“I don’t mind,” he assured me. “We should probably get to bed soon though, it’s fucking late.”
I exhaled a cloud of smoke. “To bed or to sleep?” I wanted to know as I handed the cigarette back.
He appeared to think about it for a moment. “Sleep,” he said then. “I’m just too fucking exhausted tonight.”
“Okay,” I said simply. Then, getting up as though about to change, I realized I’d forgotten to do laundry. “Damn it,” I swore, and slipped under the sheets sans underwear. It wasn’t like Rhys hadn’t seen me naked. I’d have to make sure I would have clean underwear once we were back on the bus though. I had no desire to be the one flashing my bare ass at everyone else.
I was nearly asleep when it occurred to me that he’d never answered my question.
+++
The next day found us en route to Denver, Colorado. We drove through bad weather, with the rain drumming monotonously on the windows and the sky so dark I kept thinking we were headed straight for a tornado. I played poker with the guys, betting pennies and winning more than losing, which bought me a little respect. I checked in on Rhys several times. He was back to playing his guitar for hours, and not acting as though he cared for my company, so I never stayed for long. Oddly though, the talk I’d had with him yesterday had done its part in making me feel more comfortable being around him, despite his occasionally cranky demeanor.
“You in for this round?” Todd, one of the sound guys, wanted to know as I stepped off the stairs and reclaimed my seat at the table. I nodded. While I pushed my ante towards the middle of the table, Oz dealt the cards.
It was a comfortable game. I folded after the first round of betting, causing JJ the drum tech to label me a pussy and me in turn to flip him off. The second round of beers had already been opened, though I hadn’t had any.
I was re-stacking my chips when we first heard the rolling thunder, as though the thunderstorm was directly above us.
“Damn,” Oz muttered, glimpsing out the window.
“Yeah, it’s getting bad,” Rhys remarked from the stairs.
Oz turned to face him just as I did. Everyone else’s heads turned as well.
“Look who’s joining us from the realm of lyrics and melodies,” he teased. Rhys just shrugged.
“Figured I’d take a break,” he said, and went to grab a drink from the fridge. When he came back, just as JJ dealt cards, he took the seat beside me. I took no small amount of pleasure in it.
“Texas Hold’em?” he asked, glancing at the table. We nodded in unison.
“You wanna play?” Oz asked, but Rhys shook his head.
I glanced at my cards, ten and queen of hearts, and leaned forward to move chips when it was my turn.
“Call,” I announced, then leaned back and gave Rhys a sideways look that made him bite his lip. Since we would be sleeping in the bus tonight, we couldn’t do anything, but I was ready to try and make him want me so that the night at the hotel would at least be action-packed.
“What do you got?” Rhys asked, leaning close, and I showed him my cards while my heart suddenly picked up speed. Holy shit, was he... flirting? Maybe he, too, was regretting simply going to sleep the night before.
To his credit, he maintained a neutral expression when he saw the nice hand I’d picked up. I called once more after JJ’s raise, then held my breath for the flop.
Jack of diamonds, nine of hearts, three of hearts. I had a chance for a straight or a flush, either only missing one card. My brain rattled through the possibilities.
Then Rhys leaned over again, and I lost my train of thought completely.
“Do you play a lot?” he wanted to know. I shook my head.
“I know how, but no, I don’t play regularly. Do you?”
“I’m not very good,” he admitted.
I leaned away briefly in order to raise Oz, who was also still in the game. JJ silently followed suit.
“Do you know if Midway Monday are gonna have the same road crew they did last time?” Oz wanted to know. He directed the question at Rhys, but everyone else shrugged as well.
“Yeah, I remember they played a lot, but not for pennies.” Rhys grinned. “They were pretty hardcore.”
“Didn’t they take someone’s shirt once?” Oz frowned, motioning for JJ to put down the river. He did so, and I felt my heart skip a beat. Jack of hearts.
That certainly was interesting. We now had a pair on the table, enough hearts for my flush, but also the possibility of a straight flush. The betting went crazy at that point.
