“Did you know they’d back off?” asked Glen, as the crowd dispersed, grumbling their disapproval. The thought of a fight and the chance to make a buck had been a very novel distraction.
Jake rubbed his head. Partly to check liquefied brains cells weren’t actually leaking out. “Hell no. I was hoping if I called their bluff they might think twice.” He passed the same hand over his face in relief. “Pretty sure I could’ve gotten myself sacked if I let that go ahead.”
“Over my dead body,” said Rielle, eyes flashing.
Glen stepped back with a grin. He was bailing. He was a dead-beat coward.
“That so?” Jake said, “I remember not so long ago you thought I wasn’t up to this. What was it, not Godzilla enough?”
“Yeah well, that was pretty fucking Godzilla.” She play punched him on the arm. He caught her fist and held it and a look flashed between them that made him think of steamy sex scenes in x-rated movies for no good reason, except the thought filled up the craters in his head with something like warm sponge.
&nb
sp; “Are you all right?” he asked. It was the first time he’d seen Rielle alone since leaving her sobbing in her room. He’d heard her behind the closed door and ached to go back inside and comfort her. But since he figured he was the source of her distress that didn’t make a lot of sense. So he listened to her sob until he couldn’t stand to listen anymore, then he went to the hotel bar and started in on today’s intergalactic sized hangover.
“I’m good,” she said. “But you don’t look so great.” She reached up, lifted his sunglasses off his face.
“Aw, too bright.” He squinted, flinching from the midday sun. She took his hand and drew him into the shade. “What did you do?”
Tried to forget the ravaged look on your face and the wrenching sound of your sobbing. Tried to understand how the heat between them had roasted him to the core but left the walls of her ice palace frozen solid. “I met Jack Daniels in the bar and he kept topping up my glass.”
Rielle sighed. “That would be my fault.” She dropped her head and spoke to his rubber-soled work boots. “I’m sorry.”
She looked about as miserable as he felt. Jake put his arms around her and drew her to his chest. “Maybe we just burned too hard? Maybe we’re moths and the light’s too intense, and we can’t help ourselves but keep flying at it even though it’s going to kill us.”
She nodded into his chest. “Just don’t hate me.”
“About the only person I can summon the energy to hate is Jack Daniels and I think he’s already dead. Bastard.”
“Can we be friends?” she asked.
Jake heard the hesitancy in her voice. He wanted to say, “No, are you deranged? No, we can’t be friends, we can’t be lovers, we can’t be anything to each other. It’s too hard.” But what was the point in telling her that. The tour was half way through, only Melbourne and Sydney to go and she’d be out of his life anyway. He tightened his hold on her and breathed her in and she tucked herself into his arms like she wanted to belong there and contrary was her middle name.
“Rand and Stu, is that over?” he said.
She looked up, stepped out of his arms. “For now. But it’s not finished. It’s a problem, but not your problem.”
“They’re fighting over Ceedee. What does she want?”
“She wants Stu to commit, and she wants Rand to make him. It’s not going to work. Rand is such a dope. He lets her play him every time. And Stu, he’ll never give her what she wants and Ceedee will never stop believing he’ll change.”
He said, “Hmmm,” considering the implications for the rest of the tour, for the rest of the band’s future.
“There’s no ‘hmmm’ about it, Jake. People don’t change. It’s going to go on like this until someone breaks.”
Did she really believe people couldn’t change? Was that the problem for Rielle, wanting to change and not being able to? It was all too much on top of the hangover. Jake’s head throbbed, his ears felt like they fitted too tight, his throat felt too small to be functional, and he had work to do. He dropped a kiss on the top of Rielle’s forehead and left her at the side of the stage.
Early that evening, before the stadium gates opened, Jake watched as Rielle and Ceedee rehearsed their pole routine. They were working under a set of stage lights, both girls sweating from exertion. The forecast had said evening breezes, but instead they had a blanket of humidity thick and wet and heavy around them.
Bodge and Tef were standing by watching. A couple of roadies were setting up for Problem Children and Jake sat back in the wings, ostensibly checking over venue records but surreptitiously watching Rielle.
When the first few moths arrived they were hardly noticeable in the big space. But as the evening spread, more of them arrived. They craved the light and began to fly around the lit stage in increasing numbers. Bodge and Tef swatted them away with annoyance and still they came—a huge cloud of them.
“Argh! Yuck, what are these things?” Ceedee screeched, sliding down her pole to the ground to shake two out of her hair.
“Bogongs, you can eat them,” said Tef helpfully. When Ceedee made a face, he laughed, mouth wide. And promptly swallowed one. Jake laughed while Tef choked, hawked and spat to try and dislodge it.
“Tasty eh, Tef.” Bodge thumped him on the back.