Rand laughed. He twisted the hoop in his ear. “I want twenty-five cities. I want Sydney. I want to go home.”
She took a deep breath. She wanted to tell him to go without her, go today, but she knew he wouldn’t. He’d had a hundred, a thousand opportunities before this tour came up. It still hurt him too. “Okay.”
“What?” He nearly left his seat.
“I said okay.” Rielle swallowed the muddy taste of rising panic. “You’re right, I’m shit scared about going back, but yeah, all right. Let’s do it.”
Rand grinned, rocked the chair back to its outer limit and folded his arms behind his head. He had a look on his face like he’d just learned Santa was real. “You sure about that?”
“No.”
He laughed, his purple-black hair falling over his eyes. “Twenty-five really great cities, eight months.”
“Sydney.” She sighed. Sydney was thudding rain, slick road, tearing metal. Sydney was screaming and blood and awful silence. Sydney was pain and reality sharper than nightmares. But Rand wanted to go home.
“All right then,” he fist pumped, “twenty-four really great cities, and one really bad memory.”
She tried not to smile, but Rand was having his own personal Christmas morning. “Twenty-three really great cities, and one really bad memory.”
He released his pressure on the seat back and it sprang upright. “Shit, where else do you have a problem with?”
Rielle looked at him sideways. “You can’t call Adelaide a great city.”
He laughed. “Okay, twenty-three really great cities, one overgrown country town and one really bad memory.”
“Put that in the tour bible and I’m there.” She put her feet back on the tabletop. “It is kinda cool, biggest tour we’ve ever done, longest time we’ve ever been on the road in one stretch.”
“Don’t tell me you’re excited now?” Rand put his feet on the table as well.
“I’m too cool to be excited.”
“Yeah right! Wanna call the suits back in?”
“Nah, let ‘em sweat for a while.”
“You were so badly brought up.” He exhaled an exaggerated sigh. “How much do you reckon it’s changed?”
Rielle pulled her feet off the table and climbed on it instead, sitting cross-legged, facing Rand and the pinkish, smoggy haze of an LA afternoon beyond the glass walls of Global Artists Management’s offices. “Sydney?”
“No. The Yarra bloody River.”
“Some things won’t ever change.” She shook her head, pushing a strand of red hair behind her ear, tracing her fingers over the tattoo of a planet and three orbiting stars at her hairline.
Rand climbed on the table as well, stretched out on his back, his full six foot three length. “We survived it, Rie. It’s okay to go back.”
“We did better than survive.”
“Shit yeah, twenty-something city tour.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean maybe if it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be here now.”
Rielle flicked his nose with a fluorescent yellow nail and he made an ‘ow’ sound. “You don’t believe in fate, neither do I. It’s not like there’s some cosmic lottery that gave us a payback.”
Rand rolled his eyes back to look at her. He always knew when she was talking shit—she was doing it now. She might not believe in fate, but she believed in fault and that’s why she didn’t want to go back. Too many if onlys.
He pulled a strand of her hair. “And if we don’t get this tour right, imagine the way the media will hunt us.”
“Does it matter? We can retire rich.” She flicked his nose again.
“Ow! Quit that!”
“Yeah it matters. We never did this to get rich. We did it to eat.”
“But we never have to worry about food in the fridge anymore. We could quit and stay home,” said Rand, closing his eyes.
“Retire at twenty-eight, are you kidding? You’d be dead or in jail within six months if you didn’t have the band.”
“Hardly,” he drawled. “But I would be deadly bored.” He broke into song: “Turning heads wherever you go, whiter and brighter, smiles to die for. Use Macrodent Light.”
“What was that?” Rielle leant down over him so her face was cross-eye close. She deliberately exhaled coffee breath on him.
“Stupid jingle stuck in my head. Who’d want to rhyme ‘brighter’ and ‘die fer’ anyway?” He opened his eyes wide. “Except maybe people with coffee breath.”
The door cracked open and Jonas stuck his head in. “Ready?”
“No,” they chorused, and Jonas grimaced and retreated, closing the door.
“We are ready aren’t we?” asked Rand.
“Yeah, just keeping them keen.” It was only one city for a couple of days. One city. And two dozen after it to help her forget.