Straight from the Heart (25 page)

Lucy: Same here. Let’s do lunch before the
festival.

Me: Oh for sure. Love ya

“Who were you texting?” Cale asked, raising
one of his eyebrows.

I turned around and handed out my phone.
“Just your ex,” I replied sarcastically. “Who just happens to be
excited to see me.”

Cale laughed and rolled his eyes. “Leave it
to Lucy to be friends with my now girlfriend.”

“What, is that so bad?”

He shook his head. “I’m slowly learning to
let that shit go. That’s all.” And he left it at that, picking up
my guitar case and taking it out to the van. Before we all piled
in, he pulled me aside the van. “You realize I’m staying with you
tonight, right?”

I smirked. “What makes you think that? You
must think you’re my boyfriend or something?”

Leaning down to kiss me on the corner of my
lips, he let his lips linger to tease me “Because it’s been a long
day and I think I need some alone time with you, in your bed, just
the two of us.” I knew what he meant. Pelton and his boastful
attitude thinking he was going to get something out of me…which he
knew he always would.

I smacked him on the ass and ran to the
driver side of the van. “We’ll see about that!” I yelled, slamming
the door before he could kiss me again.

When we got back to the loft, I told all of
the guys they could stay on one condition.

“No way in hell!” Cale tried to sound
furious, but his incontrollable laughing took its place. “A guy
that would willingly watch this crap you women call ‘romantic’ is
messed up in the head.”

“Come on, it’s a good movie!” I egged him
on. I told the five of them they had to sit and watch
The Last
Song
with me, since I had just bought it and hadn’t had a
chance to watch it yet. “It’s before she turned into a wrecking
ball…please?”

Tyler cackled as if that was the funniest
thing in the world. “I’m not in the mood to cry like a baby,
Schaefler. Don’t you have like
Fight Club
or something?”

I pointed to the few movies I had. I was
never home enough to watch them unless something was on demand on
TV. “Feel free to look,” I replied sarcastically. “But no matter
what, you’re going to cry or not want to watch it.”

Cale snatched the movie from me and put it
in my DVD player.

“You owe me big, B.” He winked, jumping
stomach first onto the bed.

“Shut up, it might be good.” Vince said. I
looked at him and he high-fived me. “I’ll take one for the team. I
don’t feel like driving back to the apartment anyways.”

So all five guys, including me, piled onto
my bed. Somehow we all managed to squeeze onto it with just a
little bit of room. Luke pulled out his phone and managed to get a
picture of all of us, posting it to our ‘official’ Facebook &
Twitter page. He captioned it “
Our one big happy family having a
sappy movie night. Guess whose idea that was?’

Towards the end of the movie, where the main
character finds out about her dad dying, I could hear a sniffle
beside me. Of course, it was Raptor ACTUALLY starting to cry. I
didn’t want to put him on blast so I ignored it and my attention
turned back to the movie. By the end credits, I was bawling my eyes
out, while Vince and Cale were passed out cold. Tyler was staring
at the screen with a blank expression on his face, while Luke and
Raptor were wiping tears away.

The rest of us that were awake tried to
untangle ourselves from Cale and Vince. I ended up taking the
couch, while Raptor, Luke and Tyler slept on the extra floor
space.

Before the guys hogged the bathroom for the
night, I decided on taking a quick bath. I had never used the bath
while living here, and was sort of anxious to put in my bubble bath
I had picked up while on tour. Filling the tub to the rim with
water, I stripped down and stuck one foot in to test the water.
Sinking in, I let out a sigh and tilted my head backwards towards
the end of the bath tub. I don’t know how long I was in there, but
then I heard a loud knock at the door.

“Almost done!” I cried, reaching for the
towel that sat beside the tub. I dried myself off and wrapped the
towel around me, turning on the blow dryer to quickly dry off my
hair. Cleaning everything up, I yelled again. “Can come in
now!”

Tyler popped his head in to make sure I was
covered before coming in.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, with a sleepy
look to his face. “I didn’t cut your time short did I?”

