Daltrey
Pushing Daisies 4
Heather Young-Nichols
Contents
1. Ella
2. Daltrey
3. Ella
4. Daltrey
5. Ella
6. Daltrey
7. Ella
8. Daltrey
9. Ella
10. Daltrey
11. Ella
12. Daltrey
13. Ella
14. Daltrey
15. Ella
16. Daltrey
17. Ella
18. Daltrey
19. Ella
20. Daltrey
21. Ella
Also by Heather Young-Nichols
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 by Heather Young-Nichols
Cover Art by Sassy Cat Creative
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
1
Ella
If I was going to be talked into spending a week off work to follow a band around for my best friend Emery’s birthday, at least I was booking hotels with pools. I lay out in the sun like I was trying to get a tan, but the joke was, I just liked the heat and smeared SPF 70 all over my pasty skin.
We weren’t staying in any upscale places, but they weren’t dives, either. Emery had been saving for this week and when her parents had asked what she wanted for her birthday, she’d said this. So they’d given her cash. All I was paying for was my own tickets and my own food.
Must be nice to have parents with money.
“We’re staying here tonight then driving to the next city tomorrow, right?” I asked her as she flipped onto her stomach. Emery, unlike me, was actually working on her tan. But she had a darker olive complexion that could handle the sun. I, on the other hand, was quite pale with freckles. My peachy skin was a gift from my Irish ancestors along with my golden copper hair and the barely-there freckles on my nose that I didn’t bother trying to cover up.
“Yes. Different city tomorrow. Just like yesterday,” she said, but she could barely contain the excitement in her voice.
Pushing Daisies had been one of her favorite bands since before they’d even started touring. Last night was my first concert of theirs, though she often played their music in the car when we were together. They weren’t really my jam, but she loved them a freakish amount and I loved her, so I’d made the sacrifice. And they weren’t awful.
“Where is tomorrow?” I leaned up to apply another layer of sunscreen. If I didn’t do it every ninety minutes religiously, I’d burn to a crisp.
“Milwaukee.”
“And you already have the tickets?”
“Yes!” she practically squealed. “Then after that, it’s Chicago and that’s the one I couldn’t get tickets to, so I spent all that time trying to win them.”
“Oh, that’s right.” I flipped my sunglasses back over my face and lay back again. “The one with the backst—”
“Stage passes,” she finished for me and squealed again.
This girl was crazy. I mean, I sort of got it. The guys were decently good-looking as far as I could tell, though honestly, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to them. I hung out with my friend and danced like a fool. That was the fun part of concerts. Not a single person was looking at you.
“I told them it’s my twenty-third birthday and this was all I wanted. Told them what we were doing, which is what got us the backstage passes. This is the best gift I could’ve asked for.”
I snickered. “Do yourself a favor, though, and keep the squealing to a minimum when you actually meet them. You’ll scare them away.”
“Pft,” she scoffed. “You know me. I will be calm until we are no longer there. Then I will probably lose my mind.” She took a much-needed breath. I wondered if she understood how good of a friend I was for doing this with her and being able to tolerate the obsessed fangirl thing. “I really hope the seats are good, but honestly, I don’t even care.”
I took a quick look at my phone then told her, “We should get going. If we’re both going to shower the sunscreen off.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to be late.” Emery hopped up like a kangaroo. Her excitement for Pushing Daisies couldn’t be matched by anything else.
“Late?” I grabbed my belongings and slid my feet back into my sandals. “Can you be late for a concert?”
“Yes, if we’re late, we miss Pushing Daisies.”
“So, like, we miss a song.”
Emery stopped dead and turned to me. She had her dark brown hair pulled up into a bun pool time but some of the hairs had started to escape. “Please don’t make me murder you.”
I giggled at her threat. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it and she’d known I was fucking with her. Instead of continuing, I waved her along so we could go get ready for the show.
As Emery passed a group of guys, all of their heads turned. Not surprising. Emery could fill out a bathing suit. She was what guys liked to refer to as thick, whereas I didn’t think I was proportional at all. My breasts were too big for my body and, technically, I would’ve said I was curvy, but not like her.
I wasn’t into girls, but if I were, she’d be my type.
Instead, we got to be best friends and were both better for it.
We met our freshman year of high school because neither of us had really had any other friends and would eat lunch in the library. Turned out we were both bookworms as well. We’d gained more friends through high school and a lot of attention from guys once we’d bloomed, as my mother put it, but we always had each other to keep our heads on straight.
Sure, we hooked up with a guy here and there, but we always had each other’s backs no matter what.
