Rock Star Ex

by Jewel Quinlan

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs of the bus and a man with a goatee and trucker hat poked his head in the door.

  “We all set, boss?” he asked. “All the bags have been stowed.”

  Clayton introduced him to Kate and Eve. He was the driver, Keith.

  “All right, well, I guess we should hit it,” Clayton said to the group. To Eve and Kate he said, “So I’ll be on the other bus. You have my number if you need me. See you in about five hours. This one’s not a long haul.” And he left with a wave down the stairs.

  Eve switched off the camera and gulped as the door to the bus hissed shut. The floor thrummed beneath her feet as the engine started. There was no turning back now.

  ****

  Devon leaned casually against the dining table as the bus started to move. Tommy had offered the girls something to drink and was showing Eve how to use the Keurig coffee machine they had on board. He wasn’t sure he liked the attention Tommy was paying her. Not sure he liked that she was going to be on the tour with them either. It really wasn’t the right environment for a quality woman like her.

  She looked a lot more like his Eve today. The one he remembered. She had her long hair tied back in a ponytail with one long tendril loose to frame her face. And the skinny jeans she wore hugged every curve just right.

  She had flashed a friendly smile at everyone including him. But the smile she’d given him had been tinged with a cool aloofness. It wasn’t something the others would have noticed. It was just the tiniest telltale stiffening of her smile that he’d detected, but it was enough for him to know.

  Why would she take an assignment where they’d be stuck in such close proximity? Based on what had happened the other night, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that she hated his guts. She had a right to do so. He always regretted what had happened with her.

  Tommy had the remote in his hand and was showing her how to work the satellite TV and radio. The other girl, Kate, sat on the couch talking to the others.

  “I swear you can get any show with this stuff and any radio station. Honest to god, I even caught Drew watching Britain’s Next Top Model one night.”

  Shane guffawed. “Yeah, yeah. I saw him too.”

  Drew rolled his eyes and a grinned. “Riiiight.”

  “That’s amazing,” Eve said. “But where’s the receiver? Don’t you need a satellite dish to get the signal?”

  “It’s all in that cabinet there,” Shane said, waving a hand at a cabinet between the couch and dining table where Devon was standing. “Some tech guy came and set it up. That’s all we know.”

  Eve’s eyes passed coolly over him as she turned to look at it. He didn’t know why but it irked him, made him want to wrap her ponytail around his fist and pull her close for a kiss just to break the ice.

  She used to be open with him. Fun. Affectionate. “Do you have a favorite show?” he asked. He already knew the answer but just had to see if he could get some other reaction from her. He couldn’t help it.

  “Yes.” She just looked at him and waited. Apparently she wasn’t going to be giving any information up freely.

  “What is it?”

  “The Walking Dead,” she said in a neutral tone.

  Not the show he had been thinking of. “That’s a zombie show, right?”

  She nodded and took her camera from her bag. “What’s your favorite show?” she asked and snapped a picture of him.

  “The Voice,” he said mildly.

  Tommy laughed. “He loves to make fun of it, he means.”

  She snapped a picture of Tommy too and then looked at him inquiringly. “What part do you find funny?”

  She wasn’t talking to him, he realized. She was interviewing him. Collecting information about him for her job. He felt another prick of annoyance. “It’s just dumb. They win a stupid competition and are given a record deal just like that? Just because they got lucky doesn’t mean they are going to make it in this business.”

  From his own history he knew life on the road was a boot-camp-tough experience. Performances themselves could be extremely stressful with the demands of perfection and the emotional dynamics between people. Put all them together in one vehicle and add in the stress of traveling and you had a ready-made time bomb. But he wouldn’t take it back for the world. His experiences had connected him with his backbone and the meat for new songs. There was absolutely no substitute for real life as a training ground.

  She said nothing to that and turned to make herself a cup of coffee. She looked over the different flavors of coffee pods they had before selecting one. Dunkin’ Donuts Dark Roast. The corner of his mouth lifted. He wondered what she would think about the fact that they liked the same flavor of coffee. The pods were there because they were on the shopping list he gave to Keith every week. Maybe he would mention it later.

  “So how does this social media stuff work?” he asked. “What do you need us to do?”

  The others quieted down at his question to hear the answer.

  “Nothing unusual, really,” Eve said. “Just be yourselves and have fun.” Her coffee finished brewing and she emptied a packet of sugar into her cup.

  “In about a week we’ll have everything set up. Which is pretty quick. There’s some significant revamping that needs to be done to your sites,” Kate said. “Eve and I will handle all the posts initially, to get you started. Then we’ll slowly trickle it down to you to manage and make your own.”

  “What was wrong with what we had before?” Tommy sat on a couch and leaned back.

  Eve and Kate gave each other an amused look. It wasn’t the first time a client had said something like that to them.

  “A lot,” Eve said. “But we’re going to make some big changes in a short amount of time.”

  “I’ll just tell you a few things that needed improvement,” Kate stated. “For one thing, none of your sites linked to each other. Ideally you want something like Facebook to have a link to your blog. Or a Web page to link to your Twitter account. None of that has been done. When they’re linked, your fans can keep finding new information about you. It keeps them from getting bored.”

