Shit.
Without knowing where anything is, I pull open drawers in a search for cutlery. There are too many drawers. One seems to be devoted to various lengths, colors and thicknesses of rope. Eventually I find a whole bunch of knives in what must be the cutlery drawer — untidy and in disarray, a complete contrast to the gleaming countertops I’d been admiring before.
But now is not the time to criticize their organization skills. It’s the time to criticize mine.
Oh God.
I jam the knife into the toaster, aware that this is probably breaking a hundred health and safety rules. Gently, I try to pry the toast out between knife and grate. Smoke is starting to billow from the toaster, and I try to pretend — through my coughing — that this is not happening to me.
“Come out here, you little shit,” I mutter, stabbing the toast with the point of the knife. I get so far then it tumbles back into the grate.
“Are you kidding me, big guy?” Again, I pierce the toast and try to draw it upward — but in the intervening minutes, the toaster has become a heater and the outside metallic casing burns my palm. I yowl in agony as more plumes of smoke flood into my face, making my eyes water.
The door to my left slams open and suddenly there is the absolute shriek of an alarm.
My last thought as I’m dragged out the kitchen, my hand still clutching the knife, is, This is all my fault, isn’t it?
AS THE FIRE ALARM CONTINUES its incessant wail, I find myself being ushered off the bus.
“Off, off, off! Everyone off!” Gary the driver is having none of this. He directs me and the guy who dragged me — one of the band members but despite memorizing their names and faces on flashcards, I can’t remember which — to the exit.
We step onto wet concrete. The band member whose name I can’t remember extends an arm out to me as I step off. The step is high so I grab his hand gratefully. In the warm enclosure of his palm, my skin stings from the burn it received earlier. I try not to wince.
It’s freezing. Rain drizzles onto my thin pajamas.
Behind me, the other band members grumble as they jump off the bus. One yawns almost as loud as the alarm, and wraps a blanket tight around himself. Conor, I tell myself, recognizing his thick red hair. They’re all wearing dark, heavy-looking dressing gowns and fluffy bed socks. It’s almost sweet — and jarring to see, given how often they’re presented lounging in high fashion on the covers of glossy magazines. The dressing gowns cover their bare legs, unlike me who’s shivering to death in cheap cat pajamas that stretch to mid-thigh if I pull them down.
“Is this the part of my dream where I’m abducted and taken to a cat café?” Conor asks, staring at my pajama top as he wraps his dressing gown tighter around himself. “Because for the record, I’d be totally down with that.”
It’s like the strangest fever dream when famous band member after famous band member leaps onto the ground beside me. I can’t quite get my head around it — these faces I’ve seen before on TV, on the internet, all over the damn place. I don’t even dare look at Adam; I don’t think I could if I wanted to. And part of me really does want to...
Seeing him in the flesh had been like a punch to my heart.
No matter how old I get, sometimes I’ll always be a twelve-year-old girl crushing on a boy.
Windows burst open and streaky gray smoke curls out into the air. After a moment, the alarm stops. It takes a while for me to acknowledge this because its echo still rings in my ears.
“Thank fuck for that,” Tarek growls. He glances over at me, no doubt to shoot me some kind of warning look. “Nice dagger,” he says instead, nodding at the knife I’m still wielding like the world’s worst assassin. “Were you planning on using it on us?”
The dark-haired guy who helped me off the bus glares at him. “She was obviously making toast.”
“Yeah, well, keep this up and she’ll be toast.”
I quash the urge to tell him to take a hike; instead, shamefaced, I stare down at my sodden feet.
Gary, with his seven-foot bulk, strides down the bus and graces the entrance. He’s holding a pair of metallic tongs — which grip what looks like a rectangular slice of charcoal.
“For the newbies among us,” he says in a delicate voice, thrusting the charred toast in my direction. “The toaster is out of bounds unless Toasting For Dummies has been studied thoroughly.”
“To be fair, there’s a knack to it,” Adam says. “You have to hold it down hard and keep your fingers there.”
My head desperately tries to compute this statement as anything other than extreme porn from Adam Tyndall. Hold it down hard and keep your fingers there are two relatively innocuous statements that, coming from his deep voice, have the ability to render me utterly speechless.
There is silence, as though they’re waiting for me to acknowledge this as common-sense advice and not porn. Jerkily, I nod my head in his direction, still unable to look him in the eye.
I hear him sigh in response.
Finally, Gary lets us board the bus. As he settles behind the wheel, muttering about insurance and paperwork, a horrible thought overtakes me. Even though my feet are damp and frozen, and Adam gestures at me to go first, I wait till the end to board.
“MCM won’t hear about this, will they?” I quietly ask Gary. The doors whoosh shut behind me.
His eyebrows rise high into his bald head. “Endangering five of the highest-paid music stars on the planet and asking for my silence?”
“N-No, not asking,” I say quickly.
He frowns. “Demanding?”
“No!” Man, this hasn’t gone as well as I’d wanted. “I was just checking—”
“Because I’d be delighted not to waste a day filling in paperwork over a broken toaster.”
I close my mouth with a snap. What?
“All this?” He gestures to the digital clock above him with its bright red digits. “Just a dream.” And then he winks at me. I don’t know who he’s trying to convince, me or him, but I’ll take his word for it. “Go back to bed, princess.”
Confused, I stagger down the aisle as the bus drives off. My wet feet splodge across the carpet. I’m dripping wet and shivery. No princess has ever looked this bad.
When I reach my bunk, there’s someone already there.
The dark-haired guy whose name I can’t remember. Damn.
He’s holding a stack of luxurious soft-looking towels. I smile at him gratefully, touched. The warmth looks so inviting in my bedraggled state.
“Thought you could do with these,” he murmurs. His voice is soft and sweet, and there’s a gentleness to him in a way the others aren’t.
I wish I could remember his name. This is so bad... I recognize him from photographs, but he’s probably the least well-known member of the group. He’s the one who’s always getting mixed up with another member. Is he Leon or Seth?
Standing in front of him now, I don’t understand why. There’s something striking about him — the dark wing of hair that falls across one of his piercing blue eyes. There’s an intellect in his gaze that takes me by surprise. If he weren’t a boy band member, I imagine he wouldn’t look out of place at a lecture on art history or something.