“Hey Tony, do we need both boxes signed?” Sandy asked as she got to the bottom of the stack of posters in the first box.
“Yeah, please,” Dad said absently. He was sitting on the other side of the table, scrolling through his phone.
I could have answered Sandy if she’d asked me. There were a lot of posters, definitely enough to give out to the fan event and then some, but we wanted everyone at tonight’s concert to leave with one. Getting news about the band to go viral was what we were aiming for, especially if we could do it near the beginning of the tour. Giving out free posters so girls could drool about the boys and tell their friends was an easy and relatively cheap way to get the word out.
I came around the table and, using my bus key again, opened the second carton before returning to rolling up the signed ones.
“Thanks,” Sandy said as she pulled out the protective piece of newsprint.
She gasped. I looked up and saw her entire body stiffen as she looked down into the box.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. She looked up at me and I watched as a series of emotions—confusion, disbelief, sadness, anger—washed over her face. My heart began to pound hard in my chest. What happened? What could it be?
I came back around the table and looked down at the posters.
At first I thought they were a mistake because the photo was completely different. This one didn’t have the blue sky and the green of Central Park behind the boys. Then I recognized the scene—this was one of the nighttime long exposure shots Rex had taken in the triangular junction of Times Square. The background was mostly dark, the trails of headlights lighting up the sides of the photo, giving the shot a whimsical, ethereal look.
But it wasn’t the setting that had my stomach bottoming out in dread. No. What had made Sandy gasp, and was currently making my heart race, was that it wasn’t the band at the center. It was me.
Me and Dave.
Me and Dave kissing as the world whizzed by around us.
Kissing, not almost kissing. There was no denying that our lips were touching, no, pressing together, no light between them. Where there was the tiniest gap between our mouths, the peek of a pink tongue showed through. His? Mine? No way to know for sure. But my face said all that mattered—regardless of whose tongue it was, I was totally into the kiss.
Oh God.
That’s when it hit me: my face—my whole face was in the shot.
Dad and Rex had promised me a tight shot. That I wouldn’t be recognizable because it would just be my mouth and part of my jaw, maybe my cheek. No one would ever know it was me.
This was not a tight shot. This was all of me pressed up against Dave in Times Square.
What. The. Hell?
I must have had a crazed look on my face as I turned and glared at my dad because his smile instantly dissolved. He got up and came around the table toward us. “What? Is something wrong with the posters?”
“How could you?” I whispered, the only sound my tight throat would allow. Dad’s eyes went even wider but I had to look away, the crush of his betrayal threatening to break my heart. He’d promised. How could he do this to me?
Sandy’d had no idea Dave and I had really kissed, but here was the evidence. Two hundred and fifty copies of it printed out in full-color right in front of us. God knows how many more were coming off the printer to be shipped around the country to meet us at every tour stop.
I turned to apologize to Sandy for blindsiding her, but I couldn’t because she was no longer there.
“Nessa...” Dad said, his palm on my arm. “She can’t take it personally that she isn’t the one in the photo.”
I could only blink at him as I tried to sort out what was whirling around in my head. How could I explain to him that he had it all wrong? That her not being in the photo was only a small part of it, if at all—that what she was really mad about was that I’d kissed Dave, the guy she had a crush on. That I’d never told her about the kiss, which probably made me look guilty of something worse. Because all this time, I’d been telling her she had to keep her feelings to herself.
One glance at the poster was all it would take for her to think there was something going on between me and Dave.
“I wasn’t supposed to be in the photo,” I squeaked out, shaking out of my father’s grasp. “It was supposed to just be a random, unidentifiable face. Not my face!”
“Nessa?” Andres said from my left, having appeared out of nowhere. “What is...oh...” he said as he saw the poster.
Perfect, now he thought something was going on with Dave, too.
Fighting tears and losing, hating that all the guys got to witness me falling apart, I turned and ran out the door, thankful that the bathroom was only a few doors away.
The Ladies’ Room
As I pushed through the swinging bathroom door, I was relieved and at the same time upset that Sandy wasn’t in there. We needed to talk. ASAP. No, sooner than that: now.
I pulled out my phone, ignoring the tears that were rolling down my face. Actually, I wasn’t ignoring them exactly. I was cursing them, blinking past them, but not taking my hands off my phone to wipe them away.
Where are you? I texted.
When she didn’t respond right away, I dialed her.
“I’m not talking to you,” she barked when she answered. “I’m so furious that I can’t even...how could you? No, don’t answer that. I don’t care.”
Then she hung up, but not before I heard the wind noise that told me she was outside.
I hit call again and was surprised she actually picked up. She snorted before saying, “Are you kidding me with this?”
“Where are you?” I asked.
She laughed humorlessly. “Do you not understand that I can’t be around you right now?”
I tried a different tack. “I’m tour manager, I need to know where you are.”
“Nice try. I’m not your freaking employee, Vanessa. I’m not even getting paid on tour, so you’re not responsible for me.”
“Maybe not, but my dad is and he’s not going to like it if you run off. That’s not very professional, Sandy.”
