed off and I didn’t miss the hopeful look he shot me.

He gave me the type of innocent smile as he raked a hand through the hair at the top of his head that reached into your soul like a puppy’s lick could. “I swear it’s great—”

“Okay.” I shrugged up at him, meeting his gaze. “I’m game.”

Sacha paused for a second. His six-foot-one-ish height towered over my five-two. “You don’t mind?” He asked it so hopefully even if I hadn’t wanted to eat Thai, I would have still done it to keep the grin on his face.

The question earned him a snort. “Food is food.”

He hitched a shoulder up, the sleeve of his T-shirt sliding back to reveal more of the thick, black bands of his tattoo that went from wrist to shoulder. “That was easy.”

I didn’t even miss a beat before blurting out, “I’m easy.”

I slammed my mouth closed. And I blinked. Then I stopped blinking all together and just stared.

If it wouldn’t have been for Sacha stopping again and turning to look down at me, his mouth pulled tight at the corners, I wouldn’t have known he’d heard what I said. His dark eyebrows were halfway to his hairline. His eyes were huge as they flicked to the side.

I narrowed my eyes at him, heat crawling up my neck. “Don’t… say… anything.”

He coughed the fakest, most forced cough in the history of coughs. “Say anything about what?” he asked slowly, hesitantly. He even added a little questioning shrug at the end.

It was a lot harder than it seemed to not laugh. “Exactly.” I shrugged back at him, wanting to kick myself in the ass for having such a big mouth.

Sacha gave me a low-lidded glance before visibly pursing his lips together and coughing one more time. I didn’t miss the way his mouth pulled up into a tiny, short smile before he managed to wipe it off his features altogether. Sacha scratched at the bridge of his nose and glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes again before finally grinding out, “You’re sure you’re fine with eating that, then?”

At that point, it wasn’t like I could say no even if I wanted to. I nodded, which earned me another smile from him.

We walked a block in silence, each of us giving the other a few curious if not a bit awkward glances, like neither one of us could think of what to say until Sacha broke the silence. “Are you having fun on tour?” he asked as we came to the first crosswalk.

“Yeah, besides dealing with the heat.” It had been hot in every single venue we’d been in over the last two weeks, and me complaining about it said something; I’d lived in Texas my entire life.

He groaned. “It never gets easier to handle, trust me. I’ve been touring six months out of the year for the last ten and it hasn’t gotten any better than that first summer the band spent in a van with no AC.” Sacha shuddered at the memory, and I think I could have exploded at his cuteness.

“Ten years?” I asked him, looking up. He didn’t look twenty-one or even twenty-five but he didn’t look over thirty either. His face was still relatively unlined, except for these deep laugh lines on the sides of his mouth. How old was he?

“Ten years in August,” he reiterated. Sacha turned to look at me with those clear gray eyes. “Is this your first tour?”

I snorted as a dozen memories of the five years I spent on and off with Ghost Orchid blew through my brain in the span of a second. “No. I used to leave with Eli, but about two years ago, I decided to go to school full time and stopped. This whole bus thing is new to me. We used to get around in a van,” I summed it up, leaving out a few details that didn’t seem important.

Sacha grinned at me slyly. “I guessed that when you didn’t take shoes into the showers with you.” He looked down at my tennis shoes and waggled his eyebrows. “I heard you got fungus from it.”

I wasn’t even going to bother trying to guess which asshole spilled the beans on my foot problem. It could have been any of them. Pricks. I’m not sure where the action came from, but I bumped his arm with my own. He was so much taller than me, I was hitting closer to his elbow than his shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

And just like that, he was nudging me back with a big grin on his face. The corners of his deep-set eyes crinkled. “I bet your skin looks raw, huh?”

Just at his mention of raw-looking skin, that crease between the balls of my feet and toes started doing this weird itchy-burn sensation I’d become familiar with. I’d been smothering my feet in cream for two weeks and changing my socks twice a day per Mason’s instructions. What no one tells you in those athlete’s foot commercials is how long those creams take to work.

“Sucking ass” just barely began to describe the experience.

“It happens to everyone,” Sacha added when I didn’t respond immediately.

I snickered, remembering the last time I’d heard those exact same words. “I’m pretty sure Mason has said the same thing about having The Clap.”

The laugh that exploded out of him in response was so unexpected that I jumped a little at first.

It was so infectious it made me snort.

“That is… that’s absolutely not true,” Sacha snickered in between bouts of clear, loud sounds of enjoyment.

“That’s Mase for you.”

He slapped a long-fingered hand over his mouth as he laughed. “I thought I heard him say last week something like ‘it’s all fun and games until someone gets crabs.’ But I thought I imagined it.”

Oh god. I burst out laughing just as loud as he’d been going at it a few moments ago. “Yeah, that sounds like something he would say.”

