Yep – yet another chapter! But I’ve only updated today to
settle into my new routine … from now on The Follower is going to be updated
every Tuesday and Popular will go up every Friday!
This is a bit of a nothing chapter I’m afraid guys – believe me it does pick up lots and lots though later on! Hee hee!! Thanks guys xx
Chapter 19
“I can’t believe how late we’re leaving!” Mel stressed, as she glared at Karen who was sitting down calmly at the mirror fiddling with her hair.
“Chill!”
Mel ignored her words, “are you going to be much longer?”
“A little while, I haven’t even straightened my hair yet.”
“Straighten it?” Mel screeched, “but it looks fine, you don’t need to straighten it.”
Karen chuckled at her and began to spray her hair carefully with some product.
“There’s no hurry Mel,” Steph pointed out from the other end of the room. She too seemed to be taking her time and was sat on the bed carefully applying her lip-gloss.
“But it’s 8.00pm and they’re on stage at 9.00 pm.”
“And it’s only a 30 minute drive, it’ll be fine,” Steph argued, refusing to understand why Mel was getting so flustered.
“Why didn’t we start getting ready earlier?” Mel whinged.
“Cos we were in the cinema.”
“OK, why aren’t we staying in a hotel that’s closer to the arena?”
“Cos the boys decided to stay in this one.”
“Do you have an answer for everything?” Mel retorted, tapping her foot against the floor. She had been ready for a good half an hour now, for some reason it had only taken her 10 minutes to change her clothes and do her make up. All she could do now was stand here and wait.
“Don’t know why you are standing there with your coat on,” Karen continued, “I’m going to be at least 10 minutes and you must be baking hot.”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I don’t want to take the damn coat off.”
Steph furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, “did you come out of the bathroom wearing your coat?”
“Yep she did,” Karen answered for her, “she went in there to get changed and then came out buttoned up in her coat.”
“Why?”
“I think she’s hiding something from us,” Karen grinned, “she obviously has on some hideous piece of clothing that she doesn’t want us to see.”
Steph chuckled at Mel’s face as it began to glow a flaming tomato colour.
“No I’m not,” she replied, quickly unbuttoning the coat and throwing it on the bed.
Steph’s eyes widened at the sight of Mel in a top that was so small, it barely covered her. It was made out of a gorgeous purple lace and was cut right down to just above her chest and finished half way up her belly, revealing her stomach. It was slightly see through, revealing the dark purple push up bra that was underneath.
“Nothing to see,” Mel said casually.
“You can say that again!” Karen smirked, “there’s hardly anything of it.”
“This one of your new tops Mel?” Steph asked, not being able to tear her eyes away from the strange sight before her. Mel was a very attractive girl, there was no doubt about it, she had a gorgeous face, long blonde hair and had a lovely figure – however she had never been known to draw so much attention to herself.
“Yeah, got it for the tour.” Mel said, shuffling awkwardly at all the eyes that were fixed on her, “just fancied a change.”
Karen glanced back into the mirror, running her hair through her fingers for the last time, “Right I’m done.”
Gathering up her jacket, Mel gratefully wrapped herself up tightly in it, and the girls headed out to the car.
It was a half an hour drive to the arena, for some reason the boys had decided to stay in a hotel that was quite a few miles out of the city centre and so driving to the concert meant going through Birmingham and out to the other side.
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Mel whinged from the back, they had been in the car for ten minutes so far and were currently stuck in a traffic jam somewhere in the city centre.
“No, but you are more than welcome to get out and walk,” Karen replied.
Mel shut up, realising that pissing off the driver probably wasn’t going to help her at all.
As the traffic began to move they trundled slowly along until they finally made it to the front of the traffic lights. Mel glanced out of the window, trying to pass the time quickly by people watching. There wasn’t really much to see at this time of night though – so far a few drunken lads had walked past and decided to moon at them and a late night jogger who, in Mel’s opinion, should not be wearing lycra, had nearly ran into a lamppost. At the moment she was watching a dog walker who seemed particularly interested in their car and was now flapping his arms madly at her.
“Watch it, there’s a loon on the starboard side.”
“Where?” Steph asked in interest.
Mel pointed to the man who had now started to walk towards them.
“He’s coming over!”
“Just ignore him, the lights will change and he’ll go away,” Karen said, fixing her eyes firmly on the road ahead.
The man walked right up to the car and tapped gently on the window. Against her better judgement, Karen wound the window down slightly.
“Sorry to trouble you,” he started, “but there seems to be a bit of trouble with your tyre.”
“There is?”
“It’s as flat as a pancake.”
Karen thanked the man and when the lights turned green edged the little car into the nearest side road and got out to have a look.
“Shit! Come and look at this!”
The girls climbed out of the backseat and joined Karen on the pavement. The man had been completely right, the tyre was lying flat against the ground.
“How come we didn’t notice that?” Steph asked in disbelief, “you would have thought it would have made a noise or something.”
Karen laughed and reached out a hand to touch it, “it’s completely dead, there’s no way we are going anywhere on this tonight.”
“But what about the show?” Mel suddenly announced, “we have to get to the show.”
Karen shrugged, “there’s not a lot we can do.”
She headed back towards the car to ring the AA.
Steph wrapped an arm round Mel’s shoulders, “don’t worry about it Mel, we’ve seen the show, and there’ll be plenty of chance to see it again, doesn’t matter too much if we miss just this one.”
“No!” Mel shook off Steph’s arm, “we have to go, he said he’d see me there.”
Mel couldn’t bear the thought of Christian going out on stage and seeing an empty seat where she should be sitting – there was no way that she could miss this show.
“There must be a way of getting there!”.
Karen returned from the car, “Sorry there’s no way in the world, I’ve spoken to the AA, they’re going to be half an hour sending a van and then the spare tyre they put on you can only do 40 mph on.”
“That’s no good,” Mel wailed, “I have to be there for the start.”
She began to jog a little way down the road, searching in vain for a bus stop, but each new stretch of road that she reached lay empty and barren.
“Don’t they have bloody buses in Birmingham?” she muttered to herself.
She stomped back to the useless car.
“Give up Mel, you aren’t going anywhere,” Steph said.
There was no way in the world that she was going to accept that – she was going tonight, even if she had to run the whole way. There was no way that she was going to waste a single moment of the time she should be spending with Christian.
“Birmingham taxis please,” she barked at the telephone operator.
“I can’t believe you are going to all this trouble!” Karen muttered, “its only a stupid a1 show that you will be seeing loads of times anyway.”
“It matters to me OK,” Mel said, quickly punching in the number.
“OK calm down.”
Several minutes later and the backpack of stress was removed from Mel’s shoulders.
“Taxi is here!” she yelled happily, running over to Karen and giving her a big hug.
“Mel you OK?” Karen asked, she had never seen anyone have such a violent mood swing.
“Yep am great!” she called back hopping into the taxi, “you guys sure you don’t want to come?”
“Nah, we’re fine, we’ll just stay with the car,” Karen answered, “you go and have fun.”
Waiting for the taxi to leave, Karen turned to Steph.
“I’m worried about Mel, something’s going on.”