Paper Parachute | Celebrity Romance

14.

Blair was freaking the fuck out.

It was the first day of the tour and the weight of having to perform to a sold out arena had settled on her shoulders and it was crushing her.

She sat on the edge of the stage, waiting for her sound check to begin, staring out to the vast space of the arena. Rows and rows of empty seats stared back at her for as far as she could see and she tried to imagine what it would look like in a few hours when it was packed wall to wall with people.

So far, the largest crowd she had ever performed for was a packed night at Deno's. That crowd of maybe one hundred people would surely pale in comparison to tonight's audience of thousands.

"You nervous?" A male voice behind her asked. She glanced back and saw Dex, one of Blake's bandmates, the drummer, as he bent down and took a seat next to her.

"Oh yeah." She said softly as she blew out a breath, returning her gaze to the extensive of empty seats.

"Don't be. Blake's right." He gave her a knowing look. "Don't tell him I said that. But I mean it, you're really talented Blair. You deserve to be here and there's not a doubt in my mind that everyone's going to fall in love with you once they hear you sing."

"I hope you're right." She mumbled. "There's just so much on the line for me. I've wanted this for a long time and I'm scared to mess everything up." She turned to look at him. "That's the only reason things between Blake and I are so shitty right now, you know? I pushed him away to focus on tour."

"Yeah, I heard." He said softly and Blair wondered what exactly Blake had told them. "Blake's an interesting dude. As long as I've known him, he's only really cared about himself, well and his mom. He's a total fucking momma's boy. What I do know is, the past few months he has been a lot less selfish and it was because of you. There's a lot on the line for him too, you know? But he was willing to risk it all for a shot with you. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but since he's one of my best friends, I just thought you should know. Good luck tonight, Blair! You'll be great!"

With that he pressed his palms against the stage, pushing himself up with ease and heading backstage to get ready for his own sound check later.

Easton and the sound technicians worked to get everything ready for Blair's performance, while they worked her mind was everywhere but on what they were telling her. She only hoped that she would be more mentally prepared when it came her time to shine that night.

She walked off stage and waited in the wings, hoping she could at least see for herself that Blake was alright after their fight. The boys had whisked him away as soon as they'd gotten back to the bus and she hadn't gotten to see or speak to him all day. It could have been that they were both just busy, but she suspected it was more so due to him purposefully avoiding her.

"Easton, we're good to go ahead and start. Blake's gonna be a few minutes, his nerves are getting to him. He was puking his guts up when we headed out here." The bassist, Rian, she thought his name was, said.

"Should I be worried?" Easton asked.

"Nah, he gets like this the first show of every tour. He'll be fine by showtime." That seemed to satisfy Easton. Blair wanted to stick around, wait to see Blake, she wanted to verify with her own eyes that he really was okay and watch his band sound check, but she needed to get to hair and makeup. So reluctantly, she turned and headed towards the bus.

•

"Do you know what you're wearing tonight?" Brooke asked as she held bobby pins in her mouth and attempted to wrangle Blair's hair into an updo.