by C. R. Jane
“This comes with a pretty awesome meal if you’re hungry,” I say, trying to sound innocent although the boob graze was definitely on purpose.
She nods and since I still haven’t let go of her hand, I start to pull her behind me into the green room, despite the obvious reluctance I can feel in her body. It’s amazing how just holding her hand is sparking a million memories of my life before now.
As I walk in, Tanner looks over, his eyes glued to Ariana. There’s a hard, desperate longing in his gaze and I wonder if they already had their reunion and it hadn’t gone well. I lead her over to him, nevertheless, not paying any mind to his flavor of the week and longtime drug dealer, Tanya, who’s desperately hanging off of him. The girl doesn’t know what’s coming now that Tanner’s “Princess” has returned.
“Tanner, you remember Ari,” I say jokingly. Ariana’s gripping my hand like it’s her lifeline and the protective streak she always brought out of me urges me to drag her away from the uncomfortable situation. But then I remember how she basically ruined my life for the last five years and I don’t feel so bad about torturing her a little. It’s amazing how having her back for fifteen minutes makes me want to forget all the heartache and indescribable pain she put me through. I can’t forget it though. She could easily do it again. And this time I might not be able to recover.
Tanner doesn’t answer me, instead he starts to nibble on Tanya’s neck, his eyes glued to Ariana’s as he does so. She looks sick to her stomach as she watches Tanner and I finally give in to the roaring inside of me that’s always been desperate to make her smile, and I pull her away from Tanner’s little game of vengeance. There is a table in the back of the room that’s laden with food as well as about twenty other VIP guests who are eyeing me like they are lions and I’m particularly tasty meat.
I give them the stage smile that I’ve perfected and make sure to greet them, never letting Ari go. If she’s going to be in our life she will have to get used to this part of the job. Most VIPs are actually not too bad. They’re usually on the younger side and have gotten the tickets for them and twenty of their friends for a birthday present from their rich father. They usually can’t get a word out because they are in shock and if you take a quick picture with them and give them a hug, they’re pretty much guaranteed to be your fans for the rest of your life. There are however some VIPs that are nothing but groupies, like the one trying to push my hand onto her heaving double ds despite the fact that I’m obviously with Ari at the moment. I slept with my fair share in the first few tours, desperate to try and fuck Ari out of my mind. When it didn’t work and I realized how miserable it was making me feel, I backed off and haven’t touched one in over a year.
I manage to wrench my hand from the girl’s and make it to the table where I start stacking two plates. I feel a sick sense of dread when I realize that I’ve loaded up Ari’s entire plate with what used to be her favorite foods. What’s it going to mean for me that I’m still so gone over this girl that I can remember everything about her? Looking over at her, she’s looking at the plate like it’s a snake that is about to bite her. I’m sure we’re both wondering how our habits have survived five years apart from each other. I throw the plates down and garner a sweet gasp from her when I yank her towards the door that leads to my dressing room. What I’m feeling feels too personal to be on display in front of a room full of strangers even if they are all going to think I’m taking her inside to fuck her.
She gives a soft sob when she sees the intensity in my eyes after we get inside and the door is shut. “What do you want, Jesse?” she asks, which angers me because it should be fucking apparent what I want, what I’ve always wanted from her.
“I have never wanted anything more than you.” I tell her. “I haven’t—I’ve never thought about kissing someone the way I want to with you. And fucking. Shit, I want to worship every part of your body, but I also want to fuck hard and raw until your sweet voice is rough from begging and then we’ll begin again. Just us. Starting with a kiss.” My hand trembles when it reaches her nape, winding through her soft hair. “Let me in.”
Ariana
Jesse gives me hope. Faith in tomorrow, trust in the future, and freedom to feel everything that I thought was lost. To feel with him. With Jesse.
“Yes.”
At the one-word submission, he hisses and then dips down. He aligns his mouth with my own, and we kiss. We kiss until breathing is forgotten, catching only short gasps of air when we part long enough to move a fraction. We drown in the thundering rain that is our pulse and the beat of what becomes us. We kiss until the palate of colors creating his canvas blends into mine and a new picture forms. We kiss until our souls bleed from the pain and heal into a new and beautiful masterpiece. And then the silence that surrounds us is quiet serenity. It ends on a heady moan, his or mine, both, when reality intrudes from voices in the outside room.
Jesse pulls away but he doesn’t go far, leaning his forehead against mine. “Where have you been the last five years?” he asks, and I know he isn’t asking a question about geography, he’s asking a question about my heart. Fear shocks my system as I remember the phone call that came in when I first saw Jesse. I’m sure it was Gentry. Jesse mistakes my look and abruptly pulls away from me.
A tremor bursts across his shoulders, and he grabs his hair. Bending over at the waist, he groans. I fight the urge to go to him, to say I’m sorry and I didn’t mean it, and that we’re good together, because we were, we are, but then he stands and his eyes cool to an icy blue. With a nod, he slams a hand into his jeans pocket. “I’m sorry I burdened you with my feelings.”
“That isn’t . . .” I try to tell him, but just then the door opens and Jensen fills the doorway, taking my breath away.
