Chapter Twelve #2
He shrugged. “I get that you’re embarrassed to talk about it with knucklehead one and two, but you could have come to me instead of walking around with this chip on your shoulder. I want to believe you, Remi, but how can I do that when you’re lying to me?”
“Oh, because you’ve always been so truthful with me?” Remi snapped.
West pressed his lips into a thin line. “You know all of my secrets that are mine to tell.”
Remi rolled his eyes and brushed past him to walk off the bus. He couldn’t stand to feel his disapproving, hypocritical gaze one second longer.
There was a weird tension on the bus that afternoon when they finally left.
Remi knew he was the cause of it. Liam and Ollie had set up shop on the couch, playing video games, while West had tucked himself into one of the bunks.
The tour bus was warmer than usual. They were driving through the desert, and the air conditioning was barely keeping up.
Remi sat across from Skye at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. She’d been working on her laptop all day. He’d been scrolling through the band’s social media, liking and responding to comments until they started to fuck with his head.
You suck.
This band is so fucking cringe.
Bunch of homos.
Who’d these guys suck off to get famous?
Remi put the phone down on the table, looking for a distraction.
Skye was chewing on her bottom lip, focusing on her computer in front of him.
“What are you doing?” Remi asked casually.
It’d probably be too much to ask that she’d say “Plotting your band’s downfall. Would you like a sneak peek?” but he was curious.
Her eyes darted to him, narrowing. She didn’t say anything for a beat, as if she was waiting for some scathing remark, but when he supplied none, she just turned her laptop around and showed him a spreadsheet.
“Looking at our budget,” she said. “We haven’t replaced the broken lights yet, and I’m debating whether we should buy them ourselves or go through the label. The label could put in a bulk purchase order that would be cheaper, but I have to fill out forms, and it’ll take forever.”
She clicked around and pulled up a website.
“If we bought these ourselves, we could get them shipped to the next venue. Then we could submit the expense to the label, but they’ll only reimburse us whatever they would have paid, so do we pay extra to get them faster?
Or do we just keep doing what we’ve been doing. Steve—Steve is our light guy—”
“I know who Steve is,” Remi said.
“Right,” Skye said. “Well, Steve said that he’s been working with what we got well enough.” Skye shrugged and swiveled the laptop back around. She tugged on a strand of her hair and twirled it around her finger. “I just don’t like the idea of going over budget this early in the tour.”
Remi tilted his head and tried to figure out her angle. West was in his bunk. Liam and Ollie had their headsets on. No one was around to hear her ‘I’m a great manager’ act.
She glanced up at him. “What do you think we should do?”
He tapped his fingers on the edge of his sandwich plate while he thought about how much he wanted to say. This had been one of the problems on his mind too.
“Steve is making do because he’s one of the best in the business,” Remi said. “But I already talked with him, and he’s calling some connections for me about getting us a discount if I do a few promo spots for the lighting company.”
Skye opened and closed her mouth wordlessly. “You’ve already taken care of this,” she said, sitting back from her computer.
Remi shrugged one shoulder, unsure why he was playing humble.
They stared at one another, something electric passing through the air between them. Remi zoomed out of his body for a moment and imagined a different timeline where he and Skye worked together to make the tour happen instead of playing this constant game with one another.
“I’ll check in with Steve and see if I can get us new lights by the next city,” she said.
He should have told her not to get involved, but instead he nodded and stood up, taking his plate to the sink to break the connection between them.
Remi gripped the edge of the counter, forcing himself not to turn around and capture her mouth. He wondered if she’d let him. Let him kiss her, touch her, fuck her over the table.
She’d protest at first, push him away, and say she didn’t fuck the soulless, but just like in his bedroom, she’d give in.
He’d lay her out on the table, and her legs would wrap around his head as he feasted on her.
She’d come on his tongue, cursing his name, while he drowned in her bittersweet taste.
“I’m going to take a nap,” he announced.
He had to get some distance between them.
As he passed West’s bunk on the way to the back bedroom, he thought about trying to apologize and make things right with him, but West’s privacy curtain was pulled shut, and he didn’t want to bother him.
