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“Who the hell is Lyndsey?” I asked.
“She’s our new tour manager,” Priya explained, pocketing her phone.
“What happened to Tori?”
“She’s going to grad school.”
“I told you so! If she can do it, so can I! See?” Henry declared, jabbing his drumstick in the air to prove a point.
“What the hell would she do that for?” I asked.
Priya shrugged. “She applied on a whim and got offered a stipend. It’s a fantastic opportunity.”
“Well, then, how are we supposed to trust this new broad?” I asked. I loved Tori, and I trusted her with my life. She was the one who brought me miso soup in bed when I had the stomach flu in Toronto and kept the green room stocked with snacks and Ibuprofen. How was I supposed to trust a brand-new person?
“Tori recommended her! They’ve worked with a lot of the same bands. She’s great. Her resume’s a novel. And before you start anything, she passed both background checks. I also talked to Oli June about her, and they had nothing but good to say.”
I huffed and returned to my smoothie.
Priya’s phone buzzed again. She clapped her hands together. “She’s here!” Priya got up and ran around to the entrance of the bungalow.
Priya returned, holding onto Lyndsey’s wrist, resembling a child excited to show her parents she’d made a friend.
Lyndsey was tall. Her shoulders were hunched to accommodate a lifetime of being told to make herself smaller.She wore ripped jeans, dirty Converse, and a moss-green t-shirt. She held a backpack in her free hand.
She looked up, inquisitively glancing around the studio space, taking in the sound booth we had wrapped in a sound-proofing tarp and the half-drank smoothies on the table. Her eyes were large, brown, and doe-like with strands of gold and feathery, inky lashes. A pair of wire-framed glasses slid down her nose, which rounded at the end. I could see a smattering of freckles dusting her cheeks. Her lips were peony pink. They looked soft. I told myself to stop staring; they were so plump, as were her pert tits that strained against the soft fabric of her t-shirt. I wondered what it would be like to—
“And that’s Vince; he’s the bassist,” Priya said, pointing to me.
“Hey, Vince,” Lyndsey said softly. Her voice was lower than I thought it would be, a dulcet alto I felt in my bones. It was sexy.
“H-h-hey, hi. Hi.” I mumbled quickly.
I’d never been at a loss for words in front of a woman before. If anything, I always said too much, regaling them with stories from tours or run-ins with various rock stars in venue bathrooms across several continents.
I’d cock my hip and lament that Mick Jagger was a great guy, but really, he needed to stop texting, then before I knew it, we’d be in bed. I prided myself on being suave, a skill often credited to my profession. While music didn’t provide dental insurance, it certainly taught me the art of conversation with women… until Lyndsey.
I felt my shoulders stiffen. I was acutely aware of my hands hanging limply at my sides. I picked up my melting smoothie and took a sip. The straw screeched against the top, punctuating Lyndsey’s curious silence.
“Y’all are taking a lunch break? I hope I didn’t interrupt,” Lyndsey said, glancing at the smoothies.
“Yeah, we needed a minute. I got you one, too! You said you liked strawberries?” Before Lyndsey could answer, Priya thrust a smoothie into her hands.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“I stashed it in the fridge earlier,” Priya replied.
“That’s so sweet. Thank you, Priya,” Lyndsey said. She sat down at the table and reached down into a ratty black backpack. Pulling out a manilla folder.
“I thought we could take a minute to go over everyone’s rider before we hit the road,” Lyndsey suggested.
Priya nodded enthusiastically. “Wonderful idea,” she said, sitting beside Lyndsey.
Lyndsey passed a piece of paper to each of us, with our rider requests typed out in a neat bullet-pointed list. I should have known Tori would have our backs, even if she wasn’t still on the road with us.
“How’d you get to be a tour manager?” I asked as I read over my rider. It was correct: one box of Red Hots, Paul Mitchell mousse, Kombucha (lemon or chamomile), and some sort of ice pack or a heating pad.
“I went on tour with Oli June doing merch the summer after I graduated college, and it snowballed. Now it’s been five years, and this is pretty much what I do.”
