Troubled Times

by Selena Kitt

  I walked away and didn’t think about what I was leaving behind, because there wasn’t anything, not anymore. No job. No boyfriend-slash-fiancé. My mother lived three hours north, and I’d call her, eventually, to tell her where I was and what had happened. The only thing, the only person, I was going to miss, was Sabrina, and after Tyler told me that Rob was going to ask her to come with us on tour, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to have to leave her behind.

  That was until we stood outside the bus—more like a rolling mansion, really, nothing like the Greyhounds that ran through town—and Sabrina and I hugged each other to pieces. She told me she wasn’t going with Rob after all. She couldn’t leave her job and uproot her whole life to go gallivanting around the country with a rock and roll star, she said. I didn’t get it. I saw the way she looked at Rob, I knew how much she adored him, how could she not come with us?

  But it made sense, in the end. She was far too practical to do something so reckless.

  I, on the other hand…

  “Call me. A lot. Email. Text me,” Sabrina urged, searching my face with her eyes. “Oh my God, Katie...”

  “I know, I know!” I kissed her on the cheek. “The tour’s over in April. After that...”

  “You’ll invite me to the wedding?” She giggled, but I saw the pain in her eyes. Tyler was single, fancy free, but Rob was still married—even if he’d been publicly separated from his wife for some time. Being madly in love with the fantasy of a rock star was a lot harder than being in love with a real one.

  “After that, I don’t know.” I shrugged one shoulder, still grinning. “But I can’t not go. Come on, Bree—on tour with Trouble? It’s a story I’ll tell my grandkids some day!”

  “Not sure that’s a story that you should tell your grandkids.”

  “I’ll tell them the PG-13 version.” I laughed.

  “I’m happy for you, Katie.” Sabrina put her arms around me one more time, giving me a long, hard hug, and I knew she really was. I also knew she wished she could be like me—wild and reckless and oh-so-not-sensible. “Be good. Tell Tyler I said goodbye.”

  “I will.” Of course, I was answering the latter, not the former. I would tell Tyler she said goodbye, but I was going on tour with Trouble—did she really expect me to be good?

  Tyler took me on a quick tour of the coach. Rob and Tyler shared it with the other three members of Trouble—the ones everyone forgot about. Poor Jon, Nick and Kenny. Celeste called them the Three Stooges, and they kind of were, at least the little bit I’d seen in interviews and now the limited time I’d spent in their company. Just three guys rocking it out and having the best time of their lives. Kind of like me—just happy to be along for the ride.

  “These are guest bunks.” Tyler flipped up a curtain to reveal a small bunk. How did you even roll over in there? I wondered. “For family or friends or whoever.”

  Or whoever.

  “These are the condo bunks for Nick, Kenny and Jon.” Tyler pulled aside one of those curtains to reveal a bunk twice the size of the guest bunks.

  “The three stooges.”

  “Don’t let them hear you say that,” he warned, smiling at Celeste’s little inside joke. We came to a door—an actual door on a bus—and he opened it. “This is mine.”

  “My God, Tyler!” It was a whole room, with a big bed in the center. There was built in shelving all around, even a small closet.

  “You should see Rob’s back there.” He snorted. “It’s twice this size.”

  “You weren’t kidding about luxury.” I sat on the edge of the bed, testing it—nice and firm—wondering just how many girls had been in it. But I decided I didn’t want to know. Whatever he’d done in the past, whatever he might do in the future, right now Tyler Cook was with me.

  “There are a few rules.” Tyler ticked them off on his fingers. “One, there’s no pooping on the bus.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I gaped at him and then laughed.

  “Two hundred dollar fine for every occurrence. No joke,” he said with a straight face. “If you gotta go, tell Big Guy, the driver, he’ll stop somewhere. The septic system isn’t designed to handle solid waste very well.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, a little stunned by this strange requirement. “What are the other rules?”

  “The thermostat stays at sixty-five.”

