I slid out of the booth and stood up as I did the hashtag search for the band.
Then it was my turn to curse.
“What?” Sandy asked, looking up at me.
Anger bubbled up in me. Not indignant anger for a fan taking advantage of Andres or one of the other guys. This was different. This was personal.
“Nessa?”
I just shook my head as I swallowed, fighting to keep control and not scream until my lungs exploded.
It was a long moment of blood rushing through my ears before I could manage to say, my voice trembling but relatively calm, considering the circumstances, “It just got way, way worse.”
I held my phone out toward my best friend. Her eyes went wide as she read it before they darted up to me. “Day-um,” she drawled. “Not cool.”
A second later, she slid out of the booth, obviously changing her mind about coming back with me. “All right. Let’s go.”
I gave her a quizzical look. She shrugged. “Someone’s going to have to hold you back.”
I was way too mad to laugh. And a part of me knew she was only half-joking anyway, so I just nodded and then turned to lead her off the bus.
Appliancicide. It’s a Thing
I’d just locked the bus door and was trying to ignore the constant buzz of the phone in my pocket as we walked, telling myself that chucking the device across the asphalt parking lot wasn’t going to solve anything.
Despite it being well into the evening, the air felt especially muggy after the well air-conditioned bus. The close air just fueled my anger.
“Who are you going to talk to first?” Sandy asked.
We were walking quickly. Well, I was walking quickly, Sandy was nearly jogging to keep up. I was powerless to slow down to accommodate her; I was on a mission. An anger mission.
But I actually stopped in my tracks when I realized I didn’t have an answer to her question. “Honestly?” I said with a snort. “I haven’t actually thought that far ahead. I haven’t gotten past figuring out the best method to carry out that whole justifiable homicide thing.”
“You’re really mad,” she said unnecessarily. But then she put a staying hand on my arm when I would have started walking toward the school again. “But wait, Nessa. Think about how you’re going to deal. How you handle this could affect a lot of things. For you, me, the band. Everything. You need to calm down. At least a little,” she added when I gave her a withering look.
I sighed as I looked at my normally impulsive friend, realizing that, in this moment, our normal roles had reversed. “Since when have you become the rational one?” I asked.
She was right that I needed to take a moment to think about how to handle it, of course. And I probably would have come to the same conclusion if I’d had some time and distance to think it through and sort out a plan, but I didn’t have the luxury of time and distance. All I had was my righteous anger. Hardly the best emotion to rely on when dealing with issues.
Thank God for her. That thought alone brought my rage down a notch or two.
She shrugged. “We’re best friends, so I know how you’re feeling right now. This is exactly the worst thing he could have done, I know that, obviously. But I also know if you don’t think this through and calm down, you’re going to do or say something you’ll regret. It’s important to not lose your cool, Nessa.”
I exhaled and closed my eyes. “I doubt I can be smart and rational right now, so if you’re going to be the calm one and act all grown-up-y, I’m open to suggestions.”
“How is your dad going to react?”
Good place to start. Still, I cringed. “He’s going to lose his mind.”
“Obviously,” Sandy said. “But what is he going to actually do?”
That took my anger down another two notches as I considered her question. “I really don’t know.”
She nodded. “All right, well we’d better go find out. I think you should go to him first. He’s the manager of the band, he needs to know about this before you confront Andres directly. Plus, as much as I’m all about murdering fridges right now, I don’t want to have to visit you in jail after you commit appliancicide. Best to talk to your dad and calm down a little. A little more.”
“You’re probably right,” I said with another sigh, suddenly more weary than I was angry.
No, that’s not true. I was still way more angry.
We found my father outside on the stage, bent over and pulling up some electrical cord that had been taped down. I had an absent thought of wondering how much tape we would go through on a tour and was glad stocking it was the job of the production manager, leaving me to only worry about stocking the bus with things like snacks and toothpaste.
The crew was packing up the equipment, cheerily shouting directions to each other as they worked. The band was nowhere to be seen which I knew meant they were still in the school locker room, which was a very good thing at that moment. “I’ll go head them off,” Sandy said, reading my mind, “So you can talk to Tony uninterrupted.”
“Thanks.” Taking a deep breath, I tried to will my heart not to pound its way right out of my chest as I walked up to my father. “Dad?”
He looked up and smiled, which told me he had no idea what had happened. I’d sort of hoped he’d have seen it by now so I didn’t have to be the one to break it to him. Nope, not even that little bit lucky.
“We need to talk,” I said.
The serious look on my face made him stand up straight, abandoning the cord. “What’s wrong?”
I looked around. “Not here. Let’s go find somewhere quieter.”
He nodded toward the school, but I shook my head. “No, this way.” I pointed in the complete other direction to a quiet spot at the end of the bleachers.
“You’re freaking me out,” he said as I led him across the field.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and unlocked the screen before I sat down and gestured for him to take the spot beside me on the bench.
