Chapter 13
Ari
The next stop on the tour is San Francisco, which gives us only a little over an hour for our first flight with Erica. She boards the plane nervously, not having much to say.
Fish plops down on the seat beside her, tossing his arm on the back of her seat around her shoulders, but not touching her. Still, it makes me growl a little, which seems to be his intention. She smiles up at me, and he clears out of what he knows is my spot now.
Not the seat of the plane. Just being next to Erica. Wherever she is, my place is beside her.
“Are you doing, okay?” I ask quietly. The guys are respectful enough to pretend that they can’t hear us and are minding their own business. With us growing up below the ocean, our hearing is exceptional on land, and we can sometimes hear too much.
She nods then straightens her spine, pulling a smile to her face that looks a bit forced this time, but not in a bad way like she’s uncomfortable.
No, it looks like she’s made the mental decision that after everything, she deserves happiness.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
All I want is her happiness, and hopefully she can find that with me.
“Does the rest of your crew not fly with you? Or your gear?” she asks as they seal up the door of the plane, noticing that it’s just the four of us from the band, her, and our grumpy manager who is sitting in the front seat bossing people around.
Bach speaks up this time, not having said much the other night while Fish and Scooter regaled the women with stories of our band adventures.
Mostly embarrassing ones of me, to Erica’s apparent delight.
“We have a handful of people on the crew who are terrified of flying, so they drive and choose to stick together, so it’s just us up here. ”
She nods again and her eyes drift once more through the cabin of our private plane.
“Do you like it?” I blurt, suddenly worried that she’s not comfortable, hyper aware of what she thinks.
A dusting of pink settles on her lightly freckled cheekbones. “Oh, of course I do. I just . . . I’ve only ever flown once, and it was the cheapest ticket on the cheapest airline there was.” She offers a small, nervous laugh.
“Ah yeah, we had to work hard, but we finally got this baby—what was it?” I look to the guys.
“Like six or seven years ago?” They nod in agreement.
We settle in and buckle up when the overhead seatbelt sign illuminates with a ding, and the captain announces our take off and arrival time over the speaker like he’s talking to one of his regular commercial flights.
Over the course of our short flight, Erica and I immerse ourselves in our own little world.
When we boarded, a part of me felt as though I was at a bit of a disadvantage.
She informed us in the hotel, when we were all hanging out last night, just how long she and Max had been fans of ours.
Over thirteen years. They’ve learned all about us, the band and each of us individually.
I can’t imagine how many interviews, television appearances, or magazine articles we’ve been in over the years where we’ve been asked basically everything imaginable.
Erica let me ask her an obnoxious amount of questions as I craved every scrap of information I could get.
Her favorite color is black, or a really dark purple, which I may have gathered from her style preferences.
She’s not one of those girls that dresses in the rocker girl look just for a concert. She lives it and I fucking love it.
Even today, I nearly drooled when I saw her waiting for me on the sidewalk. She has the un-loc’d top of her hair in a messy mass on top of her head, while her locs are left down with the sun glinting off silver charms she has clipped around them in certain places.
She’s wearing high-rise black denim shorts with five buttons and no zipper, a grey tank tucked into her shorts, with a black and grey checkered denim jacket over the top.
She’s wearing some kind of shiny tights under her shorts that run down her smooth legs and into her black chunky platform oxfords.
She looked like a wet dream with her lip between her teeth as she nervously watched the cars on the street.
Between those lips and her nails, I’m having trouble focusing. I can’t get the thought of her sharp, black fingernails running down my back out of my head. Hell, I can’t get anything about her out of my head. Ever since the moment our eyes met she’s consumed my every thought, awake or not.
I also learned that she doesn’t really have any family.
Her mom didn’t know who her father was and, after she was born, left her with her grandmother.
She loved her dearly, but she passed away when Erica was in her junior year of high school, and then she pretty much moved in with Max and her family.
She doesn’t like mushrooms. Actually, she doesn’t like the texture of mushrooms but likes the flavor. She said they have the texture of snot. I laughed and vowed not to ask her to eat mushrooms. Fish refused to promise, just to get a rise out of her.
She loves music and the arts. She was a graphic designer before Vann made her quit her job, but she’s dabbled in all forms; writing, music, and even pottery, but she expressed her deep frustration of not being able to conquer the clay.
She has such a big, loving, calm, and easy-going personality that I can’t fathom being someone who wanted to put her in such a small box.
She deserves room to grow into everything she is and can be.
She deserves someone to nurture her. I can’t wait to watch her bloom after having wilted in on herself for so long.