His head tipped down enough so that our eyes met. Very intently, he asked, “Is he serious or does—”

“Oh, he’s serious most of the time. I went with him to a free clinic when we were seniors because he’d gotten crabs from a girl on the drill team.” It had been our secret until he got drunk one night and told everyone willing to listen about his previously itchy privates. I’m pretty sure the staff had assumed I’d given them to him but who knows.

Sacha’s mouth gaped in amusement for a second before he stopped abruptly in front of a storefront. “The restaurant is in here.” He gestured toward a glass door to our right, opening it and waving me inside.

The small restaurant was homey with burgundy walls, round black vinyl-covered tables and a counter directly in front of the door with a menu mounted above it, written in chalk. There wasn’t anyone in line and I took my time looking at the various items listed for that day. Sacha stood next to me, deciding what to get as well. After a couple of minutes, an older lady in an apron and a hairnet made her way out of the kitchen and took our orders.

With our drinks in hand—some tea drink for Sacha and water for me—we took a seat at one of the empty picnic tables.

My unexpected eating buddy took a sip of the yellow drink in a clear red cup and raised his eyebrows. “You’ve known Mason for a long time then?”

“I’ve known him and Gordo since I was five. We all grew up together,” I explained. “They’re like the brothers I never wanted.”

He smiled. “But you and Eli really are brother and sister?”

“Oh yeah. He likes to say he shoved me out of the way to come out first.”

Sacha blinked. “No shit? You two really are twins?”

I knew he hadn’t believed me! Then again, most people didn’t. My brother had more physical traits in common with Bigfoot than he did with me. “Yup.”

He still made a face that said he wasn’t entirely convinced. “But he’s twice your size.”

Twice my size. I could give him a hug for being such a terrific liar. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he tried to eat me in the womb.”

Sacha burst out laughing again, making the lightly tanned skin on his face glow. His complexion was so clear it almost radiated; it made him even more attractive. “Jesus. They said you were funny, but I didn’t believe them.”

Funny Gaby. I smiled and held back the sigh creeping around in my chest. How many times had I friend-zoned myself by joking around? A dozen? It wasn’t even that I tried to be funny; I just grew up around smart-asses. You either learned to adapt or you died. Well you wouldn’t really die, but you’d get verbally eaten alive by the folks that were supposed to love you; apparently they just loved making fun of you an equal amount. My siblings and the two idiots could find the smallest things to tease me over.

I pushed all five of them out of my head and smiled at the man sitting across from me. That longer hair at the top of his head and the shorter buzz cut along the sides were really flattering even when he didn’t have it perfectly in place.

“What about you and your band? Have you been together a long time?” I asked.

“Isaiah—do you know Isaiah?” he asked, and I nodded. “Isaiah and I have known each other since middle school. We started playing together in high school, doing some cover band stuff, and then we met Julian. He’s the big guy,” Sacha explained, like I didn’t know the names of the people I’d been on tour with for the last two weeks, but I didn’t correct him. “The three of us started TCC when we were sixteen, and then slowly added members over the years.”

Was asking his age considered flirting? I wasn’t positive, but I decided that I didn’t care. “So you’ve been together…?”

“Eleven years.”

He was twenty-seven. Huh. That sounded about right. I whistled. “That’s a long time.”

“It is.” He shrugged. ”But I wouldn’t want to do anything else… most of the time.”

I smiled at him, his words hitting home. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life now that I was done with school. The only thing I did know was what I didn’t want. That didn’t exactly help any, but I guess that’s what this tour was for. To give me some time to figure things out.

What was the rush, right?

The same woman who had worked the counter came over with our order. Sacha’s bowl was shades of green and brown while mine was a red curry dish. It must have been a sign of how hungry we both were that neither one of us said a word as we tore into our food. When I finished before him, I got up and ordered Carter the same thing I’d gotten.

He smiled at me from behind the rim of his glass as he finished off the last of his tea when I sat back down. “Thanks for being a good sport and eating here. I usually have to pay one of the guys to come with me.”

“Why? They don’t like Thai?” I asked. I wasn’t a picky eater. You could put a vegan dish in front of me, or fried chicken, and it was going to get devoured.

“Not at all. None of them like spicy food,” he said, setting the glass on the table.

“But not all of the food is spicy…”

He blinked. “I know.”

“Babies,” I muttered, a little unsure how he’d handle me calling his friends that.

He beamed at me. “Huge babies.”

“They don’t know what good food is.”

“Right? If it were up to them, we’d get fast food every day. All I’m asking for is a little Chipotle at least.”

“Chipotle’s high class.” I smiled.

He lifted a shoulder. “I’m a high-class kind of guy.”

Yeah, I couldn’t hold the joke back despite how inappropriate it might be considering we didn’t know each other well. But screw it. Kicking him in the ass was like jumping ahead three months in a friendship. “You know who else is high class? Hookers. Hookers are high class.”

Sacha didn’t even miss a beat. He blinked those clear gray eyes at me and asked very seriously, “Do you know from experience?”

Was he seriously calling me a hooker on our first expedition out?

By the smile on his face, I would say yes. Yes, he was.

I think I’d found a friend.