by Megan Walker
Felix takes June out of her case as the DJ’s song ends, and the crowd makes more noise. It’s not exactly a packed stadium, but between our families and all our church friends and our industry friends, the ballroom is nice and full. The mics are already set up from the prom king and queen announcement, and cleaned off from the post-crowning bloodbath.
“Thank you all for joining us at our prom, and for celebrating this great time in our lives with us,” I say, and everyone cheers. I pause, pressing my lips together for a moment. “There have been some rough times in this last six months or so, but things have been so great lately, and no small part of that is because of the love and support of people right here in this room, so thank you.”
More cheers, as I smile widely and look over at Felix. “And thank you most of all to my family. To my kids, and to Felix.” I can feel my eyes getting watery. “You make everything better.”
There’s clapping, and people saying awwww.
Felix’s eyes shine back, and he blinks. “Really, people,” he says into his own mic, still looking at me. “She’s the one that makes everything better for us. I love you, Jenna.” I can see how much he means it, how much he’s always meant it, and I feel so, so incredibly lucky.
He turns back to the audience, who are still making awww sounds. “Now before we get carried away and our son has to threaten to call the PDA police on us, maybe we should play the new song we wrote—it’s called ‘All the Versions of You.’” The cheering starts again, and then we start playing.
The first verse is just me and the piano, and in the second verse he comes in with the cello, and by the chorus we’re singing and playing together. A duet about all the different versions of each other—the beautiful and the difficult, the scarred and the healed—and how much we love all of them.
I look out at the crowd while we play, and I see the couples, the people we love, dancing, swaying together. Gabby and Will, smiling at each other. Josh and Anna-Marie, sharing a soft kiss, with his hand stroking her belly. Leo and Roxie, Alec and Jillian, Ben and Wyatt, and so many more.
And for a moment, I imagine I can see my past self out there. Young Jenna, with her spiky hair buns and equally spiky attitude. She would have loved all this, even though she would have pretended not to.
She pretended a lot of things, and I see that more clearly now. She pretended not to care, when really she cared too much. She pretended not to feel, when really she was drowning in those feelings.
I don’t hate her anymore; I wish I could hug her and tell it’s going to be okay.
And right now, as I’m singing on the stage with the man I love more than all the world, I do the best thing I can for her—I imagine her out there, in prom finery, dancing with a young Felix, and so, so happy.
Happy like I am now, with a future bright and messy and imperfect and incredible in front of me. And Felix at my side through it all.
Acknowledgments
There are so many people we’d like to thank for helping make this book a reality. First, our families, especially our incredibly supportive husbands Glen and Drew, and our amazing kids. Thanks also to our writing group, Accidental Erotica, for all the feedback.
Thanks to Michelle of Melissa Williams Design for the fabulous cover, and to our agent extraordinaire, Hannah Ekren, for her love and enthusiasm for these books. Thanks to Amy Carlin and Dantzel Cherry for being proofreading goddesses, and thanks to everyone who read and gave us notes throughout the many drafts of this project—your feedback was so greatly appreciated.
And a very special thanks to you, our readers. We hope you love these characters as much as we do.
Janci Patterson got her start writing contemporary and science fiction young adult novels, and couldn’t be happier to now be writing adult romance. She has an MA in creative writing, and lives in Utah with her husband and two adorable kids. When she’s not writing she can be found surrounded by dolls, games, and her border collie. She has written collaborative novels with several partners, and is honored to be working on this series with Megan.
Megan Walker lives in Utah with her husband, two kids, and two dogs–all of whom are incredibly supportive of the time she spends writing about romance and crazy Hollywood hijinks. She loves making Barbie dioramas and reading trashy gossip magazines (and, okay, lots of other books and magazines, as well.) She’s so excited to be collaborating on this series with Janci. Megan has also written several published fantasy and science-fiction stories under the name Megan Grey.
Find Megan and Janci at www.extraseriesbooks.com
Other Books in the Extra Series
The Extra
The Girlfriend Stage
Everything We Are
The Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour
Starving with the Stars
My Faire Lady
You are the Story
How Not to Date a Rock Star
Beauty and the Bassist
Su-Lin’s Super-Awesome Casual Dating Plan
Ex on the Beach
Chasing Prince Charming
After the Final Slipper
The Real Not-Wives of Red Rock Canyon
Su-Lin and Brendan Present: Your Wedding
All-Night Dungeon
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Turn the page to read the beginning of How Not to Date a Rockstar,
book eight in The Extra Series.
One
Kevin
We’re playing a sold-out show in Denver, which is my favorite city to play. The three original members of my band are all from Wyoming, and Denver was our closest big city with a music scene, so this is where we got our start. Some of the fans here have been with us for years, and others only heard of us when we got big a couple years ago when “I’ll Take You Back” climbed to the top of the charts, but the energy is live and the audience is excited. No matter how many times we play shows like this, I can never get enough of it.
JT, our singer, looks over his shoulder at Shane, our bassist, and grins. He just got flashed by a couple girls in the front row, and I know what they’re thinking. They’re trying to decide if they’re going to invite those girls to the after-party. It’ll be invaded by groupies regardless, but sometimes Shane and JT like to handpick the girls they’ll hook up with out of the crowd. It’s not really my thing—something Shane still razzes me about, even though he ought to be used to it by now.
