How Many Times Can You Race Around the Tree Before You Catch Me?

Jake was running a towel through his hair trying to soak up some of the water and sweat from the show.

“Why not?” I crossed my arms fully prepared for some kind of a fight.

“You’re off for the day. Someone special is here to do that left sleeve of yours.” I raised an eyebrow at Niki.

“Who?” I knew who I wanted to do my sleeve, but our schedules never matched up ever. I had pretty much given up on it.

Mikey wasn’t sick, He had to go get Trevor from the airport, but Trevor is setting up in the back room right now. You have the rest of the day off.” They all smiled at me.

“Really? He’s gonna do the whole sleeve now? You guys have a show tomorrow and we can’t afford for you to be late…” Jake groaned.

“Bitch, go take a shower and do your tattoo. I’m in charge now!” Everyone kinda just stared at Jake.

“Jake you have the same authority that I regard to an ant. I can’t hand the reigns over to you. You have an acoustic set to do still, plus all of your lessons and I haven’t finalized everything for the show tomorrow. Don’t forget the signing and you-“

“Jesus christ.”

For once, Christian was the one to take charge. He unclipped my walkie before I could react and turned and shoved me towards the buses.

“We’ll be fine. Go do your shit, happy birthday part two” I turned and frowned at them all before going to walk away.

SNAP!

My hands flew to my butt right where Jake had snapped me with his towel. I turned with my jaw dropped. Everyone, including other bands, now had their eyes on us.

“Jacob Alex Romero, I swear that I will kill you before this tour is over.” I grabbed the towel from Niki.

“And you best pray that I’m nice.” I twisted the towel and threw the retaliation before he could react.

“Fucking shit!” He held his arm as I handed Niki back the towel.

“Thank you guys for this surprise. I love and appreciate it. However, I will not hesitate to punish you tomorrow if something happens. Now please have a good day, go REASONABLY crazy.”

I walked away and back towards the bus area.

“Well then.” Vinny jogged up next to me.

“Yeah the boys are crazy, No joke I’m pretty sure Jake made my ass bleed. I don’t care how bad that sounds.” Vinny tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help it.

“That doesn’t sound comfortable.” I rolled my eyes and tried to walk faster and away. He grabbed my hand to keep me next to him.

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Whatever. What else do you have to do today?”

“Take a shower?” I looked at the black grease paint that was caked on his skin.

“That’s probably a good idea. How about you go do that and i’ll go get repeatedly stabbed with a needle. You are very much so free to join.” He laughed as we got to his bus. We were not parked together today.

"Sounds like a plan.” He gave me a quick kiss before going up into his bus and I went to mine.

I walked in and saw all the doors open. Trevor was in the back wiping stuff down.

“Trevor!” I smiled and he turned with a smile on his face.

“Happy belated birthday Jax. Or early birthday. I never know with those guys.” I chuckled.

“Yeah they just celebrate it differently every year. We haven’t ever celebrated on my birthday.”

“Well it’s nice to know I never technically miss it. Anyways, you ready to do this?” He motioned to the couch that he had shrink wrapped and wiped down.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

I put my hair into a bun and pull my shirt off so I was just in my sports bra before laying where he wanted me to. He free handed the designs we agreed on with a red sharpie before letting my stand and give it a look. I loved it. It was a themed sleeve based around the salem witch trials with a fire like filigree connection and words from one of his band’s full length album. It was going to hurt like hell, but I really loved it.

It took him about three hours to get the outlines for everything done. Vinny had popped in during one of our breaks but when he saw that there wasn’t much room he didn’t want to intrude. I promised to let him know when we were done. When Trevor was almost half way done with the initial shading, the guys came back. I immediately kicked the door shut and wouldn’t let them in. They would have screwed it up. However, them coming back told me it was around seven. I had another 5 hours before we were trying to leave. Our driver and Motionless’ driver had made friends and decided to travel together for the tour. So Vinny wasn’t going to leave before I was done.

It took another two hours before Trevor was done with the shading and I had already made my self bleed from biting my knuckle.

“Are you sure you’re good or do you wanna cut it here? It’s pretty much done. It just needs that color.” I looked over at the table and saw that he had laid about a few cups of accent colors. It would probably be another hour.