“Professional?” she shouted and I could imagine she was mad enough that she was probably holding up her phone in front of her face as she walked. “I’m not being professional?”
I sighed. “Please tell me where you are. We need to talk.”
There was a long pause and then she said, “I’m almost at the bus.”
Relieved, I told her not to move before I hung up. I used the bathroom and washed up before I grabbed a tissue and dabbed my eyes, taking a deep breath as I quickly looked at myself in the mirror. “Nice going, Nessa,” I told myself. The whole thing about that kiss hadn’t sat well with me, but I never dreamed it would be put on a poster like that. They had been looking for an almost kiss, a pose. One that could never be traced back to me.
“It wasn’t even real,” I told myself. “She’ll believe me when I tell her.” Of course she would. She wasn’t unreasonable. She’d know it was just for the camera. I mean, she had been there. My dad had been right there. It had been Rex’s idea, for crying out loud!
Sandy didn’t need to know how after it had happened I’d wondered what a real kiss with Dave would be like. It was just normal curiosity. For many reasons, it was a moot point anyway, the first being that while we were on tour I wasn’t with anyone and once we were done with tour, Andres would be my boyfriend.
She was more than welcome to Dave.
I tossed the Kleenex into the bin and turned toward the door when it opened to reveal Andres. He had a hand covering his eyes. “I’m not looking, but are you in here, Nessa?”
I didn’t want to laugh, considering what had just gone down and that my best friend currently wanted to murder me, but he was so freaking adorable, I couldn’t help it. “Yes, I’m in here and you can look. It’s just me and I’m decent.”<
br />
He let out a relieved breath and took his hand away from his eyes, which were full of concern. “You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. Sandy’s pretty mad. I’m going to meet her at the bus.”
“Whatever she’s mad about, it’s not your fault,” he said.
Part of it was—the part where I hadn’t told her about the kiss. But I knew what he meant and nodded.
“I know you didn’t want to do the shoot in the first place.”
“No, I didn’t,” I agreed, trying to get past him to the door. “But I need to go remind her of that.”
He didn’t move out of my way.
I looked up at him. “Can I go?”
His brow creased. “It looked good, the poster.”
Where was he going with this? And it didn’t matter that it looked good—after I dealt with Sandy, I was going to then deal with my dad and make sure those posters never got released. “Okay...”
Looking at me sideways, he said, “Maybe too good?”
Really? He was being jealous right now?
“Andres. It was a photo shoot in front of my father. You would have seen it firsthand if you’d been paying attention instead of goofing around with Sandy and the other guys by the limo. It was an act for a publicity shot. Please don’t go all caveman on me. Not right now. I have my hands full with explaining it to her. Not you, too.”
He clenched his jaw and I was about to push past him when the door opened, smacking into Andres’s back.
With a grunt, he lurched into me before I could move back. I wrapped my hands around his arms to steady him.
“Nessa?”
“Dad!” I exclaimed.
My father looked from Andres to me and back again, his eyes narrowing angrily. “What’s going on?”
I suddenly dropped my hands, my face heating up even though my father was not interrupting what he thought he was. “Ugh, nothing is going on. You whacked the door into him and he fell into me. I grabbed him so we wouldn’t both go over!”
“Oh,” he looked apologetically from Andres to me. “Sorry.”
“You know,” I said, crossing my arms. “There’s a lot of testosterone in what is supposed to be the ladies’ room.”
Dad looked at Andres and nodded his head toward the meeting room. “Why don’t you head on back. There’s more posters to sign.”
“Those posters...” Andres began but my dad gave him a look that stopped him mid-sentence.
“Go sign the posters,” Dad said very slowly so Andres knew there was no room for negotiation. Without another word, Andres left the bathroom, and I have to admit, I was a little relieved. Not that I was eager to deal with my dad now, but one problem at a time.
“I need to go talk to Sandy,” I said once Andres was gone. “And I know you were just getting rid of Andres, but he doesn’t need to go sign those posters because they’re not going out.”
My father stepped forward and reached for my arm, but I stepped back out of his reach. Hurt crossed his face before he took a breath and gave a determined nod but stayed where he was. I was glad he felt hurt—now I wasn’t the only one. “Okay, look. I know that you didn’t want your face on the posters...”
I leaned back against the counter and crossed my arms. “But you went ahead and put it on anyway.”
“No.” He looked into my eyes. “I would never have done that behind your back. You know that. Rex also knew what we were going for. This was an error. There must have been a miscommunication between him and his assistant who cut and approved the final posters.”
“Shouldn’t you have approved them before they went to print?”
He sighed but didn’t take his eyes off mine. “Yes. I should have. But Rex and I have worked together for a long time and I trust him. I’ve been busy. Things have been crazy, you know that.”
I did. And I was reasonable enough to see how this could have happened. I also knew deep down that my father never would have knowingly allowed that poster to happen without my consent.
“I can only imagine it was the same for Rex—he must not have seen the final proof or maybe he forgot that it was supposed to be a tight shot. I’m going to have to talk to him to find out. But rest assured, I will and will make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I blew out a loud breath, my anger dissolving as I realized that my father was no happier about the mix-up than I was. “Still, I don’t want...”