Shane shrugs. Either he hasn’t seen anything he likes, or he’s holding out in case he sees something better.
I shake my head at the both of them. Lando, our drummer, starts up the next song, “Still Falling.” The crowd doesn’t know this one as well yet, because we just launched our second album, but when we hit the first verse and JT belts it into the microphone, I see a few people singing along. This song has a crazy-fast guitar riff, and I’m killing it. It’s one of my favorites, weirdly sad even though it’s one of our fastest and hardest songs, about continually falling for someone who’s long ago moved on.
Not that any of us would know. Neither JT or I have ever had a real relationship—JT because he’s way too into whatever girl has most recently flashed her tits at him, and me because while I’m in my element up here on the stage with all eyes on us, I’m far less comfortable if I’m expected to actually carry on a conversation. Both this album and our last were supposedly written about Shane’s high school girlfriend, Anna-Marie, but that’s a pile of crap. Shane staged the whole thing to get back at her for running off to LA and forgetting about him. Anna-Marie was my friend, too, and I’m ready for Shane to drop it already, but he writes all our lyrics, so it’s not like I really have a say in what our albums are about.
I’m not about to confront him on it, either.
We finish the set. I’m sweating under the lights, and I step behind the drums and take a long drink from my water bottle while JT works the crowd. I swear he sounds like he’s going to lose his voice by the end of the night, but he never does. He’ll hit the after-party still shouting too much and too loud until Shane tells him to shut his mouth and JT yells back at Shane to shut his.
That’s the thing about playing with the same guys for more than a decade. Lando’s only been with us for six months, but from Shane and JT, there are never any surprises.
I think they’d probably say the same thing about me.
I return to my microphone and tune up for the next song. The girls in the front row have their shirts back on, though I don’t expect that to last, especially since word has gotten around about how exactly women get backstage invites at Accidental Erotica concerts. I saw a whole thread on a fan forum a while ago, which labeled me as the hardest to impress, and postulated that maybe I’m not into white girls, a theory I’ve heard before.
I may be the least social member of the band, but that doesn’t have as much to do with me being black as with me being shy. A surprising number of stage musicians are, I’ve learned. There’s a big difference between performing and interacting. Not that I haven’t been with my share of groupies, even if my bedpost has significantly fewer notches on it than either Shane’s or JT’s.
And it’s not, as Shane frequently reminds me, like groupies actually require us to talk.
JT asks the crowd to give it up for my solo during that last song, and the audience goes nuts. I like to underplay my reaction to the crowd—a reviewer once wrote that I’m the perfect understated foil to JT’s manic energy, and I like that better than a lot of things I’ve been called over the years.
Lando starts the next song, and one of the girls in the front row strips her shirt completely off and throws it toward the stage. It’s caught before it reaches us by the girl sitting next to her—a black girl who’s dressed more straight-laced than most of our fans, and a hell of a lot less skankily than her friends. She throws her friend’s shirt back to her and sits down, shaking her head like she disapproves.
Her friend shrugs and then throws the shirt right back up on the stage, where it lands at Shane’s feet. Shane laughs.
This girl, though—the shirt catcher—crosses her arms and shakes her head and glares up at the stage like she can’t believe these shenanigans. I rarely see this much disapproval except from the protesters who sometimes picket our concerts, claiming that we promote “riotous living” and “free love,” which I’m pretty sure isn’t a term anyone cool has used in the last fifty years. This girl doesn’t appear to be one of those people, though. First, because she’s sitting in the front row instead of outside the venue, and second because she’s actually dancing a little to the beat of the song, though not as much as her friends. She looks over at her now-shirtless friend and says something, and they both laugh.
And then she glances up at me.
Damn, she’s gorgeous. She’s got more going on than anyone else in the audience, and that’s with her shirt buttoned all the way up. She’s got deep, dark eyes and a heart-shaped face, russet-brown skin and the kind of smile that’s effortless, even if it has to be earned.
She catches me staring at her—not difficult, since I’m up on stage under spotlights—and raises her eyebrow at me, like she’s not sure what I’m looking at.
I want to meet that girl, I realize. I want to talk to her and see if she really is that difficult to impress, and if we’re managing it anyway. She’s still staring at me when I look back over at her, and this time I wink. There’s the glimmer of a smile on her face, like she likes what she sees but isn’t willing to admit it yet.
And that’s when I decide. During the next break between songs, I wave over one of the stage assistants, describe her—not hard, since she’s the black girl sitting next to the girl who’s lost her shirt—and scribble a note for them to take to her, inviting her backstage.
When I turn back to the band, Shane is smirking at me. “Nice,” he says.
He probably thinks I’ve invited the shirtless girl, who will no doubt come backstage too, since I sent enough passes for her friends.
Let him think that. It’ll keep him off my back for not indulging in all the perks of our rapidly growing success.
I just want to talk to this girl and see if she’s anything like I’m imagining. It’s possible her personality is intolerable, but if so, it’s not like I can’t slip out of the after party and leave her to have fun with the rest of the band.
Wouldn’t be the first time—or the fiftieth.
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