Chasing Thunder

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“What?” Bex hangs halfway out of her side of the car. “What’s going on?”

I press end on my mobile and glance over at her. “They’re not ready yet, so they’ve asked us to meet them upstairs. Do you want to come with me or…?”

“Coming,” Bex replies, stepping all of the way out of the car and readjusting her shirt. “Are we allowed to just park here?” She asks, walking over to me as I make my way towards Nikki’s Eclipse that’s pulled in just behind me.

I nod as Nikki rolls down her window so we can talk. “I think so. Hey, so they’re not ready yet, so we’re going inside to hang out until they are. Do you want to wait out here or—“

“I’m coming,” She answers immediately, shifting into park and undoing her seatbelt. “I can just leave my car here?” I nod and she takes the keys out of the ignition. “How much longer do you think it’s going to be?”

“I have no idea,” I answer honestly as we step through the revolving glass doors and into the cool lobby. “I wouldn’t think they’d be too long though.”

We cross the room and hit the calling button on the elevator, Bex and Nikki chattering excitedly next to me. I listen to their conversation halfheartedly, more musing over my thoughts quietly to myself than anything else. Would Jordan be upset that I was going into four boys’ hotel room?

I don’t want to answer that question as we step inside and press the seventh floor button. Nikki uses this time to fix her hair in the reflective surface of the elevator’s ceiling and Bex slouches against the railing, sighing a bit.

“So we’re taking them to King’s Island and then to Boomerang Bay?” She asks, looking over at me.

I nod, watching as the red numbers on the screen creep steadily higher. “Yeah, I figured that would be fun for them. Maybe take them out to eat so they can try some Cincinnati favorites.”

Nikki laughs as the doors ping open. “Do you really think they’re going to like it? I mean most people can’t stand our food; they look at us like we’re from another planet.”

“They can at least try it and if worst comes to worst, we can try another restaurant,” I answer as we take a left and start to walk towards their hotel room. “They seem like the adventurous type though.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nikki muses thoughtfully, biting down on her lower lip. “Watch them be super picky or something.”

Bex laughs attractively as I find their hotel room and knock briskly on the door. “Well we’ll just give them the chance to pick then, won’t we? There’s nothing wrong with ordering in a pizza or something.”

The door opens and I’m looking into the familiar eyes of the drummer. I smile brightly up at him and wave. “Hi Gustav.”

“Hello,” He smiles softly, stepping aside so we can enter. “How’re you?”

“Good,” I reply, walking in past the tiny kitchen and into the main living area. Georg is sitting in front of the television, his computer in his lap and Tom is sprawled out in an armchair, watching the television screen with a bored expression on his face.

“Hey guys,” I greet them quietly, taking a seat next to Georg on the sofa. “How’s everyone feeling this morning?”

Tom turns when he hears my voice and he offers me a small wave. “Good. Tired, but good.”

“So we have no hungover people?” I ask, laughing a bit. “They all went home with me apparently.”

“Hey,” Nikki plops down on the armrest of the sofa. “I wasn’t hungover—it was Birthday Girl over there.”

Bex flips her off and then pulls out her vibrating phone. “You’ll be singing a different tune in a few weeks once it’s your birthday. Addy, do you have tickets already?”

I shake my head, turning in my seat so I can see her properly. “No I don’t. I was just going to get them at the entrance of the park. Do you think it’ll be sold out or something?”

“It’s most likely not going to be, especially since a lot of schools haven’t let out for the year.” Bex answers, clicking through on her phone. “It’ll probably get crowded in the late afternoon slash early evening though, when the school kids come out. Do you know what time the park opens?”

“Ten,” Nikki pipes up, fooling around with the back of her earring. “I used to date a guy who worked there,” She answers our unasked question without looking at us. “Don’t judge me; he let me into the park for free. It was great.”

“Anyway!” I say loudly, trying not to laugh. “So we drove in two cars because my mom’s using her Escalade to do some errands. I can fit three in my backseat and Nikki can fit four, since Bex is with me. I don’t know how you want to,” I make a motion with my hands. “Divide yourselves up, but I’ll let you decide, okay?”

The three band members exchange looks before there’s a noise coming from the next room and Bill finally emerges, pushing his wallet into the pocket of his swimming shorts as he walks. He stops when he sees the three of us already in the living room and his face lights up adorably.

“Hi!” He greets us enthusiastically. “Was everyone waiting for me?”

“Just like we always are,” Tom teases good-naturedly, turning off the television and stretching. “Bill and I will ride with you, Addy, if that’s okay?”

I nod, standing up as well and pulling out my car keys. “Which means that Georg and Gustav are riding with you, Nikki.”

“Sounds good,” Nikki replies happily. “Unless either one of you have any objections to Maroon 5?” Both of the boys shake their heads and the happy look pops back up on her face. “Excellent. Let’s go!”