“Let’s do it. We hardly ever have the time to do this.” I laughed.

“Alright. Let me know if you need to break.”

He continued to assault my arm. Soon enough though, it was all over.

“Looks like that’s it.” Trevor started wiping down my arm. The liquid was cold on my skin and it made it feel completely ok.

“Take a look.” I stood and started looking it over.

I was speechless. It was so amazing.

“I love it!” I gave Trevor a one armed hug.

“Good, It took us two years to get it on ya.” He chuckled.

“I know touring and everything has been insane. Anyways, should I dry heal this?”

“For the first couple of days probably. Just keep it wrapped for 24-48 hours and every morning and every night before you go to bed for that 24-48 hours wash any coagulation off to prevent scabbing. You’re gonna be in the sun a lot so keep it covered too. After that first 1-3 days use plain unscented lotion.” I nodded making sure to repeat it into my memory.

Trevor sat me back down and took some pictures before wrapping me up. I helped him clean everything up before we went out to the front.

“Let me see!” Christian jumped up to look.

“Calm yourself. It’s wrapped. You can see it in the morning. But thank you guys, seriously. I love it.” I gave them each a one armed hug before Trevor came up into the front.

“Alright guys, I gotta leave for the airport soon.”

“Sorry we couldn’t drive you back there buddy. We can’t miss buss call tonight.” Trevor shrugged and hugged all of them before calling an uber.

“Alright I’m going to find the driver and talk to Josh and the MIW camp. Did anyone grab dinner?”

“We did for us. We figured you ate.” I shrugged.

“I’ll grab some food.” I pulled my phone out and shot Vinny a text that I was done and was coming to his bus.

“MIW? I forgot they were on this tour.”

“Yeah wanna come say hi and then I’ll walk you to your uber?” He nodded and I grabbed one of his bags with my good arm.

We walked over towards the MIW bus and saw that they were all packed up.

“They’re probably all half asleep by now.”I chuckled.

We walked over to the front and I gave a kick on the door. Rich answered.

“Hey dude, I brought a friend. Mind if we come in?” I motioned to Trevor.

“You’re always welcomed on here.” I smiled.

Josh and Chris were sitting at the table and everyone else was dispersed around the couches.

“Nice to see you all too.” Everyone finally looked up and saw Trevor.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Chris was the first to get up and give Trevor a ‘man hug.’ The others quickly followed.

“I’ve been trying to put some ink on Jax over here for two years. She manned up and just did a whole sleeve.” I smiled and pointed to my jellied arm.

“Damn, how did that feel?”

“Like fucking daisies and fairy dust, how the fuck do you think it felt Ryan?” The guys all laughed at my response to him.

“Yeah, we just knocked through it. I think it came out amazing. Took us forever to get down to it though.” I nodded to agree.

“Yep.” Vinny came out of the back then. He looked at my arm.

“Anyways, I just wanted to come say hello before I left.” Trevor waved.

“Oh before you go, this is the newest addition to our little troupe here. Vinny this is Trevor, Trevor this is Vinny. He’s our touring drummer.” Vinny moved forward and shook hands with Trevor.

“Nice to meet you.” Vinny smiled at Trevor before Chris pull him aside to talk. I moved to talk to VInny.

“Sorry we couldn’t do anything. I forget that there’s really no room in the back.” He shrugged.

“It’s ok, anyways…” He looked around at the guys before motioning towards the bunks.

I followed him all the way into the back room where he sat down and motioned me to sit next to him.

“Trying to seduce me,huh?” He chuckled and pulled me into his torso, making sure to not hit my arm.

“Maybe, is it working?” I laughed.

“No, not at all. I can’t tell if its the lack of actual seducing or the gross laundry all over” Clearly they used their back lounge to change and get ready for shows.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I can’t really do anything about that.”

After he spoke it became very quiet. I grabbed his hand and started playing with his fingers. This was nice to me. It was quiet and calm and he just wanted to sit with me. There wasn’t anything wrong that I needed to run off to. Just calm and quiet.

Until my phone started going off.

“Sorry.” I pushed off of Vinny and pulled my phone out of my pocket. Jake was calling.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Yeah so You're on Issues bus for the night.” I raised my eyebrows.

“Uh why?” He stayed silent.

“Hello?” He sighed.

“We left.”