Kaleidoscope Eyes

“Are you sure you don’t want to answer that?”

Isabella’s co-worker Whitney was looking at the vibrating Blackberry on the countertop with slightly agitated eyes. Isabella had taken one look at the caller id and decided to let it ring, much to the annoyance of those in the kitchen.

Isabella just ignored the comment from her co-worker and picked up the now silent phone and pushed it into the back pocket of her shorts. Wishing she could just ignore what was going on and not feel terrible about it.

With a sigh that she tried to keep to herself, Isabella grabbed the packed lunches that she had to deliver and glanced down at the clipboard that would announce whom they were for. When she saw the bands name a fresh and genuine smile grew across her face, and she felt lighter than she had all day.

The backstage area of the Hurley stage was chaotic. Band techs were running around with broken or freshly tuned instruments and tour managers were waving set lists. The actual musicians were either sweaty and happily exhausted or still smelling clean and bouncing with nervous energy. John O’Callaghan belonged to the latter of the group.

Every time before he went on stage the same nervous energy would fill him, like the night of his very first show where he was so nervous he had to stand with his back to the crowd. Sometimes during sets when the mass of the crowd was overwhelming he still had to do this. John was just about to take one last attempt at a calming deep breath when he saw Isabella.

She seemed to stand out a mile in the hectic sea that was backstage. Her calm was overwhelming and at the same time he could feel her positive energy. She advanced towards him with a smile and a box filled with food and water for the band.

“You look nervous,” was the first thing she said to him, not feeling the need at any attempt of small talk.

“That’s because I am,” John said with a shaky laugh.

“Ah it’s okay it happens to the best of singers,” Isabella said with a smile as she handed the box of food over. “Mike Jagger told me that sometimes he still feels like he’s about to shit himself when he walks on stage. His words not mine.”

She grinned up at him and it was at that moment that John really realized just how lucky he was for being able to have her around him.

“You met Mick Jagger?”

“Charity catering. You get to meet some pretty interesting people,” she said with a smile, before seeing the guy she remembered as Garrett from the We The King’s set the other day, waving at her from behind John’s back.

“I think it’s you time to go on stage,” she said as she gently turned him around to face Garrett who was pointing impatiently at the stage.

John took a shaky breath in and before he could stop himself he turned round to Isabella again.

“Would you mind staying?”

Her smile grew and she nodded, gently pushing him closer to the stage.

“Don’t worry I’m not going anywhere.”

Watching John on stage was fascinating. It seemed that the minute he stepped on stage he was a different person. Even though at times he needed a few moments and turned his back on the audience, he still had them eating out of the palm of his hand. There was an adopted arrogance in his step and a suave attitude that lined his voice, and what was strangely comforting was to know that John was not like this in real life.

What was the most interesting thing for her to see was the audience reaction to him, specifically the female one. The screams and grabs that occurred anytime he came any where near the barrier were deafening, and with a sinking feeling it made Isabella realize that if she let herself in with John, she would have to share him with a lot of other people. The way that some of the girls tore at his shirt and dived towards him frightened her because they made it look like he was all theirs, and Isabella knew that this wasn’t true. Of course he loved every single person that paid to come to their show, but the John O’Callaghan that they saw and that they felt belonged to them, wasn’t the same one that walked and breathed a life offstage.

During the gap between songs, Isabella felt her phone vibrate in her back pocket. With a sinking feeling she reached for it and glanced at the screen with growing trepidation. It was the same person that had been trying to ring her every day since she started out at Warped. The voicemails had been piling up and went unheard. Again Isabella chose to let her phone ring, but when she looked back up at the stage her expression must have been dark because John who had been trying to catch her eye looked worried.

However she shifted her frown and replaced it with a smile, she didn’t want to worry John. It was his moment and he needed to focus on making every single person in the crowd happy, and she didn’t want to detract from that. Not one bit.

The show was over quickly after that, and the teenage mass was satisfied for now. John came off stage smiling gratefully at her and needed no more assurance than her wide smile to know that they had done good.

It was then that Isabella had realized that she had missed a significant part of her lunch shift, and that David would hit the roof if he found out she had. With a regretfully rushed goodbye to John and his band mates Isabella walked as quickly as she could to the canteen.

Thankfully David didn’t see her arrival, but at the end of her two-hour shift he cornered her just outside the canteen with a furious look on her face..

“Where were you?”

He was angry and this really worried Isabella, she had only seen him angry a handful of times and those were darker times which she didn’t like to be reminded of.

“You were with that Travis boy that’s been making eyes at you for the past days right? God Bells you’ve got to be careful damnit! After everything you shouldn’t be doing this!”

“It’s not like that at all David,” she said trying to stay calm and not get upset. “Not at all.”

She walked away from David before she got more worked up about it, and just as she felt that she would cry she walked right into the person that she needed most.

John.

“You look like you need to get away from here,” he said with a soft smile looking down at her with concern tugging at the corner of his eyes.

She only managed a nod and let John take her by the hand and lead her away from the canteen and from David, who watched the scene with a fire burning in his eyes.

The loud whoosh of the low flying planes caused some of the buses to vibrate where they were standing and were part of the background noise that John and Isabella had been trying to tune out now for almost half an hour.

They had climbed onto the roof of The Maine’s bus. Well John had, then he managed to pull Isabella up once he was secure on the slippery top of the bus. It had actually been a smooth operation as John was far stronger than he looked.

They sat next to each other, John letting his long legs dangles down the side of the bus and Isabella choosing to sit with denim clad legs pressed closely to her chest. It was impossible to sit directly in front of each other; the roof space on the bus was limited. But still Isabella enjoyed being above all the commotion on the ground. From where they were sat the entire parking lot, the crowds of people resembled ants that were scurrying around trying to get from one place to another without causing a disruption to the flow.

As always with John, the silence was peaceful. She was grateful that he wasn’t one of those people that felt the need to constantly talk in order to fill the gaps of the silence that could be so calming. In fact in some way she felt that she understood John more when he was silent than when he said anything. However, the minute Isabella would let herself think this, John would say something and it would be exactly the fitting thing for the moment.

When John did bring out the words that usually came so easily to him in songs, the things he said were thoughtful and carried weight. Behind every word there was a thought and so every sentence was important.

“So would you like to explain to me what that back there was all about?”

However, sometimes regardless of how important the words were that he said, Isabella didn’t always want to respond to them.

“Oh nothing,” she said as she fiddled awkwardly with the edge of her vest, trying to avoid John’s perceptive gaze.

“Okay if you say so,” he said with a smile, but Isabella knew that this conversation was far from over. “It’s just David with all his overprotecting might as well be your bodyguard.”

He grinned at her slowly, unsure of her reaction to what he had just said. He knew how important David was to her, but he wasn’t sure of just how good he was for Isabella.

“He’s like an older brother to me and wants the best, it takes some getting used to,” she was with a poignant smile that signified this conversation was over. But John wasn’t having any of that.

“Isabella…” John started, determined to take charge of this conversation and finally break down the wall that was beginning to make its presence known around a part of Isabella’s heart.

She seemed to know where he was going and smiled gently, resting her hand on his arm.

“Not today John, some other time.”

There was something that she still didn’t want to share with him, and she was determined to hold this back for as long as possible.