Everything Has Changed

“Aren’t you excited? Can you at least pretend to be excited? For me?” Lindsay asked, and I managed the biggest, cheesiest smile possible before letting it drop as I yawned. We were heading out at an ungodly hour of the morning to leave for Sudbury, the four of us not even having time to work out before going. So Jordan was pissy, Marc was asleep, and Eric was driving, leaving me subject to Lindsay and Tanya’s questions and conversation. Heather was asleep in the backseat next to Jordan, and he was grumbling about not being able to sleep. I was just glad that Jordan had agreed to let us take his Escalade, because we wouldn’t have all fit in any other vehicle.

I fell asleep between Tanya and Lindsay’s excited chatter and the country station Eric found on the radio. When I fully came to, after having dozed off and on for who knows how long, we were about ten minutes out of Sudbury. Tanya was driving now, and Heather was awake, Jordan snoring loudly, but not as loudly as Marc was. Eric was dozing, the way he did when the boys were down for a nap, and every sound or change of sound had his head up and eyes open.

“Have a good sleep?” Tanya asked, looking over at me for a brief second. I nodded, rubbing my eyes as I sat up properly; one leg and most of my ass had fallen asleep.

“Yeah, actually,”

“You don’t sleep that great anymore?” she prodded. I shook my head, choosing to look out the window and escape her concerned gaze. Instead she patted my arm the same way my mom would have and stayed quiet.

We got to the hotel and checked into our rooms before Lindsay insisted that we should head over to the fairground to see if there was any main stage performances going on right now, and then we could go eat somewhere that a band was playing. Tanya and Heather thought it sounded great, and I shrugged, not really caring what we did. My brothers didn’t really care, so we piled back into the car and headed for the fair ground. We got our wristbands and started wandering around. I was almost positive I saw Brett Sutter, but shook it off, because he’d never said anything about coming here when he’d left our place on Wednesday.

We walked past a big grandstand, and the people on stage somehow caught my eye. I stopped dead in my tracks then, recognizing the brunette who was sitting cross-legged on the floor and tuning an acoustic guitar. Her hair was falling around her face in messy waves, and even though a large portion of her face was hidden it wasn’t hard to tell who it was.

“Cheyenne,” the whisper left my lips before my brain had time to process it, and Marc ran into me, nearly sending the two of us toppling over.

“What’s your problem?” he asked, rubbing his forehead where he’d cracked into the back of my head. The throbbing was definitely there, but I couldn’t even find the brain power to really think about it as my eyes stayed glued to her.

“Oh my God! Tanya! That’s Cheyenne Summers! I forgot she was supposed to play again this summer! She wasn’t here last year!” Lindsay squealed, and my head whipped around. There was no way…

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… you know Cheyenne?” I asked, and she scoffed.

“Jared, really. Get with the music program – she’s like the Canadian Taylor Swift… just not as internationally acclaimed or famous. Yet,” she explained, and Tanya nodded.

“We saw her play in Toronto last year, and at Calgary Stampede, she’s incredible!”

I looked from them back up to the stage, glad Cheyenne hadn’t noticed us yet as she started playing her guitar and humming, the microphone close enough to pick it up. She laughed at something one of the band guys said, and I just about lost all brain function at the sound. I felt eyes on me and saw Jordan staring, his brow knit, before his eyes widened a little. He hadn’t looked up to the stage and saw her yet, and even then I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d recognize her.

“Jared… she isn’t… that isn’t your Cheyenne, is it?” Jordan asked, and my inability to answer had all three of the girls staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed. I was just as surprised as they were. He looked back and forth between the stage and me, disbelief written all over his face as he slowly began to recognize the brunette on stage as the brunette he’d met at my apartment.

“Why didn’t you tell us!” Lindsay demanded, and I shrugged.

“She never made a big deal about it… she never told me she did these kind of shows… just that she sang and did some smaller stuff…” I explained, unable to tear my eyes from her on stage. She looked completely at home and in her element, yet she was different. She’d lost some weight, and I hoped it wasn’t my eyes playing tricks on me that made her smile seem unable to reach her eyes, like there was an invisible weight on her. I didn’t want her to feel like that, but the rest of my family didn’t seem to notice that as the girls gushed over how good she looked, and about her clothes and especially the boots she was wearing.

“Well you sure know how to pick them Jay,” Marc allowed, and Lindsay nodded, rather than smacking him as we both expected.

“Go say hi,” she hissed, giving me a shove. I shook my head, not ready to handle this. I needed time to figure out what to say, how to act – what was crossing the line and what wasn’t.
“I can’t… she’s busy,” I stuttered, and Heather stepped in to save me from my other sisters-in-law.

“He’s a little shell-shocked right now… why don’t we wait until after her show? Then Jared might be able to get a full sentence out,” she suggested, and finally they nodded. A small crowd had gathered around, because the gate was closed to actually get near the stage and apparently you needed a VIP pass to get in early. There was already fifty or so people lined up and waiting by the gates so they could get in for her show. Lindsay and Tanya soon spotted the merchandise table and quickly bolted over there to join the line up of fans wanting to get something.

“I can’t believe you hooked up with a famous person and didn’t tell us,” Jordan pouted, obviously a little disappointed at the thought.

“It’s not like I knew about all… this!” I shot back, waving my arm around to indicate the huge stage and group of fans, and Eric elbowed him in the ribs to shut him up. Soon they were starting to play, and the group around us cheered as Cheyenne stepped up to the microphone. I ducked, hiding behind Eric before realizing how infantile I was being. I just didn’t know what to do yet, and until I did I didn’t want her to know I was here. What if she thought I was stalking her or something?

“Wow… she’s good,” Eric allowed as she started in on a Shania Twain song for sound check. Lindsay and Tanya came back, each clutching a CD and talking excitedly.

“She just came out with a new EP like two weeks ago – I haven’t found it anywhere yet!” Lindsay explained to Marc, who took it from her hands to look at it, flipping it over to read the back as well.

“The guy said it’s only available at her shows this summer – she’s officially releasing it in September,” Tanya finished, and soon the three of them were gushing over the CD. Apparently she’d done YouTube videos of two of the new songs and they’d both been incredibly excited for the record ever since, and I learned they both had her first EP.

Five minutes later they were off the stage, and twenty minutes after that they opened the gates for people to get into this grandstand area. People swarmed in, some wearing T-shirts with Cheyenne’s face and name on them, others had homemade looking ones. Lots had pictures or posters, and all of them were screaming excitedly. Cheyenne had left the stage as soon as her sound check song was over, and I was rooted to the spot. How could she have not told me about all of this?