  “Brr!” I shivered. “You’ll have to keep me warm. What else?”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” His eyes lit up at the thought. “The last one is don’t ever fall asleep or pass out in the front of the bus.”

  “Why?” I cocked my head, looking at him quizzically.

  “Do it and find out.” He grinned.

  “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.” I laughed. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good, so I made a note to myself never to do it, but I still wondered what it was. And Tyler wouldn’t tell me, no matter how much I bugged him about it.

  I wasn’t happy to see Barbie the Bimbo get on the bus with Nick. So, she was with the band. So to speak. But when she started doing shots with the guys around the Michigan-Ohio border, and then passed out around Sandusky, that’s when I found out why you should never fall asleep or pass out in the front of the bus. No matter how hard she scrubbed, the “L” on her forehead in permanent marker didn’t come off for several cities. I think we were in Virginia before it had faded to a ghost of its former self.

  By then I was calling her Lana—which was actually her name—and she’d stopped calling me “Blondie” and had started calling me Katie instead. We weren’t the best of friends or anything, but we learned pretty quickly that, living in close quarters, you kind of had to get along. Although I was surprised how we could all be together in such a small space and still move like satellites around each other. You got to know faces, names. People became familiar, but you were still somehow strangers.

  It was good to ground myself by talking to Sabrina once or twice a week. She made me promise to keep an eye on Rob, which of course I said I would—and I did. Not that he needed it. The man lived like a monk on tour. He went to the meet and greets after every show, signed autographs and took selfies with hundreds of women, but he didn’t look twice at them after that. He Skyped with Sabrina every night, asked me about her all the time, and one time, backstage during a sound check, told me he was going to ask her to marry him as soon as his divorce was final. Rob swore me to secrecy about that, and I didn’t tell Sabrina, but I thought she must know.

  The man was head over heels for her, completely gone. It couldn’t have been more perfect, really, unless Sabrina had agreed to come along on tour with us, but in a way, I was glad she hadn’t. The road wasn’t Sabrina’s style—the grueling schedule, the constant traveling, the loud music and even louder people. I loved it, even thrived on it. There was a routine in the midst of it all, and Tyler was my constant.

  He kept me close, and I kept him closer. As close as I could. As close as he would allow. I felt like I couldn’t get close enough, although from what Celeste said—and Lana too, who said it with more venom and less awe—Tyler let me closer than they’d ever seen before. Other girls had come and gone on the road, but he’d never been so possessive of them before. Both Celeste and Lana said Tyler’s girls were usually more like community property.

  I didn’t realize how true that was until one night I made the mistake of hanging out at the front of the bus by myself.

  Tyler was sleeping in our room—he’d gone to bed early with the beginnings of a cough, some bug he’d caught in spite of Rob’s regimen of elderberry, Echinacea and propolis, given every morning to the whole band, administered by Celeste. He wanted me to come to bed with him, and I had held him in my arms until he drifted off, sufficiently medicated with Nyquil and half a bottle of Jack. But insomnia had struck, and I wandered out into the front of the bus.

  Harry—Hair-Bear—was sitting up front with our driver, Big Guy. Guy was even bigger than Harry, although he was less muscled, round and soft in the middle where
Harry was thick and hard. His short arms barely reached the end of his big belly as he gripped the big coach steering wheel, driving us through the night.

  The two guys sat and talked for hours about the tours they’d been on, from the British invasion to the punk revolution. Both were probably as old as my father and seemed to have three things in common—tours, sports, and women. This last was a particular favorite, and they really didn’t care whose delicate sensibilities they offended by their talk of fine—or skanky—pussy.

  So, it was no surprise that they continued to talk about pussy when I came out to open the fridge and stand in front of it, willing there to be something I wanted to eat inside of it. I settled for a peach—there was always fresh fruit in the fridge—and sat down at the table to eat it, listening to Harry and Guy reminisce about some woman they’d both had during their last tour with Trouble.

