A Dreamers Dream

After the show - Birmingham, England

By the time Sammy and I slump out of the crew buses and into the hotel, it's already three am. To say I am shattered would be an understatement but my requests to go straight to bed seem to be falling on deaf ears.
"Oh, C'mon! It's your first night! We need to celebrate and welcome you to the team properly! You can't just slouch off to bed" Sammy admonishes me as we make our way into the hotel lobby. I barely have the energy to take in the opulent surroundings, let alone enough to head to the hotel bar with Sammy and a few other members of the crew. But as we have the day off tomorrow, they seem to have decided that tonight is a good night for a bit of fun.
"I'll come for one, just one though! Some of us had to drive halfway across England this morning remember," I say teasingly, giving in. I don't want to seem like a killjoy. Reluctantly I follow along behind Sammy, Clarke and a couple of others who I've not met yet towards the bar and order myself a large vodka Redbull in a pitiful attempt to perk myself up a bit, before flopping into an oversized comfy armchair.
"To surviving day one!" Sammy roars, raising her garish pink and green cocktail up to clink glasses with Clarke and I as we settle in around a table in the corner of the bar.
"Haha thanks, I don't think I managed to break anything at least. Although I'm fairly sure when I take my shoes off, I'm gonna have a pretty big bruise on my toe" I joke, tapping my glass against both of theirs and settling back in my seat.
"What did you think of your first night then Kiddo?" Clarke asks, and Sammy shoots me a confused look
"Kiddo?" She questions
"Yeah, Clarke seems to not understand the ageing process. He's known me since I was a baby and seems to have trouble reconciling the fact that I'm actually all grown up now," I tell her, giving Clarke a withering look.
"Sorry Kiddo, but no matter how old you get, you're always gonna be Mike's bratty kid sister to me. Gotta admit though, you're nicer to look at since your boobs grew in," he fires back at me with a wink. I grab one of the plump red velvet cushions from behind me and swat him around the head with it playfully making him slosh some of his beer over his lap. Serves him right.
"Your boobs aren't looking so bad either!" I tease him with a pointed look at his chest. It's not that Clarke's fat exactly, but he's certainly carrying around a bit more weight than he was the last time I saw him and the outline of teeny tiny man boobs are visible through his thin white T-Shirt. "Anyways, if you're quite done taking the piss I'll answer your question," I say in my most exasperated voice. Clarke nods lightly in my direction and takes a huge gulp of his pint, draining half the glass in one go as he waits for me to respond. "It was good! Although I'm bloody tired, I enjoyed it. Everyone seems really friendly and, other than my little mishap with the star of the show, I don't think I made too much of a prat out of myself," I tell him.
"Mishap? Ahh shit kid, what did you do?" Clarke asks and Sammy bursts into a fit of the giggles, almost choking on the mouthful of cocktail she was midway through swallowing and I reach over to pat her on the back whilst her coughing subsides.
"Argh..well... I might sorta.. dropped one of the barricades on my toe and fallen over into him a little bit." I admit sheepishly, feeling the heat rising in my face
"AND!" Sammy prompts me unwilling to let me get away with only telling half the story.
"Ok, Ok, it's possible that I also screamed a few obscenities in his general direction as well. I didn't know he was there!!" I finish and put my head in my hands in mock shame
"Don't you mean in his one direction?" Sammy splutters, tears streaming down her cheeks, clearly impressed with her own joke and finding the whole situation hilarious.
"You didn't! Way to make an entrance!" Clarke laughs, slapping his denim-clad thigh heavily with one of his pudgy hands.
"Hey! That thing was damn heavy, and it really hurt! Either of you would have done the same thing," I defend myself as I join in with their infectious laughter. "Thank god he was ok about it, can you imagine if I'd have been fired by Harry himself on my first night of the damn tour?!" I ask them through my laughter.
"I told you, Maddie, H is a good guy, he'd never fire you over something so stupid. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he's never fired anyone from the crew. He even tried to convince Paul to give Amber and Tony another chance before they were let go if the rumours are true." Sammy says.
"Amber and Tony? Were they the two that got fired before I got here?" I ask her, finally managing to compose myself and relaxing back against the cushions of my chair.
Sammy looks around quickly before answering me as if to check who is in earshot before she starts gossiping, which I can tell from the look on her face, she is absolutely dying to do. Several other crew members are milling around in the small bar. Still, most of them are too far away to hear our conversation, so she leans in a little closer to Clarke and I before she continues.
"That's the ones, well it was no secret that they'd been at it for weeks. For most of the European leg, they'd been sneaking in and out of one and others hotels rooms after shows. Then, when we got to Oslo middle of last month, Amber was bunking in with Cathy, who by the way has the biggest mouth of anyone on the crew, watch out for her. Tony ended up in a room with two other blokes, so it became more complicated for them to have their little liaisons," Sammy says in a mock French accent before taking a large gulp of her drink and setting the glass back on the table and continuing. "After that, people started running into them everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. In the toilets, the gym, once I actually spotted them going at it up against a speaker backstage when we were supposed to be doing takedown. They were like fucking rabbits, I swear!"
"Oh my god, really? Right there in the arena?" I ask incredulously, unable to believe that anyone would be quite that brazen. "Surely they could have just snuck off to another hotel or something and got a room together?"
"Nah, Paul would have gone more mental about that, to be honest. He insists that we all stay under the same roof whilst we're touring, less chance of private info about H getting out or someone turning up late for a flight or something that way you see."
"So did Paul or Harry or someone catch them at it then? Is that why they got fired?" I ask her totally invested in this story now and desperate to find out the ending.
"God, no! They were careful enough to make sure the only people who ever spotted them were other crew members. After a while, we all just got used to hearing heavy breathing behind a closed door or accidentally getting an eye full of someone's crotch as they were pulling up their underwear in a hurry. Problem was, a relationship like that when it's all just about sex, I guess it was destined to burn out, and when it did, things got nasty real fast." Sammy tells me before Clarke steps in eagerly to pick up the story
"See, Tony started dating one of the other crew, Claire, and Amber went apeshit when she found out. Tried to have a punch-up with Claire right in the middle of the arena floor in Mannheim, Claire was terrified poor girl, and we were all trying to pull Amber away, but she was tearing at Claire's hair, ripped her top and all sorts," Clarke says with a smile that tells me he enjoyed the spectacle a lot more than he's willing to let on.
"Paul heard the commotion and came out to see what was going on just as Amber threw a pretty decent right hook at Tony," Sammy continues "So he herded them both off into his office, and that was that. By the time we got back to the hotel that night, both of them were on planes back home."
"Wow, well remind me not to get involved with any of the guys on the crew then!" I say jokingly as I finish my drink.
"Probably for the best, their all idiots anyways," Sammy says with a pointed look at Clarke, but he doesn't seem to notice.