Roadie: A Summer Set FanFic

Chapter 11: Phoenix

*I don’t own any of the bands, band  members, songs, Connor, Twitter, Instagram, Laundromat, Starbucks, Vans, 7-Eleven, etc*

Jess’s POV:

Ahh, Phoenix. My hometown. I was excited to get back there so early on the tour. Some of my old friends had tweeted me to tell me they were coming to the show. I was happy to hear that. I had lost touch with most of my friends once I started touring with The Summer Set. It reminded me of our song, “Don’t Let Me Go.” It was about being away for a long time, and then returning home and feeling like a total stranger. I was suddenly afraid I’d feel that way. I shook the worried thoughts from my head and focused on my friends now—Tess and my band.

We climbed aboard our bus and headed to Phoenix mid-afternoon of Sunday. I could tell a lot of us were still hungover. I still had a headache and slight nausea, and Tess and Stephen still looked a little rocky. They looked better, though. Happier. I smiled when I saw that. They were talking and laughing like they had been before the whole Chloe thing happened in Emmett. They looked like friends. When we got on the road, I stayed quiet, trying to focus on keeping my stomach even. Watching the others, I smiled to myself. Josh and Connor wrestled on the floor at our feet. Brian and Max were cheering them on. John was immersed in his guitar, looking strangely focused for being near so much chaos. And Tess and Stephen sat beside one another on a couch and talked casually. I watched them mostly. Both of them had dark circles beneath their eyes and they generally looked like a mess. But they seemed content talking to each other. For that, I was thankful. Being forced to watch the fighting between them in the last few days had been hard. Stephen was my best friend, and Tess was on her way to being as close to me as Stephen was. Seeing them at such painful odds with each other was, well, painful. So, I was happy they seemed to have fixed things. I wonder what had been said that led to forgiveness.

The longer I watched, the more details I began to notice. Tess’s eyes flicked back and forth between Stephen’s eyes and mouth whenever he spoke. Stephen’s hand occasionally twitched toward Tess’s like he wanted to hold it. Whenever there was a pause in the conversation, Stephen would just look at Tess and she’d blush slightly and look away. Honestly, I began to feel kind of jealous. I missed being stared at like that. I missed blushing, even though I hated blushing. I sighed and gave into my tiredness, and went to lie down in my bunk.

It had been years, really, since I’d been stared at the way Stephen was staring at Tess. I was a senior in high school last time I had a boyfriend. That’d probably been the worst six months of my life. Maybe I was a prude. I didn’t know. But he was constantly touching me and I hated it. I squeezed my eyes shut as memories of prom night resurfaced.

“Come on,” Chris said, dragging me onto the dance floor. I walked along, hardly willing. This had happened at homecoming. Was it really going to happen at prom, too?

Chris found a spot in the middle of the dance floor and pulled me close to him, moving his body forcefully against mine. I tried to pull away, but he just readjusted my body, so that his hips touched my lower back. Oh my god. I managed to squirm away from him.

“What?” he asked, annoyed.

I swallowed hard, a knot forming in my stomach as more memories hit me.

“So we have the house to ourselves,” he whispered, wrapping his hands around my hips.

I turned out of his grasp and opened the fridge. “Thirsty?” I asked.

“You could say that,” he murmured lustfully. He roughly shut the refrigerator door and pulled me up against him, kissing me hard. Sighing internally, I kissed him back. This is what I was supposed to do, right? Girlfriends were supposed to kiss their boyfriends. I ignored the feelings of uneasiness and did what I was supposed to do.