Just What I Needed

Just What I Needed (54)

There was no speaking in the bus. Not that it was awkward, they’re just weren’t talking.

Yes, conversation had happened before, but it had left over the time spent inside, all of them letting silence come as they focused on their own thoughts.

After the time Keely and Seth had spent locked inside the little change room stall, they’d left the television studio – Keely having changed out of her costume first – to the many whispers of the people inside. But it appeared that what little time they’d taken for her to calm down had been too much, because the paparazzi had already flooded the outside of the studio as they apparently thought she was on the brink of a mental break down and would like to push it along.

The flashing lights combined with the questions being hurled at them – everything from Keely’s denial of a relationship to why she looked like she’d been crying – had been enough to freeze her in her steps, her mind working much slower through the reality of what she’d just done. Scowling around at the reporters, Seth had put his arm around her shoulders practically dragging her from their midst. A clicking frenzy behind them had started, but as the bus was parked just across the road, waiting to whisk them away to Green Bay, there had been thankfully no reason to spend any more time with the reporters.

And the moment she had climbed inside, Seth following in behind her, clapping met her ears.

Colton and Marco pretending to kiss the ground she walked on was enough to make her start laughing, and for a few moments forget. They’d gathered around the table as the bus started moving, she and Seth sitting on one side with the boys on the other. And with Seth’s arm slung across the back of the booth as he leaned back casually, they’d started joking and laughing about the moments of her interview.

All four of them holding back from thinking of the very real possibility that by the time the bus reached Green Bay Keely could be buying a plane ticket back to Bellingham.

But that was until her cell had begun ringing in her pocket.

And everything had gone dead quiet.

Feeling rather hesitant, but gritting her teeth anyways, Keely had stood up from the booth, pulling the phone from her jeans. “Hi?” she’d questioned uncertainly as she pressed the phone to her ear, wrapping one arm around her and making her way to the other end of the bus.

“Apologize, Keely. That’s all you had to do, say you understood what you’d done was wrong and that you’d learnt from your actions. That’s all you had to do.”

Wincing she began to pace in the back room, not oblivious to the silence that had settled over the bus as the boys hung on to her every word. “Well, it really wasn’t that easy,” Keely had mumbled guiltily.

Maureen had just given a sigh. “I have another meeting with Mr James tonight, I’m going to try and smooth it over, but I don’t know what I can do for you, I barely got him to agree to the apology. The show in Green Bay has been cancelled, but I’ll be flying out there to talk to you in person tomorrow night so you lot will still go there until we can figure this out. I’ll have my secretary call you with the details, alright?”

Feeling sufficiently chastised, Keely had hung her head and murmured, “Alright.”

That had been when the bus started to get quiet.

Not a single one of them had gone to bed that night, although Keely did change into a pair of plaid pyjama pants and Seth’s Nirvana shirt.

And it all lead up to them sitting without speaking on the bus at that moment.

Keely was sitting on the ground at the front of the bus, her legs stretched out in front of her and her back against the wall with the couch to one side and the table to the other, an acoustic guitar in her lap.