Page 111 of Hard Rock Tease

The setup was pretty swanky for an intern.

A sudden thought occurred to me. Butterflies took wing in my stomach.

“Deena… I’m not sharing with the band, am I?”

“Of course. How else will you be able to chronicle their every move?”

I tried to keep the butterflies from spewing out of my mouth. Not only was I following the band around, I was going to be in the exact same bus as them. Alone, with Jayce, for weeks at a time.

I wished to god I hadn’t packed my fuzzy pajamas printed with bunnies and baby ducks. Hopefully Deena was right and we’d rarely have to sleep on the bus overnight.

To distract myself from my nervous stomach, I started snapping pictures of the interior. That was the kind of thing fans would like to see, eventually. I couldn’t post the pictures yet, but once the word was out that Feral Silence was on tour, everyone would want to know how the band was traveling. The more luxurious, the more successful our fans would think we were.

We wouldn’t want them to think we were spending too much money, though. We needed our fans to believe we still needed their support, that we hadn’t yet made it to the big leagues. There were always fans who gave up on their favorite groups when they got too popular, and we didn’t want that to happen yet. We still had a long way to go.

I snorted inwardly at myself. I was already thinking in terms of “our” and “we” as if I was part of the band. I couldn’t help it. If I was going to be the voice of the band, I had to think of myself as one of them. It would make their connection to their fans that much stronger.

Since I was the first person on the band’s tour bus, I had all the time in the world to explore, but aside from taking photos to post online, I was too nervous. It was too much like ransacking a stranger’s house.

Instead, I sat on a hard chair at the small dining table near the back, playing with both my phones, flipping them over and over in my hands, one in each. My crossed legs jiggled nervously, waiting for everyone else to arrive. Would they be annoyed at having to share their space with me? Four people on one bus had to be cramped enough. Add one more and it might make the place claustrophobic.

I was in the middle of a silent contest between my right hand and left hand, seeing how fast I could flip my phones, when a notification popped up. I had set up two types of alerts. One was for general notifications, whenever anyone online happened to mention the band in passing. The other was for direct alerts, letting me know when someone was sending a message directly to the band. It was the same setup I had with my own personal accounts.

I only had the alerts set up for a few hours before I realized I could ignore most of them. There was a lot of squealing fangirl praise that didn’t need a response.

I had thought out a few good strategies based on what I did for my AudioAiley persona. Every so often I would pick one of Feral Silence’s fans at random and write back. They would no doubt freak out when that happened, unable to believe their idols were speaking with them directly. That would cause a flurry of posts from other fans hoping for the same thing. On my own accounts, I always waited a few days before reaching out again, waiting until the furor died down before igniting the flames again.

I figured that same strategy would work with the band, only a thousand times more so. After all, Feral Silence was a rock band with hordes of fans. I was just another music reviewer, albeit one with a bit more of a following than most.

I swiped the screen to open the message, but it was standard fangirl squealing. I could ignore it.

There was a commotion near the front of the bus, and I sat up straight. Who would be the first one on?

Jayce’s head popped up as he clambered up the stairs. He paused when he saw me, an almost pleased look lighting up his face. Then his gaze dropped to the phones in my hand. He pressed his lips together and flopped onto the closest sofa, as far away from me as he could get without leaving the bus.

“Good morning!” I smiled brightly.

“So this is what Deena meant when she said you’d be following us around.” Jayce tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

For all that he was in the public eye, for all those heated stares he’d thrown my way, it sure did seem like Jayce dreaded working with me. I supposed I wouldn’t be too happy with a stranger following me around to share my every move with the world either. I wondered how he was going to handle having a film crew tailing him. Maybe I could convince him I wouldn’t be an imposition.

“I didn’t know I’d be sharing the bus with you until this morning. Just tell me if I get in the way.”

“Sure,” he murmured.

Draping his arms over the back of the sofa, Jayce slouched down, spreading his legs. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. I couldn’t see them clearly from that distance, but I knew they were a warm brown. I’d seen them shine with every expression under the sun. Joy, passion, fury, sorrow. On stage, Jayce held nothing back. He gave everything he had to his audience and they worshipped him for it.

I had seen flashes of something similar yesterday, but this morning he was more subdued than I’d expected. He acted different now that he knew we were colleagues than when he’d thought I was a fan.

It shouldn’t have surprised me to learn he was different off stage. Every celebrity assumed some sort of public persona, some type of alter ego. No one acted the exact same way in private as they did in public.

Was Jayce worried I would expose too much of his inner self to the world?

I felt bad thinking about it. Jayce had to perform; he had to be “on” every minute of the day, acting the part of the cocky rock star, and here I was invading the precious few moments when he could just be himself.

“Thanks.”

I was brought back to myself with Jayce’s rough voice.