Which was how I’d ended up following a rock band that I didn’t even know around the country.
The one big difference between us was that Emery was incredibly smart. She’d gone from high school to college and had done really well and she’d started working as a waitress right after. Actually, I was a waitress while I was in school but I switched to my current job after graduation. Though now she was thinking about going to a physician assistant school.
Too much math and science for me.
I was a normal amount of smart. My smart was more logical or I supposed, street smart, as our parents always said. Emery could help me get through tests, but I made sure she knew when we were in a part of town we shouldn’t have been and what to do to not get raped and murdered. Or rather, what to do to try not to get raped and murdered. There were no guarantees.
I’d graduated high school and had gone to work. Growing up the way I had, there’d been no other options. While the money I made at the restaurant wasn’t the best, the tips made up for it.
Luckily, we’d both stayed in Grand Rapids, so I hadn’t lost my best friend to the world.
I let Emery shower first and spent the time scrolling through Instagram. Emery is fantastic about posting pictures. I didn’t really care to prove whether I was having an amazing life or not, but I snapped a pic of myself right now as I waited for the shower and posted it—without a filter because I hated those things—with a caption that said I was just waiting for my third Pushing Daisies concert. That usually got a fair amount of attention, especially with the right hashtags.
&
nbsp; I might’ve not been smart enough to go to college, but I could play the hell out of social media when I wanted to.
“Your turn,” Emery said as she came out of the bathroom, a billowing of steam following her out.
“If you used all the hot water, I’m going first next time.”
She turned to me with a bit of an innocent look. “I don’t think I did. But you should go first tomorrow anyway.”
I pushed up off the bed and asked, “What are you wearing tonight?”
She shrugged. “I’m not totally sure, but I was thinking those cute jean shorts that I got at that store by the mall and a tank top. It’s an outdoor venue tonight, so it’s going to be warm.”
“I love that you can say something like, ‘I got it at that place by the thing where we went one time’ and I totally know exactly where you’re talking about.”
She grinned. “I love it too and since I can never remember the name of the stores, it works in both of our favors.”
“It does. I’ll be right back.”
I never took as long in the shower as Emery did. Another byproduct of my childhood. Our hot water heater growing up was so old that you got in, did what needed to be done, then hopped out before it turned to arctic water. Our house gave us a roof over our heads but it was absolutely nothing to brag about. I still wasn’t used to the better accommodations I lived in with Emery.
Just a few minutes after I went in, I came back out.
“How do you shower so quickly?” Emery asked as she messed with her hair.
I wasn’t bothering with a fancy hairstyle tonight, given that we were going to be outside.
“Years and years of practice,” I told her with a sigh. Being low maintenance had its perks.
As I changed right there in front of her—we’d been friends a long time and this wouldn’t be the first she’d seen of my underwear—she rattled on about how amazing the concert was going to be.
“Why do you love them so much?” I asked.
I could’ve predicted the outrage on her face.
“How do you not? Their music’s amazing.”
“It’s OK,” I countered.
“And have you seen them? They’re all siblings, so that would explain how they look alike, but there was something in the water that their mother drank to make them all come out so incredibly hot.”
I shrugged. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Ella! Seriously! How could you not have noticed? You’ve been to two concerts.”
This made me laugh. During these shows, she really was oblivious to everything around her. “I spend more time watching you enjoy the show than I do actually watching them. Except the lead singer. She’s a badass.”
“Daisy,” Emery said as if she and the lead singer were best friends instead of her and me. Or at the very least as if she knew her. “They say she’s basically a musical savant.”
“They do, do they?”
She nodded. “Yeah, apparently, Daisy Thompson can play any instrument they put in front of her.”
“If true, that makes her even more badass.”
I did very little to my hair and it dried in waves, then I put on a bare amount of makeup. I didn’t see the point as it’d melt off soon after we got there.
Our seats weren’t the best for this show, but to Emery, that didn’t matter. She was out here living her best life and even if these bands weren’t my thing, at least the music was decent and Emery wanted me here for the ride.
I’d grumble about some of the things, but she knew me well enough to know that I was just giving her a hard time.
There was no other way I’d rather spend a week off than with her doing something that made her so happy.
We grabbed something to eat from a burger place before we’d gotten here, which meant we’d be set for the night. Maybe we’d need some water, but Emery knew that I didn’t touch alcohol at all and she respected that. Even though I told her that I didn’t care if she drank when I was around, she insisted she didn’t need to. She and I didn’t need alcohol to have a good time.
