Noise and Kisses

And he was right, the next morning I woke with a splitting headache and a dry throat. I sat up slowly, still groggy due to the lack of sleep I had. Nate and I ended up going back to the bus, watched a little bit of TV and then slept on the couches together. No one seemed to be awake yet, so I took advantage of the empty bathroom and had a quick shower. I put some fresh clothes on; a teal shirt with a small black embroidered cat over the place where my heart was. I also wore some black skinny jeans and some leopard print flats. Grabbing myself some coffee and an apple, I headed outside of the bus. It was still early, about 9 in the morning. There were some tech crews setting up and some big burly guys covered in tattoos walking around and seeking out the best stage to play on. I sat down under some plastic chairs that were set up near our bus. I was munching on my apple when a tall, skinny girl with big aqua curls came up to me. Her lips were painted in a bright red and she had a yellow sun dress on.
“Mind if I sit with you?” she asked gesturing to one of the chairs.
I snapped out of my usual day dream, “No, of course.”
Smiling she threw herself into one of the chairs, “Thanks, I’m Micheline,” she pronounced her name like a cross between the names Michelle and Madeline.
“That’s a lovely name,” I returned her smile, “Mine is Thalia-Jade, but you can call me just one of them if you prefer.”
She grinned, “Oh no, I think that hyphenated names are much more sophisticated, I’ll call you both.”
I laughed, “I think my mother just couldn’t choose between one, so she stuck them together.”
She nodded, “Well that’s one way to solve the problem.”
There was a comfortable silence for a few minutes until she broke it again.
“So, is this your first time on Warped? I’ve never seen you before.”
I nodded, “Yeah, I’ve never been before. I came with my brother because he’s starting out in a new band.”
She looked genuinely interested, “Oh cool.”
“ I take it that you’ve been on Warped more than once?” I asked.
She smiled and pinned one of her curls back into place that had slipped out, “Yeah, I’m good friends with a girl called Hannah Beth. Her father is a major organizer of this tour, so she invited me along with her. This is my fifth time, but my first doesn’t really count because I only came on tour for three days.”
“Wow, you’re lucky to have a good friend like that,” I replied.
She smiled, “Yeah I am, Thalia-Jade. So, you must be touring with The Used,” she continued and reached back behind her to tap on the bus.
I nodded, “How did you know?”
“I’m pretty good friends with them, and I recognize their bus. That’s why I was walking over in this direction; I wanted to see if I could catch up with any of the guys.”
I laughed, “Oh I see, well at the moment they’re all fast asleep.”
“I take it they partied it up last night?”
“They did indeed” I responded happily, I was making another friend already.
Ironically as I thought that she stood to go, “Well love I better be off, you know, people to meet and plenty of things to do!”
She bent down and pecked my cheek before she flitted off, calling out that she’d make sure to have a chat with me again. I raised my eyebrows, thinking how quickly and randomly people came and went at Warped Tour. But I was once again interrupted with my thinking as someone stepped out from the bus. It was Brandon; he too had a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.
“Wow, you’re up first?” he laughed, “I thought you’d be sleeping away all day with the amount of partying you did last night”
I smiled, “Yeah I surprised myself too.”
“Don’t you have a massive hang over?”
“Sort of, but I get off pretty well usually, so I’m lucky,” I explained.
He nodded, “Well today is the first ‘official’ day of Warped, where we’ll be setting up and playing.”
This excited me. “So there will be fans and what not here today?”
He sighed, somewhat weary but still happy, “yeah, hoards of screaming people,” he laughed and became silly again, “of course there mainly here to see me,” he said fluttering his eyelashes.
“Oh yes,” I said laughing.
“So, your first day of Warped work,” he continued.
“Yeah, I’m pretty excited.”
“Oh, you’ll get over standing in the sun and dealing with teens after about an hour, trust me,” he laughed, “Merch work is hard.”
I grinned, “Nah, it will be great.”
However, later on in the afternoon, I decided that perhaps Brandon was right. I had to deal with many young teenage girls that believed ‘Jeph and me are meant to be’ or that they had the right to see any band member they wanted or that they should be served shirts before anyone else. I rolled my eyes at most of them and Nate just laughed at their eagerness for male attention. After lunch Nate had awoken and together we had set up their merch tent. Hazel had to go help ‘Alexisonfire’ and the rest of ‘The Used’ were doing tech practices all day. They had two performances scheduled for 2pm and 6pm. I hoped that I could make the 6pm show; but by the looks of the merchandise lines, I doubted it. Although about 4pm, the lines had started to slow down. Nate was now dealing with the customers whilst I continued unpacking shirts, CD’s, posters and other assorted merchandise. I displayed the type of shirts they had in stock on a board, the CD’s were on one table, the posters were stacked in a stand behind the merch table and the assorted accessories like gloves, badges and bags were sorted onto another table. I sat down for a minute with Nate as there were no fans waiting to be served.
“If you want to go and walk around the site or go see a show, you can,” Nate said kindly, “I can take it from here,” he added.
I thought it was very nice of him to offer, “Only if you’re sure, Nate. I don’t want to leave you alone,” I said.
He laughed jokingly, “Don’t worry about me, I won’t get attacked or anything.”
I laughed, “Alright then, thank you!” It was great timing that he said that, because it was getting close to 5pm and if I wanted to the guys play then I would have just enough time to get ready and then find their stage.
