The Unexpected

Ch18 - Phonecalls

Chapter 18 - Phonecalls

"Why haven't you called? How is the tour? Have Alex and Derek annoyed you to death yet? I guess not since you're calling. Is it really busy? How is your tour bus? Make sure to take lots of pictures, I want to see! I miss you so much; my summer has been sucking without you. My job sucks; I almost punched a kid in the face they were so annoying yesterday. You can stop me any second now. "

The voice of one of my best friend's rang through the phone and I struggled to keep up.

"Just give me a second to collect my thoughts!" I laughed into the phone; I hadn't realized how much I missed Kate until I heard her voice. "I've been super busy, um, the bus is great, the tour is great, and the boys are great. I haven't had a chance to take pictures but I will. Did that cover most of it?"

"I think so; to be honest I wasn't really listening to myself." She replied, god I missed her.

"When's your next time off?" I asked mentally going through our calendar and then giving up; I had no clue where we would be and when.

"No clue, I think I might need another summer to recover from this one." Kate replied with a sigh.

"I don't know why you even took that job; you could have been a lifeguard!" I said, a smile breaking out on my face.

"Yeah, but imagine how boring that would have been. I prefer to be doing something, even if it's just yelling at a bunch of kids to quit running off and blow some damn bubbles in the water."

"Plus it looks good on your resume."

"I guess there's that.."

"Overachiever." I teased.

"Oh shut up. Where are you right now?"

"Were at a rest stop, everyone went out to dinner but I already ate so I decided to go explore. I went for a walk and found this park with a small bench, and now I'm talking to you." I replied, pulling my legs up onto the bench with me in an effort to get more comfortable.

"So you're in the middle of nowhere alone on a sketchy park bench?"

"You make it sound so bad." I complained, settling on laying down on the bench. "I'm clearly in the United States."

"Very specific." She replied sarcastically and I hummed an answer.

"So how's home?" I asked after a moment of silence.

"It's good, everyone's been talking about you guys." My stomach dropped, all I could picture in my head was the gossip I overheard about how terrible we were. I bit my lip nervously.

"Really?" I tried to keep my voice even but it cracked at the end of the word. Either Kate didn't hear it or chose to ignore it because she continued without addressing it.

"Yeah, everyone's so proud and talking about your CD coming out soon. They are all so excited and there have been so many articles in the paper, everyone is so proud. I find it kind of funny because before you guys went on tour they didn't really pay attention." As I was listening I stopped biting my lip and let out a deep breath, people liked us.

"Yeah, it's going to be weird to go back." I said staring at the darkening sky above me. Wherever we were the view was really beautiful, the deep reds and oranges of the sunset that painted the sky were bright and not tainted by tall buildings or loud noise. For the first time since the start of the tour I took a deep breath and felt myself relax. I hadn't ever realized how wound up and stressed I had gotten until I now, the get up and go had quickly become my life.

I tried to picture returning home, I wondered if people would treat anyone from my band differently. I knew Alex was well regarded; he was always a good student so teachers and most adults liked him. He had friends from school that he still hung out occasionally but I doubt they would care for our band. Derek was not so great a student, without Alex and I pressuring him to do his work and actually go to class I doubt he would have made it out of high school. Derek could have a hard edge to him and had gotten into a lot of trouble in his early teen years, adults weren't too fond of him but he was never short of someone to hang out with when he was bored. I wondered if the adults would regard him differently now, or if they would still base their view of him on mistakes he made years ago?