“Go do what you’re good at,” I suggested as I felt her hit my back. “Ruining people’s day won’t happen on their own.”
Carron growled low under her breath, causing me to smirk.
We made it outside and then to the park five minutes later before we realized we’d forgotten to get drinks.
“I have a couple of old Cokes in my car,” she suggested, tensing to get up.
I caught her around the waist and pulled her back down to my side. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll eat without it.”
And we did.
We sat there for hours and talked about what we’d do in the next coming weeks. Then that night, I went home and called my realtor friend.
Time to get this show on the road…or get to the show.
CHAPTER 8
The key to eating healthy? Avoid any food that has a TV commercial.
-Simi’s life lessons
SIMI
Charlotte, North Carolina
“You are in the worst fucking mood ever,” Val grumbled.
Val, my sister, who appeared to be a badass, but was really just grumpy to cover up her discomfort with the world around her, was right.
I was in a bad mood. A really bad one.
But I couldn’t help it.
I was just so…mad.
Everything that could go wrong did go wrong at the last stop.
Not to mention, it’d been six weeks since I’d seen a certain someone, and I wasn’t handling it well. In fact, I was handling it so not well that I hadn’t been sleeping, my performances had gotten sloppy, and I was a complete bitch to everyone. Even Keene.
Which made me feel sort of bad. But not bad enough to stop doing it.
“I’m not in a bad mood,” I countered.
Keene, who’d gotten the brunt of my anger this morning—my God, the man had eaten the last goddamn Pop-Tart and left the fucking box in the pantry. Who does that??—snorted.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You keep your snorts to yourself, asshole.”
He held up his hand in surrender. At least the empty one. The other one that was holding my Pop-Tart stayed close to his mouth.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” he muttered, “but for once, Val is right. You’ve been in a bad mood since we left a certain someone.”
That certain someone hadn’t been far from my mind since I’d left him standing in his open front door.
I sighed and pinched my nose. “Today, I’m mad because you decided it would be a great idea to leave an empty box in the cabinet. And secondly, but also very important, those were my chocolate Pop-Tarts, not yours. I bought them literally last week at the store, where y’all assured me you didn’t want any. You went through all of your food, and then you started on mine. And thirdly, I was only able to get one Pop-Tart out of that entire box. Normally, I would be okay with sharing, but you knew what you were goddamn doing when you picked that package up today. You knew damn well and good I’d be mad, and I think you did it because you’re holding a grudge because I wouldn’t cover for you the other night because you wanted to go fuck that woman on our bus.”
Keene closed his mouth because he knew I was right.
The only issue was I’d been covering for him quite a bit over the last month, and I was tired. Ungodly tired.
“And, if you’d cared to even ask, you would know I had a headache last night,” I said.
My headaches weren’t headaches. They were migraines. I took medicine that helped me reduce the number of them I had, but one or two slipped through a month, and when they did, I stayed nauseous and dizzy to the point where I wasn’t allowed to perform on the high stuff if that was the case.
That had actually been Keene’s rule.
Keene winced at my words.
“Was it a bad one?” he asked, sounding regretful.
It would be more accurate to ask when it wasn’t bad. Because it was always bad when I had an episode.
I shrugged. “Not any worse than usual, I guess. I only threw up twice.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry would be you going to get us all breakfast,” Val suggested.
Keene shot her a look that clearly said, “Yeah, right.”
This was our first day back after a much-needed break—usually, we either drove or were busy setting up on the days between our circus destinations.
Keene had driven all night—the shift he’d wanted me to take over—and had parked us in the middle of nowhere North Carolina, where our next show would be held for the next four days.
The last two weeks had been stressful. And not even because we’d been working, but because I’d had three migraines in that time.
I had about eight thousand things to do, and one of those was practice.
So that was my goal for this morning, even though the last thing I wanted to do was do anything strenuous after yesterday.
But the circus didn’t wait for anyone, not even me.
I went to the changing room in our bus—which was really the only bedroom we had that we’d made into a closet for everyone—and got dressed for the day.
I made sure to tiptoe quietly past all the beds that were still occupied, then headed outside to where the circus was about to come alive around us.
I was up with the birds usually, and today was no different.
I was one of the first ones in the entire camp to be up, and I waved at the few people that I saw.
One of which wasn’t the person that I was looking for.
I frowned and made a circle of the camp, noting that Mary was nowhere to be found.
Mary was the one in charge of getting my silk hung, and not only was she absent, but so was my silk, which was usually up by this point.
“Has anyone seen Mary?” I called out.
I hadn’t seen Mary since we’d locked up the trailers and moved to our newest location.
“No,” Rosie called. “But I can help you get it set up really quick before I go feed the boys.”
She had a large dead rat in her hand for the snake and two very large bowls of meat.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “And yes, that trailer.”
Rosie had just gotten the lock off of the trailer and had popped one of the handles when the smell hit us.
A few other people joined us, needing their own stuff out of this particular trailer.
“Oh shit,” I heard someone say.
I looked over and saw Rosie looking at me with horror in her eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Mary,” she whispered. “Mary is in there.”
That’s when the full intensity of the smell hit me.
Just then, Mary fell out of the trailer face-first onto the ground, as if she’d been standing at the door waiting to get out, but that opportunity had never come for her.
“Go get Keene,” I said as I covered my mouth and nose.
But it did no good.
I sprinted away, running as fast as my legs would take me, and threw up in the bushes closest to the lot.
“Keene’s gone,” someone said. “He pulled out of the lot like his ass was on fire. Apparently, Val told him he needed to go get breakfast.”
I cursed my rotten luck.
“What’s going on?” I heard Roberto ask. Then he said, “Oh, fuckin’ A.”