Where We Were [ON HOLD]

Chapter 2

Bobbi glanced up from her phone when she heard her name being called.

"Bobbi, we're here."

Her smiled faded as she glanced from Alex sitting across from her, past her date sitting to her right. His gaze was locked on the scene outside as the limo rolled to a slow stop and barely looked back at her until Alex coughed and brought his attention back to earth. He ran a quick hand through his neatly styled dirty blonde hair and turned to face Bobbi, a sly smile breaking across his face as he ran his eyes over her body for the third time thus far in their short commute.

"You ready to go?" He asked.

The dark brown of his eyes forced Bobbi to swallow down a wince and looked instead down at her hands, letting her gaze absorb the glinting rings that adorned her fingers. His eyes remained the same color, despite her desire for them to somehow magically change into a nice blue. But she had managed a smile upon her lips and took a deep breath to prepare herself.

With a quick nod, his hand reached for hers and she found it suddenly enveloped in an embrace that felt too smooth and unfamiliar. She forced the thoughts of everything she wished to change about her life to the back of her mind to deal with a later time and gathered the skirt of her long black dress in her free hand.

The near silence that the three of them had ridden in the whole way to the theater was then was forcibly thrown out as a mass of screams and general red carpet ambience pierced the atmosphere as the driver opened their car door. With a quick glance in the rear view mirror situated up front and a nod from Alex that each strand of her dark black hair was perfectly in place, she was ready to go.

Taking a deep breath, she planted her ready-made smile onto her lips and stepped out onto the sidewalk, the volume level of the surrounding atmosphere erupting as the air filled with thousands of fans screaming her name.

**********

Bobbi found herself nearly losing brain cells only five minutes into the conversation with the parking attendant for the Brooklyn Music Festival the next day. Her hard-won cool manner was starting to wear thin as she continued to argue back in forth from the front seat of the minivan.

"We should be on the list. We're one of the performing acts. We have to be on some list somewhere!"

The young girl seemed just about Bobbi's own age but lacked any sort of comprehensive understanding of how to work with people. Her lack of information and qualification for the job of parking attendant was showing and painting her in a very bad light in Bobbi's eyes.

"Well, I don't know what to tell ya. You gotta have the pass to park backstage. That's the rules." Every other syllable was punctuated with the smacking sound of her bubble gum.

Bobbi glanced down at the clock, the time reading out their extreme tardiness. The sight only increased her desire to reach out and knock the girl flat on her back. She tried taking a deep breath to calm down, slicking back her hair and making sure her long brown hair was still high and tight in it's ponytail.

She turned to her co-captain where he sat in the front passengers seat, her eyes begging for assistance but hidden behind her glasses that kept out the high-noon sun.

"Any time you wanna jump in and help out, big bro, will be greatly appreciated."

"Hmm?"

Alfie looked from the visor mirror for the first time and seemed to just then notice that they had arrived at their destination. He had spent the whole drive from their motel to the venue trying desperately to tame the brown curls shooting from the top of his head. His green eyes turned onto Bobbi's own then past her at the attendant.