  “Like throwing a hot dog down a damned hallway,” Guy complained, spitting tobacco juice into a Pepsi bottle he kept in the drink holder at all times. “I had to finish myself off with that one. He likes those redheads though, don’t he?”

  Guy had a southern accent, somewhere in Georgia. People on the tour were from everywhere, all over the country. Harry had a wife in California. The roller derby queen. Not that it stopped him from fucking whatever moved out on the road, it seemed.

  “She wasn’t that bad,” Harry protested. His voice was slurred from the tequila he had cradled against his hip. “Guess my hot dog’s got more beef than yours.”

  “Fuck you, man.” Guy spit again, glancing back at me, sitting at the table and quietly—as quietly as I could anyway—eating my peach. “Her ass was still nice and tight though.”

  “No way.” Harry scowled at him. “You didn’t get her ass. No one got her ass—well, except Tyler. She would have let him do her six ways from Sunday.”

  “Did too.” Guy grinned, sounding like a bragging little kid. “Tyler’s the one who let me. Remember that flat we got in Tennessee last year?”

  “Yeah?” Harry remembered, sounding reluctant.

  “Tyler watched me fuck her ass out behind that garage,” Guy told him, sounding proud. “I fucked her ass, he fucked her mouth. He even told the mechanic to take sloppy seconds. Called it a fixer-upper bonus.”

  Harry chuckled at that. I didn’t say anything, but I cringed inside. The thought of Tyler being with another girl made me feel crazy, but it was more than that. It was the callousness that bothered me. Had he really treated a girl that way? Someone he’d brought along with him on the road?

  “He’s always been good about sharing the pussy.” Harry leaned back in his seat and glanced over at me. They both knew I was listening.

  “Not quite so generous when he’s sober though.” Guy gave a sigh and I noticed him looking at me, too, in the mirror at the top corner of the bus. He could see everything from there.

  “This one must be pretty tight,” Harry agreed.

  He watched me lick my fingers and wipe peach juice off my face with a great deal of interest. I didn’t have to imagine what he was thinking. I could feel it coming off him in waves.

  “That peach looks mighty ripe, Miss Katie,” Guy remarked, glancing at me in his mirror. He called all the girls “Miss”—Miss Katie, Miss Celeste, Miss Lana. I wondered if he called the redhead Miss-Something when he threw his little hot dog down her hallway.

  “Have a good night, guys.” I wrapped the pit in the napkin, standing and edging my way around the table, all too aware that I was alone at the front of the bus with them while everyone was passed out in back. I didn’t like what I’d overheard, and I especially didn’t like the way they looked at me in my t-shirt and shorts as I got up.

  Traveling by bus meant living in close quarters. We edged by each other in the hallways, sat packed in around the table. I couldn’t go by without being within arm’s length, even if I wanted to, but what choice did I have?

  “Why don’t you stay up here with us?” Harry slid an arm around my waist, pulling me into his lap in one, swift motion. “We can have some fun all by ourselves.”

  “Quit thinking with your dick, Harry.” I rolled my eyes, moving to get up, but he held me fast.

  “Why don’t you come blow my mind, baby?” Harry had his hands on my hips and I felt his cock against my ass through his jeans. He was taking full advantage of rubbing it there.

  “I guess those penis enlargement pills are working.” I glanced back at him, narrowing my eyes. “Because you’re twice the dick you were yesterday.”

  Guy chuckled, watching in the mirror.

  “How about I put my dick in your mouth to shut you up?” Harry was drunk—I could smell the alcohol on his breath—and I knew it was mostly the alcohol talking. He was normally an amiable guy who liked to joke around. Sometimes he took it a little too far, like now.

  “No thanks, I don’t need a toothpick,” I snapped, twisting myself in his grip, knowing it was the exact wrong thing to say when Guy let out a real guffaw and I felt Harry’s grip tighten. Harry was a bodyguard for a reason—he was big, strong and immovable. There was no way I was getting out of this unless he chose to let me go.