“So you haven’t seen any of the social media about today?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, been a little busy. Sandy usually debriefs me at the end of the day. Where...” he looked out to where the crew was working, but obviously didn’t find her among them and looked back at me. “Did she do something wrong?”
“No,” I said, quick to defend my friend. “She’s been amazing these last—God, has it only been three days?” My shoulders slumped with fatigue.
Dad snorted. “I know. And people wonder why bands burn out so quickly. Not to mention their old managers.”
“And their old managers’ daughters.” I shook my head, needing to get to the point. “Anyway, no, Sandy’s been great. Better than great, actually, but this isn’t about her. It’s about what happened at the meet and greet. The girl who threw herself at Andy?”
Dad winced and nodded so I went on, “Well, somehow she managed to get a picture of it and posted it.”
“Damn, really? So quickly?” Dad asked, but his questions were rhetorical because he knew the good and bad of the double-edged sword of social media, the immediacy of it. The potential cruelty of it.
“Yes. But that’s not the worst of it,” I said. “The timing gods must have been shining down on her because it looks like Andy’s into it in the picture. In fact, it looks like he kissed her.”
“Of course it does.” A long sigh escaped my father. “Fine. We’ll manage it. I’ll figure out how we should respond.” He moved to get up but I put a hand on his arm.
“More?” he asked, planting himself.
“More,” I said. “Worse more.”
He seemed to brace himself, his back stiffening before he nodded that I should go on.
“Andy responded.”
Dad leaned over, placing his elbows on his knees. Then he scrubbed his face with his hands. “Let’s hear it.” His words were muffled by his hands, but it didn’t hide the strain in his voice.
“May as well read it,” I said, bumping his arm
and offering him my phone that had the tweet loaded on the screen.
He held it away from his face but I wasn’t about to bring up now how he needed reading glasses. He looked at the post and narrowed his eyes. “This is a picture of you,” he said, glancing from the screen to me and then back. “From...sometime today? That’s the room from this afternoon, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “From when you left us so we could talk for a few minutes. He said he wanted a picture of me to tide him over while we’re on tour. While we’re not a couple.”
“He tricked you into this?”
It took me a second to process what he was asking. “No, I don’t think he took the picture with the intent of posting it. I really think he just wanted a picture of us.”
Dad nodded and looked down at the screen again, squinting at it. “What’s going on with your face here?”
Because of course, the photo had been taken when Andy was torturing me and my face was contorted into half laugh, half grimace. “He was goofing around. He tickled me and then took it.”
“Did you tell him he could post this?”
Leave it to my father to get to the heart of the issue. I almost squirmed, knowing what I was about to say was going to get Andy in trouble. Though the whole point was that he shouldn’t have done it in the first place so I had no reason to defend him. “No. I didn’t tell him he could take the photo, though after the fact, it was fine that he had it. But I sure didn’t tell him he could post it on its own, never mind with what he wrote.”
My father looked down at the screen again. “It’s clear he wants everyone to know he’s with you and not that girl. I suppose it’s supposed to be what? Flattering? Reassuring?”
“It’s insulting,” I said, the anger returning again. “I feel like a tree he just peed on to mark as his territory.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.”
“Are you seriously defending him?” I asked, my voice high and screechy before I could rein it in.
“No, Nessa, no,” my father said, handing me back my phone and then putting his arm across my shoulders. “Of course not. It’s not okay that he did any of it. He’s made a big mistake and he’s going to hear about it. It’s just that I expect he thought he was doing right by you when in fact, he was doing the opposite.”
“I could have handled the girl’s stupid post. We expect that kind of thing and would have dealt with it. Why couldn’t he leave it?” The tears came then and I found myself quickly pulled into my father’s chest.
“Shhh, Nessa. We’ll deal with it.”
“First I was Dave’s mystery girlfriend who wasn’t hot enough and now I’m Andy’s. Everyone’s going to think I’m—” As if on cue, more messages piled into my phone, making me start to really cry.
“Not hot enough?” Dad asked incredulously, his voice a rumble under my cheek.
“Not going there,” I muttered.
“You’re right,” he said. “Not important. And for the record, not true.”
“Dad,” I moaned.
“All right. Let’s deal with this. First things first,” he said in his business voice, giving me a squeeze before he let me go. “Turn it off.”
Happy to end the barrage of messages, I put the phone into airplane mode.
“All right,” he said. “Now. I’m going to have to deal with Andy on a disciplinary level as both his manager and as your father. But I want to know where you stand on this first.”
I shrugged. “Do what you have to do.”
“What I want to do is to kick his ass and then kick him off my tour,” he said with a rare edge to his voice. “But I know you have feelings for him and if you want to give him a chance to explain and apologize, I’ll leave that on you.”
“Would you want to kick him off the tour if I wasn’t your daughter?”
He exhaled and paused a moment as he seemed to take stock of his feelings on the subject. “Probably not. I’d read him the riot act and give him a lecture about respect and not letting his ego get in the way of being smart about how he deals with things and involves people without their consent and knowledge.
