Page 16 of Hero on the Road
A brand new bus. A tour bus. Painted in greens and yellows and with our pictures on the side of it. Our names. And the name the studio had evidently decided on for our tour.
A bus. But I thought...
Olivia shoved a letter into my hand, almost jumping up and down in excitement. “It’s from Avery and Parker,” she breathed.
I looked down at the letter, still confused, and read it aloud. “‘Congrats on your first tour! We heard a rumor your label wasn’t putting out enough money to get you a bus, and couldn’t let two of our best friends go out on the road without one. This is what you get for signing with Atomic rather than Drive In! Now get out there and make some beautiful music. We’re expecting big things! PS, the roadie came with the bus. We didn’t pick him ourselves. He probably sucks.’”
I stopped reading and looked up at Olivia’s shining face. “Your friends got us a bus?”
She jumped up and down, squealing, and then threw herself into my arms, half hugging me and half pogo-sticking against me. Then she turned and ran for the bus. “They did! Let’s see what’s inside of it!”
I watched her skipping toward the bus, still trying to catch up with what had happened. This was...
So, so weird. First we were on tour without anyone to back us up and now we were suddenly on tour in a bus and with a roadie. And Olivia Johns, the girl I’d always thought of as spoiled and rich, was acting like she’d just been given the first present she’d ever had.
I remembered thinking at Christmas that she wasn’t the girl I’d always thought she was, and that was even truer now. I’d always thought she had everything. I’d been jealous of her life and her confidence. Over Christmas, when I found out how hard she’d worked to get Parker out of a bad relationship and away from her abusive dad, I’d realized that there might be more to her than I’d realized.
Now I was thinking she was even more than that.
She was a girl who mightnothave had all the things she wanted, but always lived like she had exactly what she needed. She was going to go on tour without a single band member or roadie and make it work, like it was what she’d planned all along.
But as long as we didn’t have to do it that way...
I found myself walking toward the bus after her, a smile growing on my lips. My steps got faster and faster, and soon I was even with Olivia herself. And when she stepped onto the bus I was right behind her, thinking that this tour had started out weird, but was already looking up.
Hell, this might turn out to be fun after all.
CHAPTER10
Olivia
“Where are we going first?” I asked Barry, the guy who was evidently there to take care of us.
He turned in his seat to look at me, all bushy hair and long handlebar mustache, and I stared back, trying desperately not to laugh.
I mean, if you’d seen him, you would have been laughing too. He was like a caricature of a person. Sure, he was wearing a tight white t-shirt and jeans, but they obviously weren’t the clothes he was meant to wear. With those bulging muscles and the thick hair covering his arms, plus the puffy hair on his head and the big mustache...
The man was born to be an old-timey circus guy. He should have been wearing striped pants and a puffy shirt and shouting through a bullhorn about the bearded lady and the strong man or something.
The thought made me grin—though maybe that was the endorphins over having an actual tour bus—and Connor, who was sitting across from me, caught my eye and tipped his head.
“What?” he mouthed.
I straightened my grin, but couldn’t help my eyes, which shifted toward Barry’s enormous form stuffed behind the wheel of the bus. “He looks like he should be working in the circus,” I mouthed back.
Connor’s eyes shot over to the man and then flitted back to me, a smile growing quickly on his face. His smile brought mine back and within seconds I was giggling, completely helpless to stop it. That started Connor giggling, too, and moments later we were both laughing so hard we were holding our stomachs, our eyes tearing and our laughter echoing through the bus. Every time I thought I might be okay I made the mistake of looking at Connor, who inevitably had his mouth sealed shut and his eyes bulging, and that would start me off again.
I was laughing so hard I felt like my sides might actually burst, and I could say without a doubt that that had never happened to me before. I wasn’t generally inclined to laughing like a lunatic over...
Over...
Over a guy who looked like he should be running a circus.
That set me off again and before I knew it I was actually howling and definitely crying with how hard I was laughing. Connor was now nearly on the floor he was laughing so hard, and the only thing I could think—aside from the circus idea—was how ridiculous it was that I was laughing this hard with someone I was competing with for a record contract.
This was ridiculous.
And it was only the endorphins. I was positive of that much. Because I didn’t know Connor well enough to be laughing like a freaking hyena with him.