  “Get your fucking hands off her.” Tyler appeared at the end of the long hallway, still dressed in his boxers, hair mussed, but his eyes were blazing.

  Harry let me go and I was tugging against him so hard, I actually stumbled. Tyler caught me with one arm, frowning between the two of them. For a minute I thought he was going to go after them both, and they outweighed him by two hundred pounds between them. Not only that, but Guy was driving the bus, and if they got into it, we’d all be dead.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, nudging Tyler toward the hallway. “Let’s just go back to bed.”

  “The fuck it is!” Tyler’s whole body was shaking with rage and it made me tremble too. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Aw come on, Ty,” Harry grinned. It was the alcohol talking again. “You know you share girls like postage stamps—lick ’em, stick ’em and send them on their way!”

  Tyler hit him so hard I heard it, a fat, wet, beefy sound. Harry’s lip swelled up instantly, his mouth bleeding into his hand as he swore and spat and stood up, towering over me as I shrank against Tyler’s side.

  “What the fuck you do that for?” Harry wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked at Tyler, incredulous, like he’d sprouted two heads.

  “You’re fired.” Tyler moved between me and the big man. I saw Guy’s eyes get big in the mirror, watching it all happen. “Pack your shit. You’re out at our next stop. You understand me?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Harry paled and stumbled back, sitting on the bench seat, looking aghast. “You’re going to fire me over this?”

  Tyler took a step toward the big man, grabbed the bloody collar of his shirt, and got right in his face.

  “You’re lucky I’m not going to kill you,” he growled, low and deep in his throat, like an animal. I just stood there, heart in my throat, watching. “If you weren’t married, I swear to God, I’d do a hell of a lot more than fire you. Consider yourself lucky.”

  Tyler let Harry go, glancing in the mirror at Guy.

  “You so much as look at her sideways, old man, and I’ll do more than fire you. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Guy gave him a nod and I was sure it was the first time he’d addressed Tyler in that manner, ever.

  I don’t think I resumed breathing until we were back in our room.

  “Are you all right?” Tyler frowned as he got into bed, pulling me in with him. I just nodded as he kissed the top of my head, wrapping us up in the covers. “I told you not to go out there by yourself!”

  “You told me not to fall asleep,” I said with a shake of my head. “I had no idea...”

  “Just… stay away from the roadies unless I’m around.” Tyler sighed, his arms tightening around me. “They’re like animals. Or little kids. They just… do what they want.”

  “So do y
ou.” I swallowed, feeling his spine stiffen at my words. “Apparently all your other girls have been like community property. You shared them, why not me?”

  “No. It’s not like it sounds,” he protested.

  “Yes, it is,” I said softly, knowing the truth. “Remember the bed rules. No lying.”

  He hesitated and then gave in with a sigh.

  “Okay, it is how it sounds,” he admitted.

  “It sounds pretty awful.” I remembered the way Harry and Guy talked about the women Tyler had brought on tour with him. It made me physically ill to think about it.

  “Being on the road is hell.” Tyler’s words enveloped me in the dark along with his arms. “This isn’t paradise, baby. This is Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “More like sodomy and gonorrhea.”

  “Yeah.” He snorted. Then, he swallowed and said, “Look, if you want out, I get it.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted out.” My head came up off his chest at those words, something in me going suddenly cold.

  “Katie, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m not proud of it. I’ve done a lot of shitty things.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” I put my head back down on his chest, tucking it under his chin, where it fit so perfectly. “I’m not exactly one to judge.”

  “Listen, you don’t want lies so I’m not going to lie to you.” His voice changed, though, as if telling me the truth was painful to him. “I’ve had a lot of women in this bed.”

  “I know.” Of course, I knew. Even if I didn’t like to think about it or admit it, I knew that. I knew it long before I heard Harry and Guy talking about the redheads Tyler liked to bring with him on tour.

  “And if I’m being honest, I have to tell you that I’ve had no problem sharing.” Tyler stroked my hair in the dark. “Poor Harry. Jesus. Did I really hit him?”