-X-

“Look at how big that one is!” Bill inhales excitedly from the backseat as I pull into the parking lot of the amusement park. “Can we ride that one?”

Bex squints into the distance, trying to identify which ride he’s talking about. “That’s Face Off; that’s one of Nikki’s favorites, so I’m sure we’ll ride it at one point today.”

I hand over a twenty dollar bill to the parking attendant and then take my change back before I start to drive forward, searching for an empty spot. “You know what I just thought of?” I ask the car rhetorically. “Are you guys going to be okay without, like, security? I mean you were fine at Bex’s party, but that was a private event. I don’t want you to get mugged or something—“

“We’ll be fine,” Bill waves my words aside easily. “I don’t think a lot of people will recognize us. Plus, like you said earlier, it won’t be as busy?” I shake my head and he smiles at me in the rearview mirror. “I think we will be okay.”

I swing the car into an empty space and then shut off the engine. “If you guys say so. I didn’t even think about security for you guys and now I feel bad.” I climb out of the car and fold my seat forward so Bill can climb out.

He does and straightens out his t-shirt before he shakes his head. “We’ll be fine; don’t worry about it,” He requests, slinging an arm around my neck. “I’m excited to ride American roller coasters! Tomi and I celebrated our twentieth birthday back home by renting out an entire theme park, but these rides look so cool.”

“I forget that they’re fabulously wealthy,” Bex murmurs in my ear and I jump, startled by the sudden voice.

But then I nod and grin at her. “I know, right? They don’t act it at all.”

“Sup bitches?!” Nikki appears suddenly with Georg and Gustav trailing behind. “Let’s do this; I’m pumped for some rides.”

It takes us nearly twenty minutes to buy everyone tickets and to get through security. By the time all of us are successfully in the park, everyone in our group is in high spirits. Nikki leads the way, chattering excitedly with Tom.

“You’re quiet today,” Bill falls back from the rest of the group and walks beside me, swinging his arms a bit as he walks.

I shrug, smiling up at him. “I’m just tired, that’s all. And heat never really makes me talkative, you know?”

“This city is very—what’s the word? Sticky,” Bill struggles with his English. “It makes my hair crazy.”

“Humid,” I grin at his adorable broken English. “And yes, Cincinnati is very humid. But you get used to it.”

He makes a distasteful face as we start to walk through the barriers of the first ride. “It is a good thing that I can pull my hair back—it used to be so short; I’d get so frustrated.”

“You should see my sister,” I laugh, leaning back against the steel railings. “Sid, I mean. Back when she had hair and it used to get really hot, she would look like she stuck a fork in a toaster or something. Her hair would just be this massive curly mess; she used to say that she was glad when her hair started falling out,” I trail off, a sudden wave of emotion washing over me. “Because she didn’t have to deal with her curls anymore.”

Bill senses my abrupt mood swing and he hesitantly reaches out and hugs me, despite the heat and how hot we both were. “Sidney is going to pull through this, Addy. She is a strong, sweet girl. Don’t look for the worst.”

“I know she’s strong,” I admit as the line moves forward. I turn away from Bill and march forward, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. “She’s the strongest person I know.”

Things are quiet for a bit and the short line moves steadily ahead. The ride attendant assigns us numbers and we step out into the waiting corral as the riders ahead of us finish up their turns. The first ride of the day was one called Delirium. It was a massive rotating circle on a swinging beam. The riders were whipped around in the air for a good three minutes before the ride was over.

Bill inhales sharply as the ride goes right over our head, ruffling our hair and cooling off our faces pleasingly. “We don’t have anything like this back in Germany.”

“How good is your stomach?” I ask, trying to hide my smile as the gate attendant opens up the fence and the riders move forward, searching for their numbered seat.

Bill shrugs, following me since he was the number right behind me. “Pretty good, though I might be saying something else after a few rides.”

I hop up into the red plastic seat and bring my harness down across my chest. “You’ll be fine. Bex has the weakest stomach ever and the only ride she’s ever thrown up on is Monster—it looks like a giant octopus basically and swings you everywhere. So if she can handle something like this, then I think you’ll be okay.” I buckle my seatbelt and swing my legs cheerfully as I wait for my harnesses to be checked.

“That’s comforting,” Bill laughs, snapping his belt together easily. His legs are so long that his feet rest comfortably on the steel platform below us and I can’t help but watch as he leans out of his seat so he can see his twin next to him.

They hold a conversation in German until there’s a rushing noise and the platform starts to lower away. Both Tom and Bill say something in surprised English that I don’t catch as the wheel starts to spin us. The wind is whipping in my face and I smile happily at how amazing it feels against my hot skin.

