Angie (3 page)

Then I went to the bathroom and some
girl showed me her full body Lord of the Rings tattoos in the queue for the toilet. It was the most awesome tatt I’d ever seen and I think I told her that many, many times. Then it got a bit blurry again until Hannah came in and pulled me by the hand.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

They were playing “Party Dress”, my favourite Storm song, so the two of us jumped on a table and danced, then the girl in the red satin shorts who’d kissed Bastian earlier in the night joined us. When the song finished, we’d gathered a bit of a crowd around us, hooting and cheering.

Eric grabbed my hand and I jumped off the table into his arms.

“We need to get you girls as back up dancers,” Jack said.

Then
I remember giving Spud valuable life advice on how not to be a dick, because I figured he really needed to hear that. He seemed to be really interested in what I had to say but then he moved in closer and kinda slumped with his arms over me, and his gross tongue pushed into my mouth.

I pushed him away.

“What the fuck are you thinking?” I yelled, as I threw a beer at him to cool him off. “I told you to stop being a dick, not be more of a dick!”

Spud sulked off in his beer
-drenched state. We thought he’d gone to the bathroom to sponge himself off and I was glad to see him go. While I bitched about his non-consensual invasion of my mouth and that bitch, Hannah, laughed, a shout rang out from across the room.

We couldn’t really see well but it looked like Spud and one of the Monkey Bride roadies had got into a punch up.

I looked over at Eric and he just shrugged.

“We’d better break it up,” Jack said with a sigh.

I followed them to see what was happening. Spud sprawled on the floor – I wasn’t sure if he’d been hit or if he’d just fallen. Jack and Eric pulled him to his feet and sat him down in the corner. He didn’t look in very good shape but he wasn’t bleeding or injured.

Minutes later, he left the bar with some chick.
He could barely walk but had a massive grin on his face so obviously the possibility of sex overruled the getting punched in the head.

It seemed like not long after that we decided to leave too.

I woke up the next morning wondering where I was. I could feel floor beneath me. I think I'd started on the couch but had fallen off some time during the night. Something had trapped me, pinning my legs down. I tried to shake free and realised it was a blanket. I could hear the noise of the coffee machine in the kitchen.

"Are you making coffee?" I
murmured, trying to untangle myself from the blanket.

"Ah, you're awake!" said Hannah.
She looked mighty perky, considering.

I sat up on the couch.

"I think I'm awake.
Is that jackhammer outside or in my head?"

She laughed.
I assumed that meant it was in my head. Damn, free drinks are evils.

Shit.
I remembered when we got back to Jack and Eric’s, that big D&M with Eric where I told him exactly why I couldn't go out with him – because his mother hated me and I cared too much about him to start a serious relationship under those circumstances. Except, I couldn't actually remember Eric saying he wanted to have a relationship with me in the first place. Oh, my face burnt. I’d have to run away and never come back. I must've sounded like a complete dick. But he'd kissed me. I totally remembered him kissing me.

I remembered that it was sweet and gentle and it shook me to
the soles of my feet and I’d rubbed his earlobe. I actually told him I loved his earlobes. Did that make me freaky and weird? I’m pretty sure it did.

Then I must’ve passed out on the couch.
What had happened to that sensible me who wasn’t going to drink too much? I felt like a mess. A cotton-mouthed, foul-smelling mess.

"Why do you look so chipper?"
I asked Hannah. "It's the sex, isn't it? It totally cures hangovers."

She put her head down and didn't answer so it totally had to be the sex.
Damn her and her sex.

"Ready for another big night of rock?" she asked.

Hell. Fuck. Damn. I had to organise the film crew. I had to be alert and in control to organise shit. I needed the fuck out of that coffee because right then, I could not organise my way out of a... well out of a blanket even, since it was still tangled around my legs. And that meant I could not avoid Eric for the rest of eternity. Playing cool and keeping a feminine mystic would not be possible. Maybe he was too drunk to remember my freaky ramblings?

"I'll have a coffee too, love."
A head emerged from under the coffee table. It was Lucky, the drummer from Monkey Bride! How had he got there?

-o-

The rest of the week went by in a rock-infused blur. Concerts and parties and filming and some weird-arsed party pranks. Those guys from Monkey Bride were crazy as all hell. They were like “drugs and groupies are old hat, let's get up to some crazy larks instead”. Not that they were impervious to groupies and drugs, just that they went much, much further.

After the fourth night of partying, they really let loose.
Bastian and Lucky decided hanging out in bars was just not hard-core enough. They disappeared, leaving us all wondering where they’d gone.

An hour later, Jack got a call.
Bastian wanted us to meet him at the docks. So Jack, Eric, Hannah, Spud and I headed down, so intrigued that we had to see what they were doing.

They’d stolen a yacht!

“It’s not stolen, darlin’. It’s just borrowed,” said Bastian, when Hannah protested. “We’ll return it in one piece.”

Except that Hannah was the only one who actually knew how to drive a yacht. I don’t know how he coerced her into doing that, but Bastian just had the knack of making people do things.

It made my stomach feel weird, in that fun but scary way. Like when you’re in high school, the first time you sneak off behind the oval to have a cigarette – and it becomes fun
because
you might get caught, not despite it.

