The next few weeks of the tour seemed to pass by in a blur. The guys were performing almost every single night, and since we were constantly headed towards the next show, there wasn’t time to stop and sleep in a hotel. Since “tour bus sleep” isn’t the best sleep in the world, we all started getting a bit irritable after a while. Mildly-annoying habits that would usually go unnoticed garnered snippy remarks, and spats over little things that didn’t matter became more frequent. And despite the fact that everyone in the group got along well in general, being constantly cooped up with each other with no escape to the outside world tested everyone’s patience. To top it all off, the kids started to become more restless over time, which made finding a quiet place to do my work increasingly difficult.

With all of these things considered, it’s no surprise that we were all relieved when the band finally had a few days off. We stopped at a hotel in Orlando for three nights, and finally being back to a real bed and normal living accommodations was pure bliss.

I spent the first night holed up in my room alone, savoring some privacy and time to myself after having none for the past two weeks. The kids were wonderful, really, and I enjoyed getting to play games with them and Val. Reading Tennessee bedtime stories at night always put a smile on my face, too, and I’d been able to do it a lot more recently with the guys’ frequent shows. Even so, having no respite from the three of them on a tour bus could be a lot to handle, and I was thrilled to know that my long shower didn’t have any chance of being interrupted by the sound of someone crying.

After the best night’s sleep I’d had in weeks, I woke up feeling refreshed, and ended up spending most of the second day working in my room. It wasn’t very exciting, but there were some important tasks I needed to catch up on. While fighting this case for Avenged Sevenfold was my main focus at the moment, it wasn’t technically my only job. I had other clients who needed my attention, even if I wasn’t anywhere near the office right now. I met Johnny and Brian in the middle of the day for lunch down the street from the hotel, which provided a nice break and a chance to stretch my legs. But, aside from that, I had the day all to myself.

I finally joined back up with the group around noon the next day, after a text from Matt asked me to come to his and Val’s room. I went up the elevator and walked down the hall to their suite, double-checking the number on my phone. Matt and Val usually had the biggest room, but considering they had to fit four people into it and that it was always our unofficial meeting place in hotels, I suppose it made sense. I knocked on the door to have it opened by Val a few seconds later.

“Good morning!” she said brightly, stepping aside to let me in. I glanced at my watch curiously as I crossed the threshold, and saw that it was 11:54 AM. Well, she was technically still right. “Good morning, Val,” I said, laughing a bit as she shut the door behind me. None of us were exactly known for getting an early start, at least not when we had the choice.

Looking around the room, I realized that everyone else was already there, lounging on the couch and beds or standing around in the small kitchen. “Hey, you guys. What’s up?”

“Morning, Christa,” Matt said, greeting me from in front of the open fridge door. “Not too much, we were just trying to get up and get moving for the day. Seems like everyone’s about ready to get out of the hotel before we go stir crazy.” He grabbed a bottle of orange juice and shut the fridge door, looking around at his bandmates and family for confirmation.

“Yeah, I think we’re all ready to get out of our rooms, at least,” Zack said. His expression shifted to an amused one before continuing. “The boys, in particular, wanted to go shopping for some ‘cool clothes’.” He looked over at Tennessee and River seated on the couch, but they were immersed in a video game and weren’t paying him any attention, so he turned back to the rest of us. “I think they got jealous of us buying new concert outfits a few weeks ago. I can’t imagine they’d be entertained by something like that for very long, but they keep bringing it up, so…” he trailed off with a shrug.

I laughed again. It did seem incredibly unlikely that kids no older than five would be entertained by shopping for more than about ten minutes, but at least it gave part of the group a reason to go outside. “Alright, sounds like it could be fun. Is that where the three of you are going, then?” I gestured at Val, Matt, and Zack.

Val and Matt nodded, before Zack spoke again. “Yeah, we’re gonna go, but we were wondering if you’d be up for going with us, Christa. Tennessee’s requested that you be there,” he said with a chuckle. “I guess you guys have gotten to spend more time together over these past few weeks?”

I smiled, breaking away from his green-eyed gaze to look down at my feet. “Yeah, we’ve been reading together almost every night, since you guys have had so many shows.” I felt slightly self-conscious that everyone in the band was hearing this conversation, but that was probably just me being silly; what my brain wanted to interpret as Zack and I “having a moment” was actually just a normal interaction.

Zack nodded, unsurprised, and turned to address Johnny, Brian, and Brooks. “And I think you guys were planning to go hit the gym downstairs, yeah?”

