by Quinn, Cari
Her platform started moving again as she headed to her side of the stage. Always to my right.
Zane Landry, our co-lead guitarist, was the blue to her red. The cool to her heat. He was the steady and the true, the horizon line to Jamie’s rocky cliffs. His wide shoulders and surfer-lean body had been honed by the water he lived for. Fluid grace where Jamie was raw talent.
His glowing blue octagon sailed to the left side of the stage.
The stage rumbled a little as gears shifted and a panel opened up beneath me. The acrid scent of smoke teased its way up to me. Screens dotted the arena from every corner, showing different angles of each member of the band. Everything went black save for a moving white light on the stage.
I wasn’t a fan of the smoke machine, but it did the job when it came to opening up the show. The high definition screens picked up even the faintest rolling wisps of smoke that coated the floor and billowed out of every crack in the stage.
Our newest addition, Teagan Daly, rose out of the floor on her new glittery pink and lavender-encrusted baby grand piano. The keys had always held my heart, but when it came to running around the stage and singing, it was easier for me to be untethered.
Teagan was just as masterful behind the ivories as she was behind her saxophone. She had been just what we needed to round out our sound and let me play to the crowd.
Her notes were sweet and light at first, then pounded like thunder as the spotlight found her in the dark.
“Sixty seconds, Lindz.”
The voice of our stage manager drew me out of the rare moment of awe. After awhile, the opening sequence became routine, but tonight felt special. Maybe because it was the last night before we took a mini-break to celebrate new friends.
Maybe it was the low hum to the room as the crowd stomped and screamed.
My fingers tightened on my glittery microphone as Oz Taylor, our bassist, rose from the underbelly of the stage. His hulking frame always drew screams. Inky black hair slid over his shirtless chest. He didn’t even bother wearing a tank to start the shows anymore.
Oz was nearly as growly as Jamie. Two sides of the same coin. Silent and intense one moment, then as changeable as the wind, he was a hurricane.
It was easy for me to stand back and catalog my bandmates. Just how would they categorize me?
Focused.
Talented.
Relentless.
Together, we made magic.
Updates came through my inner ear monitors as everything ran as smooth as glass. Jamie and Zane scattered across the stage once they were untethered from their gliders. The only static song on our ever-changing setlist was “Judgment”. It was full of epic guitars and bone-jarring bass lines.
The song showcased every piece of our band.
Jamie’s discordant, in-your-face playing style.
Zane’s technical prowess.
Oz’s fury.
Cooper’s thunder.
Teagan’s light touch and murderous followthrough.
And as the opalescent LED lights came to life at my feet, I was the flash. The glitter and the voice. My oval stage started its descent as my purring notes brought the song together.
I sang with the driving need to prove myself.
Brooklyn Dawn was at the height of success now, but it had taken sacrifices to get here. In a hard rock landscape dominated by male voices, I had to prove over and over again I wasn’t just a pretty face. That our band deserved to be here.
I ripped open my chest to belt out the haunting lyrics until my crystal-laden glider touched down on the main stage. I opened my eyes to take in the sea of faces. Signs that always ended up being snuck into the venues cried out their pleas for songs or their undying love for someone in the band. The rapt attention of some fans was peppered in among the wave of cell phones raised to take in the moment.
Hands unfastened me from the back, releasing me to fly to the front of the stage to finish the song—to hold the long note and combat the cries from the crowd. My chest heaved as I drew a greedy breath and gripped my crystal-encrusted microphone stand.
My face split wide with a joyous smile. “How are we tonight, San Francisco?”
I touched a finger to my chin when the volume of the replies didn’t quite suit my mood.
“I know you can do better than that.” Jamie came up beside me and hooked her arm around my waist. I tossed my long, lavender-tipped blond curls over my shoulder. “James, does that sound like a welcome to you?”
Jamie leaned into my mic. “Sounds like a fucking whisper to me.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go with whisper. I mean, they tried, right?”
Jamie swung her guitar around behind her. “That’s why people call you the nice one. I tell it like it is.”
The crowd rose another decibel in volume. From the back of the house, they started chanting Jamie’s name.
Zane and Oz walked up to meet us. “You having a party without us?” Zane said into the small headset microphone he preferred.
“Lame party,” Jamie quipped. “These guys don’t know how to have fun.”
The crowd booed good-naturedly. Jamie shrugged and pulled her guitar back around to the front. “Maybe they need a little music to get them going?”
“Is that what you think they’re here for?” Cooper interjected from the back. “Maybe a little bit of this…” He slammed on the skins with a blend of Dave Grohl and John Bonham intensity.
“Or this?” Teagan said huskily into her microphone as she chased Cooper’s beat with her keys.
We exploded into the next song, scattering around the stage to cover every inch. To engage and delight the crowd with favorites, new additions, and cover songs when the temperature of the crowd required it.
Tonight, San Francisco was living for us, for our music, and the emotions we dragged out of each screaming fan.
By the middle of the show, my chest was on fire. I’d reached for notes I’d pay for tomorrow, but tonight, it was worth it. I had a week to rest my vocals and I was treating them like a muscle that hadn’t been to the gym in a year.
