by Zoe Lee
“I—no, I—”
“With the queen you danced with the last time,” Ambrose went on in that same way, his hand winging lazily and demonstratively through the somewhat stale air in the back hall.
Sucking in a raspy, yet somehow wet lungful, Seth shook his head. “She might be smart, fascinating and complex, but she disrupted my calm. Judged me harshly, unfairly.”
“Shook you. Challenged you,” Ambrose countered, and then his mouth pressed shut before he smoothed Seth’s hair back as if he were a parent comforting his child. “I know you’re usually the one offering the advice, but Seth, let it all in, okay? Let it all in.”
Seth couldn’t help but obey Ambrose, weak in that state of frozen, confused panic before he stepped onstage alone. Last night, he had been freaking out because it had been the first performance of his original work since Hedda’s death. Tonight the feelings should be about the same thing—one show was absolutely not enough to get over that—but everything flooded in and all he needed was Astrid, vibrant and forever out of his reach now.
He felt guilty as sin having this realization right now, missing her and completely at a loss as to what to do about it, two minutes before he was going to step onstage again.
“Well, that’s… Damn it, Ambrose,” he mumbled breathlessly after a minute.
Ambrose laughed and shoved him onstage.
The stage was about four feet high, flooded by three pure white spotlights all angled down at a plain stool and a standing microphone, his guitar on a stand just outside the light.
The second Seth’s boots were on it, he was fine. He refocused on the music and he smiled out at the packed house, his body relaxing, prepared and comfortable now. Hands that had been born to handle instruments of all types flowed along the neck and body of his guitar, tuning it one final time, checking that the amp was plugged in all the way.
“Evenin’. I’m Seth Riveau and I’m going to play some music for y’all tonight,” he murmured into the microphone as he looked out across the sea of people on the dance floor.
The crowd sighed as he began a steady, melancholy melody on his guitar, humming a wordless roll of notes. He looked more like a poet than a musician, patient and a little sad, and nothing like what was usually onstage at Local Beats, or any nightclub like this.
When he started to sing, it was like the harsh cry of a hawk tearing through a peaceful meadow, or like an ominous thunderclap in the middle of the sunniest of summer days. The song was about the anguish of walking away, how it tore strips from his body and soul, like pushing out through a wall of thorns without any weapons or armor to defend against them.
After it was done, there were a couple of seconds of near-dead silence in the club.
Before the crowd could even process the song, he was off again.
It was a booming number about the fierce freedom of pursuit, hedonistic as he kicked off his stool and prowled around inside the pool the spotlights cast. During the chorus, his hips worked in slow, rolling grinds against his guitar as he shook his untied hair back.
On and on he went with his voice that was soulful and deep even when the songs were fast or lighter. With every lyric, every toss of his hair, every smile that started with a spark in his eyes, fanned out into laugh lines at their corners, then finally unfurled across his beautiful mouth, he expressed his joy in the music and the relief that he was up there, able to do this.
It went on for about an hour before some friends joined him for a cover of a classic blues song, reworked just enough to make everyone dirty dance to it with focused delight.
“I’m going to leave y’all in these capable hands,” he said when it was over.
The crowd moaned their disappointment at the top of their lungs.
“I might be back,” he allowed with a tease of a soft smile.
When he was done drinking a bottle of water and going to the bathroom, he paced around the back office, since there wasn’t anything like a green room at the club. Everything he’d let in before Ambrose pushed him onstage was making his head and heart want to float away, filled with so much buoyant happiness it couldn’t be contained. It had been… so long since he’d been in love, and he’d forgotten how incomparable it really was. Even if he was still mad and hurt and unsure what, if anything, he was supposed to do with this love.
There was nothing to regret about his years back in Maybelle, where his family and friends had been so good to him, accepting him, not pushing him when he’d been so tied up in his own sadness. He still wished, since it had first occurred to him when he read Astrid’s draft three months ago, that someone had pushed him eventually. Six years was too long to spend his art and his gifts the way he had, in fearful, functional, little spurts here and there.
But now he had to wonder, too, how he’d let his heart become so stagnant, so locked away, that when Astrid had come before him he hadn’t even recognized the potential for love.
“God damn it,” he mumbled on a shaky exhale.
He flexed his fingers, scratched his neck, and went towards where he’d wait just offstage until it was time for him to rejoin his friends onstage. But as soon as he got there, he could tell that something was off. The band, which was a completely decent local band that had been playing together for years, sounded strained—not contentious or scared, but freaked out. Frowning, he edged close enough to dart his eyes all over, taking in the energy that had changed so drastically in the ten minutes he’d been gone. It was like a frenzy, not exactly earned by the band’s performance, and the crowd was surging and pointing.
Putting on his easy smile, he strolled onstage as soon as the song was done, even though they were supposed to sing more. The smile faltered when the crowd lost it, waving their hands frantically and pointing up like they were trying to tell him something.
“Asher,” he murmured to his friend, “you okay?”
“No,” Asher hissed. “Because according to the crowd, fucking Barnyard is out there.”
“Oh,” Seth sighed, one eyebrow winging high as he clapped Asher on the back, “is that all? I can take back over now, if y’all are a little too overwhelmed. It’s okay. I got it.”