“All in!” JJ announced, to general cheering. There was no way that fucker had more than I did, I decided. Probably a flush as well, and my queen kicker was pretty high. I had more pennies than he did, so I didn’t have to follow suit, but I decided to anyway. I neatly separated the amount matching JJ's from the rest of my small poker fortune, pushed the larger stack towards the middle of the table and the smaller over to Oz.
“All in,” I announced confidently. “What was that about someone’s shirt?”
The exclamations of the group at my gutsy move were slow to subside.
“Roadie actually lost his shirt in a poker game last time we were touring with Midway Monday.” Rhys was still closer to me than strictly necessary. It was actually kind of obvious. “Ran around without for setup, and the hall was freezing fucking cold, so he wasn’t having fun, but the guy who won the shirt refused to give it back and just kept it.”
“It was kind of a dick move, but it was really funny,” Oz added.
“At the time,” Rhys finished.
Oz got his chips sorted out, and JJ flipped the last card for us. Eight of hearts. I felt like dancing, despite the fact that it was all just a game of pennies.
“Shit, weren’t we supposed to flip our cards before this?” JJ scratched his head. “Well, fuck it. I’ve got a flush.” He tossed his cards onto the table.
“Yeah, that’s what I though,” Oz mumbled. “With four fucking hearts on the table. Before that last card I thought I had a chance, but after, yeah, that didn’t look so good.”
He’d had a full house, the two jacks and the three on the table, along with another pair of threes in his hand.
“So, did I win?” JJ wanted to know, looking at me.
“Nope,” I told him as casually as possible, and laid my cards on the table.
Rhys craned his neck. “What’d you get?” he asked.
“Goddamn, a fucking straight flush.” JJ banged his head audibly on the table. “Ow.”
There was a moment of scattered applause. Todd and Oz shoved pennies towards me, while JJ pouted.
“I think I’m gonna quit on that high note, actually,” I admitted. I let JJ collect the cards and stood. “Unless we switch to strip poker.”
“We don't have any girls here to play with,” Oz pointed out.
I grinned. “You think I care?”
“You should,” JJ said, unconvincingly.
I was still grinning as I walked up the stairs, but stopped bothering once I had reached the bunks, in order to be able to process. Rhys had just flirted with me. Really flirted, in front of everyone, doing something akin to expressing interest. It felt like the entire situation had suddenly flip-flopped. I also had no idea what had driven him to do what he’d done – not that I hadn’t liked it.
I decided to change and do a bit of reading before bed. I climbed into Rhys' bunk and slipped beneath the blankets, flipping the overhead light on, and started on my book.
I’d been there for an hour, give or take, when I got company. It was Rhys who brushed the curtain aside and peered into the small space.
“Hey,” he said. I waved at him. He leaned close.
“I was wondering where you’d gone. What are you doing?”
I pushed my book his way, and he made a face.
“Reading is so annoying. I'm way fucking slow at it.”
“I like it,” I defended myself. He leaned into the bunk a little more.
> “You do?”
When I nodded, he shook his head at me and withdrew.
“Well, you have fun,” he wished me, sounding utterly unconvinced that such a thing was even possible. “I’ll see you later.”
When he let the curtain drop, I found myself wishing feverishly that he’d crawled into the bunk with me, cuddled a little, maybe, held me close. As soon as I realized what I was thinking, I tried furiously to suppress the gooey thoughts. I’d always admitted to finding him attractive, even though my fan crush had subsided pretty quickly after the first disastrous night and his behavior afterwards. The frantic nervousness, unfortunately, had been slower to subside. But two seconds of flirting, and suddenly I wanted him quite more than in a raw sexual way.
My mouth dry, I turned back to my book and kept busy.
I went to sleep early. The thunderstorm, which wouldn’t subside, made me sleepy, and when I yawned for the fifth time in a row, I laid the book aside in one of the handy niches in the bunk and turned off the light.