“That’s right,” the bassist provided a bit reluctantly, crossing his arms over his chest. I noticed for the first time that the three of them were wearing t-shirts and basketball shorts. “It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a chance to work out.”

Zack turned back to look at me. “So, what do you think? Wanna come with us?”

I smiled at him, seeing no reason not to go along with it. Pretty much any situation that involved spending time with Zack was something I wanted to be a part of. “Sure thing, I’ll tag along. We can probably at least find some kids’ band shirts that they’d like.”

Tennessee seemed to perk up then, looking over at the adults and loudly saying, “Yay! Chrissie’s coming with us!” He clapped his hands a couple of times for good measure, earning chuckles from the rest of the room.

Shortly afterwards, once we’d gathered up all the kids, the seven of us made our way downstairs. Cash had no interest in shopping, of course, but Val had said she didn’t mind carrying him for this outing. We called an extra-large cab, and were soon headed off towards the nearest shopping mall.

“Wow, this place is huge,” Matt remarked as we pulled into the sprawling parking lot. And he was right; the multi-story building appeared to be several times larger than a baseball stadium, and looked like it probably held a few hundred stores. It would be enough to keep most adults occupied for several days, but who knew how long we’d be staying with three kids in tow.

Once the cab driver dropped us off and we’d made it inside, we went to inspect the large, illuminated directory in front of us. We scanned through the list of stores, mentioning places that might be worth stopping whenever we saw something interesting. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any shortage of options.

“We could probably start at this one,” Val said, shifting Cash in her arms as she pointed to a children’s clothing store on the map. It didn’t appear to be far from where we were.

“Works for me,” Matt said, gently taking their younger son from her to give her arms a break. I couldn’t help but smile at them. There was still something funny about watching Matt carry a toddler, no matter how many times I’d seen it at this point; I bet he never thought back in the City of Evil days that he’d be using those muscles for that.

We headed off down the mall’s main hallway in the direction of the store. Cash was in Matt’s arms, Val was holding River’s hand, and Tennessee was walking between me and Zack. He looked up at his dad, grabbing Zack’s hand in his right, and then looked up at me, grabbing my hand with his left.

Zack chuckled at the young boy, glancing up at me and then back down at his son. “You taking both of us with you, buddy?”

Tennessee nodded, both of his short arms raised up high to keep hold of our hands. “Yeah!”

I laughed at his enthusiasm, even as I felt a blush start to spread across my cheeks at our new arrangement. Last time I’d had a day out with Tennessee, someone had thought I was his mom. Now, with the way we were walking, it seemed almost inevitable that anyone who saw us would think Zack and I were his parents… which meant they would probably also think Zack and I were together…

I cut off my thoughts as quickly as I could when I realized where they were going. My face was almost certainly red now. Against my better judgement, I risked a glance back at Val, seeing as Tennessee had dragged us a few paces ahead of the Sanders family. She had that small, knowing smirk on her face again. Damn it. My eyes slid over to Matt to see him looking from Val to me and back in confusion, probably wondering what it was that his wife found amusing.

Not wanting to make him any more curious, I turned back to face forward, sidestepping a column that Tennessee would have guided me into otherwise. Hopefully, Matt would forget to ask Val about it later.

We walked the rest of the way to the clothing store and found the boys’ section inside. I let go of Tennessee’s hand to begin parsing through the racks. “So, what kind of clothes did you want to get today?” I asked him, flipping past shirts with toy trucks printed on them.

He scrunched up his face for a moment, seeming to be thinking hard, then looked up at Zack and smiled. “I want clothes that make me look like you!”

I felt my heart melt a bit as I looked at the two of them, seeing Zack’s fondness for his son clear in his eyes, and then laughed softly at the boy’s comment. “I’m sure we can find something like that. Let’s see what they have…”

Despite our searching, the first store turned out to be a bust. There wasn’t anything wrong with their clothes, but nothing really looked rock-star-esqué, so we went back out in search of more options. The second store we found also focused on kids’ clothing, and didn’t have what we were looking for, either. Tennessee grabbed both my and Zack’s hands every time we walked between stores, and I continued to do my best not to think about how it must have looked. Since Zack seemed amused by it and never objected to the arrangement, neither did I.

The boys were holding up surprisingly well so far, as no one had asked to go home yet or complained about being bored, but we’d also gone through the first two stores quite quickly. If we were going to find something today, it probably needed to happen soon.

