Our Hands Are Free

I awoke to the feeling of steam hitting my upper lip. I opened my eyes very slowly, feeling confused and unsure of my surroundings. It had been a long time since I had woken up and not really known where I was – especially while completely sober. The first thing I did was look down to see where the warmth that was hitting my lip was coming from. There was a spoon outstretched in front of me filled with what looked like chicken broth. I took in a deep breath and nearly moaned at the delicious smell.

I looked to the person that was holding the spoon out in front of me and immediately furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. His head was turned around so he was watching the television behind him, his lips pursed in concentration and his eyebrows furrowed in frustration. “Mike?” I asked, staring between his face and the spoon. “Why are you trying to feed me chicken broth while I’m sleeping?”

“Oh, good morning,” Mike mumbled without completely turning to look at me. His expression softened, but his gaze remained on the television. I looked at what was so captivating and rolled my eyes as soon as I saw the little FIFA soccer players running around in the video game.

“Mike!” I said, a bit louder. He quickly snapped his head over to me, nearly tipping over the spoon in the process. “What the heck are you doing?”

“Oh,” Mike laughed a bit, seemingly flustered. “Sorry. I was trying to get you to wake up.”

“With chicken broth?” I cocked my eyebrow.

He looked down at the spoon and slowly retracted it. “It’s cup of noodles, but I guess I didn’t get any noodles on the spoon.”

I rolled my eyes and took the spoon from him and then reached down to carefully grab the styrofoam cup of instant food. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

I instantly began to eat the food, not caring that the temperature was numbing my tongue and burning my throat. I felt as though I hadn’t eaten in days. The last time I could really remember eating was when Tony and Vic had assisted me in helping the catering line. How long ago was that? It was a couple of days, at least.

While I was focused on shoveling the noodles into my mouth, Mike reached out and poked my forehead. The poke was extremely painful and I nearly dropped my food as I cringed in pain. “Ow, jesus, what the fuck. That hurt really bad.”

“Yeah, it’s bruised pretty badly. The scratch isn’t noticeable though.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, causing my forehead to ache.

“Do you remember last night?” Mike asked, his voice turning into a slight whisper. I looked around the room and noticed that we were on my tour bus and not his – thankfully. All of my coworkers were roaming around the bus and could probably hear a majority of our conversation. Thank goodness Mike was whispering.

I tried to remember the night before, but all I could really remember was slapping Vic after what he had said to me and then breaking down in front of my tour bus. I closed my eyes for a moment and then remembered myself falling and hitting my forehead and scraping up my hands and probably my knees, too. “Oh,” I muttered. “Yeah, I do.”

“How did you fall? Were you drunk?” he asked, his voice still in a whisper.

I shook my head. “No, I was just really tired and emotionally drained.” It was only a half lie, and I was actually really surprised that I had even volunteered that much information to Mike. It was something about the Fuentes boys that made me feel comfortable.

“Listen,” Mike began, sighing as he turned to face me. I was leaning up against one edge of the couch and he was sitting on the middle, his back turned to the two other people sitting on the couch beside us. “I heard about the whole Austin thing and I just think it’s really fucked up.”

I nodded, at first thinking that he was talking about my situation with Vic and our argument over Austin, but something in his tone didn’t make me so sure. “What Austin thing?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Just everything Austin is saying… He’s not usually one to act like this, but for some reason he’s just gone awol.”

“What is he saying?” I asked, sitting up a bit straighter. At first I thought that maybe Alex had told Vic about how he saw me and Austin at the venue bathrooms a few nights ago, but now I wasn’t so sure. Austin was telling everyone about how we hooked up? Why would he exploit our meetings like that?

Mike became nervous. “Maybe it’s best if you don’t know…”

“Mike, you better tell me,” I warned.

He sighed, slouching his shoulders in defeat. “He’s telling everyone that you two hooked up a couple of times and that…well, he’s basically telling everyone that you’re a sex fiend who is obsessed with him.”

