I nodded, shaking his hand. “Yeah, I’m Gaby. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too.” He gave me another shy smile, even blushing a little, before pointing at me. “If you turn around, I can take the sign off your back.”

The sign…?

“Ah, Gordo taped it to your back when he gave you a hug,” he explained.

I groaned, not surprised at all, and turned around to let him pull it off of me. Gordo was the quiet one, sure, but he was still a prankster. How else would he survive with the other two if he didn’t have any in him? The guy named Carter handed me the bright yellow Post-It note lined with the same clear packaging tape I’d seen in one of the bins I’d rummaged through. In Gordo’s awful cursive, the note said:

Hi, my name is FLABBY.

I burst out laughing.

“He would,” I mumbled to myself, pressing the adhesive to the top of the lockbox for a memento. Glancing up at the other merch guy, I shot him a smile. “Thanks for taking it off, otherwise it would have stayed on there all night.”

Carter nodded and lifted his thin shoulders. “Anytime.”

I smiled at him. And then, we just stared at each other for maybe ten seconds. I didn’t know what else to say and neither did he.

“So… is this your first tour?” I finally asked, raising my voice a little so he could hear me as the band members onstage banged their equipment around in preparation for their set.

“No. This is my… twelfth one.”

Twelfth? He looked fresh out of high school. “Whoa.”

“I like touring,” he explained simply. “It’s good money, too.”

He had me there. I grinned at him just as the band onstage started their soundcheck, making talking nearly impossible unless you were yelling. No thanks.

It was then that it hit me. I hadn’t grabbed any earplugs. A dumbass. I was a dumbass. Not wearing earplugs for the duration of a concert was a newbie mistake. You were asking for severe hearing loss without them night after night; I’d never forgotten before.

Out of my peripheral vision, a hand waved. Carter held a balled-up fist out in my direction, a “take it” expression on his clean-shaven face. I got to my feet and opened my palm under his as he dropped two orange foam earplugs in it. I mouthed “thank you” to him along with a thumbs-up with my free hand.

Not even a minute after those puppies had gone in, the guitar player on the stage accidentally hit a note that screeched through the speakers, making everyone in the audience cringe. What followed was some of the longest twenty minutes of my life. I made it through two songs before I took my phone out and started to send Laila, my best friend, a text message before more Ghost Orchid fans approached the table, and I gestured my way through a few sales.

Once that band finished their set, my favorite three idiots on the planet went on. Eli brought pieces of his drum set onto the stage while Gordo and Mason carried their guitar and bass, along with their power amps, cabinets, pedals and cables. Gordo adjusted his microphone, and the band went through a quick soundcheck despite the earlier one they’d already gone through.

Ghost Orchid began playing.

The group had been together since freshman year, annoying everyone in the neighborhood when they practiced in our garage most days of the week. They’d driven me nuts back then, especially when I couldn’t hear myself think while I was trying to study. But I’d faithfully gone to every show and dragged my friends along with me. Back then it would have been considered a good show if there were twenty people in the audience, even if they were all family members.

Eleven years later, here they were. Playing in front of what had to easily be around nine hundred people cheering and screaming.