Her Song

24 - Land of the Freeloader

Jetlag never gets old.

Oh no wait, yes it does. It's always a pain in the arse and take it from me even flying in a premium cabin never seems to make it any better. For me at least. Josh and Ace were bouncing off the walls like they'd spent the entire flight plugged into a recharge dock. You'd think considering my father owned an airline I'd be the one who had the ability to strut off an aircraft refreshed and ready to go.

Yeah, not so much.

My childhood holidays may have been spent in locations considered luxurious by even the ridiculously over the top standards of my school mates but I'd never mastered the art of looking camera ready when I stepped off a plane. My mother even had a section in her wardrobe specifically for international air travel with a special sub-section for private jets. Francesca Beaumaris-De La Fontaine-Sebastiani-Howard, my mother had never had a husband whose name or money she didn't keep, had never suffered from post flight swollen feet or a general case of the blahs after international travel. Maybe it was a result of the time she'd spent as cabin crew but I was inclined to think it was just a general predisposition to be suited to flying. Kind of like jetsetter Darwinism. Minty seemed to have inherited the same ability even though she had no blood relation to my mother.

So there I was, just another zombie in the hideous, never-ending immigration queue. Ace and Josh bounced on their toes beside me as Gray navigated the trolley carrying our hand luggage which included the couple of guitars that would be needed for the low key New York VIP show that had been added at the last minute. Van, the lucky holder of a US passport, had shuffled off into a far speedier queue that meant he could find and retrieve our checked luggage. Truth be told I could have joined him as I'd already previously entered the USA using current passport and visa but I felt that it would be a wise idea for me to keep an eye on the other guys. We all shuffled forward, seriously it was like the Thriller video but without the choreography, until eventually we'd offered up our fingerprints, had our photos taken, our visas checked and basically shared the most intimate details of our lives with Uncle Sam's border representative.

Glancing around to ensure that neither Ace nor Josh – Gray had stuck closely to my side - had been singled out for secondary screening and an intimate date with a pair of rubber gloves I trudged off in search of Van and our luggage. I found him with a pile of luggage at his feet as he tried to stack it all onto a trolley. He was looking more gorgeous than should be fair after a long flight. His threadbare Ramones t-shirt clung to his muscles as he heaved bag upon bag and the way his soft and slightly loose jeans – he'd informed me that if you were a guy and you wanted to step of a flight with your balls intact you went for your oldest and softest pair of jeans – cupped his arse should have been illegal. It certainly wouldn't have been welcome on Tumblr what with the new porn rules. Even his hair looked artfully tousled where mine had devolved into some kind of nest – customs would probably detain me under suspicion of smuggling small animals. Around us people hurried on and fought their way to retrieve their bags from where they'd all been stacked off to the side of the carousel - long queues at immigration led to increased separation anxiety when it came to your suitcases – before making a desperate break for the exit, ready to do battle in the fight for a taxi.

"Hey Duchess," Van looked up at me with a smile that helped to dust away some of the meh I was feeling. He reached out and caught me around the waist before pressing a quick kiss to my lips. Beside me Gray grunted.

"So, this is America huh?" Ace glanced around. He didn't sound impressed. I'd been through countless airports in my lifetime and it was a universal fact that no matter how modern and slick every other area of the airport the customs, baggage and arrivals halls were universally grey and institutional. They never gave a welcoming first impression of a country or city.