I smiled and shook my head, gripping the
towel tighter and closer to my body. Why, I didn’t have a damn clue
because he wasn’t even paying attention to the fact I was naked
underneath my towel. He was eyeing the shower and my first thought
was he felt the exact same way I did.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s all yours bud.”
I patted him on the shoulder playfully before leaving. His fingers
dug into my shoulder slightly before I turned around. I got a good
hard look at his chocolate brown eyes, noticing the honey colored
ring around his pupils.
Stop staring at him!
I thought, but
there was no harm done right? “Everything okay?”

Now he started to notice me. I could feel
his gaze start from my partially dried hair down to my single piece
of clothing, which only covered just below my ass. It made my
insides feel like they were on fire. Damn I needed to get to my
clothes ASAP before I did something I’d regret. My boyfriend was
just outside of that door snoring away.

“Yeah. Sorry Bryn. You just look different
right now, that’s all.” Taking back what he said, he replied “I
mean not because you’re wearing just that towel, but you look
pretty stripped down without your makeup or your hair done.” Then
he ruffled up my hair with his hand and I swatted it away.
“Alright, sleep with the angels, Bryn.”

I took my spot on the couch after slipping
on my matching pink lacy bra and underwear set, in addition to a
baggy t-shirt. Snuggling my face into the pillow, the sound of the
shower lulled me to sleep.

“NO we totally need the drum solo in the
middle of the set! You know people dig that shit right Raptor?”
Tyler tried to get Raptor on his side as the argument
continued.

“If I could get this arm to recover any
faster I’d join you out there. Shit, drums totally over power the
guitars when it comes to solos boys, and you know it. Ladies LOVE
the men who can pound on those drums.” Raptor bumped fists with
Tyler and they cackled in Cale’s face.

“We don’t even have that much time out
there! Like an hour? They want us to play all the new shit from the
album, so we won’t have time for any damn solos.” Cale, being
especially grumpy this morning, scolded everyone. Then he saw me
getting up from my sleeping position and stopped in his tracks.
“Oh, uh, hey babe good morning.”

I rubbed a hand through my bed hair and
pulled down my oversized shirt to cover my exposed thighs. Cocking
my head to the side, I said “So what’s this about solos?”

“Tell your boyfriend here there’s no reason
why we can’t each have a little solo at the festival.” Vince
gestured towards Cale, who had a smug smile on his face. “He’s hell
bent on the idea that we won’t have any time.”

I threw my head back and laughed.

“Cale Pelton, you are something else.” I
nudged his side. “Only you would be arguing about something like
this at this time in the morning.”

Winking at me, he lifted me up into his arms
so high that my bare feet weren’t touching the ground. “I love
getting a rise out of you Bryn. You’re hot when you’re mad at me.”
The guys snickered, and I tried to get out of his grasp by punching
at his shoulders, but he only tightened it. “Keep wiggling like
that and see what happens. ”

Finally putting me down, I crossed my arms
in front of my chest and glared at him. He knew I wasn’t mad, but
it was still fun to pretend anyways. “Just for that I’ll tell all
of the new waitresses next door that you’re single. They’ll hit on
you like wildfire, and I’ll stand back and laugh.”

“Is that a punishment?”

Festival day.

My nerves were set into overdrive today, and
I had a feeling in my gut something was going to go wrong. But I
had to push it aside until our set was over

Lucy: Don’t forget about lunch Bryn!

Me: I’m looking forward to it girly. See you
later

Before Hal could even get us out of town,
something on the bus didn’t sound right. He pulled over off an exit
nearby Pontiac, and examined the outside of the tour bus for a
possible cause of what was going on.

“Mother fucker!” I heard him shout, as he
yelled for Luke to come outside and help him.

I couldn’t get a view of what was going on
from the window, but I heard more cursing and a string of swear
words from both of their mouths. Taking a peek from the door, I saw
Hal and Luke inspecting a tire that had come from our bus.
What
the hell?

“What happened?” I yelled, both Luke and Hal
turning in my direction.

“Someone slashed the back tires to the damn
bus!” Luke replied, running his hands furiously through his red
hair. “Who could’ve done this? The bus has been parked safely back
at home since being off tour!”