And it’d been so lovely out in the middle of the bay with only the sound of fish plopping in the water and our laughter floating out over the
air. I lay on the deck with Eric beside me. The two of us not talking, just staring at the moon and letting the cool breeze sweep across our bodies on the warm night. I didn’t need to touch him. I didn’t need to do anything more. I was happy just to be with him and know that my drunk, freaky self hadn’t scared him away.

It was one of those nights
that even at the time, you know will live forever in your memory. One of those nights that will define your youth. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to ruin the spell of it. And, with Eric, I didn’t need to talk. I stretched out my hand and his fingertips met mine and that was enough.

When Eric got up to use the bathroom, Bastian sat down beside me.

“The two of you are so cute, with your finger touching.”

“Are you mocking me?
It’s complicated, you know.” I sat up and gave him my mean face.

“It’s always complicated, love, but you only get one chance at this shit.
You crazy kids should be banging each other’s brains out by now, not sitting around looking moony-eyed at each other.”

“Thanks,” I said, giving him a salute as Eric came back.

I know he meant well with his little pep talk but it made me feel shit. I sat up hugging my knees, a smile plastered on my face but wondering the whole time what I’d do about the Eric problem.

We got the boat back into harbour safely and ran off into the night, hoping no one had noticed.

The week went by too fast.
I didn’t want them leaving but I had a fuckton of video to edit together. The original plan had been to put it up on YouTube and the band website but we’d started talking about selling a concert DVD. If I got it together soon enough, they could sell it during the last half of the tour.

Plus
, Monkey Bride had asked me to get a crew together for the final night of the tour with actual, real cash involved. That made me very popular with my old uni buddies. But it meant I'd be working like a bastard to get everything done and organised.

Meanwhile
, Hannah had a busy time of her own ahead. Because of the huge success of the week's shows, those lousy record labels were now knocking down her door. It'd gone from nothing to a flood of offers, so she had to get into total business mode. Anyway, that all meant that we had a quiet night of farewell dinner planned. Which would have been well and good and totally fun until Eric said his mother would come over and cook.

He'd not said anything to me about my drunken rant to him
, which suited me fine. We could all pretend I'd said nothing and it would go away. But he had asked me to come over early, before his mother got there, so we could talk. Oops.

I got there extra early, like he'd asked
, and had even made a big “Happy Rock Tour” banner to hang up. I rang the doorbell with my heart jumping all over the place. I don't even know why it was such a big deal. I would not react. I would not be emotional and I would definitely not get drunk enough for another big rant.

Hannah answered the door and helped me hang up the banner.
While we were attaching it to the rail, Eric came out of his room.

"Oh, you're busy.
Can we talk when you’re done?"

Hannah waggled her eyebrows at me so that Eric couldn't see.
Thanks, Hannah. I blushed and shook my head but didn't really look at him. If this was going to be a “stop being a creepy stalker and hanging around me all the time” talk or even an “I like you but not like that” talk, I'd rather he just sent me a text. That would be easy. Or he could snapchat me. I'd get the idea and we'd not have any of that awkward silence and not knowing what to say shit. I'd be all over that.

Obviously though, Eric wanted to do this the old fashioned way.
Face to face, with talking and body language and all that.

I tried to linger once the banner had been hung but Hannah pushed me towards Eric's room then knocked on the door and ran away.
That was so totally mature of her.

Eric sat on his computer chair and I sat on the bed and we both
stared at things floating in the air and definitely not at each other. If he wanted to talk, he could talk. I sure wasn't going to start it and say something stupid.

"Umm, Ang
e, how's things"

"Fine, fine."
I picked at the hem of my skirt.

"You know
, my mother, she doesn't rule my life. I'm not a mummy's boy," he said then grinned without looking directly at me.

"I know.
You have a great relationship with your mum and I think that's tops."

"I think she'd really love you if you got to know each other."

"Yeah, you said that. But Eric, really, she hates me. She hates everything I am. I could take out my piercings and put on a cute outfit and dye my hair blonde. Then maybe she'd like me, but it wouldn't be me she likes. It'd be like a poor imitation Hannah. I'd be the Reject Shop version. So, I think the best thing is for me to avoid her."

Eric
picked up a piece of paper off his desk and folded it into tiny squares. It wasn't easy for him but it wasn't easy for me either.

"I was actually thinking, maybe you could spend
some time together – just hear me out – if you actually got to know each other without a bunch of people around, she'd see just how awesome you really are..."

His face beamed at me with a kind of hope
– hope that I'd agree or maybe hope that I wouldn't hammer him to death. It made me groan inside. Time with his mother, with her saying mean things about me and just being mean. But then, he thought I was awesome? And why was he doing this? I mean, he had to think we had a chance or he'd just blow me off and find someone easier to be with, right? That meant I had to agree.

"I'll try but I don't think she'll agree with it."

He grabbed my hand.

"She already has.
She said she'd try."

I grinned but to be honest, I didn't think we
had much chance of success. I’d give us maybe a million-to-one odds.

He
squeezed my hand tighter.

"Seriously, Angie, when she gets to know you, she'll love you."

My hand tingled where his fingers touched mine. I grimaced.

"Love me?
I'd settle for tolerating me."

-o-

When Eric-Mama arrived, I didn't expect her to have Eric-Papa with her. To be honest, I hadn't even realised there was an Eric-Papa. I guess I'd never asked though. He had the same eyes as Eric, serious but with a special sparkle, and he had the same way of holding himself. He was happy to sit quietly in the corner like Eric too. I guess neither of them had much of a chance to get a word in with Eric-Mama around.