The Now or Never Kind

It was a little after seven when I heard Tim’s alarm go off so he could finish packing his shit. Several groans rose in annoyance, which made me smile against the pillow. Unfortunately now I was wide awake and the lump of man beside me was not. But I didn’t really want to wake him up, so I just wriggled a little closer and put my head on his shoulder.

Without stirring, Danny put his arm around my waist. Hmm, maybe he was more awake than I thought.

So I poked him. “Danny.”

“No,” he grunted, eyes shut.

I grinned. “Yes,” I argued playfully.

“No.” To emphasize his point, Danny turned over and pinned me on my back before laying his head in the curve of my shoulder.

Knocked for six—and almost out of breath—by this sudden action (and the fact that he was a lot heavier than I was) I couldn’t move. “I’m confused,” I said a few moments later.

Danny leaned his forehead against mine. “I’m not going anywhere and neither are you,” he said resolutely, blue eyes glinting.

I blinked a few times, still lost. Mostly because I was more asleep than I thought and Danny, apparently, wasn’t. “How long have you been awake?”

“A bit.” He stroked my cheek with his index finger before kissing me. “Go back to sleep.”

“How’m I supposed to sleep when I have a mountain on me?” I asked sweetly.

“Rude.” He kissed my lips again before rolling onto his side, and I curled into his chest. Danny’s arms wrapped tightly around my back, holding me to him. Eyes shut, I tried to relax, but a thought kept verbalising itself: he didn’t want to let me go. He didn’t want to leave me.

And it was driving me mad.

“Staring is impolite,” I murmured after a few minutes.

“Well, I can’t sleep,” he whispered back, “And you’re too attractive to ignore.” I rolled my eyes behind their lids, smiled, and peeked one eye open. Danny grinned.

I broke into a laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

“It’s why you like me.” He paused, and a smirk appeared. “Well, one reason.”

“Have I called you a dirty bitch in the past 24 hours?” I wondered. Instead of replying, he sealed his lips on mine and buried a hand in my hair. That was enough to distract me.

A few minutes later, somebody else got up and walked towards the front of the bus, making Danny and I both freeze. Somehow we were still sneaking around trying not to get caught, even though everyone knew about… us. I sighed. “I dunno if I can get used to not having you around.”

“You will,” he promised, kissing my forehead. “And if not, you can always come down to LA while we’re recording.”

I let out a chuckle. “Like you need the distraction.”

Eventually we did have to get up and get dressed so Danny and the guys could make their flight. I helped haul out bags from under the bus and unloaded equipment from the trailer (even though they kept insisting I didn’t need to). When the time came to check in, I hugged each of them and said goodbye.

When I got to Danny, neither of us looked very pleased. “I mean it about LA,” he said.

I grinned, looking at the ground. “I know.” There was a pause, during which the remainder of his band and crew turned to go inside. I looked up at him through my lashes, and he smiled. “I’ll try to swing it before Europe.”

“Til then.” Danny leaned in and kissed me softly. My fingers curled around the end of his ponytail, hoping that would make him stay just a little longer. Tim called after Danny (“Hey, stop making out with your woman! You’re gonna make us late!”) who pulled away after a series of short, punctuating kisses.

He smiled as he walked backwards. I leaned against the side of the bus and watched my tourmates disappear before boarding again. I sat down in the lounge as our driver started the bus again, and soon we took off with the border as our destination. Inspired, I picked up my laptop and started on a blog post.

Over the next few hours, the guys woke up and Didi, Beth, and Aero switched to our bus. I paused in philosophizing about love and change and progress just long enough to clear out the bunk I had been using and move all my shit to Danny’s. I got a little glum when I realised it still smelled like him, but I wasn’t allowed to mope around since Matt and Jesse demanded we turned on music, which degenerated into a dance party.

Ah, to have a bus to ourselves again! I got the feeling we’d be fighting All Time Low for the title of party bus once we hit Montreal.