“I’m going to be so pissed by that arrogance later,” Asher grumbled, “when I’m not two seconds from pissing my pants. It’s all yours, man. Good to see you.” He shot Seth one of his almost-smirks, jerked his head at the rest of the band, and they left with simple waves.
Seth surveyed the club lazily, not bothering to move aside the extra gear the band had brought with them and been too shell-shocked to take with them a second ago. The nerves zapping through him, charging him up and making him practically crackle with positive energy, had nothing to do with arguably one of the top ten rock bands standing in the crowd. No, it was because if Barnyard was out there, then so was Astrid Sinclair.
Instead of being terrified that she was about to, or had already, heard the songs inspired by her, Seth was elated, relieved, excited, jittery, furious, cornered, prideful.
None of it showed, though, because he was a goddamn professional.
He flipped through the songs he had left.
“This one’s called ‘Jumbled,’ y’all,” he murmured.
There ain’t but a single living soul that can get to me
Women and men, friends and lovers, lyrics and chords
They got me laughing, got me running, got me thinking
But there ain’t but a single living soul that can shake me up
Oh, God, it shakes me up, singes my wings, soothes my burns
One heartbeat, I’m denying it
One heartbeat, I’m pushing back
One heartbeat, I’m proving I’m pure of heart
One heartbeat, I’m a jumbled mess, baby
There ain’t but a single living soul that’s got me changing
A rebellion of self-righteous jabs through new mazes
Healed up the past and splintered up the future
It’s got me shifting direction, sh
ifting mindset, shifting curiosity
Oh, God, it shakes me up, singes my wings, soothes my burns
One heartbeat, I’m denying it
One heartbeat, I’m pushing back
One heartbeat, I’m proving I’m pure of heart
One heartbeat, I’m a jumbled mess, baby
Seth was breathing hard by the end of it, the soft, romantic words shoved out of his raw throat in quick, angry bursts, his guitar screeching and denying and protesting.
The crowd was screaming, pumped up twice over now, ready to burst.
“And to close out the night, here’s a little jam I wrote for Downbeat, ‘Landed in Jail.’”
He’d never played it alone before, but he knew it inside and out. All he changed was who was performing it and changing out Xavier’s smirk for a little self-mockery. It was one of his only nearly mindless songs, unapologetic and loud, about a drunken bar fight. It was like one long joke, really, and he knew it would get the crowd ready to drink and dance to the usual club music that would take over once he was done. He belted it out, he danced some more, he winked, he shook back his hair, spraying sweat all over the place.
When he finished, he bowed, thanked everyone, and got offstage, then collapsed onto the first flat surface he found, air sawing in and out of his lungs, eyes falling closed.
Heels rapped on the floor towards him and then Astrid Sinclair said, “Hey, Seth.”
Somehow he stood, the polished tips of her pointy-toed boots only a few inches from the round, scuffed toes of his boots. “Astrid,” he rasped, “what the hell are you doing here?”
Astrid surged forward, smashing into him with the force of it, and kissed him.
Their mouths melded instantly as his tongue twined against hers, his hand slamming into the wall at her shoulder. Their hips aligned, their heights identical with her heels on.
He snapped his head back, cracking it into the wall. “You can’t just—”
“Your songs are so brilliant,” she burst out, almost confrontational, almost apologetic.
He scoffed, mind whirling, and backed away from her. “I got to do the encore.”
Back out there, he got his friends onstage with him again since they were in the crowd right there, and they played the encore they’d planned. It was a little shaky, but the crowd was too excited and thrilled to care at all, dancing and screaming to one last new song.
As soon as he’d bowed and waved, he was stalking back to Astrid, who hadn’t moved an inch. He cuffed her wrists carefully in his hand. “Come on, now,” he said gruffly, pulling her through the non-public part of the club to the employee roof access, then up the stairs.
The rooftop garden was one of Seth’s favorite places, but this door opened into the corner where all the business-related items were kept. They were hidden from view by anyone else up here by a tall rack of sun umbrellas, creating a narrow alcove behind it.
He leaned against the bricks, planting his boots as far apart as they could in the space, and crossed his arms. Astrid leaned against the tall rack, one leg bent, her hips pushed out in a shallow arc. She wore sleek black high-waisted jeans with a red sweater, the neckline slouched between her breasts, one sleeve hanging off her shoulder. Her hair was in a high ponytail, the sophisticated gold studs and the industrial piercing shaped like an arrow glittering in the low lights. She was fucking beautiful but still a bit cool, still a curiosity.
“It can’t be a coincidence that you’re here,” he said. “So tell me why, Astrid.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Astrid
Seth looked like he’d just gotten off a motorcycle, his messy auburn waves layered around his neck and the sharp line of his jaw, some pieces slicing across the piercing hazel of his eyes. He wore jeans that wrapped around his thighs and loosened just enough to bunch around his brown work boots, his thighs the perfect strong surface to have rested his guitar on. His black tee shirt had a deep vee, a few necklaces with charms glowing against the warm yellow undertone honey of his skin, leather cuffs on his wrists worn and supple.
