She's Just That Kind of Girl

Twenty-Seven | Violet

"Five, six, seven, eight," Selena counted us and our dancers into our rehearsed dance steps from the practice room to the stages we danced on. At the moment, we were dancing on the main stage. Eventually, we'd practice on Stage B across the front way. The main stage is sort of designed like the Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter without the circle, and with some added features of course. The front corners are circles and the main stage wraps around the giant seamless screen. The catwalks are also screens, the coolest feature we'd never had on tour before.

As our choreographer, Selena was also the lead dancer in our group. Instruments not her thing, singing she loved, but dancing was her passion, her strength. When she danced, she stole the show and everyone knew it.

Selena watched us run the whole set dancing and singing with great concentration and intent, examining our every move nailed to the T. Shane viewed us from stage-right with bottled water in his hand and a smirk on his face. The Buzz remained part of our set for our very first headlining concert for the tour since we wrote a song together and fans anticipated seeing it happen live. I could be professional for them if I needed to. The fans are everything.

"I'm so proud of you, Violet! You are just nailing this choreography!" Selena said, clapping her hands and sporting mini jumps.

"Yeah, and your vocals are on fire! All those years of six-month-warm-ups before tours have really paid off," Dallas said.

All true though. I'd been working three times harder than everyone else who'd been rehearsing for months over the course of two weeks for this tour just to catch up. Training sixteen hours every day exhausted me, but it was so rewarding because everyone noticed how hard I was trying to make it up to everyone, and myself. Bless Selena, she stayed up with me just to help me nail the choreography alone. Our vocal coach worked longer hours just to help me get up to par with everyone else's vocal health. Our costume designers bustled overtime to get my nine different outfits caught up with everyone else's. Everyone busted culo to catch me up. I felt blessed, then it made me feel ashamed about everything I'd put everyone through all over again. But the least I could do was get my mierda together now.

"I also agree!" Shane said loudly from his spot, toasting to me with his open water.

I rolled my eyes on first instinct and fidgeted with my earpiece monitor and the receiver clipped to the back of my shorts. As if I need your approval. Puf. I can't wait for the first show to be over just so he'll be gone. I scanned around the stage at all the empty arena seats then down at the staff and crew doing their jobs to make sure this whole thing performed smoothly. Sometimes if I thought about it too hard for too long, it became overwhelming. So I always asked for a ten minute intermission. "Can we break for ten?"

"If you want a break, you get a break," Selena said in all smiles, "keep up the great work!"

I slightly grinned with an appreciative nod and sped past Shane to get off the stage and to the dressing room. I searched everywhere for my backpack that contained my songwriting journal and threw my hands up, realizing I left it in the black SUV we arrived in from the hotel. The SUV waited parked in a secluded area in the back in front of the door, guarded by two bodyguards.

I quickly brisked my way there and asked the guards to unlock it, not knowing which one held the key. One of them unlocked it and I quickly grabbed my bag. As I closed the door and thanked the guard, Shane lingered in the doorway. I started at his surprise presence and stopped in my tracks. "¡Jesús!" I muttered.

Creep.

"Shane?"

"Hey," he said, "can we talk? Alone."