“Could’ve been anyone,” Cale sighed under
his breath, moving past me to help the guys change the back tires.
“By the looks of it, this person really didn’t want us to go to
Pontiac today. Cut straight through, looks like at least a dozen
slashes per tire.”

“Well than how’d we make it this far?” Tyler
snapped. “Unless someone did it while we were getting gas at the
last stop.”

“We were all right there!” Cale snapped
back. “There’s no way…”

“How about you all just shut up and help us
fix these tires so you can make your show?” Hal bellowed over all
of us, which meant we all needed to shut up and listen. “We’ll
figure out who slashed the tires later.”

The guys finished replacing the back tires
while I sat back in panic. I kept over reacting, wondering ‘
Is
someone going to try to pull something at the festival today?’
Trying to push back the negative thoughts out of my head, I started
singing softly the words to ‘You Were Young,’ and imagining the
crowd that was expected to be there today.

Half hour later, we were back on the road,
reaching Pontiac in plenty of time before being considered late.
The area that was blocked off for the festival was already thriving
with people, and I could see the Ignite the Flames tour bus in the
distance. “This is going to be interesting,” I murmured as we
parked next to their bus that was nearly half a size bigger than
our bus.

As soon as Hal stopped the bus, the guys
swarmed off, rushing around like mad men, and leaving nothing to
me. I texted Lucy to let her know we were finally there, and
apologizing about missing the chance to do lunch. Once I hit send,
her head popped out from an open window on the Ignite bus and
screamed “About time, B!”

I walked over to the bus door and Lucy
opened it, jumping out and embracing me. “Good to see you too
Luce,” I chuckled as she let go. She looked like she was dressed to
kill, wearing tight pair of Silver skinny jeans and an off the
shoulder Asking Alexandria shirt. Her hair was styled like a big
hair ball, reminding me of the 80’s. I also noticed there were no
colored streaks in it, just her natural jet black hair similar to
mine.

“I was having a bad hair day, so I figured
why not just go with it?” She giggled. “But you look awesome Bryn.
Excited about the album?”

 “More so nervous I think, I can’t
believe it’s already out today,” I replied honestly.

“I always hated the days leading up to the
release. More so release day because it’s a big ball of excitement
and once it’s out, you’ll still feel nervous because it’s like ‘Are
people going to hate it?’ ‘Are they going to love it?’ But it’ll be
fine no matter what. I’m sure it sounds amazing. I’m going to pick
up a copy after the show.” Lucy smiled, and Damon came out of the
bus with the rest of the boys a few minutes later.

“Well look who it is!” Damon grinned like a
possum, swooping me into a big hug. “How are you, kid?”

“Can’t complain,” I replied as he ruffled
Lucy’s hair. “How’s the break treating you?”

“Ha…there’s no break for me. I’ve been back
taking care of my dad who got really sick. Label wants us to put
out a new album by next summer, early fall though so it’ll be back
to work again.” He chuckled. His blond hair was almost shaved off,
giving him a completely different look. “So how’s Raptor doing? I
heard about what happened and wanted to get ahold of you.”

“He’s doing a lot better,” I explained.
“Doctors don’t want him playing the drums for a while, but he’s
still going to help set up equipment and stuff while he heals his
arm. We got Tyler back in his place and he’s kicking ass, much to
Cale’s disappointment.”

Lucy’s face turned bitter at the mention of
Tyler. I knew that was a sore subject seeing as she was the reason
behind the Cale/Tyler fight not even a year ago. “They’re actually
getting along?” She asked, surprised.

Right on cue, Cale and the rest of the guys
were heading in our direction, all laughing and joking about
something. We watched as Tyler fist bumped Cale and I turned back
to Lucy with a smile. “I guess that’s your answer!”

“Damon how is it going pal?” Tyler gave
Damon a one armed man hug and shook hands. “Haven’t seen you in a
while!”

“Your nose looks a lot better.” Damon
smirked, and Tyler shook his head laughing.

“Yeah still crooked, but all’s well that
ends well I guess.” He replied, looking straight at Lucy, who was
staring at the ground. “Luce, beautiful as always.”

Once she knew Tyler was no harm, her eyes
studied his face. “You’re still charming and cocky I see. That
broken nose didn’t affect your ego any.”