It was the collection of posters right above the idiot’s picture that finally drew my eyes away. They were posters I’d collected of Ghost Orchid on different tours over the years. Besides having to act like a babysitter and a nagging wife, and witnessing stuff no sister should ever have a front-row seat to, I’d had a lot of fun each time I’d gone out with them. I wasn’t going to count the last day of the last tour I’d been on, but…

Was I seriously going to go on tour with my borderline-alcoholic brother for three months, all so that I could avoid the inevitable?

You’ll probably never be able to do this again.

I pulled my legs back into my chest and hugged them with the arm that wasn’t busy holding the phone to my ear.

Then I sighed. “Yes, damn it. I’ll do it.”

There was a pause before my twin asked slowly, “You will?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe my answer.

“Yes.”

“Have I told you lately how much—”

I cut him off before he had a chance to butter me up. “On two conditions.”

* * *

Six hours later, my flight from Dallas to Boston had finally landed.

Apparently buying a plane ticket exactly two hours before the actual flight took off didn’t guarantee a good seat. I’d sat through a four-hour flight wedged between a mom with a really cute baby that had colic and a man who’d probably been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day since the eighties.

As soon as my bag came out of the conveyor in baggage claim, I caught a cab to make it to the venue where Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest were playing.

The fact that just a few hours before I’d been laying on my bed, watching television and debating whether I really needed to eat ice cream or not, didn’t escape me. In the span of a twenty-minute conversation with my brother, he’d bought me the earliest plane ticket to Boston available and ordered me to “start packing, Flabby.” I had no idea how much a last-minute flight like that would cost, but I hoped it was a lot.

It was a testament to my lack of shit-giving that I was able to get all my things together in less than half an hour. I pretty much flew blind as I threw clothes into the same suitcase I’d used a few months ago when I’d been forced to move out of my apartment. My wardrobe consisted of a handful of shorts, two pairs of jeans, T-shirts, a collection of tank tops and racerbacks. A bathing suit, underwear, bras, two cotton dresses, passport, neutral-colored sandals and as many books as I could fit, evened out my trusty vintage Samsonite and backpack. I figured I could buy whatever else I needed because there was bound to be something I forgot, for sure.

Mom and Dad were all-too-excited to have me tag along with Eli. They’d dropped me off at the airport with huge grins on their faces. I hated to think why they were so happy to have me out of the house, so I definitely wasn’t going to go down that road of potential nightmares and nausea. I also think they secretly hoped I’d keep an eye on their beloved youngest boy, their wild child, but everyone knew there was no controlling Eli Barreto. The idiot had been born with hell in his veins.

On the cab ride over, I mentally braced myself for the insanity that was Eli, Mason and Gordo. Mason and Gordo had been in my life for as long as I could remember. I had a brief, blurry memory of being in kindergarten, watching Mason and Eli shove Play-Doh into their mouths while Gordo and I watched in both horror and fascination.

Even though I hadn’t gotten to see them much over the last couple of years, I loved the hell out of them. So much of the first twenty years of my life included the three monsters, there was no way I couldn’t. Once Eli and I got split up into different classrooms in elementary school to force us to make friends, one or the other had been in a class with me… usually sitting next to me, trying to copy my work.