Page 90 of Worst Nanny Ever
I’m relieved…until one of the sailor-suit ladies throws a toy boat at my head, clocking me right in the birthmark.
“What the fuck?” I say, stopping midbeat, the words clearly audible over the sound system.
“Hole in one!” someone shrieks.
So they’re drunk, too. Fantastic.
“Well,” Rob says with an easy laugh, although I can tell this is Rob, front man, speaking, not Rob, my best buddy. “Looks like we’ve got a wild crowd this afternoon. Please refrain from throwing anything else on the stage. We’ve got everything we need up here, my friends.”
“Ships, ships,shipsahoy!” one of the women screams.
“You might be lost,” Rob says firmly. “No ships here. Only rolling blue mountains.”
Our stage is right next to the river, and a bunch of people lounging on inflatable floats roll by lazily even as he says it.
“But his heart is in the ocean,” another of the sailor-suit women rebuts, pointing at me. “He’s ocean royalty.”
While Alice’s group has the drunken troublemakers surrounded, they’re just standing around them like hall monitors with disapproving frowns. They can’t actually stop them from heckling me.
Nope, I can’t finish this set.
I need to get out of here. But abandoning my drums would be only slightly less unimaginable than abandoning Ollie.
So I start packing up without another word.
“What are you doing?” Bixby hisses at me, but I ignore him, set on my task.
The crowd murmurs and pulses. The energy has shifted, as if there’s blood in the water.
Dammit, now they have me using maritime metaphors.
“We’re going to play the rest of the show as an acoustic set,” Rob says. “Every now and then we like to do something different, friends. Keeps us on our toes.”
He’s doing it for me, being a good friend to try to keep theShipsbullshit down to a minimum.
I carry on packing up, my hands shaking.
I pick up the toy boat, then figure screw it, it lookslike something Ollie might like in his bath. Whoever threw it at me automatically forfeited it, so I pack it away with the rest.
Rob starts playing again as I carry the first of my cases down, feeling sick in the pit of my stomach. I’ve got at least two or three trips ahead of me, and there’s no way Alice, however motivated, is going to be able to get her people to hold the sailor ladies back. I’m not afraid of fans, evenShips Ahoyfans, but I don’t want to have to physically defend myself against them if they get aggressive.
As soon as I reach the ground, I see them pushing toward me in my peripheral vision. One woman’s hand closes around my bicep. “Ships Junior,” she croons. “I’m here. I can’t believe it’s really you. My mom and I came to see you from Massachusetts! I’d do anything for you, Travis. I meananything.”
I tug her hand off, but it doesn’t faze her. She looks like she’s about to launch herself at me. She’s small and blonde, and I seriously don’t want to have to push her.
A huge block of a man steps out of the crowd and acknowledges me with a nod as he steps between us.
It’s Hannah’s brother. Liam’s hair is freshly cut, short and glinting red in the sun.
“He’s got a bodyguard!” the woman shrieks. “Come on, man. We just want his autograph. We werepromisedhis autograph. The last thing we’d do is hurt him. We love him.”
“Who promised you?” I ask gruffly, ignoring the professions of love from a group of people who’ve never met me.
“He talked to me!” she shouts to her friend, her voice rising above Rob’s acoustic version of “Hot Honey.”
“He asked you a question,” Liam says, his voice gruff.
“It was MaritimeLaw69. They said you’d be giving autographs. Can you sign my bra? I wore the blue one just for you, Ships Junior.”
