Set The Town Afire

The Tent (not The Room)

One month later

My friend Axl, the only one I had, had been begging me to accompany her to a festival she wanted to attend.

Her name was quite unusual for a girl, but she wanted to seem mysterious. I never questioned that.

While she occassionally drank - and when she did, she was a heavy drinker - I never had touched alcohol or anything of the sort in my life. And my concert experience from that shitty band who's name I had long since forgotten, hadn't exactly raised my urge to start drinking.

Of course, the festival only was a big excuse for getting wasted and drunk as fuck. Axl got drunk really quick and went off with a girl with boobs the size of my ass, somewhere into the bushes, I guessed.

Without my friend, I had nothing to do there and only stood awkwardly next to a smelly tent that looked like a mild breeze could blow it away any second.

Partying wasn't my thing. Why destroy your brain cells for nothing but embarrassment? I didn't get it. And I also knew else to deal with my personal problems.

I had been innocently sipping on my milkshake - it was banana flavored - when two drunks making out with each other stumbled into me, causing me to fall onto the stupid tent and spill the liquid all over me.
Great, I hated wet clothes.

Those idiots had already moved on, so I had to free me all by myself from the tent and search for another place to spend the evening at. At this point I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be coming home with Axl, she was nowhere near in sight.

But I spotted something else, and it made me curious. I only caught a glimpse of long curly hair, appearing to be deep red in the light of dawn.

Following someone who was at the other end of a huge open air festival place really wasn't fun. I bumped into others more often than I liked and got some other liquids spilled over me, mainly beer though. All because of my stupid clumsiness.

Peeking at the stage, at least as much as my low height allowed in that crowded place, I saw a long-haired band perform. But it was completely different than the one I had seen live before, these guys wore makeup and obviously cared about their fashion, even though I wouldn't refer to it as such.

"Fucking hair metal! Kill those posers!", some drunken thrashers yelled not too far away from me. Better escape from here quickly before anything happens.

But before I could disappear behind another tent, not appearing to be any more trustworthy than the other one, I was being grabbed from behind and being pulled closer to those mad guys.

"Hey Dave, where are you going? I know you hate posers as much as I do -"

Only then did the guy realize that he was grabbing an innocent girl's non-existent boobs.

"Holy... Oh shit, I'm so sorry! Ahahaha, you... you know, it's just that you look like my bandmate.", the brunette giggled awkwardly.

Only then did I recognize him as the bassist from the band with that redhead. He had a friendly face, with adorable round eyes. I felt pity for him because I myself had big round eyes and knew what that meant for being taken serious.

"Really, it's okay, don't worry about it-", I started to put him at ease, but another guy grabbing my hair from behind interrupted me.

For a moment, I just stood there and let it happen without turning around, telling him that he shouldn't dare to touch my hair without my consent ever again. I noticed how people around me were staring at us, me, a girl that clearly didn't belong to any kind of scene and that guy gently stroking my hair whose identity I still didn't know.

But somehow that moment broke. It resulted in me whirling around, almost knocking him over and me angrily staring into light brown eyes.

Note that I never had been fond of brown eyes. They seemed boring to me and I always appreciated the possibility to get lost in blue, green or grey eyes. Just not plain brown ones.

But this guy sure was something. Even though his eyes were red and glassy from alcohol and probably something else, they still perfectly complimented the crowning glory on his head. How was it possible that a human this beautiful could walk the earth?

"I have been hoping to see you again.", he smiled at me. And that was when I felt my heart shatter, tossing out all the negative thoughts I had held towards alcohol, crowded places, strange guys and crazy metalheads.

"Actually, I have as well.", I whispered.

Without asking, he just laid an arm around my body, pulled me closer to him and turned around to leave the anti-poser guys behind, watching us open-mouthed.

"I'm Dave.", he introduced himself.

We were on our way to a tour bus kinda thing, and I already had a feeling as to where this would lead.

"I'm Tiffany."

He looked at me sideways for a moment, then he smirked "More like Davetta."