Chapter 10 #2
“Holy God, I thought she was a mirage. Glad you see her too.”
I feel like doing a slow clap for Skull.
Harry’s expression as Deja hugs him slips from shock, to stupefied, to downright envy as he glances over her shoulder to Skull, whose mouth curves in a knowing smile. I bite my lip hard to hold back my laughter.
“Hey, superstars!” Kevin’s voice calls from the bank of exit doors. He struts toward us with exceptional swagger, arms outstretched. “How was the flight?”
“We didn’t end up on the news, so fairly boring,” Darcy says, shaking his proffered hand.
Kevin throws his head back as he laughs.
He’s decked out tip to toe, a trendy blazer over a loose-fitting pink button-down, well-tailored trousers that lead to exceptionally posh suede loafers.
The outfit would look douchey on most people, but there’s something so endearingly earnest in the way Kevin smiles at us, I feel like it’s more armor than anything else, dressing for the job he wants (established manager of actual superstars) and not the job he has (inexperienced manager of D-list disasters).
He goes around the group, initiating an awkward handshake-half-hug thing with each of us.
“Great thinking on that post during the flight, by the way, Harry,” Kevin says, clapping us both on the back as we watch the luggage being spat out onto the carousel. “Keeping that rumor mill churning. Very smart.”
“Yeah, what a mastermind. Learned how to tie his shoes last week too,” I say, turning to Kevin. “We’ll make sure you have a chance to sign the congratulations card.”
“Thanks, Kev,” Harry says with a smile, inconspicuously digging his elbow into my side. “Just trying to do as Sigrún advised.”
“Such a good little soldier,” I coo, swerving away from his arm, then turning to smartly pat him on the cheek.
“One of us has to be.”
I roll my eyes. While I’m going through the motions of throwing stuff up on my stories and posting pictures, I haven’t taken initiative with any of it, only doing what I’m told when I’m explicitly ordered to, spending more of my time lurking in the comments section, committing to memory all the harsh sentiments being shared.
I don’t see what the big deal is—the response is exponentially more positive when Harry posts anyway.
We collect our bags and Kevin orders us a car that takes us to our accommodations where we’ll stay for the next two nights before switching to the tour bus that will take us to Vermont.
I stare out the window, excited to see a new city—cobbled alleys nestled between skyscrapers—but we head away from downtown.
“Much more reasonably priced outside the city,” Kevin says in a chipper voice as the skyline disappears behind us.
We’re dropped at an inn on a plain-looking street.
It’s an old, Victorian-style house with hideous plastic siding in desperate need of a power wash.
The inside isn’t much better, the lobby/sitting room smelling like someone chain-smoked for multiple decades, then dumped lavender essential oil into the old pink carpeting to cover up the stale stench.
A bored-looking woman around my age reluctantly looks up from her laptop and checks Kevin in, handing him keys and flicking her wrist toward the rickety stairs, eyes already back on her screen.
Skull stops Deja on the second floor, scooping her into his arms as she lets out a breathy shriek of delight.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Own room,” he replies with a grunt, carrying her into the first door on the right. “We do not share with others.”
The door shuts with a thump behind him, and it takes all of point-two seconds till we hear bed springs creaking, punctuated by a raspy moan (from Deja) and what can only be described as a lusty giggle (from Skull).
Kevin blinks at their door for a moment before his eyes skip to the room next to it. “You all are upstairs,” he says with a defeated sigh, head hanging low as he lets himself into his room.
Kale, Harry, Darcy, and I bumble up the next flight, hauling all our crap with superhuman strength to escape the growing amorous volume.
Sigrún booked us two rooms—Kevin and Skull splurged on their own spaces—and we were promised the arrangement would mean none of us have to share a bed with anyone, so we didn’t put up too much of a fuss.
Kale and Harry carry on down the hall to their room, while Darcy and I unlock the door to ours.
We share a grimace as we take in the space … Maybe a fuss would have been warranted.
“What a shithole,” Darcy whispers as if she’s worried she’ll disturb the film of dust coating the questionable decor.
While Sigrún was more than ecstatic to capitalize on the momentum and send us on tour, she did warn us that some accommodations would be less than ideal on Ring Road’s tight budget, and our room paints a clear picture of just how economical she’s being.
The air is somehow even mustier up here, Boston’s humidity leaching through the windows.
