Chapter 3
Jodi Castle
Two of the remaining three Ghost Boys drifted in their direction a few moments later.
Lee, typically head to foot in green, dirty blond hair resting loose about his shoulders, stopped five or six paces off and opened his arms wide.
“Jo…” Duly prompted, she ran to him. The moment they were toe-to-toe he wrapped her in a killer embrace, squashing her tight against his chest and accidentally giving her a mouthful of his hair.
As Jodi wiped the strands clear of her mouth, Balin embraced her from behind, his stubbly cheek colliding with hers. She scented beer on his breath.
“Good to see ya, Jo-Jo. Has Curtis here told you the news?”
“Just. It’s amazing. Congrats. You guys are going to be so big.
You’re not going to want to know me.” She summoned every scrap of enthusiasm she could muster to put into her expression.
It seemed to do the trick. They all started backslapping one another again over their good luck.
Not that it was pure luck… They were talented.
That had been obvious from the off. Still, she loved these boys.
They were her world, her family. She prayed fame wouldn’t take them from her.
“…nah, it’s our frankly audacious talent that’s won us a cushty gig…”
“It’s deserved,” she said, nodding at Balin, the Ghost Boys bassist.
“It’s down to you, Jo-Jo.”
Sweet but untrue.
“You brought us together.”
Ish. In circumstances she preferred not to dwell on.
“And you sort us all out.”
She did her best. They were a shambles if left to their own devices.
Interestingly, both Balin and Lee were draped in their usual attire of cargo pants and washed-out T-shirts.
“How come you two haven’t been made over?”
Balin scoffed. “What’s the point in designer denim and shirts that cost two hundred quid a pop but don’t look any different to the ten-quid knockoffs? Besides, they were probably made in the same sweatshop.”
“What he said,” Lee echoed. “Also, we’re just the backdrop.”
“Fuckers,” Nash muttered.
“Man, there are limits to what I’m prepared to sacrifice to the gods of fame and fortune. They’ll be prying my lucky shirt off my cold dead corpse. Plus, we’re not toddlers, man. We don’t need our mammies to dress us.”
“Considering the shit mine used to pick out…” Lee shook his head.
Nash threw a bunch of shade at them, but it didn’t penetrate the shield of their mirth. If anything, his scowls made them mock all the harder.
Lee still had his arm slung around her shoulder.
“You should come and see the bus. Height of luxury, it is. All mod cons. You’ll be amazed.
” She didn’t have the heart to tell him it wouldn’t be the first tour bus interior she’d seen.
That would necessitate diving into a part of her history she’d never shared with anyone.
Still exerting his claim on her, Lee turned her about and nudged her towards their new home on wheels.
“Wait! I need to zip the tent up.”
She wriggled free of his hold. While it was unlikely that anyone around here would be interested in her stuff, the weather might change at a moment’s notice, and she’d rather her things stayed dry.
The cats she confined to the inner pod. They’d be fine until she got back.
They had everything they needed all set up how they liked it, and they were used to her wandering off.
As long as they got their kibble and she didn’t howl over the occasional mousy-froggy-baby birdie supplement, they were no bother.
Lee reclaimed her, despite Nash’s attempt to snag her by the hand. “Where’s Jez?” she asked after the band’s drummer as they walked.
“You mean Pee-ter?” Nash said in a ridiculous voice, prompting chortles from both Lee and Balin. “Probably gone back to wallowing.”
“Wallowing?”
“Oh, shit! Hasn’t Curtis told you?” Balin stuck his head between them, only to about turn and level a tut at Nash. “How could you not tell her, man?”
“When?” Nash raised his hand in his defence. “I’ve barely had time to say hello before you two mugs arrived and commandeered her.”
“He told me about Black Halo,” Jodi said, and even managed to sound normal despite how jangly it made her feel inside. Shit! Did that mean they were here?
“Didn’t tell you about Rune though, did he? Fuckwit only went and dumped him, didn’t he?”
“No! No way. You’re shitting me?” Rune was Jez’s Norwegian boyfriend…
ex-boyfriend. Painfully beautiful and painfully awkward.
The pair of them had been inseparable the entire time she’d known them.
They were so hopelessly in love with one another it hurt her head to think of them as separate entities.
“Why?”
She shot Nash an irritated look. Unless it’d literally happened in the last four hours, there was really no excuse for him not telling her.