We hit a little snag at the border because apparently boxes of t-shirts, CDs, and art supplies are suspicious, but after an hour of us sitting on the sidewalk outside while border patrol tore our bus apart, we continued onwards into Canada. The energy on the bus was antsy for a while; we’d be getting to the site more than two hours after the gates opened, which meant we didn’t have any way of advertising our acoustic set at 4.

Yes, we were heading straight to Warped and performing pretty much right after we got our tent set up. But we had a day off in Toronto the next day, so that was good.

“Hello, you lovely Canadians!” I shouted over the small, cheering crowd. We’d sent volunteer street team members around with signs (which were probably still wet at the time) telling everyone about our last minute set. There were a fair number of people for only having found out about it right before it happened. “I’m glad to be in your wonderful country.”

“Stop sucking up, you’re happy to be anywhere,” Matt jibbed, tapping on the bongos between his knees. I pushed his shoulder, so he pushed me back, so I pushed him again and almost knocked him off his stool.

“Hey, play nice, you two,” Sean ordered from my other side as he tuned his acoustic guitar. “It’s only the first day.”

“You can kill each other when Warped’s over,” someone in the first row said, and we all laughed.

“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands. “This is a new song that’s going to be on our new record. It’s about—” I paused for loud, high-pitched cheers, “It’s about how I think too much and can’t sleep.”

Sean counted off quietly and began playing a snappy, melodic rhythm, and after a few measures Matt added an accompanying drumbeat. I took a deep breath and shut my eyes.

“~It's 3 in the morning and I'm still not sleeping
'Cause I'm finally running your race
The mountains you've been climbing seem like they have steepened
Since I decided to pick up the pace~

“~If the whole world told me I should disappear
Could I fall right next to you?~” I smiled involuntarily as my voice drifted upwards and someone gave a whoop of approval.

“~Just let me burn the night away
Oh, baby let me burn the night away
By thinking of the simple things you say to me
That get me through the day
You keep me wide awake
You keep me wide awake…~”

There was a brief pause in the music before Sean went back into playing and I continued singing. “~So don't look back, the hourglass is runnin' empty
You've got me buried with your every move
Your fine lines have me at a loss of memory
I'm right beside you in an empty room~

“~If the whole world told me I should disappear
Could I fall right next to you?~

“~Just let me burn the night away
Oh, baby let me burn the night away
By thinking of the simple things you say to me
That get me through the day~

“~And it's so hard to catch your feelings
When you always run away
You keep me wide awake
You keep me wide awake~”

I didn’t know what it was about this song, but I put a lot of passion into performing it. It was started between Ryan and Bill—Jesus, that felt like a long time ago—and I finished it between Bill and Danny. So it wasn’t really about anyone specifically.

“~You're making it hard for me to just start
Over like we're new
Oh, the whole world told me I should disappear
'Cause I'm falling in love with you~”

Maybe it was just… the idea of someone. The idea of being in love maybe. I didn’t know. It was difficult to sing about falling in love and not think about Danny now.

“~Just let me burn the night away
Oh, baby let burn the night away
By thinking of the simple things you say to me
That get me through the day~

“~And it's so hard to catch your feelings
When you always run away
You keep me wide awake
You keep me wide awake…~”

Our audience cheered and I took a look around. Aside from all the smiling faces pointed in my direction, I was sitting amid my best friends and doing something that, not only did I love but something that I was really good at. It made me kind of warm and fuzzy, in a weird way.

And then, as the applause died down, someone in the back yelled, “MATT, CAN I HAVE YOUR BABIES?”

Everyone within earshot cracked up, including me, the boys, and our crew. “I don’t have any babies to give you!” Matt called back, ruffling up the hair at the back of his head sheepishly.

“He sold them on the Black Market to buy hair products,” I said, ellicting more laughter.

Sundance grinned. “It’s why my hair’s so nice.”

“’Nice’ here having the meaning of ‘chemical-treated to shit’,” Jesse quipped.

“Okay, shut up! We have more songs to play!”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no matter how much things change, they always stay the same.