Rock Star Ex (6 page)

Instinctively, Eve reached into the side pocket of
her purse for the small camera she kept there. It didn’t look like much but it
had set her back several thousand, being that it was a top of the line
compact.
 
She busied herself snapping
pictures, glad that the lighting was sufficient so the flash didn’t go off.
 
She didn’t want to interrupt their
camaraderie.

 
This was the
beginning of their journey and it was her job to capture it.
 
Both she and Kate were skilled at what they
did but they each had their strengths and, over time, had naturally divided the
labor between them.
 

The round of hellos finished and Clayton stepped to
the side so the girls could come forward.

“Hey, I remember you guys,” Tommy said.
 
“That was the best after-hours party I’ve
ever been to, hands down.
 
It’s Eve and
Kate, isn’t it?”
 
He shook both their
hands warmly. His short, strawberry blond hair was stylishly tousled and he
smiled all the way to his friendly, light brown eyes.

Drew, the bassist, and Shane, the drummer, also
stepped forward to shake their hands.
 
Eve felt Devon zero in on her as she said hello to each of them.

Clayton raised his voice and announced, “Guys, this
is your new social media crew for the tour.
 
They agreed, within the last twenty-four hours mind you, to cover your
asses for the next five weeks.
 
They are
going to get the public to positively drool over each picture, video and
breadcrumb of type they see on the Web.
 
So do me a favor and be nice to them.”

For a moment there was silence and then smiles lit
the men’s faces.

“Well, who better to handle the gossip lines than
two women?”
 
Devon said dryly, making
everyone laugh.
 
He stepped forward to
shake their hands a relaxed smile on his face.
 
“Ladies we’re happy to have you.
 
Welcome to the tour.”
 

His clasp on her hand was gentle but firm.
 
Eve did her best to be professional but she
knew he could see past it.
 
His eyes
roamed over her face, assessing, and he held onto her hand a little longer than
was necessary.
 
Hot blush flooded her
cheeks and she pulled her hand back.
 
To
hide her nerves she busied herself with her camera, setting it to video to see
what she could capture in the next few moments.

“Great job, Clayton,” Shane said.
 
“These two are a hundred times better than
the other freaks you brought through.”
 
Shane had tattoos that covered both of his
forearms and wore black tunnel plugs in his ears.

“For sure,” Drew said emphatically, in an English
accent.
 
He leaned in towards them and
whispered loudly, “The last one he brought through had to be three, four
hundred pounds.
 
No way that dude would
have even have fit in a bunk.
 
Not to
mention the snoring.”

“Yeah, nobody snores around here,” Devon said, arching
an eyebrow.

“
Oy
!
 
I’ve told you.
 
It’s just when I have allergies,” Drew
protested.

All the guys laughed at that one.
 

“Don’t worry. It’s not that bad,” Tommy told
them.
 
“I’ve got earplugs if you need
them.”

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs of the bus and
a man with a goatee and trucker hat poked his head in the door.

“We all set, boss?” he asked.
 
“All the bags have been stowed.”

 
Clayton
introduced him to Kate and Eve.
 
He was
the driver, Keith.

“All right, well, I guess we should hit it,” Clayton
said to the group.
 
To Eve and Kate he
said, “So I’ll be on the other bus.
 
You
have my number if you need me.
 
See you
in about five hours.
 
This one’s not a
long haul.”
 
And he left with a wave down
the stairs.

Eve switched off the camera and gulped as the door
to the bus hissed shut.
 
The floor
thrummed beneath her feet as the engine started.
 
There was no turning back now.

****

Devon leaned casually against the dining table as
the bus started to move.
 
Tommy had
offered the girls something to drink and was showing Eve how to use the
Keurig
coffee machine they had on board.
 
He wasn’t sure he liked the attention Tommy
was paying her.
 
Not sure he liked that
she was going to be on the tour with them either.
 
It really wasn’t the right environment for a
quality woman like her.
 

She looked a lot more like his Eve today.
 
The one he remembered.
 
She had her long hair tied back in a ponytail
with one long tendril loose to frame her face.
 
And the skinny jeans she wore hugged every curve just right.

She had flashed a friendly smile at everyone including
him.
 
But the smile she’d given him had
been tinged with a cool aloofness.
 
It
wasn’t something the others would have noticed.
 
It was just the tiniest telltale stiffening of her smile that he’d
detected, but it was enough for him to know.

Why would she take an assignment where they’d be
stuck in such close proximity?
 
Based on
what had happened the other night, the only conclusion that could be drawn was
that she hated his guts.
 
She had a right
to do so.
 
He always regretted what had
happened with her.
 

Tommy had the remote in his hand and was showing her
how to work the satellite TV and radio.
 
The other girl, Kate, sat on the couch talking to the others.
 

“I swear you can get any show with this stuff and
any radio station.
 
Honest to god, I even
caught Drew watching
Britain’s Next Top
Model
one night.”

Shane guffawed.
 
“Yeah, yeah.
 
I saw him too.”

Drew rolled his eyes and a grinned.
 
“
Riiiight
.”

