The Words to Define These Feelings

Paige's POV

I struggled with the door to the under bus compartment. It was the first day of the “I Love Redheads” tour and Phoebe and I were going to be shooting a bunch of behind-the-scenes content for the mini-site about the tour AP had launched online. I needed to get into my suitcase to find my camera because even though Phoebe had her advanced cameras, we needed a simple hand held camera we could use to run around the venue with without attracting too much attention. I groaned as I looked into the compartment and realized my suitcase was buried somewhere in the middle. To get to my camera, I was going to have to dig.

I began pulling suitcases out and placing them to the side, climbing partway into the compartment once I had enough space. I heard the gravel crunching outside as someone approached, and suddenly I heard a voice behind me.

“What are you doing to everyone's stuff?” Caleb seemed accusing, and I sighed before standing up out of the compartment.

“I am moving all these suitcases to try to get to mine, which is stuck in the middle,” I answered, sucking in a breath. It was hot out in California today and moving all that stuff was tiring.

“Oh. My stuff is someplace in the middle there too,” He said, leaning against the side of the bus, “Let me know when you've got all that stuff cleared.”

As soon as he'd said that he moved to lean against the side of the bus and pulled his phone out and started texting. It figured that he wouldn't help me dig through the stuff though, he was still really upset about his guitar. I felt bad about the whole thing, really I did, but I'd done everything I could to remedy the situation. I didn't owe him anything, so I wasn't about to let him treat me like I did. We had seemed to come to unspoken terms that we'd be ignoring one another as much as possible. Of course, this was a little difficult because our bunks were a grand total of three feet apart, but we did our best to pretend the other didn't exist. I had a feeling that would be a problem when it came time to write my profile about him, but I didn't want to think about that.

“Hey Caleb, have you seen Paige?” I heard Jonathan outside, and I poked my head out of the compartment to see Caleb pointing in my direction.

“I'm right here,” I said as I grabbed my bag, “I had to dig to find my camera.”

“Oh, okay. Phoebe sent me to figure out what was taking you so long,” He said as Caleb grabbed a black bag from next to me and walked off.

“Yeah,” I watched Caleb's retreating figure, “He's really leaving me to put all this stuff back in by myself?”

“Oh, um,” Jonathan turned to look at me, “Don't mind Caleb. I'll help you.”

“Well, thanks Jonathan,” I smiled, and we quickly got all of the suitcases back under the bus. Jonathan closed the compartment and we made our way around the front of the venue. I pulled my camera out as Jonathan ran down the line of fans and gave everyone high fives. He ran back to me and made a face into the camera, then pulled me back into the venue with him.

“The rest of the bands are hanging around, I thought you might want to meet them all officially,” He said as we walked through a door labeled, “Forever The Sickest Kids Dressing Room” and found most of the band milling about. Phoebe leaped up from next to Kyle on the couch.

“Hey! Jonathan wants to go introduce us to the bands... like we don't already know most of them,” She said, yanking on my arm.

“Yeah, seriously, I've had to do interviews with most of them before,” I laughed.

“Could y'all just let me pretend I'm important for knowing everyone?” Jonathan pouted and Phoebe and I both rolled our eyes.

“Fine,” Phoebe said quickly, and we spent the next half of an hour running between dressing rooms, joking around with familiar faces and introducing ourselves to foreign ones. A Rocket To The Moon made their way upstairs to get ready to play, and we grabbed Jonathan, Kyle, and Marc to do an initial interview with.

“Hey, this is Paige for AP Magazine. I'm here with Jonathan, Kyle, and Marc on the first date of the 'I Love Redheads' tour in California. How are you feeling guys?” I asked, turning to look at the three guys assembled to my right.

“We feel terrible. Awful, really,” Kyle offered, shooting the camera a sad look. Phoebe threw her hand over her mouth to muffle a giggle as Marc began to speak.

“Yeah, there's nothing worse than kicking off a co-headlining tour. This just really sucks,” He said, and I looked at them skeptically.

“Well that's too bad guys. Maybe we should just leave...” I faked getting out of my seat, but Jonathan pulled me back down and looked at the camera.

“Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding,” He smiled, eyes wide and looking directly into the camera, “We're stoked. I can't really think of anything I'd rather be doing right now.”

“Cool,” I said, “Well, this is our intro video to the mini-site. You guys should check back daily because Phoebe,” I turned the camera around quickly to force Phoebe to show her face, “Phoebe and I are going to be updating it very frequently with tons of behind the scenes and exclusive content. These guys will probably hate us by the end of the tour,” I laughed, pointing at them jokingly.

“Some of us already do,” Kyle said jokingly, then Phoebe cut the video as we all laughed and waved goodbye. The FTSK guys got up to go warm up, and Phoebe and I grabbed our all access passes to shoot some pictures from the front of the stage. I had a blast during their set, helping Phoebe shoot pictures from all different angles.

After the show had ended and all the fans had cleared, I made a beeline for the bus, closing myself into my bunk before anyone, especially obnoxious redheads named Caleb, could come in and put me in a bad mood.