“He’s a good musician and our biggest draw right now, so if he’s able to see his error and promise to not do something like that again, I’d probably give him another chance. But the fact is you are my daughter and you’re more valuable to me than any stupid kid on my tour. If you want him gone, he’s gone.”
He was one hundred percent serious; I had the power to end Andres’s tour in that second if I wanted to. Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s like...I don’t know. I feel like if he knew me at all, he’d know how much I would hate what he did.”
“You’re young,” my father said. “But so is he. I’m not defending him,” he added quickly when I looked up at him. “But people make mistakes. It just so happens that he made one on a really grand scale that’s totally public. This is why relationships are such a bad idea on tour.”
“Relationships with musicians especially,” I offered.
“Amen to that,” Dad said under his breath.
Loose Ends
We decided to deal with Andres in a two-pronged approach. First Dad would take him aside and talk to him privately on a professional level. He would address how what Andres had done was blatantly in defiance to how Dad had specifically told the guys to handle anything on social media, especially the controversial things (as in: do not engage). Also, he’d give him something of a tune up about posting anything that would be construed as personal information (they were supposed to be deliberately vague about their dating status and only post pictures of the band, their lunch, silly things, publicity-type things) and most importantly, he would give him a reminder about getting consent before posting pictures with other people in them who were not in the band.
In fact, he was planning to give all the guys this same reminder because of the far-reaching consequences it could have if they forgot. Me being the case in point. He was going to warn them that another slip-up would force him to take over their social media completely.
Knowing he really wanted to address the fact that it was me in the photo Andres posted, I asked my father to keep it professional and not about me being his daughter. I assured him I would deal with the personal side of it. Since it was me that Andres had betrayed by posting that picture, it felt like it should be me who dealt with that part of it. Plus, I needed that satisfaction of him knowing how upset I was and that it wasn’t just because of my pissed off daddy.
Dad was reluctant, but, in the end, promised he’d let me handle it and would only talk about the photo in general terms. It probably helped that by the time we’d made our plan, I was slightly less homicidal; he didn’t have to worry he was going to have to go to prison to visit his daughter between tour dates.
“But you go first,” I told him as we made our way back into the school. “I have some thinking to do before I speak to him.”
He asked me again if I was all right. It was getting tiring, but I understood he was concerned about me.
“Yeah. I just need to sort out what I’m going to say. It’s probably not as cut and dry as your spiel.”
He looked at me and I knew he wanted to ask but seemed resigned to leave me to it.
“To answer your unspoken question,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m going to say at this point. I’m not sure where I want to go from here with him as far as a relationship. I’m referring to after tour, obviously, but I think I need to know now where I’m going to be on us dating.”
He was about to respond, but the chorus of echoing male voices in the hallway put a quick end to our conversation. They poured out of the boys’ locker room, coming toward us.
“Andy,” Dad said in his pissed off but calm manager voice. It was so different from his regular voice that it stopped the group of them in their tracks. “A minute, please.”
I had no idea if the other guys knew what Andres had done, but based on the confused look
s they all shared, I had to think they didn’t.
“Sure,” Andres said right before his eyes darted to mine. I kept my face blank, but he must have figured out I was pissed. His eyes widened a bit before he looked back at my father. He knew he was busted but would he understand why?
“I’ll be in the room where the reception was,” I said.
Dad nodded and then gestured for Andres to go back into the locker room ahead of him. He’d asked me if I wanted to join them, but I’d said no, that even though a tour manager might be privy to that kind of conversation, considering our circumstances, I wanted no part of it.
“What’s going on?” Dave asked from right beside me, making me jump a little. I had been so focused on Andres that I hadn’t noticed the other guys crowding around me.
I ignored his question, instead pasting a smile on my face that I hoped they wouldn’t know was fake. “Go on out to the coach,” I said. “We’re going to be rolling out soon. There’s some fudge on the counter by the sink.”
That got them moving, making me glad I’d bought several slabs at one of the vendors earlier in the day.
Dave lingered behind, looking at me expectantly.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like fudge?” I asked lamely.
He lifted his eyebrows. He didn’t have to ask again, I knew what he was waiting for.
“It’s nothing,” I said with a sigh, waving him off.
“You sure?” He looked at me sideways. “You look pretty pissed.”
Maybe it was the post rage crash that was making me weary, or perhaps it was that this was my moment of calm between storms, but whatever it was, I wasn’t in the mood to argue or evade him. “Fine. You’re going to find out anyway. So that girl who made a meal of Andy’s face earlier posted it on Twitter and—.”
He nodded. “Instagram, too.”
Perfect. So they all knew and it was in more places than I’d thought. I gave him a look but he gestured for me to go on. “Which would have been bad enough, but then Andy posted a ridiculous picture of him and me, saying that the girl had basically attacked him, he never would have kissed her, and that I am his one and only.”
Going on Tour Page 11
