Chapter Two
Wind sat by herself in the corner of the dressing room, listening to the music coming from the stage. Sarah was front row centre screaming to her heart’s content and Aries was asleep on the couch across from her. There was one more song to go and they were done, glory be to God.
Isaac stumbled into the room and came three inches from sitting on Aries. He sighed.
“That is not a good place to be sleeping, Aries,” he mumbled, but picked her up anyway. Wind watched as he carried her out of the room, making way for a group of screaming girls, and Sarah trying to push her way through them. They squeezed into the room and stared at Wind.
“How the FUCK did you get in here so early,” one asked sharply.
“I’m a friend of the band,” she mumbled and stood up.
“Yeah, RIGHT, bitch,” the girl muttered, gesturing towards Wind’s black Hanson tank top. “Chest size like that, what are you, their personal whore?”
Wind looked down at her chest and knew what she meant; she was pretty big.
“I can’t help that. It’s just the way I am. And if I were their whore then I’d look like you.”
Luckily, it didn’t get any farther than that; Taylor came in and put himself between Wind, Sarah, and the mob.
“Call either of them a whore again you’ll be out of here so fast there’ll be my footprint fresh on your ass, hear me?”
The girl nodded and looked crestfallen, but Wind blushed and felt embarrassed. Taylor didn’t give a flying fuck whether or not they called her a whore; he was doing it for Sarah’s sake. Wind shook her head disgustedly and shoved her way out of the room, finding Zac crawling under a refreshment table and Isaac trying to put the still-sleeping Aries somewhere. She was going to hate this.
Wind sat with a thud on the couch in her space of the room and sighed. This was so depressing, being this way. Zac had suddenly stopped talking to her, so now she had no one. She could hear Sarah and Taylor fighting in their room, and hoped upon hope that maybe someone would talk to her if she tried to patch up any broken ends later. Sarah stormed from the room and plain out of the suite, leaving Wind in her dust; and Taylor didn’t come out of the room. Wind didn’t even bother to go check on him; this was their third fight that week. Sarah would come back in an hour and they’d have make-up sex. Greeeeat. She got up and dug through the fridge for the bottle of strawberry lime soda she left there, waiting to see what was going to happen in the next few minutes.
Taylor came out of his room and went to the fridge. He sat down on the couch beside Wind, not really even registering she was there, and turned the TV on to MTV. Yaaaay. Singled Out reruns. Just lovely. Taylor sighed and flipped through stations until he found an X-Files rerun on Fox. He was content with that. Wind cleared her throat.
“Um…don’t you want to see if she’s alright?”
Taylor shrugged.
“She’ll come back in an hour, say she’s sorry, give me a semi-decent lay and then go back to her airheaded business.”
Wind kept herself from smiling; she actually agreed with him.
“Then why do you still go out with her?”
Taylor stopped cold. He hadn’t thought of that.
“I guess…probably because if I dump her Aries’ll go with her and then Ike’ll be mad at me.”
Wind snorted.
“That’s a pretty dumb reason,” she commented, and turned the volume up on the X-Files. She ignored Taylor for a minute, but mumbled to herself. “I didn’t believe she was going out with you, I didn’t believe I’d meet you guys, now the guy I like hates me and you’re going out with a real Barbie doll.”
Taylor looked at her sharply.
“What? Who hates you?”
“Zac.”
“Zac doesn’t hate you.”
“How would you know?”
Taylor raised an eyebrow.
“He’s my little brother, for Christ’s sake, he tells me everything. I’m his best friend, Wind.”
Wind looked up at him.
“I didn’t even think you knew my name.”
Taylor winked.
“I know a lot more things than I should, Wind. Sorry to burst that bubble.”
Zac looked around. Whew. Wind was nowhere in site. He started digging around through her purse for that perfume of hers. Mmmm…Calvin Klein One? Calvin Klein Be? No…that wasn’t it…Yes? No, that wasn’t it. AHA! There it was…Bottled Emotions Frantic. He pulled the lid off and took a whiff. Yep, that was it. He sprayed a generous puddle of it onto his handkerchief and went on his way, popping the cap back on the bottle and tossing it back in her purse. He he he…she’d never find out.
Wind was amusing herself with Avery later, brushing her hair for her and blushing every time she noticed Avie doing exactly the same thing to her doll.
“So…what would you like, honey…a twist? A French braid?”
Avie looked up and smiled a gap-toothed grin that reminded her a lot of Zac, for some unbeknownst reason.
“I want what you had yesterday…the clip thing…”
Wind nodded in understanding and reached behind her for a butterfly clip. She listened very carefully to the sounds in the rooms around her, and heard Zac singing along to his well-loved Nirvana CD. Wind absently threw a sandal at his door.
“Too loud, Zac…you’ll wake Zoë up.”
The music instantly decreased in volume and Wind finished off Avie’s hair by pulling out little pieces of her bangs to touch it off.
“There you go, Avie. Now why don’t you go show your mom how pretty you look?”
Avery got up from the couch and skipped out of the room, glowing in happiness for finally finding someone to play with her hair, and right past a fuming Sarah, who stormed in the second the child was gone.
“You BITCH!”
Wind looked up sharply.
“Sarah! Whatever the hell your problem is, do not scream profanities near small children! I don’t want to be held responsible for Mackie calling his mom a bitch should he hear you!”
Sarah’s eyes grew wider for a few seconds, but she ignored the comment and went right about screaming at Wind anyway.
“What the FUCK are you trying to do, steal my boyfriend? I honestly didn’t think you were that much of a WHORE!”
Wind stood up quickly, the back of her throat burning.
“Excuse ME?”
Sarah stepped forward menacingly.
“What in hell were you trying to do with Tay after we had that snip, huh? Were you deliberately trying to butter him up? WHAT? Tell me, BITCH!”
Wind wasn’t paying attention to what Sarah’s hands were doing at the time, and could only pray when she saw one of them fly into the air that it didn’t bruise. A rather stupid thing, she thought, to pray, but nonetheless that’s what was running through her head. She ducked belatedly and got the punch right at the base of her eye, between her temple and the corner of her eye, and felt it sting for a few seconds. The sting left after that, but she could feel it throbbing. On total rebound by instinct, she slapped Sarah back in roughly the same spot, leaving a cherry-coloured mark and making a sound like hitting cement with a leather whip.
“Don’t you EVER, EVER touch me again, do you FUCKING hear me, Sarah? You had better fucking hear me! Or else I’ll kick your ass so fucking hard you’ll see next week!”
Sarah didn’t say anything. She was too shocked at Wind’s action. Wind wasn’t the type of person to strike, ever, even in self-defense, and she never swore when there was potentially a large group of people around. Wind stormed out, stopping at the door. She went back, opened Zac’s door a crack, and snapped,
“If anyone asks I’m dead and won’t be back for a few hours.”
Without even waiting for a response she was out the door and down the hall.
Sitting in a small coffee shop a few blocks away sucking away on an iced Valencia, Wind finally realized what Sarah had been talking about and slapped herself. It was the thing with Taylor, she knew now; he must have let it slip that she was talking to him. Damnit, Sarah, she thought, you are so damn jumpy. She sucked on the Valencia a bit more, thinking about that, until she realized that no matter when she got back, they were leaving for Connecticut the next day and Sarah was going to be there for the next two months.
"Do you know it take you forever to realize the extent of my love for you?"
- A quote picked up while talking to *laughs* Flipper. Y'all remember that one.
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