  “It looked like there wasn’t much maintenance on the accounts either,” Eve said. “The posts for Facebook and Twitter were few and far between. Right now you have only a million followers on Facebook.”

  “Whoa! That’s a lot.” Drew said proudly. The other guys seemed to agree.

  Devon waited, and saw disagreement on Eve’s face. She stirred her coffee with a stir stick for a moment.

  “Well actually, Drew, it’s pathetic,” Eve said gently. “For a band like this, with as many hits as you have, you should be more in the ballpark of twenty million. It was easy to see why the last guy got fired.”

  Devon’s jaw dropped, as did the rest of the guys’. Was she serious? People were really that into all that online stuff? He’d never even thought about it but, now that he did, it made sense. It was direct contact with the fans, their people. That sort of thing had to drive attendance at concerts and sales of their albums.

  “That’s not all,” Kate added. “Having a lot of followers doesn’t mean anything if they aren’t interacting with you. There were very few comments to the posts that have been made about you. It was a little over a hundred or so for each, and almost no shares. Big stars get tens of thousands of likes to their posts. I even remember seeing one that had thirty-five thousand likes and over two thousand shares. We’ve got to get people talking about you. For a tour like this it should have been started months ago.”

  There was silence in the bus.

  “Hell,” Tommy finally said. “We can do it. Let’s get started.” The rest of them grunted in agreement.

  “What kinds of things will get the most attention?” Devon asked.

  “Right now our plan is to start with pictures,” Eve said. “Video would be even better. We have to put something intimate out there about you. Something your fan base will find interesting and want to connect wi
th.”

  “We’re also working on your blog,” Kate said.

  “That’s right.” Eve agreed. “Since we’re headed to Vegas I think it would be awesome to blog about your craziest Vegas experiences. That’s something your fans would love to read about. Posts directly from you would be best. We’ll get to that eventually. We already have a ‘From The Road’ link set up on your Web page that links to your Tumblr account. Your site designer is also adding links to the individual Facebook, Twitter and blog accounts we set up for you as well. That way you can reach the fans as a whole, but they can also get to know you and follow you individually.”

  “We’d also like to get some video on You Tube and hook you up with Spotify. We’re working on having everything link to each other so your fans can find it. For example, anything we post on Tumblr will also post to your Twitter and Facebook accounts,” Kate added.

  There was silence as they took it all in. Devon only knew what a few of those things were. How they worked was beyond him. He could tell the others felt the same. But none of them was about to admit to a lack of knowledge.

  “What do you want first?” Devon asked Eve. It was like he was seeing a whole different person. He knew she’d been into electronics back then, which he’d thought strange for a girl. Now he realized it had only been a hint of her, the beginning. The grown up Eve was far more intelligent than he had known. He couldn’t believe now that he’d imagined her as a housewife with babies.

  “I think the video should be our priority,” she said. “It would be great if we could get something up as soon as possible. Clayton mentioned that this front lounge is also a studio that you use while traveling. Does that mean you have your instruments somewhere handy? A glimpse of you playing casually on the bus should get a pretty good response.”

  “We do,” he said rising from his slouch against the dining table. “You should video this too,” he commented, leading her towards he bunk area.

  She followed him with no comment but a light turned on behind him and he knew she’d taken his advice. He stopped just at the end of the bunks in front of a section on the right that looked like the end of the wall that separated the bunks from the bathroom.

  “This is where I keep my guitar,” he said into her camera as he pushed on it. There was a click as a hidden latch released and the panel popped smoothly out to reveal his old Yamaha. Everything on the bus did double duty. There were all kinds of compartments in it to store stuff. In such a tight space, not one square inch went to waste.

  He had an electric guitar he used on stage but he preferred his acoustic one when he was working on the bus. He saw recognition light Eve’s eyes. It was the same one he serenaded her with once. Her lips were parted slightly and he couldn’t help noticing how soft and pink they looked. She lowered the camera.

  “Hey, Devon,” Tommy called. “You want to do a coffee house version of Midnight Angel?”

  “Let’s do it,” Devon called back. He heard the others chime in their willingness to play it as well.

  “Great. Can you bring my guitar up?” Tommy asked.

  He closed the compartment then pulled his guitar strap over his head so it hung on his back. Pushing at the panel on the other side of the bus, it popped open and he pulled Tommy’s guitar from it. Eve filmed him taking it out. “Tommy’s guitar,” he commented. “He calls it the Rainmaker.” Then he watched as she pushed the button to stop the video. She was balancing her coffee in one hand and the camera in the other, her head bent as she fiddled with something on it.

  “It’s good to see you again, Eve,” he said softly so the others wouldn’t pick up on it. He knew she wouldn’t want to hear it. It couldn’t be helped, but it just had to be said.

  Her head snapped up, eyes wide.

  “That’s what I wanted to say the other night, but you didn’t give me a chance.”

  Big mistake.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t give you a chance? Then I’d say we’re even.”

  “Look, Eve, things didn’t happen the way you’re thinking. It wasn’t like that.” He set the bottom of Tommy’s guitar on the floor, his hand on the neck, and leaned closer in to talk to her.

