by Hazel Jacobs
If she weren’t trying hard to keep her emotions in check, she would have laughed out loud. As it is, Mikayla can only answer wryly. “Why would you want to do anything about it?” He gives her a confused look, and she elaborates, “We’re not friends.”
Logan blinks in surprise. He drops his arms so that the towel hovers over his crotch and gives her a long look.
“You stood between my brother and the knife that was meant for him,” he says finally. “You can ask for anything you want and I’ll give it to you.”
Mikayla feels herself blushing again, just like she had back in that hotel room in LA when Tommy and Slate were praising her, and she hadn’t known how to react. Logan hadn’t offered anything beyond silent gratitude. She had never expected this declaration, not from him, and certainly not when he was half naked. She wants to pinch herself to see if she’s dreaming, but none of her dreams have ever been this real. Or looked this good.
“I didn’t do it to get something,” she says. “I don’t want your gratitude.”
“Then what do you want?”
He steps forward, and she can see a galaxy of freckles on his chest. His eyes dart over her, searching for… something, she can’t tell. She wishes she could. She wishes more than anything that she knew what he was thinking right at that moment. Did he think about the night they met and wonder what could have been? Does he imagine where the night would have taken them if she hadn’t been the new PA? She does.
“I don’t know,” she says finally. She’s not sure what question she’s answering—his or her own. “I don’t know.”
They’re a foot apart. A part of her wishes that he hadn’t just climbed out of a pool, even if it does give her a nice view. His usual cologne has been washed away and now he just smells like chlorine. He wears it well, but she prefers his usual scent.
“Why don’t you start by telling me what got you so upset earlier?” he asks.
Mikayla shuffles her feet, finally managing to tear her eyes away from him and focus on the tiles on the opposite wall.
“It’s nothing,” she replies.
He gives her a shrewd look. “Nothing?” he says skeptically. “So, what? You came all the way down here just to watch me do laps?”
“What if I did?” she challenges.
Logan’s lip quirks up in a distant smile as he looks her up and down. For a moment, Mikayla imagines that she can see a hint of regret in his face. She remembers the band’s rule about dating PAs and wonders, not for the first time, where that rule came from.
“You would’ve been better off sneaking up on Slate. He looks better with his shirt off.”
“Doubt it.”
She is definitely blushing now, but Logan’s smiling so she thinks that it might be worth it. He throws the towel around his shoulders and gives her an almost playful look.
“Why, Mikayla Strong, are you checking me out?”
She decides that the only way to salvage this situation is to go along with it. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what you look like,” she says, raising an eyebrow at him. “If I’d have known that shaking my ass on stage would give me abs like yours, I would have joined a band years ago.”
Logan snorts at that, but it’s gentle. Good-humored. The kind of snort which is shared among friends.
“I don’t think you need to worry about your figure,” he says, giving her hips a significant look.
She doesn’t flinch. “Don’t start making judgments until you’ve seen me with my shirt off.”
“Well, fair’s fair,” he says. He gestures to his own bare chest. “I showed you mine.”
And then the atmosphere changes. It’s almost anticipatory. Mikayla finds herself wondering what would happen if she reached up and undid her robe. If she let it fall to the floor, and stepped into Logan’s arms. Would they be as warm as she’d hoped?
Logan seems to sense her hesitation because he immediately changes the subject. “Or you can tell me what actually brought you down here. Let me guess… you couldn’t sleep because of whatever it was that upset you this afternoon. A phone call?”
“How did —” she cuts herself off, but the damage is done.
Logan nods like he’s figured something out. “A phone call. Because if someone in the band or one of the roadies had upset you, the rest of us would have ripped him apart.”
She is touched by that, even if she knows that the band would never pick her over each other. They’d been together since high school—in the case of Dash and Logan, since birth—and she’d only been with them for a few weeks. But it’s nice to pretend, even for a moment, that she could have a family that wouldn’t go out of its way to hurt her. Who wouldn’t know exactly where to stick the knife and make her feel completely worthless.
“Someone you know?” Logan pushes.
Mikayla feels something wet on her cheeks and is horrified when Logan steps closer to reach out and brush the tears away from her eyes.
“Can we please just not talk about it?” she asks. Her voice is steady, but her eyes are swimming.
Logan seems to realize that he’s gone too far. He rests his hand on her cheek, and she leans into it, reaching up with her right hand to grip his wrist, her pinky brushing against the very edge of his tattoo. They stand there for a moment, gazing at each other, and she doesn’t want it to end. It’s nice to feel a comforting hand on her cheek. It’s nice to lose herself in Logan’s eyes, to the point that she almost forgets what she’d been crying about.
“Why don’t we go up to my room?” he asks in a quiet voice. If it weren’t for the echo all around them, she might not have heard him.
She feels her heart skip a beat. “I-uh, no, that’s okay. I think I should try and get some sleep.”
There’s a flash of disappointment in his eyes, but he nods. He drops his hand, and Mikayla wants to snatch it back.
“See you tomorrow?” she says instead.
He wraps the towel around his waist and nods. “See you tomorrow.”