Then we start to soar up into the air and I can hear Bex shrieking at the top of her voice from a few seats away and I laugh childishly, thrilling to feel like I was flying. I let go of the harness and reach my hands out, ignoring Bill’s incredulous words from beside me.

I think he asked if I was insane for letting go.

And before I know it, the ride is slowing down and we’re slowly falling back down to Earth. I wait for the platform to come back up before I undo my seatbelt and then all of the harnesses come up automatically.

I climb out of my seat and straighten out my top as Bill shakes his head next to me, smiling widely. “That was so Spannend,” He clutches at his twin’s hand. “Can we go again? Bitte?”

Tom laughs, glancing back at me. “We can come back later?” It’s directed as a question at me, like I was the one in charge of our day.

I nod, trying not to laugh at how Bill’s face lights up. “Sure, we can come back later.”

Bex and Nikki lead the way to the next ride with Tom and Georg, laughing loudly and taking long sidelong glances back at both Bill and me. Gustav walks at a happy medium between us, smiling softly at the sight of everyone having a good time.

The next ride is one that Tom chooses and it’s called Face Off. A simple bucket seat with a harness that sit back to back, two to a row and four to a group. The riders are taken straight up over the park before the brakes are turned off and everything hurtles through the corkscrew loops and ends up turning around on the opposite side. And then everything happens again, only opposite.

The wait for this ride, however, is another fifteen minutes so we make ourselves comfortable in the shade, craning our warm bodies so that the stale air that the fans blow can hit our flushed skin. I never really minded waiting in lines, though both Nikki and Bex were far too impatient. It gave me a chance to observe others.

Bill fans his face with one slender hand before he turns to me. “Do you like roller coasters or are you just putting up with it because we love them?”

“I like them,” I insist, laughing a bit at the disbelieving look on his face. “I really do. Some of my favorite memories are of me and my dad riding roller coasters. My biological father,” I add on, so as to differentiate between Jack and Gerard.

“Can you tell me about him?” Bill requests suddenly, tipping his head to one side. His sunglasses hide his eyes, but I imagine them to be wide and curious, all the while still remaining innocent and kind. “Your biological dad, I mean.” He amends his sentence, like I had no idea who he was talking about.

I shrug, struggling to come up with a suitable starting point. I was never embarrassed or ashamed of the fact that I had two fathers. Both Mom and Jack made it very clear to me right away, that Jack was my stepfather and that I shouldn’t ignore Gerard. “His name is Gerard Matthews—“

“So your name was Addy Matthews?” Bill asks, the corners of his mouth turning up as he tries to hide his smile.

I laugh and nod. “Yeah, before Jack adopted me and my name got legally changed. Uhm, Dad is a computer engineer and he’s the head of his department. He works for a big corporate monster,” Here Bill laughs at my adjective. “He’s married to Aimee; they got married when I was six or seven or so. They have two kids: Gavin and Joshua. They’re my half-brothers and they’re 15 and 12.”

“So you have three brothers and two sisters,” Bill observes as the line moves forward.

Somewhere up ahead, I hear Nikki shriek with laughter and I subconsciously lean forward so I can see what’s going on, though I can’t see anything past Gustav and Georg. I nod and look back up at the foreign boy standing next to me. “Yeah, except two of my brothers live in Miami, so I see them two or three times a year. It’s why I go down there so often,” I admit, crossing my arms over my chest. “Because I visit Dad and the kids and everything. I’m actually going down in a few weeks.”

“Really?” Bill straightens up and looks over at me sharply. “When?”

I suck down on my lower lip as I think. “In August, I’ll be down there for two, three weeks at the beginning.”

“Me too!” Bill cries suddenly, earning himself a few looks from the people behind us. “Me too,” He repeats himself in a quieter voice. “We’ll be in Miami recording and mixing some songs for our next record. We should meet up!” He bounces up and down a bit and I have to work hard to not laugh at how ridiculous and adorable he looks at the same time. “You can show us around Miami and we can hang out. It’ll be like I have a friend waiting for me in the city.”

“Sure,” I agree, smiling cheerfully as we walk into our stalls to get loaded into the next train. “Though I can’t quite guarantee that I’ll be an expert tour guide or anything. But it’d be really cool if we did meet up and hang out again.”

Bill impulsively moves forward and throws his arms around me and though I’m startled by the sudden touch, I relax slowly and hug him back carefully. I try to ignore the way my heart flutters nervously in my chest, but I can’t, no matter what I do.

It’s only then that Jordan enters my mind and I take an unnecessarily big step away from the lead singer, pulling on my wifebeater awkwardly and praying that he wouldn’t call attention to the way my cheeks turned a bright pink.

But he doesn’t say anything else, though if I’d been looking at him, I’d have seen the pleased smile that lights up his face and the way he watches me closely, adoringly. And I’d have realized that we were both heading for trouble.