Page 95 of Reverse

“Jesus, Easton,” I chide, which only makes his smile bloom.

“Crazy, right?” Tack shakes his head before pulling a beer from the cooler on the floorboard and thrusting it toward me. “Want one, Nat?”

“No thanks, I’m kind of a lightweight,” I admit. “I’ll wait for the show.”

A question strikes me then. “Easton?”

“Yeah?”

“We aren’tsleepingin the van, right?”

He chuckles. “I wouldn’t subject you to that.”

“We tried a few nights the first week,” Tack says with clear annoyance, lifting his chin in Easton’s direction. “This fucker insisted on it, but it was a nightmare.”

“Too fucking right,” Syd pipes from next to him.

“So sorry you missed your morning tea, darling,” Easton says unapologetically.

“As you should be.” Syd snarks back in his British accent.

Easton shrugs. “I tried. But the vote was three to one, against me.”

“Not that our win did much good. Now, after endless hours in this filthy fucking van, we’re stuck staying in the cheapest hotels,” Syd adds, his prominent accent making his snobbery sound a bit more comical. “I draw the line sleeping with these smelly bastards, and bologna is not proper food.”

“Ah!” I say, turning to Easton, “that’s what’s lingering in here. I couldn’t place it!”

Easton chuckles and glances over at me. Much to my dismay, upon entering the van, I had to control my gag reflex. Easton’s blue cheese assessment far kinder than reality. I would go so far as to say the van smells like a blue cheese-covered, heavily used gym sock that’s been freshly baked in the sun.

Easton had laughed hysterically at my reaction as I immediately rolled down the window, trying to mask my gags.

It took the better part of the first hour of our trip for me to be able to handle it. Still, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The band has been nothing but welcoming in a way I wasn’t expecting, and I got the eclectic part of Easton’s warning right away.

Tack was raised in the Midwest. His monstrous meat and potatoes build bred deep in a slice of Americana. He definitely sports the rocker look with dark brown hair and darker brown eyes. His mismatched clothes somehow work, and he’s got more ink than visible skin. So far, he’s been the most talkative of the three.

“Now this was a good fucking night,” Tack says fondly, lifting a picture to LL, aka Leif Garrison, Easton’s lead guitar player, who sits with his back to the window, his arm stretched out on the second-row seat. Though Scandinavian born, with white-blond locks and sparkling blue eyes, his Sussex-raised accent is unmistakable. LL’s looks are striking in contrast to the other three’s dark and broody.

Syd Patel, the oldest at twenty-nine, is Easton’s UK-born bassist. His skin is the most beautiful hue of dark brown, thanks to his Indian heritage. The quietest of the three, mainly because he hasn’t stopped vaping and drinking since I got into the van, he’s been forthcoming enough to make me feel at home amongst them.

“This crew,” Easton muses between us, “it’s almost like a setup for a joke.”

As I take them all in, LL returns my curious gaze the longest, a Guinness can clutched in his hand.

“Maybe,” I say, turning back toward Easton, “but this is really happening. You’re doing it. You’re on your way to play another show right now.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing. But something wasn’t right.” He glances over to me. “It hit me in Oklahoma that I needed to pick up my favorite instrument.” Jumping on Easton’s bold and slightly infuriating declaration—knowing he didn’t really mean the misogynistic insinuation—I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn on my knees, gripping the headrest. Easton objects immediately by slapping my ass,hard.

“Just for a second,” I say, waving him away.

“Put that buckle back on,now,” he barks.

“Chill,” I dismiss. “So . . .” I give each of them a pointed stare. “Tell me about the ladies,” I waggle my brows, “how’s the action?”

LL is the first to smile, and I point at him. “Ah ha!”

Glancing over at Easton in time to see his nostrils flare, Tack speaks up as Syd smirks out of the window.

“What do you want to know?” Tack asks.

---