In My Hour of Need

Chapter 11

When I woke up, the plane had already arrived in Paris. I bumped Junior in the arm. It was kind of funny, because it always seemed to startle him. He rubbed his sleepy eyes, and turned to me. I was getting used to this thing, him sleeping next to me. "We're here", I said. "Where?" "In Paris". Just as I said "Paris", he was up in less than a second to practically run off the plane. Why wasn't I surprised? Paris, the city of love, isn't that what they call it? Oh, well, I thought, he shouldn't get his hopes up.

We quickly got to our hotel to put our stuff down, then we were all off to different places. I think Chuck went with Jeff to find new clothes... Gee, what a bunch of girls. Anyway, this time our manager had managed to do one thing right, and that was to get us four rooms, instead of two, like he normally did. Finally, I didn't have to share rooms with anyone, and we all know who that would have turned out to be. I entered my room, and started unpacking all my stuff. After about five minutes, Junior came jogging into my room. "What now?", I asked, a 100% completely sure that he had some kind of problem again. He was honestly out of breath, and his room was next door. "My room's filled with rats", he panted. At first I didn't quite believe him, because this hotel looked classy as hell, but then I said: "Junior, you can't handle a couple of rats? I know you're gay, but you're not a girl". Right after I said that, I was afraid I had insulted him, because he didn't answer right away. "I think you should come see yourself", he said, and gestured me to follow him. I did, and I didn't fucking believe what I was looking at. The floor was covered, and I swear to God, completely black, because it was so packed with huge fucking rats. It was the most utterly obnoxious thing I had ever seen in my entire life, and I had seen a lot. "Good God!", I exclaimed, as I spotted some rats on the walls and at the ceiling. I looked back at Junior in disgust, and we went down to the administration to ask for a new room.

"Sorry", they told us in a French accent, "That was our last one". I sighed really heavily. Christ, that probably meant I had to share my room. "What seems to be the problem, sir?", the Frenchman behind the counter asked. "His room is filled with rats", I told him. Like, how hard could it be to get rid of those? It was only like, a couple... The guy went to find another guy, and they talked to eachother in French for a while. "We'll take a look at your problem", he finally said, and then apologized close to two hundred times for not having enough rooms and bla, bla, bla. "But it could take a while, so it would be fine if you could find someone to share rooms with for now". The other guy was sent up to Junior's room to get rid of the rats. Heavens, I knew Junior was going to ask me to share my room, because he was probably too afraid to ask one of our new band members. "Uhm, Dave", he started, "Would you mind if-" "Of course not", I sighed, "Come on".

We went back up to our rooms, where we found Junior's stuff outside his door. It had probably been removed by the guy who was there to fix the rat-issue. Then we went into my room, which was now our room. God, I was so fucking close to having my own room, and now I was stuck with Junior for a week. I was crashing on the couch while he unpacked. He was standing in the middle of the room, fixing his fucking hair. It was surprisingly hot in Paris, but what surprised me more was that Junior brought shit for his hair. He had just put it up in a fucking ponytail. Very metal. And I caught myself in staring at him. What was happening to me? He turned around, and by that catching me in staring. "What?", he asked. I had nothing. "Pretty", I smiled. Oh my god. He looked confused. "Oh, thanks?", he said, "It's just so hot in here". Luckily, he went into the bathroom, so I didn't have to drown in embarrassment in front of him.