“Wouldn’t we all love to know?”
Lee rubbed his smooth jaw. “Claimed it wasn’t going to work out, what with us being on tour and shit.”
“Rune would never have minded that.” Rune was the sweetest, gentlest, most amenable man she’d ever met, with one possible exception, but she wasn’t thinking about him. Especially not now. Were Black Halo here? “Please tell me Harry Storm didn’t have a hand in it.”
“Harry? Why would Harry have anything to do with it?” Balin asked.
“Nah, it’s all Jez,” Lee said. “Maintains he didn’t need anyone around cramping his style and that it’d been on the cards for a while, but let’s just say he’s not entirely convincing.
Whatever the real reason, he’s keeping schtum about it.
So, to answer your question, he’s probably knocking the hell out of a drum kit somewhere. ”
“Or banging something else,” Nash said.
That was just horrid. Absolutely sickening.
It made her belly flip-flop. And what did it say for her future with Nash if the hottest, sweetest couple around hadn’t survived even five months of one of them hitting the limelight.
The echoes of all the snarky remarks levelled at her when people learned she was with Nash circulated in her thoughts again.
“He’s not actually out there shagging your fans though, right?”
Silence.
Damning silence.
Coupled with some awkward looks from Balin and Lee. Yeah… Seemed they’d all been scoring themselves some easy action.
“You’re gross. Yuck.” She shrugged Lee’s arm from her shoulders.
“Why, ’cause we’ve indulged in a few hookups? How’s that any different to before? I wasn’t gross when I banged that barmaid back in Valencia—”
“Or when I had that three-day bender with the chick from Heidelberg and followed it with a blowjob from that lass from New Zealand—”
“And her sister, or was it her cousin, two days later? Think you must have hit the bass playing jackpot that week.”
“Nah, it’s just my natural charm and charisma.”
“Stop grossing my fiancée out.” Nash clouted them both around the head, which took a bit of effort given they were both way taller. It silenced them though, not that that was necessarily a good thing. It left space for her to think.
Jez and Rune had been a fixture way longer than her and Nash, and they’d done the whole long-distance thing on and off for ages too. Was this what she could expect in the future?
Nash dropped an awkward kiss on the top of her head as he pulled her away from Lee and claimed her hand. “Fuck me, you’re actually wearing it.” Nash lifted their clasped hands, so that the sun scintillated in the oversized rock on her finger.
“I resent that. I always wear it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, I need to let all your new fans out there know what the score is, don’t I?”
They reached the bus, and the security girl who’d given her a hard time earlier scowled at her as she handed over her lanyard.
“On which subject, guys, Jo and I are getting hitched tonight.”
“Handfasted,” she elaborated, in case they thought the actual wedding was this evening.
“You’re seriously hitching yourself to this tosser?” Lee quipped. “Nah, I’m pleased for you, course I am.” He slung an arm over her shoulder again. “Well, here it is. The old home on wheels. What do you think?”
“Wow.” Hopefully, she’d instilled the appropriate amount of enthusiasm into her voice.
Behind the driver’s perch, the space opened out into a curved seating area, at the rear of which a cupboard-sized kitchen consisting of a microwave, fridge, and a cooker no bigger than her camping stove.
The layout was nothing like the one on Bertha.
Didn’t stop her imagining a certain figure charging towards her with soap suds in his hair and the titchiest towel in existence secured around his hips.
“Bunks are back here.” Balin opened the door to the rear section. A dark space with a single thin horizontally set rectangular window. There’d been a full-sized bed in this area on the Black Halo bus.
“Eight bunks?” she said.
“Yeah, and nine of us, ten with you.” Balin shrugged like that didn’t make for a mathematical inconsistency. “Us, you, the driver, our guitar tech, the tour manager, and two roadies stroke security bods.”
“This one’s ours.” Nash patted the bed second up on the left.
“Great,” she squeaked. She was definitely going to have to persuade him to spend the night under canvas.
If she stayed here, they’d be squashed together like corpses in a coffin.
Plus—a tickle in her nose made her sneeze—beneath the blossomy scent of air freshener, there was an odour of blokey smells and dirty laundry.
It didn’t seem like anyone had thought to install any ventilation in the place or do any laundry.
No skylight either to allow access onto the roof.
She backed out of the space and settled on the oddly curved seating.