“Taco Bell!”
“NO!” JC called from the back of the
bus.
“Oh, come on!” Justin urged,
whining just a little.
“What’s up?” Chris emerged from his bunk.
“Taco Bell!” Justin repeated. “Next exit!”
“Well . . .” Chris pretended to
think about it.
“NO!” JC repeated, putting down his magazine. “Absolutely not.”
“Awww, c’mon Chasez! What’da you got against The Bell?” Justin
was grinning now. He knew he was going
to get his way. He always did.
“It’s almost one in the morning,
man.” They had played a show in Dallas
that night, and were headed west to Tucson.
“Aren’t you tired?” Dumb
question, JC thought. First, Justin
was never tired, not even when Wade tried to beat him into submission by having
him do “Bye Bye Bye” over and over and over in rehearsal. Secondly, none of them were ever tired after
a show, JC included. They were usually
all hopped up on adrenaline and the rush of listening to thousands of screaming
fans. It would be at least three before
the first of them came close to falling asleep. Chris usually was the first to doze off. “Too old,” Justin always said. “Fuck off,” Chris answered most nights, his
eyes closed on the couch.
“Nope,” Justin was hopping up and down gleefully.
“If you all want to go, I’d better
radio the other bus, so we can get off the highway,” John, the driver for the
three of them, stated, one hand already reaching for the ham radio.
Justin looked at JC
expectantly. Chris snickered.
“Lance is gonna kick your ass,” JC
said.
“Like he could,” Justin sniggered
out of the corner of his mouth.
“This was all your idea, wasn’t it,
Timberlake?” Lance bounced down from
the last step of the bus he shared with Joey.
He was using what the other guys had come to call The Voice, the one where
his voice lowered into his true bass range, and he sounded low and
threatening. You could almost see the
air vibrate around his throat. Lance,
Lance who talked business with the directors and who read whenever he got a
free moment, who laughed at Chris and Joey as they argued over the Playstation,
never seemed violent or threatening at all.
Except when he used The Voice.
It made JC want to take a step back, or maybe get back on the bus and
pretend to be asleep on his bunk. Even
Joey did the little shrug thing with his shoulders, the one where he looked a
little like he was adjusting his shoulder blades, when he heard Lance tonight.
Justin barely flinched. “Lance, it’s Taco Hell. How could we pass that up? Besides, I’m hungry.”
“There’s food on the bus.” Lance was wearing an old, faded gray t-shirt
and jeans. He had sandals on his long
feet.
“Lighten up, Bass. C’mon, I’ll buy you a beef taco.” Justin
turned and walked toward the fast food place.
It was located in a tiny parking lot, a little lone building amongst a
sea of asphalt, like an oasis in a desert.
Aside from the Texaco across the street, it was the only sign of
civilization in sight. Chris and Joey
went to follow Justin into the restaurant, Joey body checking Lance on the
shoulder playfully as he walked past him.
JC walked up to Lance. “You okay?”
The only lamp in the parking lot cast an eerie glow around them.
“Sure.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Lance winked at JC. “Just tryin’ to keep that infant in
line. He’s too big for his britches
sometimes.”
JC smiled at Lance’s choice of
words, and at the slow drawl he used when he said them. “I just know how much you hate stopping the
bus once you finally get settled.”
Lance suffered from motion sickness, which was at its worst when they first
got back on the buses after being in a city for a few days, and Lance had to
get used to the swaying and the rocking all over again. In the beginning, when they’d first started
to tour, when he hadn’t been used to it at all, it had been terrible. He lost about 30 pounds in as many days,
the rehearsals and the touring and the motion sickness all combining to make
him very tired, and very sick. His mom
probably would have ended up pulling him out of the band and making him come
home, except that Lance never told her how bad off he was, and always tried to
call her when he sounded relatively human.
Lance would spend hours and hours in the bathroom on the bus, Joey and
Chris taking turns sitting talking to him, or handing him wet, cool washcloths
or stroking his head as he kneeled on his knees, heaving over the toilet, even
when there was nothing left to bring up.
JC would be able to hear the retching from his bunk, and he hated the
sound, hated what it was doing to Lance, wanted to close his eyes or turn up
his walkman really loud, but he never did either, just laid there on his back,
listening to poor Lance behind his head, hearing him giggle weakly every once
in a while when Joey or Chris was being especially funny, or obnoxious.
“Yeah, well . . .” Lance trailed off
and shrugged. “I’m not nearly as sick
anymore. I just won’t eat
anything.” He grinned.
“Yeah,” JC smiled in return and
tilted his head back in understanding.
The two walked towards the restaurant, leaving John and David, the two
drivers, smoking cigarettes and stretching their legs in the parking lot.
The fast food workers had no idea
what hit them. The three guys didn’t
recognize the band at all, but they were less than amused at suddenly having
five customers at 1:30 in the morning.
The cashier glared at Justin as he rang up his order. Chris had already ordered and was unwrapping
his food at a table near the front.
