Carrie Underwood, take the wheel—I was not okay.
I shut my eyes and Rupert K. was lying beside me, looking at me through his lashes, lazy and long, his hair bed-heady, sticking up in all the right places. “My love,” he said. “You’re in my bed.”
“I know!” I squealed.
“What?” Erin said.
“Huh?” It was probably a good thing Erin snapped me out of my reverie before it got too NSFW. “I can’t believe I’m in here. How are you not more excited about this?”
I watched Erin’s back, waiting for her to answer, but her shoulders only rose and fell in a shrug. A toned-down response regarding all things Ruperts was not exactly the norm for Strepurs, but was becoming exceedingly common for Erin, and continued to confuse the hell out of me.
I realize I haven’t given you the fangirl stats on Erin yet. Might as well do it now.
Stats on Erin:
Favorite member of The Ruperts: Rupert Xavier
Number of times she’s seen The Ruperts in person: 5
Number of times she’s met (this includes getting anything from a selfie to a hug) all/a member of The Ruperts: 0
Erin and I had the same stats, except we liked different Ruperts and I’d only seen them four times (the Today show concert and three other times when Isabel took us stalking and we got glimpses of them as they got on and off their vans outside a couple of TV studios in Manhattan). The one time Erin saw the boys and I wasn’t there was on her trip to Dublin six months ago.
Erin’s parents had just gotten divorced, and as a special divorce treat, they each proposed taking Erin and her twelve-year-old sister, Richie, on a trip. Individually, that is. Her dad wanted to take them on a cruise to the Bahamas, but her mom wanted to take them to Dublin to visit her grandparents. It actually made the divorce messier than it already was, because now her parents were fighting over who got to take the girls where, and they each kept throwing special incentives into the trip to try and play favorites. Erin’s little sister opted for the cruise solely based on the fact that it had a kids’ club on board and she was really desperate to have her first kiss already and was fairly certain that if it was ever going to happen it would be on the high seas while an *NSYNC cover band played under sparkling disco lights.
Erin, to her family’s surprise, chose the Dublin trip. Of course, I knew she chose that destination because The Ruperts were going to have a show there. Erin’s mom brought her new boyfriend along on the mother-daughter bonding trip and was too busy with him to care that all Erin wanted to do was go to the concert. She dropped her off at the arena and told Erin to have a good time.
She was so lucky her parents got divorced. I would give anything to fly to Europe and see the boys in concert.
Erin never even held it over my head that she’d gone to see The Ruperts without me. Actually, she never spoke about the Dublin concert. I always took it as her trying to spare me the jealousy.
“Find anything good over there?” I said.
Erin twisted her head around and held up a maroon Moleskine notebook. “Only Rupert X.’s diary.”
I sat up with a start. “Where did you get that?”
“Bottom of his suitcase.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited; I knew she’d read it for me.
Erin cleared her throat. “Dear Diary, Dr. Slalom says I should start this. Says she won’t read it but I should do it for my own sanity. Diaries are lame. She says I should call it a journal. Still lame. Dot dot dot. Fuck this. Good night.”
“Adorable.”
“Dear diary,” Erin continued, “Today I had whole wheat toast and jam.” She looked up. “That’s all he wrote for day two.”
“Riveting stuff.”
“You have no idea. Dear Diary, I hate my life.”
“No,” I gasped.
“No one can possibly understand what it’s like to be in a band where everyone’s name is Rupert. Someone will say, ‘Hey, Rupert!’ and we’ll all turn round. WE’LL ALL FUCKING TURN ROUND.” Erin stopped. “He put that part in all caps,” she explained. Then she continued, “All we do is sing * music. The lads are pussies too. Fucking can’t stand them. Yesterday we were stuck in the hotel because of all the girls outside. I had to spend the whole day with L and P. L stuck his entire fist in his mouth and expected me to be impressed. P was his usual little gingerqueer self. Fuck my life. Dot dot dot. I had eggs Benedict for breakfast. Highlight.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You can’t make this shit up. It seems like he takes the journal thing more seriously later,” Erin said. “Listen to this: Every day I look around me and am deeply plagued by the unfairness of life. It is everywhere. All around me. Why is life so unfair to so many undeserving people?”
“Wow,” I said. “Deep.”