During the set, Astrid had gripped the railing of the balcony, her hips working in little swirling dips against an invisible partner, her eyes pinned on him, wondering if he felt her devouring him. Afterward she had shaken with the need to wrap herself around his body, around his heart, to win him back after three months, but all she had been able to do was kiss him.
Now, on the cooler rooftop, her heart raced faster and her inner thighs trembled and her whole being was focused on Seth, which was completley unfair of her, because she’d been the one to fuck this up the most. She’d held that mirror up so that she saw nothing but her own damn self, where once, she’d seen only his humor, his warmth and desire, and beneath it, the dark pools of calm and certainty and sadness that filled up Seth Riveau.
“Hank came to talk to me about the… draft,” she said, her throat convulsing delicately. She wanted to take it back when his eyes, which had once looked so far into her that she’d never felt the same since, darkened and sharpened, and he shook his head. “I was very upset when I wrote it. I walked away from Tristan’s party and just… let loose when I got back to my hotel room. I didn’t think it was fair to ask my opinion, in any capacity. And you asked during a party with your family and friends, when we had plenty private between us…”
One of his hands lifted so that he could scratch along his jaw, and it was quiet enough up here that she could hear the scritch of his nails over his stubble. “The duality of your opinions about me makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs,” he replied calmly.
“Pardon me?” she asked in off-balance confusion, her control of the situation slipping.
“In private, you told me that you couldn’t even theorize about an ‘us’ if I were going to pursue music in a big way,” he elaborated, his manner still calm but his eyes flashing fire in little sparks. “Then you wrote an essay, which I assume was supposed to be published for the whole world to read, about how you’re so angry that I’m not pursuing music in a big way.”
“It wasn’t appropriate for me to give opinions or advice that could shape your future, on a personal level,” Astrid retorted hotly, her nails digging into her thighs where her hands were tucked inside her pockets. “I’d only met you two weeks before you asked for that.”
“But I already valued your personal opinion, since I asked for it,” he argued.
She struggled to match his calmness, feeling her guilt and conflict trying to freeze the inferno of need and affection she felt for him. “Two weeks of proximity and sexual compatibility isn’t enough of a reason for me to have to bear that responsibility, Seth.”
“Too bad,” he snapped, chin jerking down so that his eyes bored into hers, an upsetting combination of defiance and pleading there. “Too fucking bad, Astrid! You don’t have a choice about it, and I don’t believe in trying to pretend it ain’t there when it is.”
When it is. Present tense. Not when it was.
She hugged herself even though she wanted to stand firm and strong, her voice coming out frayed around the edges when she protested, the words coming so fast, “I know what this could be, in another life. Maybe if we’d met a long time ago, before I earned the life I’ve made, I would have swayed and slid my hands over my breasts onstage while you played, the way I did with Barley. Or if we’d met after you learned how to live with your past, maybe you would have let yourself fly as high as you wanted because you didn’t have any ghosts.”
Every muscle in his body and face clenched, as if her words were a vice grip, and she was sorry for his pain. But she wasn’t sorry for what she’d said; Astrid wouldn’t dishonor what Hedda had meant to him by skirting around her or pretending she hadn’t been there. She wouldn’t ignore the love Seth carried for Hedda or the scars she had left on him.
“If you’d given me a chance at Tristan’s, I would have told you that I’d already said no Downbeat, that I’m always going to say no,” he finally answered, his voice a r
ough rasp.
“W-what are you talking about?” she stammered, her heart hammering wildly as her knees went to jelly and she had to splay her hands out on the ledge behind her hips to stay upright. “Then what the hell are you doing here, playing several sold-out solo shows?”
He stared at her and stated, “If you hadn’t had your panties all up in a bunch that the others heard we had something personal going on—as if they didn’t already know, darlin’, come on—I would have told you that I’d already said no, again, to rejoining Downbeat.”
Gaping, she blurted out, “Then why in God’s name did you keep pressing me for my opinions when you’d already made your decision about it?”
“Because I wanted to know how you fucking felt about it, Astrid!” he yelled.
He closed his eyes and his chest rose and fell in a deep, jagged in and out.
When he opened his eyes again, his face sharpened, not in a predatory way, but as if he were stripped down to the core of him, exposed fully to her. He pushed off the bricks and cupped her cheeks in the gentlest hold of her life, and said, every word seeming like it was deliberately chosen to demand that she listen to him, “I’ve got a thousand friends. I’ve had more than my fair share of lovemaking that made me soar, with partners and strangers and both. I let it all in, then let it all go—except for my love of music, my connection to Hedda, and now you. It’s not something I can control, or that happens only after people know everything about each other, prove they’ll be good together in bed, whatever it is. It just is.”
“I,” she struggled to formulate a response.
He dipped his face closer to hers, slow and deliberate, and set his mouth on hers.
She made a noise as she was swamped by his taste. Her lips clung to his, her tongue twined with his, her hands gripped his waist. She was enveloped by pleasure, relief, joy, surrender, terror—she didn’t know what it all was. She couldn’t bring herself to care or think as the kisses went on and on, his leg sliding between hers until she was using the ledge behind her as leverage to brace her ass and arch her hips to meet his.