“Yeah, it probably was best if I didn’t know…” It was too late, though, because I did know. Before everything happened in my life, rumors like this wouldn’t mean anything to me. I would just pretend like I didn’t hear them or show everyone that I didn’t care. When you’re with the same group of people on a tour across the country, rumors are bound to go around. It’s like high school all over again – relationships, hook-ups, partying, and the talking about it afterward. Plenty of rumors used to fly around about me because I was always at the parties and I was always meeting new people and making new friends – people knew my name and knew who I was, even if I didn’t necessarily know them in return. But now, now that my life had been taken away from me after the accident, I couldn’t have any attention on me.

Kenny knew most of the things that had happened to me without the gory details, and the fact that I was even on the tour again was a miracle – he pulled so many strings for me and went through an insane amount of phone calls and conversations to make sure that I was allowed to be put back on this tour, even when my record wasn’t yet cleared. I didn’t want Kenny hearing rumors and regretting his decision, or even worse: I didn’t want people to know me and figure out why Kenny had a tough decision to make in the first place.

“I know they’re not true, you know…” Mike said, looking into my eyes and bringing me back into reality. “Something’s just got Austin’s panties in a bunch and I’m sure he’ll knock it off once he cools off.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, “they’re true.” My words were slow and almost like a question. Maybe the best way to stop the rumors was to just own up to them, even if they weren’t entirely true. If it wasn’t a mystery anymore, who would really care? It wouldn’t be the first time a hook-up happened on tour, and it definitely wouldn’t be the first time a roadie supposedly became obsessed with a band member – these were the two most common things to happen on warped tour. Nobody would care if it was true, but everybody would care if it was a mystery.

Mike’s eyes widened. “W-what?” he asked, seeming a bit disappointed. “I thought…but they’re just…”

“Rumors?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow. I slowly began to stand up from the couch. “If being under the radar is going to bring me too much attention, then I guess it’s time I change things up a bit.”

Mike cocked his head to the side, his eyes wild and bulging with confusion and what looked to be fear. I was certain that he had no idea what I was talking about, and part of me wanted to smile and say, my point exactly, but was it my point? What was I trying to accomplish by putting up a tough, confident act? I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything, I was just trying to survive.

I needed to get through the rest of the tour without anybody finding anything else about me. Dan knew too much. Vic knew too much. Mike knew too much. Hell, even Austin knew too much. The extent of their understanding of me needed to end, and in that moment that I heard about Austin’s rumors, I decided to end it.

--

I walked with the cigarette hanging between my lips and two cases of water bottles in my arms. Sweat was dripping from my forehead, but having my cigarette to puff on as I walked across the venue helped with the heat by calming my nerves. If I was going to start breaking out of my shell in order to keep the insides private, it was going to take a lot of cigarettes to take off the nervous edge.

So far only two people had asked me if I was Samia, and only seven people had stared at me as I walked by. I was thankful that nobody had known me from the previous years that I was on warped tour – luckily enough the bands that were on the tour dates then had already cycled through their days on warped and now newer bands were joining the line-up.

“Yo! Sam!” I didn’t slow down to see who was calling out to me. I continued to walk, ignoring whoever it was.

“Slow down there, tiger,” he said with a laugh. I could tell by the playfulness in his voice that it was Jack. Good ol’ Jack, always hungry for gossip and drama. I knew exactly what he was going to want to talk about. He was one of the only people on this year’s tour that actually knew me from when I was still me.

“Hi Jack,” I said with muffled words, through a mouthful of cigarette.

Jack stared at me for a moment, his eyes narrowed but his smirk never leaving. “You seem different.”

I reciprocated his stare. “Different how?” I asked, allowing my cigarette to drop from between my lips. I lifted my left foot and stomped it out before continuing on toward one of the venue’s beverage carts that I needed to deliver the water to.

Jack skipped along after me, coming up fairly close to my face before he spoke. “I don’t know. Something about you seems…different.”

