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I blinked at him. “You need honey and lemon for that.”
Denver shrugged.
“Ignore them,” Neal said. “I’m the only one of us with manners. But I’m used to quiet bus rides.” He held up his book, which was a mystery novel, judging by the cover.
“I have manners,” Axel argued.
“Oh really?” Neal asked as our bus pulled out of the lot. “Which one of us is a nudist, Shimmy?”
“I amnota nudist,” Axel argued. “I just can’t resist a dare to go streaking. Which I haven’t done.”
“Yet,” Neal said. “You haven’t done it yet. It’s still early.”
Axel sighed, then looked at me. “Don’t worry, Brit. We’re behaving on this tour, I swear.”
We took our seats, and Axel powered up the game console. And so it began. I slowly relaxed as the bus powered down the highway, and Axel and I fought a dragon before we leveled up. If I’d expected some kind of wild debauchery from the Road Kings, I wasn’t going to get it. I saw no sign of alcohol, drugs, or wild sex. None of them even smoked a cigarette.
After the second hour, Stone, who had been listening to music, dropped his headphones to his neck. “We need to play ‘Epic Landing’ faster,” he said into the silence. “Mix up the tempo. It’s too slow.”
Neal barely looked up from his book. “We’ve always played it that way.”
“Well, we should change it,” Stone snapped back.
Axel and I were taking a detour across a forest, looking for extra gold coins to pick up. “If you want to go faster, I can go faster,” Axel said to Stone. “Just make sure you keep up, Zeeland.”
“I can keep up,” Stone said. “It’s Watts who’s slow.”
“Fuck off,” Neal said, going back to his book.
Stone disconnected his headphones and played something on his phone at full volume, a song I didn’t recognize. “We should play it more like this. You hear those drums, Shimmy?”
“Who’s that?” Neal asked.
“They’re a band out of Arkansas. Brand new. Kind of a blues thing going on,” Stone said.
Axel paused our game and turned in his seat as the song kept playing. “Are you for real? Jesus, Stone, how old are these guys, twelve? I played that exact beat in ‘Wasteland.’ They’re stealing fromme.”
“We don’t need to play ‘Wasteland,’” Stone said. “We need to play ‘Epic Landing’ with the ‘Wasteland’ beat.”
Neal lowered his book. “I’ve never liked ‘Wasteland’ much, anyway. The guitar solo is too showy, like the guitar player has something to prove.”
“Shut it, Watts,” Stone said.
Denver opened his eyes. He had been napping in his seat. “Let’s do it,” he rasped, then closed his eyes again.
The conversation continued, starting and stopping as they talked music. Axel and I resumed our game. I thought that the journalist, Sienna Maplethorpe, would probably give a lot of money to be listening to this if she was supposed to write about the band.
When they asked my opinion about something musical, I said, “I’m not an expert, so I can’t advise. I can, however, give advice about hair. Which, I can’t help but observe, you all desperately need.”
Neal and Denver laughed, and Stone said, “Yeah, you can stay.”
I felt like one of them after that. I wasn’t even sure why.
EIGHTEEN
Axel
Brit didn’t like L.A. I didn’t blame her, considering her shitty ex was here somewhere and she likely had some bad memories. But we were playing two shows, so we had to stay for a couple of days.