  “The way I’m thinking?” she repeated. Standing up straight, she stuck one foot out to the side and said in a low hiss, “Look, Devon, the facts are the facts. You left and I never heard from you again. Not once. It has nothing to do with the way I’m thinking.”

  He tensed. It was happening again. She was misunderstanding him. “No, look, that’s not what I mean, okay?”

  “Oh, then what do you mean?” She cocked her head at him and waited.

  “It’s…it was hard on the road, to keep in touch with anyone, for a lot of reasons. You don’t know what it was like. I mean we were bouncing around from place to place, driving for long periods of time and then having to work until really late at night. It was pretty much impossible to communicate. Besides, you had no answering machine back then, remember?”

  She visibly puffed up. “I see, so it’s my fault you couldn’t communicate with me?”

  “I’m not saying it was anyone’s fault, Eve. Just that there was no way to call.” He felt relieved. He had finally been able to tell her, to explain. Maybe now she would understand. Well, when she calmed down at least.

  “And you couldn’t write a letter?” She spoke quietly but the words dripped acid.

  She had him there. Even though she was several inches shorter, he suddenly felt very small. He looked down and stuck a hand in his pocket, not knowing what to say. That was an even more complicated topic.

  Her cold eyes were on him. The silence stretched on for another moment. Before he could gather any other words to try to explain she turned and headed back up front, her ponytail slapping him in the face as she went.

  ****

  Half an hour later, Eve sat in the back lounge of the bus with Kate, editing the video they’d shot. Both of them had used their cameras to catch shots from different angles. Eve had been responsible for shooting Devon and Kate had shot the rest of the band and some close-ups of their hands as they worked their instruments.

  “It’s looking really good, Kate, “ Eve said.

  Kate was organizing and rearranging different snippets of the video so it flowed well. Her legs were curled neatly under her and her shoulder-length brown hair hid her face as she bent over her laptop.

  The whole band had sat in the front lounge with their instruments and played a coffeehouse style version of Midnight Angel from the new album. Playing while sitting on a bus didn’t diminish their power one iota. She’d thought there would be a big difference from seeing them in the Staples Center. But seeing them play in this casual way had felt like a special treat.

  While Kate edited the video Eve busied herself posting pictures from her camera. She’d started with the photo of Devon leaning on the dining table to Tumblr, with the caption ‘Lead singer Devon Quinn coming your way’. It was getting hits already.

  “Listen to these comments, Kate. And I only posted this a couple minutes ago.” She scrolled through the feed on her iPhone, picking some at random. “ ‘He’s hot.’, ‘How do I get backstage?’ ‘Arsenal rocks! Can’t wait until you get to Denver.’ There’ve also been several shares.”

  “That’s awesome! I’d have to say we are off to a good start.” Satisfaction lit her friend’s brown eyes. They’d always shared a love for gadgets. It was part of what had bonded them in school.

  “You almost done?” She couldn’t wait to see the final video.

  “Yeah, just let me take care of this one last thing… Okay, it’s ready to go.” She turned the laptop so Eve could see and hit play.

  It was perfect. There they all were, looking badass but casual as they played. The video transitioned smoothly from wide shots of the whole band, to Devon, then Shane as he worked his electric drums, and then a close up of Tommy’s fingers on the guitar, and on and on. The sound quality of the video was great, thanks to the soundproofing of the
lounge area, even on Kate’s laptop. The fans were going to love it.

  She’d been glad when she and Kate had retreated to the back lounge, closing the door so they could concentrate on their work. But she was having a hard time focusing. Her internal awareness of Devon was on high frequency and she couldn’t shut it off no matter how many deep breaths she took. It was impossible to stop thinking about what he’d said to her in the hall.

  He’d missed her, he’d said. In that soft voice.

  No matter how many times she replayed it in her mind she could not deny the sincerity with which he’d spoken. There was no denying the look on his face. She hated that some little part inside of her was jumping up and down about that. And now, she could even pinpoint where he was on the bus because her subconscious was keeping track. Right now he was sprawled out on his bunk doing something on the iPad there. It turned out that his bunk was right above hers, of course. Of course it was. Fate had a rotten sense of humor.

  While filming the video Devon had needed very little instruction. He claimed he’d never been in a video before so it was surprising how he knew how to look into the camera just right. He would turn his head so that the strong planes of his face caught the light exactly right, his voice and expression imbued with feeling as he sang.

  It was ridiculous, but each time he’d looked into the camera it had felt like he was looking at her. Reaching for her. With his eyes.

  “Eve?”

  She whipped her head around. The video had ended and somehow she’d been staring out at the never-ending desert they were passing through. “Um, yeah. It looks good. Let’s get it up on YouTube and send it to the designer for the Web page. I’ll post a link on Facebook.”

  Kate eyed her. “Uh huh. You want to tell me what’s up between you and Devon?”

  “I…what? What are you talking about?” She did her best to look innocent but she knew Kate wasn’t buying it.

  “Oh please. I’ve known you too long, and I see the way he looks at you.” She shut the laptop and crossed her arms in front of her on the table.