Easton chuckles, releasing the picture as more snapshots of my life unfold on screen. Scanning the suitcase, I opt to pull on some white shorts beneath my skirt before discarding it.
“Keep the heels,” Easton orders thickly, glancing over at me as I turn my head, and our eyes collide.
The air charges between us as I lift a brow.
“Please,” he adds dryly as if he’s reached his limit for the day and the word is now leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
“Thought you weren’t here for that,” I snark.
“I’m here for you. But we’re not going anywhere if you don’t hurry the hell up.”
I slip on my worn checkered Vans and opt to toss my favorite heels in the suitcase before zipping it up.
Without prompt, he walks over and lifts the case from my bed, running his fingers over my patched quilt comforter as if he couldn’t resist feeling it on his fingertips before extending his hand toward me. The familiarity of the act brings forth everything lingering between us, and so I do what feels natural. I take it.
Steal Away
Robbie Dupree
Natalie
Gaping at the footage on the cell phone, I glance back at Jason Garett, aka Tack, Easton’s hired drummer, as he grins back at me from the first row of the van. Stunned, I flit my gaze to Easton, who opted to drive while I ride shotgun.
“You outran a fucking tornado?” I scold in my Bactine and Band-Aid maternal tone.
“We were at a safe enough distance,” Easton defends weakly, a grin brewing on his lips.
“That’s a bit of a stretch. Look at this,” Tack admits, thrusting a picture of golf ball-sized hail cradled in his heavily tattooed hand toward me.
“Jesus, Easton,” I chide, which only makes his smile bloom.
“Crazy, right?” Tack shakes his head before pulling a beer from the cooler on the floorboard and thrusting it toward me. “Want one, Nat?”
“No thanks, I’m kind of a lightweight,” I admit. “I’ll wait for the show.”
A question strikes me then. “Easton?”
“Yeah?”
“We aren’t sleeping in the van, right?”
He chuckles. “I wouldn’t subject you to that.”
“We tried a few nights the first week,” Tack says with clear annoyance, lifting his chin in Easton’s direction. “This fucker insisted on it, but it was a nightmare.”
“Too fucking right,” Syd pipes from next to him.
“So sorry you missed your morning tea, darling,” Easton says unapologetically.
“As you should be.” Syd snarks back in his British accent.
Easton shrugs. “I tried. But the vote was three to one, against me.”
“Not that our win did much good. Now, after endless hours in this filthy fucking van, we’re stuck staying in the cheapest hotels,” Syd adds, his prominent accent making his snobbery sound a bit more comical. “I draw the line sleeping with these smelly bastards, and bologna is not proper food.”
“Ah!” I say, turning to Easton, “that’s what’s lingering in here. I couldn’t place it!”
Easton chuckles and glances over at me. Much to my dismay, upon entering the van, I had to control my gag reflex. Easton’s blue cheese assessment far kinder than reality. I would go so far as to say the van smells like a blue cheese-covered, heavily used gym sock that’s been freshly baked in the sun.
Easton had laughed hysterically at my reaction as I immediately rolled down the window, trying to mask my gags.
It took the better part of the first hour of our trip for me to be able to handle it. Still, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The band has been nothing but welcoming in a way I wasn’t expecting, and I got the eclectic part of Easton’s warning right away.
Tack was raised in the Midwest. His monstrous meat and potatoes build bred deep in a slice of Americana. He definitely sports the rocker look with dark brown hair and darker brown eyes. His mismatched clothes somehow work, and he’s got more ink than visible skin. So far, he’s been the most talkative of the three.
“Now this was a good fucking night,” Tack says fondly, lifting a picture to LL, aka Leif Garrison, Easton’s lead guitar player, who sits with his back to the window, his arm stretched out on the second-row seat. Though Scandinavian born, with white-blond locks and sparkling blue eyes, his Sussex-raised accent is unmistakable. LL’s looks are striking in contrast to the other three’s dark and broody.
Syd Patel, the oldest at twenty-nine, is Easton’s UK-born bassist. His skin is the most beautiful hue of dark brown, thanks to his Indian heritage. The quietest of the three, mainly because he hasn’t stopped vaping and drinking since I got into the van, he’s been forthcoming enough to make me feel at home amongst them.