Limbo

A Little Something Extra

DAWN:

      "Well, that was... enlightening," my Aunt Gwen says, as we walk out the door of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. 

      "I have to agree that it was pretty interesting, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'enlightening', hon," Jed responds.

      "I wasn't referring to the displays, I was talking about the little mob scene as we were getting ready to leave," she answers. Turning to look at Ash, she queries, "Does this happen every time you go somewhere?"

      "No, not every time, but it is fairly frequent," he admits. "It's my own damn fault this time, I should have just left my shades on. Nobody was really paying attention before I took 'em off, since I'm wearing a hoodie."

      "Too bad we were already in the lobby, or you could have just stood really still and pretended to be one of the wax figures," Lily snickers.

      "Nah, these kids were actually pretty cool. At least this batch was fairly respectful, and didn't get too out of control, so it wasn't that bad. And we still have a couple of hours before I have to go back for soundcheck, so is there anything else that anyone wants to do before then?"

      "Can we get something to eat?" Lily questions. "We've been out doing stuff since like eight o'clock, and it's almost one now. We've been to the street market, saw the big clock, and now the museum, so if we don't get lunch now, we won't have time before you have to go do your show stuff."

      "I'm gonna second that one, love," I chime in. "I wouldn't mind having a little something myself."

      "Well, since you're the birthday girl, whatever you want to do is fine with me," he announces, wrapping his arm around me to give me a quick squeeze, and a kiss on my temple. "What are you in the mood for?"

      "I'm pretty okay with anything. And after what happened last night, I think I'm gonna hand that choice off."

      A rather sheepish look passes across his face, and he nods, turning to look at my aunt. "Yeah, that would probably be for the best, I suppose. And again, sorry about the curry, I didn't even think about it being a problem."

      "You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, Ash," she assures him. "It looked wonderful, and smelled even better, but apparently my opinion doesn't really count right now. And it seems that my little stowaway is telling me that we're in the mood for pasta today. Linguine with clam sauce sounds absolutely heavenly right now."

      "In that case, I know exactly where we need to go," Ash informs us, and proceeds to wave down a taxi. He gets one to stop, we all get in, and he tells them where we want to go. I snuggle against his shoulder as the driver makes his way through the streets, glancing out the window, and occasionally snapping a picture with my phone whenever Ash points out a landmark, or I see something that I find particularly interesting.

      Just before he left to go back on tour, he informed me that he'd arranged for me to come out and spend a few days on the road with him, so we could be together for my birthday. And during one of his "work errands" he had also gone to discuss the idea with Jed and Aunt Gwen, and offered to fly them out with me, so I could spend my birthday with them, too. And since it coincided with Lily's Spring Break at school, and would give them an opportunity to sort of have the honeymoon trip they didn't get to take because of all the craziness going on when they actually got married, they had agreed to the idea. We put together a plan to meet up with the band in England, where they'd scheduled a couple of days downtime to get past the jet lag before tonight's show, and all travel together to France. After the Paris show, Lily and I are gonna tag along to the shows in Vienna, Berlin, and Copenhagen, and let Aunt Gwen and Jed have a few days to themselves, then we'll fly back to meet them in Paris, and the four of us will go home together while the band does their Asian and Australian shows. We were all pretty confident that we had every possible contingency covered, but then, three days ago, it almost seemed like we were gonna have to pull the plug.