“That’s amazing,” Eve said.
 
“But where’s the receiver?
 
Don’t you need a satellite dish to get the signal?”

“It’s all in that cabinet there,” Shane said, waving
a hand at a cabinet between the couch and dining table where Devon was standing.
 
“Some tech guy came and set it up.
 
That’s all we know.”

Eve’s eyes passed coolly over him as she turned to
look at it.
 
He didn’t know why but it
irked him, made him want to wrap her ponytail around his fist and pull her
close for a kiss just to break the ice.
 

She used to be open with him.
 
Fun.
 
Affectionate.
 
“Do you have a
favorite show?” he asked.
 
He already knew
the answer but just had to see if he could get some other reaction from her.
 
He couldn’t help it.

“Yes.”
 
She
just looked at him and waited.
 
Apparently she wasn’t going to be giving any information up freely.

“What is it?”

“
The Walking
Dead
,” she said in a neutral tone.

Not the show he had been thinking of.
 
“That’s a zombie show, right?”

She nodded and took her camera from her bag.
 
“What’s your favorite show?” she asked and
snapped a picture of him.

“
The Voice
,”
he said mildly.

Tommy laughed.
 
“He loves to make fun of it, he means.”

She snapped a picture of Tommy too and then looked
at him inquiringly.
 
“What part do you
find funny?”

She wasn’t talking to him, he realized.
 
She was interviewing him.
 
Collecting information about him for her
job.
 
He felt another prick of
annoyance.
 
“It’s just dumb.
 
They win a stupid competition and are given a
record deal just like that?
 
Just because
they got lucky doesn’t mean they are going to make it in this business.”

 
From his own history
he knew life on the road was a boot-camp-tough experience.
 
Performances themselves could be extremely
stressful with the demands of perfection and the emotional dynamics between
people.
 
Put all them together in one
vehicle and add in the stress of traveling and you had a ready-made time bomb.
 
But he wouldn’t take it back for the
world.
 
His experiences had connected him
with his backbone and the meat for new songs.
 
There was absolutely no substitute for real life as a training ground.

She said nothing to that and turned to make herself
a cup of coffee.
 
She looked over the
different flavors of coffee pods they had before selecting one.
 
Dunkin’ Donuts Dark Roast.
 
The corner of his mouth lifted.
 
He wondered what she would think about the
fact that they liked the same flavor of coffee.
 
The pods were there because they were on the shopping list he gave to
Keith every week.
 
Maybe he would mention
it later.

“So how does this social media stuff work?” he
asked.
 
“What do you need us to do?”

The others quieted down at his question to hear the
answer.

“Nothing unusual, really,” Eve said.
 
“Just be yourselves and have fun.”
 
Her coffee finished brewing and she emptied a
packet of sugar into her cup.

“In about a week we’ll have everything set up.
 
Which is pretty quick.
 
There’s some significant revamping that needs
to be done to your sites,” Kate said.
 
“Eve and I will handle all the posts initially, to get you started.
 
Then we’ll slowly trickle it down to you to
manage and make your own.”

“What was wrong with what we had before?”
 
Tommy sat on a couch and leaned back.

Eve and Kate gave each other an amused look.
 
It wasn’t the first time a client had said
something like that to them.

“A lot,” Eve said.
 
“But we’re going to make some big changes in a short amount of time.”

“I’ll just tell you a few things that needed
improvement,” Kate stated.
 
“For one
thing, none of your sites linked to each other.
 
Ideally you want something like Facebook to have a link to your
blog.
 
Or a Web page to link to your
Twitter account.
 
None of that has been
done.
 
When they’re linked, your fans can
keep finding new information about you.
 
It keeps them from getting bored.”

“It looked like there wasn’t much maintenance on the
accounts either,” Eve said.
 
“The posts
for Facebook and Twitter were few and far between.
 
Right now you have only a million followers
on Facebook.”

“Whoa!
 
That’s
a lot.” Drew said proudly.
 
The other
guys seemed to agree.
 

Devon waited, and saw disagreement on Eve’s face.
 
She stirred her coffee with a stir stick for
a moment.

“Well actually, Drew, it’s pathetic,” Eve said
gently.
 
“For a band like this, with as
many hits as you have, you should be more in the ballpark of twenty million.
 
It was easy to see why the last guy got
fired.”

Devon’s jaw dropped, as did the rest of the guys’.
 
Was she serious?
 
People were really that into all that online
stuff?
 
He’d never even thought about it
but, now that he did, it made sense.
 
It
was direct contact with the fans, their people.
 
That sort of thing had to drive attendance at concerts and sales of
their albums.
 

“That’s not all,” Kate added.
 
“Having a lot of followers doesn’t mean
anything if they aren’t interacting with you.
 
There were very few comments to the posts that have been made about
you.
 
It was a little over a hundred or
so for each, and almost no shares.
 
Big
stars get tens of thousands of likes to their posts.
 
I even remember seeing one that had thirty-five
thousand likes and over two thousand shares.
 
We’ve got to get people talking about you.
 
For a tour like this it should have been
started months ago.”