I was wild and the crowd fed off of it.
I curled my arm around Jamie’s neck and dragged her close to whisper in her ear. “‘Barracuda’?”
Her dark eyes lit with the devil. “Fuck, yes.”
It had been a damn long time since we’d done the song. It had been a staple of our tour when we first started out, but we’d left it behind for new songs and multiple albums. For a catalog of music we all loved.
I stopped at the microphone tucked away near Cooper and flashed him a huge smile. One eyebrow shot up. I said, “‘Barracuda’,” into the mic and he twirled a stick into the air.
“Fuck, yeah.”
Drums and guitars on the grittiest end of the spectrum were Cooper’s favorite part of a show. Calling an audible was asking for trouble when it came to the lighting rigs and smooth sailing show our stage manager lived for.
I was about to fuck up her day.
I locked eyes with Jamie and we both ran for her glider.
“Goddammit, Lindz.”
I grinned at Darcy’s voice coming through my in-ear monitors. She liked to break in and give me a piece of her mind sometimes. I mostly let her. She was all bark. I reached behind for my battery pack and gave it a double tap to let her know I still loved her and that I wasn’t changing my mind.
Teagan was getting used to our ways and spun out the end of the song as one of our techs locked us in on Jamie’s glider. The crowd kept craning their necks to find us on the stage, but we were swallowed in shadows. Slowly, the arm activated and pushed us out over the crowd.
The opening chords of “Barracuda” screamed out into the night.
The spotlights twirled around the stage below us while the red and purple lights from the base of Jamie’s triangular glider threw up eerie streaks. The glitter of my costume’s bodice picked up all the flash and fire of the crimson and lavender lights. I widened my stance to show off the m
ile of leg and body jewelry that dripped off me.
The Heart lyrics were as familiar as my own. If I was going to shred my voice, I might as well head into Ann Wilson’s territory. It was one of the few songs that Jamie actually liked to sing with me. Her voice was Joan Jett-raw with just as much sandpaper.
We performed the song as we soared over the crowd. Jamie killed the solo and we both headbanged our way through the end of it. The crowd was with us the entire time, shouting the lyrics back to us as we created a little singalong jam near the bridge. Jamie and Zane dueled and lengthened the outro for an extra two minutes so we could make it back to the stage.
Sweat poured off Jamie’s arms and neck. Her inky dark hair tipped in violent red stuck to her skin before she flipped it back with a wild grin. We both laughed and hugged as one of our stagehands helped us down.
“Holy shit,” I said into my microphone as I slowly sauntered back to the center of the stage. “Think we can slow it down for a minute?” I gripped my mic, then touched my forehead to the warm, familiar metal casing. We were back on track and the light, airy notes of “Ruin” drifted into the night.
I hated and loved the song in equal parts.
It was wrapped in memories. Even after a handful of years, it still had the power to make my belly clench and my heart race. I’d written it after that night in New York City. After that rash, ridiculous, regrettable night that had ruined me for too many nights to count.
Handily, the name of the club was a harbinger to exactly what I’d done that night.
The song started soft and built with each layered chord. Some nights I played it with Teagan. Sometimes I needed the bench seat to remind myself of a single moment of madness. Of what I could never do to myself again.
Liar, he did it. You just took it.
I slammed my eyes shut and poured my soul into the song. The screams and voices echoing my words were put in a box. Tonight, the memories were too close to the surface.
I didn’t need the reminder of the piano.
I didn’t need the vibration of notes under my fingers.
It was all I could do to let the words escape my chest. Letting the cracks show for the crowd was my job. Sometimes I kept myself buttoned down, sometimes I only allowed the mirror of what they wanted to see.
Sometimes I sang through a nightmare.
Midnight eyes full of taunts and accusations, black, mussed hair sifting between my fingers, strong hands that ripped at my skin at the same time they offered pleasure so profound I’d never found its match again.
He’d split me open like an offering to some god I hadn’t been aware of. And when I’d been bled dry, he’d tossed me aside like a shell crushed on the beach.
To know that level of pleasure only to be left empty-handed had shook me to the core. Words had been log-jammed in my head for weeks.
Until this song.
Until I’d allowed myself to remember it all and etch it into paper. A painful reminder I had to sing again and again. So I could relive my mistake and vow never to let it happen again.
I’d wrapped myself up so tightly in the song I wasn’t aware I’d crashed to my knees until I opened my eyes to glimpse the shocked faces in the arena. Thousands of phones were raised to capture my little death on the stage.
I let my hair fall forward to shield myself from their eyes, both personal and digital.
The lights went out, allowing me time to gather myself. Jamie was at my side in a moment.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, just got caught up.”
“Fuck yeah, you did. Scared me for a second.”
Even Jamie didn’t know about the story behind “Ruin”. She didn’t know about him. Even his name was on lockdown.
I gripped her fingers for a moment before escaping to my piano at the back of the stage. I was supposed to play head-to-head with Teagan for the next song, but I couldn’t face my piano bench just yet.
Too many memories bombarded me.
