Too Young for Love

“Excuse me, Miss?” A voice coming from behind me asked as I snapped another picture of the chaos of the city. I pulled my lens cap from my back pocket and snapped it onto my camera before looking up at the man in front of me.

He was tall, to say the least. At least a good five or six inches taller than me. Looked to be in his early twenties tops. He had tattoos all up and down his arms. He was intimidating.

Let’s just say that if I wasn’t in the middle of a city, with people all around me, I would be scared of this guy. There’s no way that he’d try to kidnap me with people all around, right?

“Miss?” he asked again.

“Yeah, sorry,” I apologized and I could feel my face burning. It wasn’t until now that I noticed that he was indeed very attractive.

He looked a little nervous and hooked his thumbs into his pockets as he started to speak again. “Do you do photography professionally?” he asked.

I looked down at my camera and thought about all the good pictures that I could get of him and his tattoos. I hadn’t met anyone that was quite like him before. “Kind of,” I answered. “I’m taking a class on it now. But I’ve never done like a photo shoot or anything of that sort. I usually just stick to scenery. My parents don’t approve of me taking photos.”

“How old are you? If you don’t me asking?”

“I’m nineteen, sir.” It was times like these that I hated my parents for raising me to be so polite. Sir wasn’t a word that I liked to just use so casually like this.

Clearly he wasn’t used to hearing it in conversations like this either. He looked rather taken back, but continued speaking none the less, “I have a proposition for you, then. You don’t have to feel pressured into doing this if you don’t want to. It’s completely up to you. But my band is on tour promoting our newest CD, City of Evil, and we’re looking for another photographer. If you’re interested, you can start right away. Or if you want to meet the rest of the band first I can have them meet us somewhere.”

I knew that my parents would hate this. They would probably even hate me for doing it. But I felt like this was my chance. If I took this job it could be great for my career. “I want to do it. I’m going to need to go to my house first and get my things.”

“Oh! Of course. I’m sorry, I’m so rude, I forgot to ask for your name. I’m Brian. We can go get the guys and the bus then you can just put your things straight on there.”

“I’m Aubrey. And you don’t know how amazing this is for me. Young photographers don’t get a lot of jobs around here. And it finally get’s me out of my parent’s house,” I said while turning to follow him as he started to walk down the sidewalk.

He didn’t say anything as we walked. I opened my mouth to speak twice but decided not to when I thought about what I was going to say. We reached a hotel several blocks away and I followed him through the lobby and into the elevator.

“What’s your bands name?” I asked. I didn’t listen to music much so there were few bands that I actually had heard of. I mainly knew the ones that my parents listened to, and he didn’t look like he’d be in one of those kinds of bands.

We reached our floor and got out as he answered, “Avenged Sevenfold.”

Just like I though, I’d never heard of them.

Brian pulled out a card and stopped abruptly only two doors down from the elevator. There were four guys lounging around the room, all staring at the television. Then I noticed a blond girl sitting a the table figuring out something on a calculator then scribbling down numbers.

He pointed to a guy laying on the bed closest to us, he had a mohawk. “That’s Johnny.” Then he pointed to the girl, “Val, she’s with Matt, who’s by the window.” Then he pointed to an abnormally tall guy who just stood up. “That’s Jimmy, he’s crazy, so don’t listen to anything he tells you. And Zacky is right there.”

As he said each of their names they all looked in our direction. Each of them looked different, yet similar at the same time. Everyone had on some kind of black band shirt on and black jeans. Other than that though, they were different.

“Who’s this?” the tall guy, Jimmy, asked looking from me to Brian.

“She is our new photographer, Audrey.”

“It’s Aubrey,” I corrected, emphasizing the b in my name.

Three of the guy busted out laughing, Val just rolled her eyes and went back to her work chuckling to herself, and Jimmy patted Brian on the back, “Nice, she probably thinks you’re an asshole now. You can’t even get her name right.”

“Anyway, we need to go get her stuff. Matt can you drive the bus so that we don’t have to bother John? He seemed kind of tired earlier.”

Matt nodded and Brian tossed him the keys from off the table. They walked in front of me whispering amongst themselves. I caught a few words, but not enough to figure out what they were saying. When we made it out of the hotel and into a parking lot, I was shocked when I saw the tour bus. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting them to have.