The next evening, when Mikayla’s feet take her down to the pool again, Logan is there. Doing laps. And when he’s finished they talk about safe, mundane topics that don’t make Mikayla cry or Logan throw up his hands and storm off.
That becomes part of the pattern as well. Whenever she can’t sleep, she walks down to the pool—every hotel they stay in has a pool—to find Logan doing laps long into the night. She’ll dangle her feet in the water, and when he needs to take a break he’ll swim over to her, and they’ll exchange small talk. Mikayla begins to look forward to those moments when it’s just them—no screaming fans, no band, just them and the sound of water lapping against the concrete edge of the pool.
It isn’t until they get to Seattle that the pattern changes. They have three performances, and then they give their buses back to the company. They won’t be needing them for two weeks.
It’s time to head to London.
When they arrive at the airport, they discover that Mikayla is in coach again. Slate works his magic, and she’s upgraded to first class, this time sitting beside Tommy, who looks delighted.
“You want to share headphones?” he asks, offering her an earbud while the other dangles from his ear. They aren’t attached to the chair like the airplane issued headphones. Mikayla follows the cord down to the tiny iPod next to his elbow.
They’re in the middle row, with two sets of two seats on either side of them. These business class seats are bigger than the last ones. There’s a space beneath the seat in front where Mikayla’s legs will go when she reclines, and a small table next to her elbow with a set of instructions for how to turn the seat into a bed. She’s never been on a long-haul flight before, but she imagines that it will involve a lot of sleeping. She tries to imagine sleeping in economy. She can’t.
“Doesn’t that get in the way of your songwriting?” asks Mikayla, gesturing to Tommy’s earpiece.
“No… it’s just dubstep. No lyrics.”
She declines the earbud, leaning back
in the cozy first class seat and thinking that she could get used to traveling in style with Black Lilith. But then, she thinks, if she becomes a successful events manager, she’ll be able to afford her own first class seats. She won’t have to rely on Slate’s charms to get her upgraded.
The hostesses come through the cabin, offering warm towels to the guests. Mikayla isn’t entirely sure what the purpose of the hot towel is, but she rubs her face and hands with it anyway. She wonders whether the hostesses think it’s strange to see Black Lilith there in their casual clothes, looking remarkably out of place next to the suits of the business men and women riding with them. Even Mikayla, who’s in her usual skirt and blazer, looks underdressed for first class.
Slate is seated in front of Mikayla and Tommy, chatting with a woman in a power suit that puts Mikayla’s business casual to shame. He’s wearing his usual ripped jeans and vest, and he looks like he’s actually putting in some effort to hit on her—he mustn’t be her usual type. Mikayla’s glad that the other woman is making him work for it. It’s about time someone did.
Logan is on the other side of the aisle with Dash. They’re both staring out of the window, nudging each other.
“They’ve never been out of the country before,” Tommy whispers when he catches her looking.
“Neither have I,” she replies.
Tommy’s eyes go wide. “Seriously?” She nods. “Oh, Mik… you’re going to love London. It’s beautiful!”
“I’ve heard good things,” she says.
“There’s a reason that people keep writing songs about it. I’ve only been once, but it’s so full of creative energy. I think I spent most of my time writing.”
The plane takes off, making Mikayla’s ears pop despite the chewing gum Tommy gives her while he tells her about all of the things they absolutely have to see while they’re in the UK. They’ll only be there for two weeks, but the way he talks, it seems like two years wouldn’t be enough time to cram everything in.
“There’s a pub in Earl’s Court that has some really great live bands on the weekends. We should check that out if it’s not too crowded.”
Mikayla nods along, imagining the sheer logistical nightmare of trying to fit all of that sightseeing in around the band’s other commitments. She decides to at least try to get some good tours in for Logan and Dash, if not for herself. She has never really considered herself a ‘sightseeing’ tourist. She’s hardly ever been a tourist in the first place. But she remembers sitting in on her mother’s slide shows whenever she came home from a holiday in the Alps or something, and thinking that nothing could be duller than going to a new place and seeing the same buildings and trees that every other tourist saw. Then taking the same pictures to show your family.
She glances over and sees the brothers still staring out of the window. She leans forward slightly, and she can see the rippling ocean through the glass.
Mikayla thinks that it would be more interesting to share the memories, the stories. Instead of treading the usual path, she wants to be the kind of tourist who returns from vacation with a fine from the local police for wandering somewhere she shouldn’t. Or an amazing story which she could only have after getting lost in a land where she doesn’t speak the language. She’d much rather have an experience like that than go to the same spots that everyone else went to.
Tommy finally runs out of things that she absolutely has to see. When he’s done, he stuffs his second earbud into his ears and bends over his notebook, leaning heavily against the tray table and scribbling like mad. She glances over his shoulder, but she can’t make sense of the words. They seem to be more impressions than lyrics, as though he’s transcribing snapshots of whatever will become the band’s next big hit.
In front of her, Slate turns around and waves. “Comfy, beautiful?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” she replies. She leans over just enough to see his seat mate through the gap between their headrests. The woman has put on her headphones and is watching a movie. “No luck?”