“I know,” he said, finally dropping his eyes. “And I’m sorry this happened, Nessa, truly I am. But...”
I did not like the sound of that ‘but.’ “What?”
He sighed again. “I hate to admit it, but it looks great. It’s exactly what we wanted from that poster.”
I knew what was coming and couldn’t fight the tears that pricked at my eyes again. “Dad, no. Please...”
My plea didn’t stop him from asking. “What if we use it? Would it be so terrible if you’re on a band poster?”
Yes. “It makes me look like a groupie.”
“It makes you look like a model. I don’t think you appreciate how beautiful you are. How great you look.”
Right. Because fathers are never biased. “No,” I shook my head. “It makes me look like Dave’s girlfriend.” And a hypocrite to the entire world—how long have I said to everyone that I hate musicians?
“Will’s,” he corrected and then when I gave him a look, he shook his head. “Sorry. Not the time to be correcting you. But Nessa, it is a really great poster. Also, it’s just a media shot. It’s not real life. Everyone knows that. If you looked at it and could get past that it’s you, you’d see that. It’s a great promo piece for the band exactly when we need it most.”
“But I never wanted...” I said, sort of hating that my anger was running out of steam. Damn him and his reasonableness.
“It’s not even that clear that it’s you,” he said, trying to say it casually like it was no big deal. “You’re in profile.”
“Not helping,” I said, sniffling.
“Sorry,” he said, and I could tell he really was. Which meant he was coming very close to wearing me down. Time to make a strategic exit.
Pushing away from the counter, I avoided his eyes when I said, “I need to go talk to Sandy. She’s at the bus.”
“Okay.” He gave me a decisive nod that told me he understood I needed some distance.
I reached for the door handle but before I could pull it open he said my name, making me freeze, though I didn’t look at him.
“Give it some thought. Because we are short on time, I’m going to keep the boys signing the posters, but if you give me the word, I’ll trash them.”
I finally looked over my shoulder at him. I knew he meant it a hundred percent. I never should have accused him of doing it on purpose. More than just being my father, he was a good guy and he wouldn’t have done that to anyone, daughter or not. “Thank you,” I said, without giving him my verdict before I pulled open the door. I would go talk to Sandy and then I would tell him he couldn’t use the posters. At least then he’d think I’d given it some consideration before refusing.
But before I went through the door, I stopped in my tracks, cursing inside my head. I took a breath, turned back toward him and said, “You can use them.” I regretted the words as soon as I said them, but also knew, given the chance to take them back, I wouldn’t have.
I expected him to smile, but instead he just cocked his head and said, “You sure? I don’t want to if it’ll make you uncomfortable or will threaten your relationship with Sandy.”
Reason number a million why I love my dad. I swallowed past my tight throat and then said, mostly to the door, “I’ll deal with Sandy. It’s fine, Dad.”
His hand landed on my shoulder and he gave me a squeeze. “Thank you.”
I was about to leave the bathroom but he turned me around for a hug. “You’re a good kid, you k
now that?”
“Yes, I do,” I said, muffled into his shirt. I pulled back and gave him a pointed look. “I also know how these things work and that means if you’re going to use this poster, you owe me more as a model than you did as just an anonymous body part like we’d agreed on.”
“Oh, so you mean I owe you more than food, shelter, riding lessons, that house in the Hamptons, tuition at your...”
“Never mind,” I interrupted, getting his point.
He winked at me. “I’ll call my accountant. I’m sure we can work something out.”
“I was just kidding,” I said.
His face was serious when he said, “I wasn’t.”
I gave him a smile. “Fine. Now let me go talk to Sandy or it’s going to be very tense on that bus.”
He gave my shoulder another squeeze before I left him.
All He Needs Is a Club and a Loin Cloth
Sandy was sitting on the asphalt, leaning against the front wheel, her upper body in the narrow shadow of the bus. Either she’d pounded on the door (which I hoped she hadn't) and Gary’d either not heard or ignored her, or she realized that, without a key, she’d have to wait for me. Maybe I’d talk to my dad about getting her a key of her own. Assuming she wanted to stick around, that is.
“Hey,” I said as I walked up.
She didn’t look up until my shadow fell over her legs. She yanked out her earbuds and squinted up at me.
“Hey,” I repeated.
She took a long time to say, “Hey,” back.
I was about to unlock the door, but changed my mind. There was no one around anyway. “We need to talk.”
She nodded toward the door. “Shouldn’t we go inside?”
I shook my head. “Gary’s sleeping.”
“Right. Touring rule one: respect the fact that someone is always sleeping on the bus.”
“Exactly.”
“So. Want to tell me what the deal is with that poster?”
No pussyfooting around, I guess. “They were trying to get the shot and Dave and I were both...” I thought back to that night, how awkward it had felt. “Clenched. Rex suggested we kiss to make it look more natural.”
The Rosewoods Rock & Roll Box Set Page 25
