“I’m not sure what you mean,” Elisa says with an innocent shrug. “I do not understand.”
“But, really, ‘Anjon’?” Angel whispers, rubbing a palm across his eyes to wake himself up. He looks like he’s recovering from a particularly bad bout of the flu. “I guess we are the hot ones, but still. Why are they shipping us, of all people? Jon’s Catholic!”
Jon sighs. “I’m pretty sure you can be Catholic and gay, Angel.”
Angel does an exaggerated double-take. “Are you trying to tell me something here, buddy?”
“No!”
Moritz has jumped into the fray now. “If you ask me, it could be a good idea to focus on Anjon,” he says. “This could take the focus off of the other boys, no?”
“Nobody did ask you,” Erin snaps.
“Why are they asking about shipping at all?” Zach asks in an urgent whisper. “We’ve never gotten those questions before.”
“Yeah, but if in-band romance becomes a blocked question, it’s going to be pretty obvious why,” I murmur.
Zach pales. “So, what, everyone’s going to know? What the fuck? I haven’t even told my mom, I haven’t—”
I lean forward as far as I can, right up in Jon’s personal space. “Hey, breathe. It’s okay. They don’t know know. And they won’t tell anyone because they’d get so fucking sued. My sexuality’s been a blocked question from the start, and the public still thinks I’m straight.”
Zach nods, but he’s breathing rapidly, and his eyes are too wide. Jon does what I can’t, and reaches behind Angel to touch Zach’s shoulder briefly. And as much as I want it to be me doing that, I’m endlessly grateful to Jon for giving him a brief moment of comfort.
Erin steps back from Elisa, shaking her head with a scowl. Elisa and Moritz don’t look any happier about things, but they force smiles as they go back to their question list. “Okay,” Elisa says. “Um … What are you all most excited to do in Europe?”
Jon’s ready. “To see all our amazing fans. I’m super excited for our concert tonight. I’ve heard Vienna has some of the best music fans in the world.”
Elisa laughs, then turns to Zach for comment. He’s staring into the distance with a look of sheer panic on his face, and he doesn’t notice her indicating to him. Angel jumps in, though his voice is hard. “We don’t have very much time to do much of anything,” he says. Erin’s face clouds. Wrong answer. Angel notices her expression, and something in his posture changes. “We’re just focused on giving the best performances we can. But I’ve seen so many incredible things, I’m definitely planning on coming back to see Europe with more time.”
That’s better. Much more rehearsed. For a moment there it almost sounded like he had a negative opinion.
Now it’s my turn. “The Burgtheater,” I say, trying to keep my voice upbeat. “I’ve heard it’s spectacular, and I’ve always had a love for the history of theater.”
I don’t tell them that Erin approached me a few days ago to gently let me know we wouldn’t have time to see it after all.
I hadn’t really hoped for it too much, anyway.
Just a little bit, I guess.
* * *
“I’m gonna get David on their ass,” Erin rants from her spot on the minibus as we pull out of the parking lot. “Imagine the nerve…”
Zach is sitting across the aisle from me, both of us alone. Last week, Erin asked us to keep our distance better whenever people can see us, and the minibus definitely counts as public. Even now, we’re driving particularly slowly to avoid the writhing crowd of fans who have gathered at the gates outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of our faces through the tinted windows. The screaming and shouting is muted by metal and glass. I can only imagine what it must be like to stand among that crowd without walls up.
We roll through the automatic gates and it—somehow—grows even louder. I wave at the people who make eye contact with me, and they shriek with ecstasy. I’m hit with the familiar, conflicting feelings of gratitude and love for them and their support, mixed with the sense that if I stepped out of this vehicle they would rip me limb from limb to get close to me.
As individuals, they’re all wonderful to begin with, but there’s something awe-inspiring about them as a group. Banded together, they have more power than the four of us and our team ever could. That’s how they managed to raise us as high as they did, I guess. But the flipside is they also have the power to destroy us, if they choose to.
Once we get on the street and join the traffic of Vienna, Erin precariously walks down the aisle, swaying with the van’s movements, and stops before Zach and me. “You two okay?” she asks. “Zach, I know that caught you off guard.”
Zach’s wearing his too-cheerful smile, the one he turns on whenever he lies about being okay. And, as predicted: “It’s fine,” he says. “I get it.”
“It’s not, fine, actually,” Erin says. She strikes me as a motherly figure in this moment, full of concern and rage on Zach’s behalf. But there’s something off about it, something that’s niggling at me. The thing is, Erin isn’t a bad person. But she is a person who values her job more than anything. On the plus side, it means we couldn’t find a harder worker to be our tour manager. But on the other hand, it means that if she has to choose between us and what Chorus expects of her, she’ll pick Chorus.
I don’t know where her line in the sand is. What she wouldn’t do to us if Chorus asked her to.
It scares me to consider that maybe she doesn’t have one.
“We’ll be making ourselves perfectly clear moving forward,” she goes on. “No romance questions, no shipping questions, no questions about who’s closer to who. Period. Ever again.”