7

After getting her to stop telling me that I didn’t have to do the shit I was doing for her, Emma and I wound up quietly watching cartoons together on the couch. As much as I loved watching those stupid Trading Spaces marathons, I thought that cartoons were a little cooler than watching Trading Spaces. Don’t ask why, but it’s just what I thought at the moment. Every so often we’d smoke, and I’m pretty sure that a few times she dozed off, but for the most part we watched cartoons together and stayed warm.

When Emma pulled her blanket open she smiled and let out a quiet laugh, "I think I’m actually hot…"

"Good!" I told her with a big smile and leaned my head back against the couch as I looked at her smile. "Can I ask you a weird question?"

"Sure…" she told me as she grabbed another of my cigarettes and lit it. "You can ask me whatever you want, I just have the option of not answering if I don’t feel like it…"

I nodded, "That’s cool… It’s not really a weird question, actually. Just sort of nosy…" I laughed at myself and she smiled before puffing on her cigarette.

"Go for it…"

"What’s up with you and Skinner? Are you guys like, together?"

"As in dating?" she asked.

"Yeah… I know you room with him and stuff, but… well…"

She smiled, "But you’ve seen him whoring around with groupies, right?"

I felt myself blush and I nodded, "Well yeah…"

She nodded, "It’s okay… We’re not a couple. I guess we’re just friends. Roommates maybe. I met him back in Florida at a bar where he was sitting in playing drums for some band. We started talking and ended up having dinner together that night and exchanged phone numbers. I never called him, but we ended up running into each other again about a week later. He knew that I was staying in a hotel at the time and he asked me if I wanted to stay with him. He has that big house and no one in it, so he offered me a room. The next thing I know, he’s getting ready to come on this tour and he asked me if I wanted a gig selling tee shirts and shit. I said sure, and here I am."

"How long did you know him before the tour began?" This was intriguing me, completely. I wanted to ask her about six hundred questions right then and there.

"About a month, maybe…"

"Wow… Did… Wait, you said that you were living in a hotel when you met him? What’s up with that?"

She paused and I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to answer the question, but eventually started talking again, "I had only been in Florida for a few weeks when I met him. I was living in a hotel because I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay there or not. It was easy to find work there with all of the tourist attractions and shit, but I didn’t know if I liked it enough to live there."

"Where are you from?" I couldn’t stop asking her questions. Yes, I was being nosy, but she was interesting.

"A galaxy far, far away…"

Point taken. "How come you moved?"

"Just felt like it…" she said with a shrug and put out the cigarette in the ashtray that we’d put on the couch between us. I could tell right then that she wasn’t going to let me go any further with the questions about where she was from. Something about the way she shrugged and the tone of her voice told me not to press on, just yet. Point taken, again.

I watched her until she looked at me again and then I smiled, "Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t believe that Skinner hasn’t tried to hook up with you. He’s a dirty man. Great drummer, but a dirty man, and well… you sorta fit the mold for the type of girl he usually goes after."

She smiled again, "I didn’t say he hasn’t tried. But I told him flat out that if I was going to come on this tour, I wasn’t going to be some groupie for him. We don’t share a bed, there’s always two beds in our hotel rooms, and if he decides to get his freak on with some groupie, he gets another room."

I laughed at that. Skinner having to get a second room in order to fuck some groupie struck me as seriously funny for some reason and I cracked up. "He must like you… he wouldn’t do that for many people."

She shrugged, "He tolerates me. We get along for some reason, so it works most of the time."

"That’s cool… I didn’t realize you were selling shirts. I just thought you were sort of tagging along… no offense."

"None taken. Oh yeah, I sell shirts and magnets and all sorts of shit with your face on it every night. It’s certainly an interesting experience."

"Are you mocking me again?"

"Oh no…" she said and then laughed and wrapped back up in the blanket. She was curled up and sitting sideway facing me with her cheek resting on the couch. "Sometimes, if I get a booth close to a walkway I can hear some of the music over the screaming…"

"It gets a little loud in there…"

"Yeah, I’ve started to worry about your hearing, seriously."

"Oh I’m sure it’s fucked up after having to endure so much screaming over the years… But, I guess it’s worth it. So, were you a fan at all before all of this?"

"I dunno… I knew who you were, and knew some of the songs. I remember back when Millennium was out and you guys were all over the place. I was in college then and all of the girls in my dorm were nuts over you."

She’d gone to college but was selling tee shirts on my tour and was rooming with Skinner? Weird.

"That’s cool… so, have we grown on you at all?"

"Sure…" she said with a smile. "I’m usually around for the sound checks in the afternoon. I tag along with Skin and listen in. It’s much easier to hear you guys sing when there aren’t several thousand screaming women around."

"True…" I chuckled.

"I’m more a fan of good music rather than a fan of certain groups or a certain genre of music. You guys definitely have talent, so I appreciate that."

"Thank you…" I told her, she smiled and nodded. "I’ll have to look for you at sound checks now… where are you usually at?"

"About half way back on the floor… Sometimes I help out the guys who run around to see how the sound is at different points of the venue. But usually I just sit down in the middle somewhere and they’ll say to me, ‘How’s it sound there, Em?’ and I give them a thumbs up or down."

"You’re a very interesting person…" I blurted it out. Blurting was another thing I was working on.

She made a face at me and chuckled, "Not really…"

"No, seriously… Everything from rooming with Skinner to selling tee shirts to helping out with sound checks… you’re just, interesting. I have this overwhelming urge to ask you questions all night long so that I can know everything about you."

"You don’t want to know everything about me…" Her tone of voice changed again. It was softer, sad.

"Yeah I do…" And I did. I wanted to know the ins and outs of this girl. I had no idea why, but I did. I was a big believer of fate and how it brought people together for reasons that weren’t always clear at first. She shook her head and looked at the random cartoon on the television that was serving as background noise for us. "How about we start with just a few things instead of everything? We’ll build our way up to everything. We’ve got, what… four more months of touring? That’s a lot of time to get to know each other…"

"You planning on stealing me from Skinner?" she asked with a smirk in my direction.

I nodded "I’m thinking so…"