On our third try, we stopped looking for kids’ stores and went into a shop focused on alternative clothing. Matt gave a small grunt of approval when we walked in, the black walls and darker aesthetic a definite contrast to the brightly-colored stores we’d been in so far. “This looks more like it.”

We walked over to the cash register to ask the clerk if they had a children’s section, and he led our group over to the back right corner of the store. Sure enough, there was a rack of tiny t-shirts that looked like they would fit the boys. I browsed through the clothes to see that most of them were decorated with skulls or logos of classic bands, and nodded in approval. This was exactly what we’d been after.

I paused in flipping through the clothes when I saw a shirt that looked familiar. “What do you think of this one, Zack?” I asked, holding up a white t-shirt with the Ramones’ insignia on the front. Zack looked over the shirt and smiled in recognition. “Ha! I’ve got one almost exactly like that. Sure, let’s hang on to it.”

Once we’d all helped pick out shirts and gotten the boys to try them on, we let them choose which items they wanted the most. Tennessee did end up getting the Ramones shirt, seeming excited that he’d be able to match with his dad, along with a black AC/DC shirt. River opted for Guns n’ Roses and a skull print.

We rang up our purchases and left the store, the kids talking happily about how much “cooler” they would look now, and the adults in our group tried not to laugh. “Was there anything else you guys wanted to look for?” I asked, addressing Tennessee and River.

The two of them looked pensive for a moment, exchanging a brief glance, but then both shook their heads. It seemed like that was enough shopping for them today.

“Should we go get something to eat, then?” Matt asked, placing a hand over his stomach. There were general murmurs of agreement—I was feeling pretty hungry, myself—and we headed off in search of food.

After debating what to order and waiting in a couple of separate lines, we finally sat down with our meals in the bustling food court. Tennessee insisted on sitting between Zack and me at the table, which didn’t surprise either of us at this point, but Matt and Val still seemed amused by the action. I silently hoped that Matt wouldn’t read too much into it. We had a quick lunch together, having a tough time convincing the kids that flinging rice at each other across the table was not a good idea, and then gathered up our purchases to leave.

We called another large cab once we’d made the hike to the parking lot, and everyone made it back to the hotel in one piece. Overall, I’d say it had been a successful trip; the kids found what they wanted, no one had gotten lost, and I’d managed to call Zack by his real name the entire time and not say anything stupid.

We all got in the elevator to head up to our rooms, letting the kids press buttons for the 16th and 17th floors. Zack, Tennessee and I got off first, since Matt and Val’s suite was one floor above everyone else’s rooms.

“We’re leaving at eleven tomorrow, right, Matt?” I asked as we walked out, turning around to face the singer. He nodded in confirmation. “Yep. Next stop’s in Miami, so we’ve got around a four-hour drive.”

“Sounds good. See you guys tomorrow, if not before then!”

The elevator doors closed, obscuring the group from view, and Zack and I began to walk down towards our rooms. It wasn’t a very long hallway, and we came to my door first. Zack stopped beside me, which I thought was unusual, but I figured he was just making sure I got inside okay. I reached into my handbag to grab my card key, and was just about to stick it in the slot on the door and say goodbye, when Zack spoke. “So, do you have any plans for the rest of the day?”

I thought about it for a moment, taken a bit off-guard by the question, and tilted my head to the side. It wasn’t very late yet, only mid-afternoon. “Not really,” I replied, turning to look at him. “I was probably just going to do work for a while, and then watch TV until dinner.” I shrugged my shoulders noncommittally.

There was silence for a few seconds, before my slow brain realized he might be asking because he’d thought we could do something together, and I quickly added, “Why do you ask?”

So much for not saying anything stupid in front of him.

Zack chuckled, and shrugged his own shoulders in return. He dropped his gaze down from me to look at Tennessee, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Ten had said earlier today that he wanted to watch a movie. If you’re busy it’s no problem, but I thought I’d see if you wanted to join us.”

I felt my heart beat kick up irrationally. It’s not a date, it’s not a date, it’s NOT a date if his kid is there. He knows Tennessee likes you, and he’s just being nice.

Despite my slightly-pessimistic thoughts, I smiled at the two of them. It sounded like a much better way to spend an afternoon than what I’d been planning on, so I nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like fun!”

Zack let out a short breath. “Okay, cool. Come with us, then.” He turned and started walking further down hall, with Tennessee following close behind him.

I stared after them for a moment, surprised at the quick turn of events. Is this really happening? Before I could make myself look like a fool again, I kicked my legs into gear and followed them down the hallway.

Notes