Free From My Heart by Breigh Forstner

don’t even care if the rest of them hear us. I’m going to have a few drinks and I’ll want to have some amazing drunken sex.”
    “Drunken sex? Really?” I giggled. “That is so not romantic at all.”
    “Well anything on a tour bus isn’t really romantic. I mean, I don’t have any rose petals or fancy smelling candles to make it ‘pretty.’” He air quoted pretty and I couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll have to save it for when we stay at a hotel.”
    “I’ll hold you to that.” I smirked, and he slapped my butt as we walked back inside, where everyone was having a few drinks by our small table to loosen up.
    Hal told us the owner of the venue wanted us on stage in about twenty minutes, so we cleaned up our mess on the bus and hurried off to tune our instruments. All of the members of Angels from Hell were sitting right in the corner by what would be my side of the stage. Oh great I groaned to myself as I strapped on my new purple guitar Cale had promised he’d buy me since our time in St. Louis. He called it a late Christmas present and had it shipped from the guitar store we visited down there on the previous tour.
    The lights were dimmed and I started playing the opening riff to “Mayhem,” a new song off our album. It had a combined sound of Hinder and Avenged sevenfold—as odd as that sounds—but it kicked off the album just right.  Tyler started pounding on the bass, the lights flickering on and off in time with the beat. We all started playing the notes in perfect unison, and that was when Cale’s voice shook up the small club.
    You want mayhem?
    Well you got it
    I’m a walking basket case
    Never know when I’m going to crack
    His voice growled as I swayed along to the beat, keeping my eyes on the crowd in front of me. My fingers were sliding along my new guitar strings like butter, and my nerves quickly went away when I heard people actually singing along. The album hadn’t even been out for a month and a half; people already knew the words to this stuff?
    My eyes caught Kallie’s from where she was sitting by the front of the stage and she gave me a slight nod as if she was saying she liked my guitar playing. I still had to figure this girl out. I didn’t know whether to like her or hate her yet. Cale walked over to my side of the stage in between songs where he had a bottle of water standing a few feet from me.
    “That guitar just makes you look even sexier up here,” Cale whispered into my ear, kissing my cheek before we went into “You Were Young.” I loosened up more through the song and when it came to be my turn to sing, I gave it all I had. I could hear Louis say, “Damn she can sing.”  I didn’t even want to see Kallie’s expression at that point. I didn’t care. I was in my element and nothing was going to ruin my night.
    By the time we wrapped up with “Away from you” everyone was on their feet screaming like we were in a big arena and not a small bar. I waved to everyone, shouting “Thank you!” into my microphone and quickly stepping off the stage while Cale was boasting to the small crowd about buying shots for the prettiest girl in the place. I rolled my eyes, hoping he meant me, but I knew he wasn’t actually serious.
    Raptor and Hal were taking care of most of our equipment while I hurried back to the bus to put on a zip up hoodie I packed in my overnight bag. Running back outside, I high-fived and hugged the guys.
    “That set was awesome. Good job guys.” I muffled in between hugs. Vince roughed up my hair and I wiggled out of his hold.
    “I’m going to steal your guitar,” he replied. “It looked like it played really easily…”
    “I’ll let you borrow it for the first show on the tour, how’s that?” I asked.
    “That’d rock.” Vince smiled widely. Cale walked outside from the club talking, to Louis and Adam with Kallie right on their heels. She was on her cell phone, but her eyes were boring into Cale’s back. Suddenly I felt