Remi laid on the bed and shut his eyes. He was only able to nap for a few minutes before he was tossing and turning from the heat.
He tried to mess with the blower in the room, but it only gave him hot air.
Sleeping while sweating his ass off wasn’t going to happen, so he wandered back into the main area. West sat next to Skye at the table, fanning himself with a takeout menu. Ollie and Liam had already taken off their shirts. It was sweltering.
“Why’s the air conditioning off?” Remi asked. He messed with the dials, but it was doing the same thing as the one in the back, only giving him hot air.
“It’s broke,” West said. “We already tried all that. Driver said that he’d check the compressor. We might need refrigerant.”
“Damn. That sucks,” Remi said.
Skye was in the same position he’d left her in. The heat was suffocating, and yet, she wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
“You’re fine with this,” Remi said.
She shrugged and didn’t stop typing. “Where I’m from, this heat is a cool spring day.”
Right. Hell. It had been toasty in her bedroom.
“Where you from, Skye?” Liam asked.
“Down under.”
“Australia?” Ollie said. “That’s sick. Why don’t you have an accent?”
Skye shrugged. “Raised all over the US. My mom traveled around a lot but spent most of her time in LA. We went home to visit though, so it’ll always be where I’m from.”
Remi grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and sipped from it. Was any of that true?
“What’d your mom do?” West asked.
Skye stiffened. “She worked in the music industry. Did a little bit of everything.”
Ollie nodded. “So that’s where you learned all your skills?”
Skye smiled, but it was tight. “Yeah, she passed on the tricks of the trade.”
“What’s she doing now?” Liam asked.
“She’s dead,” Skye said, not looking up from the laptop.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry,” Liam said.
Skye shrugged. “No problem. It was ten years ago.”
An awkward moment passed. Remi didn’t take his eyes off Skye. She played at nonchalance, but there was a tension in her voice when she spoke about her mom. Unless it was all part of her act. He couldn’t be sure how much of what she said was the truth and how much was a lie.
“Well, you’re the only one equipped to handle this heat. I’m fucking melting,” Liam said.
Remi squeezed his water bottle, squishing some of the water out of the opening. What if Skye was the only one not affected by the heat because she broke the air conditioning to make them suffer on purpose?
The bus hit a pothole, and he tripped over his feet as they all jostled. His water spilled down the front of his shirt. The bus kept bouncing as it slowed and then came to a stop.
Remi looked out the window. The cracked and desiccated dirt went on for as far as he could see. There were a few bushes on the side of the asphalt, only the barren skeletons left of them.
Their bus driver, Larry, rushed off the bus, and everyone followed behind him with a quiet dread lingering in the air.
If Remi thought the big metal box of the tour bus was sweltering, it was nothing like the blast of oppressive heat that hit him in the face as they got off the bus.
They formed a semicircle around the front of the bus, staring at the flat front right tire.
“Hey, mate,” Ollie said. “That ain’t looking good.” He pointed to the smoke curling from the end of the tour bus where the engine was located.
“Shit,” Larry said and hurried to open the rear panels. The faint twists of smoke became a plume.
“Is that from the air conditioning?” Liam asked.
Larry waved his hand through the smoke. “No. I have no idea what this is. The water pump or something. The transmission felt like it was starting to go while I was driving too. We need to call a tow.”
Remi pressed his tongue into his upper lip and slowly turned his head to Skye.
She startled when she noticed him looking at her. Her jaw dropped, and she flung out a hand. “What? You think I did this?”
“Well, if you were to fuck with the air conditioning and then make the bus break down in the middle of the desert during the hottest time of day, you would be the only one of us not affected by the heat,” Remi said, trying to keep his voice level, but heat-induced anger swirled through the words, adding a vicious, almost deranged bite to them.
“You can’t blame Skye for the air conditioning breaking!” Liam said.
“And ya think she sabotaged the transmission and the water pump?” Ollie asked. “That’s nuts. She’s stuck out here with us.”