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“You two work things out?” Johnny asked as he scribbled something down in a notebook.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I kind of thought you were smart enough to know you wouldn’t have your own damn tour bus.”
The two shared a laugh as Johnny instructed them to sing a specific song. It was one of their lesser-known songs, but Johnny thought it would work well with the tour.
“The good news is, it’s just one tour. It’s one summer of your life on a bus with someone touring the country and getting to do what you love. Surely you can handle that. The paycheck alone should help you handle that.”
Johnny had a point. She could do anything for one summer. Even share a bus with Riley DeLuca. How bad could it be?
Chapter 4
Riley
After an exhausting few weeks of tour rehearsals and watching Elena and Skylar try and deny their attraction to each other, Riley was thankful for a few days off before the tour started. Although her mom had begged her to come home, she’d chosen to spend the extra few days at the hotel in Santa Barbara. On her own dime, of course. Johnny had made it clear that he wasn’t paying for her Pacific Coast holiday. There was just so much Riley hadn’t seen yet and she didn’t know when she’d be in California again.
Granted, she’s seen more of her hotel room than anything so far. She was determined to get as much content out to the virtual world as possible before the tour started. Despite it already being sold out, Riley wanted to keep the hype going until the last chord of the final night. And in order to do that, she had to keep pushing out content like a well-oiled machine.
Even if the machine was whirling to the end of its workday rapidly.
Riley stood from the uncomfortable desk chair she’d been sitting in for God knows how long hunched over her laptop. She stretched her back as she looked out the window of her hotel room. The California sun was high in the sky, beaming brightly off the pool two floors below. Aside from a few people in lounge chairs under umbrellas, it looked relatively empty. A little sun would do her some good.
Changing into the bikini she’d never wear in her mother’s pool, Riley grabbed a towel from the bathroom along with the bag she’d taken to the beach a few days ago. She put an oversized T-shirt over her bikini before quickly descending the stairs to the pool. As the warm sun hit her skin, Riley dropped her bag onto an empty lounge chair and pulled out her sunscreen. Her mother’s voice was in the back of her head telling her to lather up, and there was no way Riley was going to get sunburnt and listen to that lecture. Again.
Riley took off her T-shirt and tossed it onto the chair. She lathered the sunscreen and rubbed it into her back as best she could. One of the few negatives of traveling alone was that no one was there to put sunscreen on her back.
Oh well, Riley shrugged. She wouldn’t stay out too long anyway; work would be calling again soon enough. Probably literally, if Riley were to assume. She’s never had an entire team directing her in what to do and what to post but her phone was almost constantly buzzing these days. Riley knew she could cut out some of the noise by muting the social media accounts for Maine Event, but Riley liked to see the comments on her post.
Everything could wait until she was out of the pool though. Turning her phone’s volume off, Riley tossed it into her bag, discarded her flip flops, and walked over to the pool’s edge. She slowly swiveled her head to see the few people around the pool. There was an older couple who appeared to be asleep and a family with young kids in the shallow end of the pool.
But it was the woman off by themselves that caught Riley’s attention. She was wearing shorts, a bikini top, and sunglasses, seemingly lost in a book. When Riley looked her way, the woman quickly lifted the book higher over her face.
Weird, Riley thought to herself as she dipped a foot into the water to test the temperature. It was warmer than she expected, which surprised her.
Almost as much as the realization of who the sunglass-clad woman was.
Harlow.
Riley hadn’t seen her in weeks. Harlow had been working from the hotel for the last few weeks, which made sense with the hundreds of phone calls she had to make to get everything in order for the tour. But it had been so long since Riley had actually seen her that she might as well have been back at her house, wherever that was.
She looked Harlow’s way again, seeing if she was still looking at her. If she was, Riley couldn’t tell. Her darkened sunglasses and the book covering everything below her nose did not indicate she was paying attention to her. Not that Riley wanted Harlow’s attention. She didn’t. But still. They were going to be sharing a bus starting in a few days. It was probably past time to have an actual conversation.
Eh, I’ll deal with that later.
Jumping into the pool with a splash, Riley savored the weightless feeling of being in the water. She had visions of surfacing like The Little Mermaid, complete with the perfect hair flip. It was sure to get Harlow’s attention. Not that that was her goal. It wasn’t. She just thought it might open up lines of communication. Hell, it worked for Ariel and Eric.
Riley planted her feet on the bottom of the pool and stood up. Her brown hair was plastered all over her face and there was no way she could flip it if she tried. She quickly pushed it out of her face and behind her ear, wondering why she didn’t put it up before jumping in. Grabbing the black hair tie off her wrist, Riley quickly put it up in a wet, messy bun.
Great. This is attractive.
Not that she wanted to look attractive. She didn’t. She just often cared what people thought of her. It was a terrible habit to have, she knew that. Riley knew it probably had a lot to do with her profession in social media. Everyone was constantly critiquing every little thing, and Riley had fallen victim to targeted hate online more than once. The ramifications of the negative comments hung around longer than the positive ones, that much Riley knew for sure.
She tried to remove Harlow from her mind as she floated on her back in the pool. The playful laughs of the kids on the other side of the pool made Riley smile, and she frequently caught herself looking over at Harlow to see if she were smiling too. Not that Riley could see Harlow’s face to know. Harlow still had the book placed almost suspiciously; as if she were peering at Riley over the book’s cover.
You’re delusional.
At twenty-six, Riley had only had a handful of relationships in her life. There had been one in high school, a couple in college, and a couple since then. Well, three since then technically but Riley didn’t consider dating someone for less than two weeks as actually dating someone. They were more like friends with benefits, minus the friends part.