“I need more description than that, Jack. You’re not really elaborating at all.” I narrowed my eyes as I looked for the cart that was in distress. I spotted a cart with a long line of people, all fanning themselves and nearly panting as they waited for the water and began to head in that direction.

Jack hummed for a moment as he followed me, his footsteps sporadic and his gestures unpredictable as he seemed to think for a moment. “You seem…sexier. You’ve got this bad-girl vibe going on, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m really diggin’ it.”

“You’re digging the vibe; or the rumor you heard about me being a sex fiend?”

Jack let out a loud laugh that was combined with a cough. He waited to answer as we approached the cart and I dropped off the cases of water – the line cheering at the sight of the water…or maybe at the sight of Jack, I couldn’t really tell. I helped load the water into the ice chest that was connected to the cart while Jack tried to hide behind me. He waved to a few people but didn’t stop to chat. He was too eager to follow me as I turned to walk back toward the buses.

“Hey, you know, I really miss you,” Jack said with a gentle voice. “And you know you can talk to me about anything. I’ll try my best not to blab it around.”

I still couldn’t tell if I needed to have a guard up around Jack or if it was a sincere gesture. I decided that I couldn’t let my guard down for anyone – I mean, look at how that turned out the last time I did it. I had the bruise on my forehand and an ache in my hand to remind me.

“Thanks, Jack,” I said whilst continuing my stride. “I’ll see you around.”

Jack stopped walking and let me carry on. I was glad he picked up on the fact that I really didn’t want to be reached out to. It was kind, and in my heart I did appreciate it, but my mind knew that something was off. Everybody was acting so strangely. Or maybe it was just me.

I lit up another cigarette, not even caring that it had to be my fourth one in the last two hours. It was the only thing that could take off the edge. Well, the only thing besides alcohol, but even I knew that resorting to alcohol wouldn’t be best. At least not while I was working. I had been strongly considering it, though. I continued to walk toward the bus to take a small break, but my journey was interrupted when I noticed that Of Mice and Men’s tour bus was right in my path. There was no avoiding it. And the whole band and crew was oh-so-conveniently outside. I had no chance but to walk past them.

I decided to walk by without looking at them or cowering down in any way. I needed to keep up my confidence, because I could already feel the stares lessening. When people get a rise out of you, they’ll continue to spread the rumors, but when it doesn’t matter to anyone, they will be dismissed. And that was exactly what needed to happen with me. I pulled my cigarette from my lips, releasing my smoke as I pulled out my cell phone to check if anybody had been trying to contact me.

I had to admit that it was painful to see that Vic hadn’t tried to contact me at all. I wanted to convince myself that he was just giving me space and listening to my wishes for him to stay away, but I also was hoping that he cared enough to at least apologize. I needed to hear his apology just for the peace of mind. I had no intentions of actually accepting it though.

I took another puff of the cigarette, but left it against my lips this time as I used both hands to hold my phone. Just as I was about to give up on waiting for Vic to contact me, my screen lit up and there was a text message. But from the last person I wanted to hear from. Austin.

Can we talk?

I stopped walking and turned my head to my right, where I knew Austin was standing with the rest of his crew. He was staring at me, holding his phone in his right hand while his left hand slowly lifted up for a slight wave. I continued to look at him, took a puff from my cigarette, and as I blew out the smoke, I shoved my phone back into my pocket and continued to walk toward my bus.

“Come on!” Austin called out to me while the rest of his crew let out a chorused “oooooh!”

I turned around, walking backwards, and said, “I think you’ve done enough of that, Austin.” And there was another wave of responses from his crew. I felt in control as I turned back around, stomping out the butt of my cigarette as I did so. I needed this. I needed to feel some power for once in my life.

Notes

Hey guys! Here's a small little update/fillerish chapter for you guys. I know not much is happening, but this is an introduction to a huge transition in Sam's life. And I'm really excited for everything to unfold - which is going to be happening very very soon.

Let me know what you guys think and be sure to check out my other stories as well! MUAH xoxoxo