“You can’t win them all,” Slate says with a shrug. He doesn’t look too put out by the setback. “How about we share a champagne and swap some embarrassing stories?”
“How about I watch movies until I fall asleep?”
“Boo, how boring.”
But he winks at her before turning back around. Mikayla picks a movie—something light and funny—before pulling her own headphones over her ears and blocking everything out.
The movie is pretty funny. She didn’t catch the name, but it has Amy Schumer and Jennifer Lawrence in it. She finds herself laughing out loud in some parts. After about an hour, and after a particularly funny scene which actually has her covering her mouth to keep from disturbing the other passengers, she glances across the aisle to catch Logan staring at her.
“Something wrong?” she asks, pulling off the headphones and pausing the movie.
Logan’s soft brown eyes observe her. Beside him, Dash has pulled down the blinds and has pressed himself against the wall, dozing with his eyes half-closed.
“Nothing,” says Logan. He seems to hesitate before adding in a low voice, “You have a nice laugh.”
Mikayla can feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she quickly turns her attention back to the screen in front of her. “Thank you,” she says.
She turns the movie back on, but she’s not paying attention to it anymore.
They stop-over in Dubai, where Slate disappears for a few hours with the woman who’d sat next to him on the plane, who had apparently warmed up to him. He returns with a sly grin on his face that makes Tommy throw pretzels at him while the other three just shake their heads.
They get on another plane, Mikayla is again upgraded to first class, and they arrive in London at midday local time. She is pleased to see the English roadies there to greet them at the airport. She’d emailed them the day before so that they could help with the instruments. When they come out of the airport, jetlagged and still smelling like airplane food, to the sight of a building that looks older than the concept of America and a red double-decker bus.
“Cool!” Dash and Logan say at the same time.
“I thought those were only in movies,” Dash adds.
Logan’s entire face is transformed when he sees the bus. He looks like a kid who’s been surprised with a big bar of chocolate. Mikayla doesn’t tell him that she’d made the change herself, when Jack and Finn, the security detail, were confirmed to be traveling with them to London, she’d needed extra transport for all of their gigs. Rather than book a second bus, she’d gone with the option that she thought the band would appreciate most. Tommy and Slate are both excited, but not half as much as Logan and Dash, who abandon their bags next to the taxi rank and head straight for the bus.
She organizes the bags and instruments with the roadies, leaving Jack and Finn, who had ridden in second class on the plane, to make sure that Logan and Dash don’t steal the bus and go joyriding. The sky above them is a gloomy gray which hints at rain to come. Or maybe rain just passed, she thinks as she notes the rain drops sliding down the bus’s windows. Everyone climbs in, and suddenly they’re being driven through streets with stone houses and bright green trees dotting the sidewalk.
Tommy insists on stopping at a real English pub for lunch. So they drive around until they find one, drawing the attention of a crowd of Black Lilith fans who’d been sending each other updates on the band’s progress via Twitter. That leads to a long few hours of signing autographs—but thankfully no attempted stabbings—and by the time the jetlagged group had eaten and then found their way to the hotel, the sun was beginning to set.
“How is the sun setting?” Dash demands, waving irritably at the sky, his earlier enthusiasm for a new country forgotten. “It’s four pm!”
“That’s England in winter,” Slate replies. He throws his arm around Dash and squeezes. “Come on, squirt, let’s get you some coffee.”
They head into the hotel. Mikayla lingers outside, taking it all in
. She’d been too busy on the ride through, to really stare around and process what she was seeing. But now that the band is safely where they need to be, and there’s no chance of any fans attacking them when her back is turned, Mikayla can relax and really look. What she sees is the Langham hotel with its brown brick exterior and curved windows that look like they’re more suited to a fairy-tale castle. She sees black cabs driving on the wrong side of the road, a red telephone box, and a couple of kids in school uniforms skipping past her.
For a moment, she thinks that she might have stepped into a postcard. Or a television show. Surely none of this could be real?
Her father would have loved this. When she was a little girl, he used to sit her on his knee and tell her about all the adventures she would have.
“One day…” she remembers him saying when she was about seven or eight, “…one day, Miss Mickie, you will be a beautiful and successful woman. You will travel the world, and you’ll fall in love, and most importantly, you will be happy.”
Well, she wasn’t beautiful. Pretty would be a better word—girl next door pretty—with a good figure. She wasn’t model beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. And she wasn’t successful. She’d fallen into a job that only vaguely matched her skill set. As her mother loved to point out—Mikayla wouldn’t truly be successful until she was actually using her degree for what it had been for. And she hasn’t fallen in love.
But she is traveling the world. And she’s happy—happy enough, at least. She could be happier. But then, her father had taught her to want more for herself. She could never be content with just ‘happy enough.’
When she turns around, Mikayla catches Logan watching her again. He’d lingered behind the others as well. He has his hands in his pockets and a jacket on to protect him from the cool air of the London winter. His tattoos have been covered all day, but she has them memorized at this point.
“See something you like?” she asks, hoping that her tone is light and airy. She thinks she pulls it off.