Joey gestured with a thumb at JC and Lance, “These fellas are mad that
we’re making them work, aren’t you?” Joey asked them. Worker #2 practically threw Joey’s soft tacos onto his tray. Joey grinned. He was just trying to be friendly, JC knew, but sometimes he just
came off like an asshole. This was one
of those times.
JC stepped up behind Joey in
line. Suddenly a steak soft taco and a
Pepsi sounded really good to him. He
looked at Lance, “Sure you don’t want anything?”
Lance shook his head. “Just a Sprite, okay?”
JC grimaced and waved a hand toward
the menus above the counter. “Owned by
Frito-Lay, La. Only Pepsi products
here.”
“Damn.” Being a southerner, Lance was a born and bred Coke drinker. “Okay.
Slice, or whatever they call it.
Pepsi my ass.” He handed JC two
dollars out of his pocket and went to sit next to Joey. JC placed the order with a rather snarly
looking sixteen year old.
When he came up to the tables the
group was occupying, Chris was ragging Justin about Britney again.
“So, you can tell me, man, are they
fake or what?”
“Shut up, Kirkpacktrick.”
“No, really, what do they feel like,
man? Do they feel different?”
“Shut up, Chris.”
“I’m not gonna tell anyone, Jup.”
JC watched Lance fold his lips over
the straw to his drink, and tried not to stare. His eyes flicked up to Joey, who was trying not to choke on his
taco, he was laughing so hard.
“How would I know if they feel
different?”
“Well, you’ve touched ‘em, right?”
“Yeah.” Justin sounded a little offended.
“And, you’ve touched other ones,
right?”
“Yeah.” Justin sounded plenty miffed now.
“So, you should be able to compare,
right?”
“I guess.”
“So . . .” Chris prompted.
Joey was out and out laughing now.
“So what?” Justin asked.
Chris sighed.
Joey’s arms were wrapped around his
stomach, he was laughing so hard.
“Shut up, Joe,” Justin elbowed Joey
in the side.
“Well, are they, meaning Britney’s,
as, um, uh, squishy, or not?”
“What would that prove?”
Chris’ forehead hit the table with a
soft bang.
“What?” Justin asked.
JC giggled, and Lance rolled his
eyes.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom,”
Lance announced.
“Need help there, Bass?” Joey managed to gasp out in between
continuing fits of laughter.
“No, I think I’ve got it covered,
Fatone, but you’ll be the first one I’ll call if I need help.” Lance smiled and
pushed his chair back from the table with a prolonged squeak on the floor. JC turned and watched Lance walk away, saw
how his jeans were worn away in places on his thighs, knees, and ass. He caught the glares of the three kids
behind the counter, and turned back around.
Joey raised an eyebrow at him, which JC ignored.
“Aren’t they all supposed to be
squishy?” Justin was asking.
Lance was washing his hands when JC
walked into the small men’s bathroom.
There were two sinks in front of a mirror on his right, and two stalls,
one regular and one handicapped, on the left.
Lance turned off the water and shook his hands out one last time,
sending small droplets spraying everywhere.
“What are they talking about now?”
Lance asked.
“Same thing, mostly,” JC laughed, in
spite of himself. “Chris is, um, trying
to explain some things to Justin.”
“Good lord.”
“Yeah.”
JC looked around again. “No urinals?”
“Nope—weird, huh?”
“Yeah.
JC looked at the floor.
“Floor’s pretty gross, actually,”
Lance commented.
“Yeah.” JC said.
Lance smiled, and reached out to tip
JC’s chin up until he made eye contact.
“Is that all you can say?”
“Yeah.” JC smiled.
Lance leaned in and kissed JC,
softly, his lips barely suckling JC’s before he pulled away.
“Better?” Lance asked.
“Yeah,” JC said and laughed.
Lance laughed, too, and wrapped his
arms around JC’s neck, pulling him closer.
JC’s hands automatically fell onto Lance’s hips. “Could we try a different phrase, here,
please?” Lance was using a low voice again, the words coming rumbling out of
his throat; it was the voice JC had come to associate with warmth and home and
hands and soft, wet, kisses, and the one that had nothing do with The Voice at
all.
“How about thank God you came in
here because I’ve wanted to kiss you so badly all night that my teeth hurt?”
Lance leaned in and kissed JC again,
his fingers curling softly through JC’s long hair.
“That’ll do, Josh” Lance whispered
against JC’s lips in the other voice, his eyes catching JC’s before JC closed
his eyes and covered Lance’s lips with his own.
Ten minutes later, Joey and Chris
exchanged a look.
“Look like you’ll be switchin’ buses
tonight, Fatone.”
“Yep,” Joey said, unperturbed,
taking a bite out of his last fajita.
“How come?” Justin asked.
Joey burst out laughing again.
“And what the hell happened to Lance
and JC? They fall in or somethin’?”
Chris joined Joey in laughter.
Justin glared at them. “What?” he asked.
“Shut up,” he pouted.
