May 4, 2014
If I didn't get out of this tent soon, I was going to go stir crazy. It was stifling hot, I was bored, and I wasn't nearly drunk enough to manage it. Carolina Rebellion wasn't fun when you were spending it holed up in a tent. I checked the time; Myles wouldn't be out of his signing for another hour and I didn't really know any of the other bands at the festival to go hang out with them.
All that left was walking around looking for trouble. I slid my sunglasses on and stepped out into the heat. I wasn't built for this kind of weather. As long as I'd lived in Los Angeles, I was still a Spokane native and I would die unable to deal with excessive heat.
At least I had my camera with me. It would give me something to do while I hunted for more alcohol. The festival was buzzing with all sorts of interesting characters. But two that caught my eye were a tall woman with pink and purple hair and her much shorter dark-haired friend. They were hanging around outside the Jack Daniels booth, talking and laughing.
"Excuse me, do you mind if I take a picture of you?" I asked, tapping the taller one on the shoulder.
"Oh no honey, people have been taking pictures of me for years." She turned her friend around to face me and I snapped their picture.
"I'm Mina." I said as I showed them the picture I'd taken.
"I'm Roz, and this is Ash." Roz was the tall one and seemed to be the voice of the pair. It kind of reminded me of Lola and me, if Lola grew about eight inches and I shrank about five. "Is that a backstage pass?" She gestured at the pass hanging off my shorts.
"Yeah." I sincerely hoped she wasn't about to ask me to get them backstage. I'd learned my lesson after letting a girl who seemed perfectly normal backstage. She ended up running away with a pair of Josh Todd's boxers.
"Who are you here with?" Ash spoke for the first time, holding up her own pass.
"My husband is the singer for Alter Bridge." I tried not to puff up with pride when I talked about Myles, but it was so hard.
"I'm married to the singer from Avenged Sevenfold and Ash is married to the guitarist, Zack." Roz said.
"So, Mina, what are you up to?" Ash asked.
"Looking for trouble. I'm bored as shit waiting for Myles." I looked behind them at the tent, wondering how much alcohol I could buy with the cash I had on me.
"Well you certainly found it. We're bad influences." The grin on Roz's face was so similar to Lola's I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't my best friend on stilts. But I'd left Lola and the others in Virginia to see Myles for a few days before we had to get back on tour.
"Let me get a little more liquored up first and then we can go wreak havoc upon the festival." This was such a bad idea, but fuck it. I hadn't done anything really stupid in a long time.
An hour and god knows how many Down Home Punch's later, I was well and truly drunk and leading Roz and Ash to Alter Bridge's tent. It occurred to me that I was lucky I hadn't been able to go to Welcome to Rockville. The others had had their families come out for a visit and I had a reputation to keep up with those kids.
"Myles!" I sang, practically falling through the flaps and into his lap.
"Hey, I was wondering where you'd gone." He gave me a quick kiss before wrinkling his nose. "You're sloshed."
"Absolutely. Meet my new friends!" I introduced him to Roz, not having noticed that our smaller companion was missing. "Where'd Ash go?"
"Zacky snagged her as we walked past the tent. We won't see her for a while." Just as Roz finished her sentence, a tattooed man who looked like he could run security at a Slayer concert by himself showed up.