I slid around to Teagan’s set-up and touched her shoulder, then sat next to her on the bench. “Hey, girl.”
Bluebell eyes met mine with surprise. “Hey.” Her voice was still a little tentative in the mic. She’d been touring with us for a little while now, but she still wasn’t completely at ease with the craziness of our life.
“Mind if I sit a spell while you play?”
Her fingers immediately rested on the keys. “My piano bench is yours.”
I touched my temple to hers, our curls blending—the fire of her red and the sunshine of mine.
The song was a happy one. An early one before complications had invaded my brain. We sang in sweet harmony to combat the darkness of the song that had come before.
Though no one really knew about the darkness. Just me.
Just my way to deal with it.
It was always music that saved me, even after him. Especially before him.
Music was my one constant and would always be my salvation.
As I drifted from Teagan to Oz to Zane and back to Cooper to finish out the night, we hammered our way through the setlist. I smiled and laughed and pushed “Ruin” further back into the little box it usually stayed in.
By the end of the show, there were only smiles and banter. Tonight was the last show for a week, and we were all ready for a bit of a break.
Like always, I poured myself into the encore. Jamie and I rocked out back to back as we had since the beginning. The screams of the crowd had grown, but Jamie had always been the one to hold me up.
I grinned over my shoulder at her as the last notes of “Black Magic” echoed into the night.
The rest of our band came up and met us for the final bows. We soaked up the screams, and they waved back at our raised hands. It was tempting to give them one more song, but we were all due to get on a plane.
Our opening act—Warning Sign—had a celebration planned. A wedding for two of the most colorful members of their extended family. People we’d grown close to in a very short time.
As we walked off stage, “Hurricane” from Thirty Seconds to Mars gave the crowd the signal that the night was over.
We walked down the ramp to the under stage. I plucked out my monitors and couldn’t stop the laugh as Lauren Bryant, the bride, galloped by with sparkly Converse sneakers, white jeans, and a white T-shirt with a unicorn on the front. Oh, and couldn’t forget the veil she had pinned to her wild blond hair.
West Reynolds, the groom of course, was chasing after her.
Never a dull moment with Warning Sign on the bill with us.
“I’m getting married.” Lauren’s off-key singsong voice echoed down the hall. “Hurry up. We have to get on the plane. I don’t want to miss my wedding.”
“Babe, you’re not going to miss the wedding. We have to be present for the whole thing to happen.”
“But I want it to be now.” She twirled around and spotted us. “Finally! I didn’t think you guys were ever going to stop playing.”
Jamie sighed. “Do I really have to go?”
“Yes.”
“Why? They don’t care about me going to their stupid institutionalized form of torture.”
“Tell us really how you feel about marriage, James.” Oz twisted his long hair up into a manbun. “I, for one, am looking forward to a week in fucking Hawaii.”
“I’m looking forward to fucking in Hawaii, does that count?” Jamie batted her lashes up at Oz before hanging a left down toward the showers.
Oz shook his head with a sigh. “Getting married isn’t torture.”
I patted his arm. “You haven’t done it yet.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I know, but it seems like it might be cool if I found the right chick.”
“Woman,” I corrected.
“My woman won’t mind being called a chick.”
“She probably won’t.” And I was looking forward to finding out just what kind of woman felled my favorite redwood.
Lauren nearly vibrate
d in front of me. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing.”
I waved her off. “No hardship here. Especially since you picked a gown that’s one of my favorite colors.”
“You like all colors.”
“Handy, right?” One of Lauren’s bridesmaids was evidently even more insane than she was. She’d decided rock climbing was a great idea right before she had to fly to a destination wedding.
Her dislocated shoulder and broken leg put her out of the running and I’d been asked to fill in.
It helped that I had a seamstress on call due to all the costumes I wore. I didn’t mind. Lauren and her crazy crew of bridesmaids made things entertaining at the very least. And I couldn’t deny my love for a good wedding. Especially when the two people were so obviously made for each other.
Lauren had her hand curled around West’s like a lifeline. There was no panic in West’s eyes. Just pure adoration for the bundle of nerves beside him.
“Well, let’s go get you two married.”
Lauren squeaked and threw herself into my arms. “Oh my God, yes!”
Five
Some days I rued ever allowing myself to be dragged from my place in the city. The dragging hadn’t been literal, although right now, it felt like it.
Having bloody friends was almost as bad as having no one.
At least being alone meant some peace with your thoughts. The freedom to just be.
I wasn’t about to find that here, at my buddy Logan King’s home in Winchester Falls. The guy was a superstar, so naturally, the place had all the amenities, including a professional grade studio.
It also contained any number of pains in my ass.
Right now, the biggest one was the supremely talented woman I’d suggested should be the centerpiece of Logan’s Christmas album charity project.
Clearly, not my brightest idea. Dammit to hell.
“Fly, baby. Fly to those angels. Fly.”
I rose from the studio chair, smashing my knee on the storage shelf at the clang of guitars tumbling outside. “Cock munger.”
“Fly, baby, fly.”
The singsong quality of the voice was instantly at odds with the sultry voice I was used to working with.