Page 9 of Rock Giant

“Or when I had that three-day bender with the chick from Heidelberg and followed it with a blowjob from that lass from New Zealand—”

“And her sister, or was it her cousin, two days later?Think you must have hit the bass playing jackpot that week.”

“Nah, it’s just my natural charm and charisma.”

“Stop grossing my fiancée out.”Nash clouted them both around the head, which took a bit of effort given they were both way taller.It silenced them though, not that that was necessarily a good thing.It left space for her to think.

Jez and Rune had been a fixture way longer than her and Nash, and they’d done the whole long-distance thing on and off for ages too.Was this what she could expect in the future?

Nash dropped an awkward kiss on the top of her head as he pulled her away from Lee and claimed her hand.“Fuck me, you’re actually wearing it.”Nash lifted their clasped hands, so that the sun scintillated in the oversized rock on her finger.

“I resent that.I always wear it.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, I need to let all your new fans out there know what the score is, don’t I?”

They reached the bus, and the security girl who’d given her a hard time earlier scowled at her as she handed over her lanyard.

“On which subject, guys, Jo and I are getting hitched tonight.”

“Handfasted,” she elaborated, in case they thought the actual wedding was this evening.

“You’re seriously hitching yourself to this tosser?”Lee quipped.“Nah, I’m pleased for you, course I am.”He slung an arm over her shoulder again.“Well, here it is.The old home on wheels.What do you think?”

“Wow.”Hopefully, she’d instilled the appropriate amount of enthusiasm into her voice.Behind the driver’s perch, the space opened out into a curved seating area, at the rear of which a cupboard-sized kitchen consisting of a microwave, fridge, and a cooker no bigger than her camping stove.The layout was nothing like the one on Bertha.Didn’t stop her imagining a certain figure charging towards her with soap suds in his hair and the titchiest towel in existence secured around his hips.

“Bunks are back here.”Balin opened the door to the rear section.A dark space with a single thin horizontally set rectangular window.There’d been a full-sized bed in this area on the Black Halo bus.

“Eight bunks?”she said.

“Yeah, and nine of us, ten with you.”Balin shrugged like that didn’t make for a mathematical inconsistency.“Us, you, the driver, our guitar tech, the tour manager, and two roadies stroke security bods.”

“This one’s ours.”Nash patted the bed second up on the left.

“Great,” she squeaked.She was definitely going to have to persuade him to spend the night under canvas.If she stayed here, they’d be squashed together like corpses in a coffin.Plus—a tickle in her nose made her sneeze—beneath the blossomy scent of air freshener, there was an odour of blokey smells and dirty laundry.It didn’t seem like anyone had thought to install any ventilation in the place or do any laundry.No skylight either to allow access onto the roof.She backed out of the space and settled on the oddly curved seating.

“So, what time’s your ceremony?”Lee asked.He opened the fridge, thus confirming her suspicion that it was packed with beers with a few food items tucked in around the cans and bottles like an afterthought.Having dished them out, Lee lifted one of the seats to replace them with cans from their stash.

“Quarter to eleven,” Nash confirmed.“Figured it’d still be quiet-ish.Tonight’s headliners will still be on stage.People’s attention will be pointed in that direction, not at us.”He claimed Jodi’s hand and sat right by her.“It’s our moment.Not something we need to be sharing with the masses.”

“There’ll be other couples too though, right?”she asked.

He settled back more comfortably, legs falling apart.Maybe because he wasn’t blessed in the height department, he always spread himself out.Another reason sharing his bunk might not work.“A few, maybe, I guess.But they’re going to be focused on what they’re doing, not that Curtis Nash is saying ‘I do’ to his fiancée.”

“Is that what we say?”

Nash wriggled about so that he could fish something out of his back pocket.It turned out to be a folded piece of paper with a loose order of the ceremony and some example oaths.“We can amend them, make them personal to us.They don’t have to be exactly as written.”He’d already jotted a few such amendments in the margins, reducing his vows to:

These are the hands of your future husband, strong and full of love for you, that are holding yours, as you promise to love, cherish and obey him today, tomorrow, and forever.She smudged the pencil marks with her thumb, obliterating the obey part.It gave her shivers, reminding her too much of her father’s dictatorial approach that had blighted her teenage years.

“You don’t like that part?”

“It’s a bit old-fashioned.We’re entering into a partnership, we should be making the same vows, not setting it up to be lopsided from the start.”

“Guess,” he muttered, before stuffing the paper back into his pocket.“We can figure it out.”

Balin announced he was going to chill in his bunk, and Lee muttered something about tracking down Jez, and left, taking his beer with him.Nash snuggled her closer.“Just us left.”