Really, she hardly ever drank anyway. I just wasn’t sure if that was my influence or not. Given the way I’d grown up, I was thankful that she didn’t overindulge.
It wasn’t long until the stage lights went on and the music began.
Emery and I danced and danced, and though I watched the crowd more than the band, at least I was recognizing the songs. So far, “Losing Myself in You” was my favorite. Daisy’s voice was magnetic. The song gave me chills and what Emery had told me about her being a musical genius made so much sense the more I heard her.
Much too soon for Emery’s liking, the set was over and we were at intermission, which was the perfect chance to use the restroom before Courting Chaos started playing. We might not have been here for Courting Chaos specifically, but we sure as hell didn’t leave before the concert was over. That would’ve been a waste and besides, Emery liked them too.
I was slowly becoming a fan.
We got back to the hotel late and crashed almost right away.
In the morning, we woke early to get on the road for the next show. Even though we were doing the same thing each day, each day wasn’t actually the same.
This time, once we arrived at the hotel for the night, instead of hanging out by the pool all day, we explored the city a little before needing to get ready for the show.
Once again, we danced and sang our hearts out and I had no doubt that Emery’s passion was making me a fan. We didn’t have great seats again, but clearly, we didn’t care.
And we were having the best experiences. Talking to other fans and the only one on stage I really noticed was Daisy. She was small but powerful. She had copper-red hair that she wore down every night and we hadn’t been close enough for me to see her too clearly. But she owned the stage. All eyes were on her. I didn’t think this woman would back down from anyone.
Daisy was amazing every single night. She gave her brothers shit during the banter with fans and her brother on the bass gave it back the most. As far as I could see, he didn’t look anything like Daisy. He was tall and muscular. Had dark hair. I didn’t know if that was by design or that was just their regular dynamic, but it worked.
“You know, I think if I had siblings, I’d want the kind of relationship Pushing Daisies have on stage,” I told Emery as we lay in bed back at the hotel that night.
“Right? I think it’s real. At least from what I’ve heard during interviews, it seems real.”
I turned over onto my side to look at her, though I couldn’t actually see her through the darkness. “It feels natural. I’d bet it’s real. The one on bass is hilarious.”
“Van Zant,” she said with a dreamy sigh. “He and the drummer are twins, remember?”
“Right.” She’d tried to give me a crash course in the band back when we decided to do this.
“And I can tell you that not every sibling relationship is like that.”
True. Sometimes Emery made me glad that I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. That I knew of, but since my dad barely ever came around, who knew how many kids he had out there. Probably some he didn’t even know about.
Emery had an older brother from her dad’s first marriage and they barely spoke. She liked to claim it was because he was so much older than her, but I always thought there was more to it.
If she didn’t want to share, I wouldn’t push her.
“So tomorrow’s the big day,” I told her and I felt her excitement spike. I didn’t even need to hear her voice. I could feel it in the air.
“Yes. I can’t believe I’m going to meet them. But we have to be there early because the meet-and-greet is before the show.”
“I know.” She’d reminded me a hundred times today. “We’re getting up super early and eating breakfast on the road. We’ll get to the hotel, shower and everything, then head to the venue. I called and confirmed our early check-in. We are all set.”
“I’m so excited.”
<
br /> “I know. I’m not going to let anything go wrong.”
“You know you’re the very best friend a girl could have.”
“I know. I know.”
We both started laughing because as good of a friend as she thought I was to her, she was that to me.
And I only had like three more concerts to go to before we returned to reality.
2
Daltrey
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mack asked me. I thought the question was rhetorical, so I tilted my bottle of beer against my lips as the bus hit a speed bump.
My brother Mack was built like a tank. The biggest of all of us and he’d been giving me shit since the day I was born. But this felt like specific shit.
No idea what I’d done. We’d done the show, then I’d gone out for a few drinks and had been back in plenty of time for us to leave.
“I don’t think so,” I told him as I looked away.
Looking at Mack was a little like looking in the mirror. If the image in that mirror were similar—but absolutely different. We boys in the family all had dark hair and dark eyes. Bonham and Van Zant were twins so of course identical, but we all shared a strong resemblance to each other. Daisy was the outlier. First of all, she hadn’t been a born a boy. Second, she had this bright red hair that she’d gotten from our dad.
It fit both her pale complexion and her personality.
“Do you give a shit about this tour at all?” He was suddenly standing in front of me. Not even the motion of the bus could shake him. My brothers and I were all pretty tall, but Mack looked ten feet tall right now and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was sitting and him standing or if it was the alcohol.
Daltrey (Pushing Daisies Book 4) Page 1