Camera Shy || Ben Barlow

Twenty Two

Dani wasn't allowed to complain today. For the past three weeks, we'd let him sit there and whine about his leg and boss us around as though we were all obligated to basically live his life for him just because his leg was minorly injured, as Fil had said. It wasn't a minor injury. It was broken, but that's an irrelevant detail. 

Today was not Dani's day. Today was my day. She's waited twenty entire years for this day, Dani, Fil had been telling him all morning. Do not ruin it. 

I'd have happily let him ruin it for me, in all honesty, but the best night of my life was; literally just about to happen; my first ever concert. I'd spent ages researching concerts taking place on this date, because the boys had only shown me a distorted photocopied version of the tickets and refused to tell me who they were seeing - I'd concluded that it absolutely had to be All Time Low. No way around it. 

So here we were, in a (too) small minibus - so as to not draw unnecessary attention to ourselves - on a motorway somewhere in Europe. I couldn't see a thing, which mostly just added to my impatient anger. I could literally feel Dani drawing on my arm and fully regretting agreeing to sit next to him for the entire journey. West was on the other side of me and I'd hoped he'd at least make attempts to stop Dani from ruining my skin, but he just sat there and laughed because apparently you let Dani draw on me all the time, Essa. 

I don't think West understood that Dani, before he broke his leg, would have squashed me for trying to stop him having any kind of fun. 

About twenty minutes into the little roadtrip, the minibus stopped and I felt one of the boys removing my seat belt and tugging on my arm. 

"That was quick," I mumbled.

"Don't be so ridiculous, Essa." I could practically feel the eye roll as Dani (presumably) swatted my arm. "We're stopping for a Burger King."

"I- can I take this ridiculous blindfold off, yet?" The blindfold was one of those ridiculous sleeping masks that pretentious suburban "soccer mom"s wore in terrible American teen movies. I really hoped it wasn't pink. 

"NO!" All the boys rushed to shout at once, three of them (at least) grabbing my arms to stop me. 

"Alright, chill," I said, trying my best not to fall out of the bus as (I think) West basically dragged me by my wrist against my will; I had not signed up for this. I just wanted to see All Time Low perform. Right now.

"So," Dani said, excitedly. I had no idea where anyone was except Dani and Fil at this point; Dani was somewhere behind me and Fil had a solid grip on my elbow. God knows who was pushing Dani's chair. "We've made some special arrangements with the, uh, performer's management and got all access passes!" All I could think in my head was I'm going to meet All Time Low in a non-work setting. Jack Barakat was going to talk to me. 

"We're skipping the queues," Fil said, "and going straight backstage. We've got quite a bit of time with hi- them."

Ben slapped his hands over my ears a few times between the car and the door, apologising every time and promising me free ice cream (which the boys all protested at; apparently it was their ice cream he'd offered me) but other than that, the little journey had gone better than expected. By that, I meant no one had recognised any of the boys and none of them had fallen over. Hallelujah. 

"Are we there yet?" I whined, feeling like Dani whenever we were on the road for more than a couple of hours at a time (which was normally every time we travelled anywhere).

"Don't be such a child, Es," Dani mocked, knowing full well that he was an impatient seven year old stuck in an attractive adult body. 

"At least you can see," I snapped, feeling the urge to cross my arms and stamp my foot like an angry toddler; I restrained myself because I knew my boyfriend was somewhere behind me and I knew he'd never let me live it down - the jokes would be endless.