When I woke again, in the middle of the night, from having to piss, Rhys was in bed with me. What was more, he’d put an arm around me and had actually pulled me close. It felt nice, and I regretted having to break the contact when I climbed over him to use the bathroom. When I returned, he’d curled up with his arms wrapped around his own body, looking oddly fragile, and I dared only lean against him as I drifted off to sleep again.
+++
Denver, Colorado boasted the nicest hotel that I’d stayed in so far during my time with Collision In Reverse. We exited the bus at noon, which was the soonest we were allowed to check in, and walked through the lobby and to our rooms in one big cluster. The roadies were chatting like schoolgirls.
“Sweet, we got a pool,” Penley pointed out. I promptly wished I would have thought to buy swim trunks. Maybe I’d get an opportunity that afternoon.
Rhys was once more distant towards me. He was joking and talking with his band mates and the crew, but didn’t appear to want to exchange more words with me than necessary. I started to think that the flirting had just been a fluke. Maybe he’d been impressed by my poker abilities, or felt lonely, or both. Either way, this was getting annoying.
We all went out to eat at an Italian place that night. It was a fun evening out, even though I was starting to worry a little about my finances. Eating at restaurants was difficult to justify on my budget when I didn’t have a damn income. Soon I’d have to find excuses not to go. I was pretty sure the roadies had an allowance to work with, but I didn’t. It was just one more headache.
I picked the cheapest dish on the menu, a salad, and went with that. It was a decent dish, but JJ was the one who noticed, and promptly commented.
“You keep eating salad all the time. Why?”
“I like salad,” I shrugged. It was only half a lie.
“More than, like, a nice steak?” Oz asked.
Todd shook his head. “You eat like a girl, dude. Gay guys are weird.”
“We won’t start calling you fat if you eat something decent, you know,” JJ said, getting a little ridiculous.
“I like salad.” I threw him a look. “And yes, I like steak too, but at a place like this the portions are so big that I’d leave half of it on the plate, and that would be a waste of food and money.”
I weighed something like half of any one roadie. There was no way I could manage one of their portions, which was what they seemed to be expecting of me. The waitress came to check on us yet again, saving me from having to listen to more stupidity.
“Everything great?” she chirped, sending several guys into snickering as she turned her back.
“I think she wants to jump your bones, Rhys,” Angus commented dryly behind his hand.
Rhys looked after the woman and shrugged. It was true that she’d been standing directly next to him every time she came to our table. It was amusing, though also a little disconcerting to witness.
She was back moments later with the ice water. Rhys leaned to the side to give her space to move, looking at her with amusement as she poured. Finally, she got to his glass and he grinned at her.
“Hi,” he said, sending Todd and Angus into a laughing fit.
The waitress just smiled back, finished filling his glass, and promptly dripped ice water on Rhys' shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, and put the pitcher down. “I’ll get you a towel.”
As she hurried away, more people began to laugh. I was among them, sort of by necessity, because I felt scrutinized. Laughing it all off seemed the only good way to handle this.
“Well if that wasn’t an attempt to get you out of your clothes, I don’t know,” Penley commented.
“Yeah, I know.” Rhys shrugged, and suddenly his eyes met mine and I knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth again and nodded towards me. “He does a much better job with it.”
I laughed in earnest, though still a little self-conscious. It had been just a jibe, but still, it was the first time he’d verbally acknowledged in front of a whole group of people that we were sleeping together. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t know already, but him saying it was different.
“You should ask for her number,” Penley stoked the fire after the girl had returned with a towel.
“Nah.” Rhys shook his head. “Brunettes aren't my thing.”
Damn, I mouthed, quite visibly running my hands through my hair, which provoked more laughter. It was true though that I actually had brown hair, though the dark blond suited me well enough that the dye job wasn't noticeable. When my roots started showing, I'd have to start worrying about it. Rhys, who hadn’t been looking at me, turned towards me in surprise.
“What?” he asked. I just shook my head at him.
“Nothing,” I lied, and he obviously didn’t believe me for a second.