I scrambled up from one of the chairs and quickly ran off to find the bus. The next thing I knew I was being jostled around in the crowd. It was about 5 minutes before The Used were scheduled to play.
“Damn” I thought, “it wasn’t really necessary to take that shower.”
I was already sweating and had only been in the mosh pit for about 10 minutes. I was standing next to the stairs of the stage and the guy behind me kept pushing me into them. I frowned; it was really starting to hurt my hip bone because I kept crashing into the corner of the stairs. I was about to turn around and mouth off to the guy, but someone grabbed my arm. I looked up startled and met the cheeky face of Quinn, “Hey sugar cheeks,” he laughed.
A few girls standing around me started screaming in joy, recognizing who Quinn was. He was standing on the stage stairs and was beckoning for me to climb up to him. The crowd became tighter, as more and more people started screaming for Quinn. He waved at them but continued to tug me up on the stairs. Finally, I was hoisted up and I fell into his arms. I fit right into them and was looking up at his smirking face.
“Feeling better dearest? You looked like you would have died down in that pit,” he smirked and did his usual eye up of me.
I rolled my eyes and stepped out of his embrace, “What do you want?”
He rolled his eyes, mimicking my previous gesture, “I was helping you, and I thought you would rather see the show from backstage instead?”
I bit my lip, he was just being nice and thinking of me; I felt bad for snapping, “Oh okay, thank you.”
“Its fine,” he replied, “let’s just get backstage before the crowd dies over me,” he laughed becoming sarcastic again. But for once, his sarcasm didn’t truly bother me….it was actually really attractive.

Once we were behind the stage I could still hear the crowd jittering because they had sighted Quinn. Jeph had his bass strapped around him and Brandon was twirling his drumsticks around. After Quinn got me backstage he thrust a backstage pass into my hand and said, “Quick, I gotta go; we’ll be on in 3 seconds,” and he ran off to get his guitar.
I decided to watch the show from the backroom. To my surprise there weren’t many people there. There were a few people that were clearly from bands, just waiting around till their turn. Scattered amongst them were a few other merchandise people and also what I presumed were some groupies. I watched the show from a small TV screen. About an hour into the show; almost towards the end, Nate joined me in the backroom. A girl with choppy red hair and a tight zebra dressed, swooped down on Nate. She was flirting and giggling with him. He seemed slightly uncomfortable, but I honestly did mind. It’s not like I had a claim on him. The girl with red hair, whose real name was Amelia but liked to be called Valentine (hence the red colour of her hair), offered myself and Nate some alcohol. I still didn’t feel my best from last night, so instead I declined the drinks and decided to head back to the bus myself. I was super tired from the day and I knew that I needed some rest. I was walking back to the bus when I heard my name being called out from behind me.
“Thalia!”
I whirled around but it was getting too dark to see anything.
I kept walking until someone grabbed me arm, causing me to spin around.
I opened my mouth, willing to scream if it was some crazy man, but it was only Quinn – again.
“Thalia,” he said, breathless like he’d been running.
I frowned, “What’s wrong?”
He returned my frown and released my arm, “Why did you take off? Why didn’t you stay till after the show?”
“Oh yeah, your show was really great tonight,” I said, forgetting to congratulate him before I left.
He smirked and ran a hand through his hair, “Yeah well,” and then deciding that I still wasn’t off the hook he frowned again, “So? What’s your excuse, why didn’t you stick around and wait for us to come off?”
“I was really tired. Honestly, I watched all of the show and it was great, but I had to get some rest.”
He pouted, accepting my explanation, “But there’s gonna be an awesome after party you’ll miss out on.”
I sighed wearily, “I’m sure that there will be many parties for me to go to, but not for tonight.”
He became his playful self again, “But if you don’t go, then I’ll hook up with all the other girls.”
I laughed, he was being so stupid, “Oh well, we’ll have to rain check.”
He raised his eyebrows, he probably didn’t expect me to joke back to him. I began thinking that maybe he just said things to piss me off. But he’ll see I didn’t always have to react to them.
“Fine then we will have to rain check,” he said smirking again.
I nodded.
“Tomorrow night, I’ll kiss you then,” he laughed.
I rolled my eyes and gently pushed his shoulder away, “Whatever Quinn.”
He softened his voice, “Ah, she doesn’t deny it. You want me Thalia, don’t you?”
I blushed at Quinn and his remarks but brushed him off as usual, “Yeah yeah, oh Quinn, you’re so irresistible.”
He laughed, “Sarcasm is always good, but I can see right through you,” he said, taking a step closer towards me.
My breathing got slightly heavier, Quinn was always keeping me on my toes; at the same time I wanted to hear more of his silly antics yet I also wanted to be serious for once.
We were very close to teach other right now, yet we weren’t touching each other at all. I could feel his hot breath on my lips as he breathed in and out. His face split into a grin, “And you have nothing to say to that, do you?”
I bit my lip, silently cursing myself. I didn’t want him to know that I liked him. I disliked him and liked him at the same time.
He stepped back, making my body immediately miss his warmth and energy.
He smiled at me as he turned to go, “Go get some sleep Thalia; you’ll need some rest for tomorrow night.” And with that he winked and walked away with his hands in his pockets.