“How far is your house from here?” Matt asked sitting in the drivers seat and starting up the bus.

“It takes me about a half an hour to walk here, so maybe five or ten minutes away. I can give you directions,” I answered, taking a seat next to him and buckling up. Brian had wondered off to the back of the bus somewhere. “Turn right out of here, then go all the way to the second set of lights and take a left.”

He nodded and turned right out of the parking lot. “So is this your first big job? You don’t seem very old.”

I heard a door shut in the back and suddenly Brian was up front, standing in between Matt and I. “Yeah, it’s only the third or fourth time I’ve done a job for people outside of my family. And I’m nineteen. How old are you guys?”

I looked up a Brian and saw Matt shake his head and laugh about something, “You’re nineteen, I would have guessed seventeen tops.”

“He means that to be a compliment,” Brian explained. “And Matt, Jimmy, and I are all twenty-four. Zack’s twenty-three, but his birthday is in December. And Johnny is only twenty, he’ll be twenty-one in November.”

Matt was just now taking the left at the light, this road took us out of the city. “Keep going straight until you get to the stop sign, then take a right.”

“Okay, and I have to ask. The technician bus, where the other photographer is, is currently full. So if you want you can bunk here or we can get one of the guys from there to come over here and you can go there. Which ever your comfortable with,” he informed me.

Although I know that I’ll fit in better on the other bus, something inside me makes me want to stay with the guys and Val, it would probably be a hell of a lot more entertaining. “I’ll stay here.”

“By the way, Matt, I talked to Michelle. She wants Val to call her later.”

“I’ll let her know. What now?”

“Third house of the right,” I said and he pulled up right in front of my house. Brian let me out of the bus and I walked up to the front door.

“Let us know if you need any help!” Brian yelled to me.

I held up a thumbs up as I walked into the house. My parents were in the kitchen, just sitting at the table. This is going to be the worst part, telling my parents that was leaving to do photography for a band. I was leaving to do something that they hated, this would not go over well. Best to just get it over with. Rip it off like a band aid.

“I’m leaving,” I said, my voice quivered a little.

They both looked to me with shocked expressions on their faces. My father spoke up first, “Excuse me?”

“I said, that I’m leaving. I met these people today while I was in the city taking pictures. And they want me to go on tour with them, and be their photographer. I’m going, this could be my big break,” I explained, hoping that they could just understand me.

“That’s fine. But if you leave,” my father started, standing up and facing me. “Don’t come back.”

Then the conversation was over. I climbed up the stairs to my room and get an old suitcase from my closet. I start pulling clothes off the hangers and throwing them into my bag. I fill another one up with random things that I want to take with me, and finally the last one is a small bag. In that goes all of my photography things. My tripod, all of my lenses, a Polaroid camera, and cleaning things.

I carry the camera stuff down first, Brian is sitting on the stairs of the bus, he stands up when I reach him. “I’ll show you your bunk.”

We walked past a small kitchen type things and through a doorway into the bunk room. He patted the top bunk all the way in the back and smiled, “Right above me.”

“I’m going to need your help. I’ve got two more suitcases. They’re kind of heavy.”

“Two?” he asked.

“Yeah, my parent’s don’t like what I do, nor why I’m leaving to do that. They told me not to come back, I’ll just use the money that I earn to get a small apartment in the city after the tour’s over.”

He didn’t respond after I said that. He probably felt sorry for me, and if that’s the case then I’m glad he didn’t say anything. I don’t want anyone’s pity.

Brian followed me up to my room and picked up the suitcase that had my clothes in it. I got the other one and I grabbed my cell phone and iPod from my nightstand before following him out to the bus once more. They stored the one that didn’t have my clothes in it in a storage place under the bus.

“There are two drawers under every two bunks. You can put some clothes in there once we get back to the hotel and the rest can go into the storage compartments,” Brian explained as Matt started the drive back to the hotel. I offered to tell him directions for the way back but he declined, saying that he remembered and he could get it.

“Well Aubrey,” Brian said laughing, probably thinking of how he messed my name up earlier, and pulling me into a one armed hug. “Welcome to the Avenged family. And welcome to life on the road.”