“Nothing,” I repeated when he kept looking at me, and patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, alright?”
Half the table howled with laughter. Even Big D was chuckling. Rhys seemed to take it well that I’d just made a bit of a joke at his expense.
The weather had worsened once more when we went back to the hotel after supper. The sky was dark and ominous, and the air smelled of rain.
“Another storm tonight,” Big D commented, hurrying along the sidewalk with the rest of us. “It’s gonna be a stay inside kinda night.”
It was. By the time I had returned to my room, the rain was drumming against the windows as though trying to break them, and lightning flashed in the sky. I took some time to change. Since Rhys and I hadn’t had sex in two days, I was pretty sure it was going to happen tonight unless he had another odd mood swing, so I took a long time, fingering and stretching myself.
I wandered the hotel after that. The place we were staying at was a small one, much tinier than the previous hotels, which lent a sense of familiarity as I encountered people from our group wherever I went. A couple of them were playing ping pong, and even more were hanging out by the indoor pool, either chilling in the whirlpool or having drinks at a nearby table, despite the fact that it technically wasn’t allowed. I wasn't even sure the pool was supposed to be open during this kind of weather. I didn’t see Rhys anywhere, but then again, I wasn’t his keeper. So I sat down next to Oz, who was sipping on a can of beer.
The large windows affording us an outside view were delivering spectacularly. We saw clouds in shades of blue and green, and never-ending streaks of lightning. It created quite the atmosphere.
“You gonna go for a dip?” Oz wanted to know at some point, nodding at the pool. I shook my head.
“Don’t have any swimwear.”
“Just go in your underwear, dude,” suggested the lighting tech, Odie, whose long blond dreads were currently in a ponytail. I shrugged again.
“I dunno,” I evaded. “Maybe I will later.”
Just then, our attention was consumed by the antics of Penley and JJ, who entered the pool area lugging a h
eavy trash bag between them.
“What the fuck?” Oz asked.
“Dude, guess what this is!” Penley challenged him excitedly. “Just guess!”
“A dead body?” Odie suggested.
“A million dollars,” was Oz’ guess.
“I was talking to one of the dudes on staff, and he said they had a wedding here yesterday and this,” Penley waved his arms dramatically at the bag, “was left over and they were gonna throw it out.”
“Booze?” Angus asked hopefully.
“Dry ice!” Penley revealed, grinning like a five-year-old.
“Dude, don’t touch it though, that shit can burn the fuck out of your hands.”
Penley appeared to know that. He wasn’t about to touch the contents of the trash bag.
“Why the fuck are you bringing that here?” I dared ask, and the drummer looked up at me with the world’s largest grin on his face.
“You know what happens when you put dry ice in water?”
I did. “Oh shit!” I gasped.
“Oh my god, do it! Do it!” Angus had caught on and started clapping. “Do it!”
Odie laughed. “Man, we are going to get into so much trouble!”
Penley and JJ had meanwhile dragged the bag to the edge of the pool. Egged on by cries of Do it! they finally took the trash bag by its bottom corners and unceremoniously dumped the contents into the deep end.
Instantly, the bubbles started, and the fog followed only moments later. Everyone clapped and cheered, and before we could react, Penley had taken JJ by the arm and sent him following the dry ice. He vanished in the fog.
“Dude, is that safe?” Angus was looking skeptical.
“As long as he doesn’t dive and touch the stuff, it’s fine,” another roadie whose name I kept forgetting opined. “It’s like eight foot down though, so as long as you don’t go too far under…”
His words acted like a compulsion. Next thing I knew, the hot tub had been abandoned, people were taking off their shirts, and everyone was jumping in the pool. I sat and laughed, undecided, wanting to join them because this was just fucking epic, but at the same time not so sure about taking my shirt off. My nipple piercings and chain were kind of... kinky. Personal. At least it felt that way among this crowd of straight guys. So I sat and clapped and shouted and tried to pretend like it didn't bother me.
Collision Course Page 8