The decor is coastal grandma but without any of the chicness and all of the mounted fish eternally gaping for their dying breath.
An alarming amount of thick rope decks the walls, while the bust of a wrecked-looking mermaid that may have belonged on the mast of a worse-for-wear ship or a poorly designed strip club lurches over the bed.
The bed is its own anomaly, not matching the …
style of the rest of the room. The frame is a jarringly white four-poster monstrosity, a heavy, sagging mattress wrapped in a bubblegum-pink duvet sitting on top of short, skinny legs.
Somehow, I instinctively know that if I lie on that bed, a cloud of dust will poof through the room like an atomic bomb.
But the alternative …
A threadbare rollaway cot sits next to it, the mattress as thin as the other is thick, and so compressed lengthwise that my legs would dangle off the edge.
We stare at the beds in silence, neither of us breathing. And, like the climax of a horror movie, our eyes slowly trace to each other, locking in fear. The fear shifts to realization. Then determination.
“Dibs,” we screech in unison, then make a mad dash across the room.
“Get off me,” I grunt as Darcy grabs my elbow, trying to jerk me back and use the momentum to fly ahead. I shake her off, giving her a decent shove into a floor lamp shaped like an anchor with SO KNOTTY written on the shade in letters made to look like rope.
“I called it first,” she lies, tripping me so my knees land on the carpet, something crunchy in the fibers sounding with my impact. I wrap my fingers in her belt loops as she tries to leave me in the dust, and she joins me on the ground.
“I’m taller,” I pant as we tussle. “The cot is the perfect size for you.”
“I will saw your feet off if you try to stick me on that piece of plywood,” she snarls back.
We manage to stand, still tangled as we move. We leap at the same moment for the bigger bed, colliding in midair so we land on the edge of the mattress, hanging like Mufasa in his final moments.
I claw into the duvet, using some of the ostentatious buttons as hand holds, Darcy scrabbling next to me. We’ve both nearly dragged ourselves to the top when a loud groan cuts through our struggling, a wail of warning before a crack echoes through the room.
We only have half a second to look at each other, eyes widening in fear. Then, with the jerk of a roller coaster, the bed collapses down, the skinny legs splintering to twigs as the crash thunders through the bones of the house, the entire structure shaking.
Everything is silent for a moment, Darcy and I still locked in a horrified look, and I’m fully convinced this bed is about to fall three stories through this dilapidated house and we will die in the wreckage of this hideous bedding.
I think my life is supposed to flash before me when faced with imminent demise like this, but the only (ridiculous) thought I can muster is that I’m so glad Darcy’s big blue eyes are the last thing I’ll see before I perish.
That I’ll go out doing something ridiculous with my favorite person on the planet.
The bedroom door flies open and bangs against the wall, snapping me out of my fanciful final moments, the house settling back into place.
No death today. Not even bodily harm. Maybe the tour won’t be so bad after all.
“What the hell are you on about?” Harry shrieks, barreling through the room, the rest of our gaggle of misfits—minus Skull and Tiny Deja, who apparently can’t be bothered enough by cataclysmic sounds to stop shagging—close on his tail. “Are you okay?”
Darcy and I share another look. “The bed broke,” we whine in unison.
“Clearly this was faulty construction,” Darcy says, gesturing at it. “We can’t be blamed for that.”
I nod emphatically, locking eyes with the front desk girl as she mounts the final step and enters the room. She could not look more unimpressed.
“Okay, everyone keep calm,” Kevin says, not very calm at all. “We can figure this out. Discuss the damages.”
I’m guessing massive ancient bed destruction wasn’t budgeted for.
“I literally do not care,” the front desk girl says with a yawn. “That bed is a thousand years old, and the legs have been replaced so many times. Just, like … keep it down? I’m trying to study for my bioethics in the age of consumerism exam tomorrow.”
“Right. Sorry. Wow. Bioethics in … That sounds … Yup, she’s walking away,” I say, watching her disappear down the steps.
“You two need to get your shit together and not die before our first show,” Harry says, sounding like a mother hen. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Cubby’s untimely death would keep us trending for at least another week, so it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Kale says, eyeing the damage.
I bark out a nasally fake laugh, flipping him off with both hands.
Kevin looks the worst for wear, frazzled and sweaty as he continues his wide-eyed appraisal of the room. With a deep sigh, he hangs his head and says what we’re all thinking. “This is going to be a long summer, isn’t it?”