For one heartbeat, pain burns through the hard veneer sculpting Jensen’s features, pain and sorrow, like a man who knows too much and can’t wade through his mucky memories. He drowns under the burden.
“Jensen,” I whisper and reach for him. The pain melts away, leaving a blank mask.
“We’re on in ten,” he says to Jesse, slamming the door behind him without another look.
Jesse starts to walk towards the door. “We’ll talk after the show,” he says, and then he too leaves the room.
It feels odd knowing that he just left me in his dressing room. I had always imagined that the stars’ dressing rooms would look like something out of the page of a design magazine, but this room looks just like Jesse. There are clothes sprawled all over the floor, I’m not sure what from since he just left for the show still just in a pair of black jeans. There are some empty Snickers’ wrappers laying on the coffee table along with a few empty cans of Mountain Dew. Walking over to a mirror vanity on the side of the room, I pick up the lone picture frame sitting on it. My hands begin to tremble as I see that it’s one of the four of us. It must have been taken right before they left although I don’t remember it. I’m smiling widely at whoever was taking the picture. It’s a real smile stemming from something one of the guys had just said. What strikes me most about the picture is that while I’m looking straight at the camera, all of the guys are looking straight at me. I had never seen this picture before, and I want to steal it and hoard it away so I can never forget that I was once adored.
Setting the picture down despite my baser urge, I walk out of Jesse’s dressing room, closing the door softly behind me. So far, the night has been a lesson in agony but I need to snap out of the melancholy I’m feeling and just try to live in the moment since I’ll never get it back.
Jesse’s sitting on a stool, talking to a now red-headless Tanner. He glances up as I walk closer, blinking away his vulnerability and hiding behind the whiskey bottle he has in his hands. He takes a long swallow. A sliver of pain slides through his sky-blue eyes but another long swig follows, dimming the light. Brushing the back of his hand across his lips, he flicks his gaze at Tanner, and then a blonde sneaks into his side to whisper in his ear. Bitter resentment roars to
life in my chest, and I hate it. I hate that I feel something in this moment. Tears rush my eyes, but I bat my lashes and force my focus to examining the rest of the room.
When I look back at Jesse, the blonde is looking at me, a speculative look on her face. She flips her hair. I flip mine. She smirks. I smirk. She laughs. I laugh. She touches. I—that’s taking things too far. Before I can go after her though, there’s a silky voice in my ear.
“Want to get out of here?” it asks, a large hand landing on my hip. Everything after that is a blur. Jensen has the guy by the neck, and his voice sends chills down my spine. “Hands off what’s mine, Levi.”
“Fuck you, Jensen!” says the red-faced guy who I’ve never seen before. That’s all it takes. One angry-as-hell rockstar and every pair of eyes in the room rushes our way. Levi suddenly twists out of Jensen’s grip and shoves. Jensen’s thigh crumbles, and he uses a table to catch his fall, cracking the leg. His eyes flame wide. He lunges.
Tanner steps in. One fist coils in Levi’s shirt, the other in Jensen’s. “Cool it. We need to get out on stage right now,” Tanner snarls.
Jesse’s blue eyes find mine for a second. Is that sympathy? Then he turns to follow Jensen and Tanner out of the room towards the stage. I’m left with the carnage: a broken table and my scattered breath.
Levi leaves the room with a backwards glare at me. Giving him a second to get farther away, I collect myself and then follow the line of VIPs out to the specially marked area of the front row that’s been reserved for us. Somehow, I end up in the front of the dead center of the stage.
The stadium goes dark, and the crowd erupts in a fervent cheer. Thousands of chesty girls scream to be noticed as the band walks on stage, only their silhouettes visible to the crowd against the crush of the lights. My heart pounds as Tanner takes the stage and picks up his first guitar. Without saying a word, he busies himself studying the strings, double-checking the tuning. Behind him, Jensen starts strumming the opening beats to their most recent single, “Cry For You.” Off to the side of the stage, a musician who is not an original member of Sounds of Us starts the opening piano notes and Jesse kicks in on the drums. The music swells until it reaches a feverish pitch. Finally, the lights focus, fully revealing Tanner as he saunters to the microphone and begins to sing.
“You stole my heart, left me to die, you took my breath, you made me cry. But I’m done with that, I’m done with your games, this much is true. I’m never again, going to cry for you...”
The crowd loses it. I can’t take my eyes off him. Every fiber in his being oozes charisma. Every movement is personified charm. It must be impossible for anyone in this stadium not to have a crush on him, a crush on all of them. As I watch I can’t help but drift into the memory of the first show I saw them perform. Remembering his expressive eyes and the control he possesses over the muscles in his face, I blush at the memory even now. I allow myself to rerun that entire first show in my head and marvel. As the song ends, he removes his guitar strap from his shoulder, and instead of putting the instrument back on its stand, he lays it down on the floor in the middle of the stage and turns to greet the crowd.
A frantic guitar tech gives an I-know-he-does-that-just-to-mess-with-me eye roll and inconspicuously runs out on stage to save the stranded piece of equipment, then places an acoustic guitar on the stand. Tanner rips off his shirt making the whole stadium roar and then switches spots with Jesse. As he walks to the drums, I gape at his body along with every other person in the crowd. His back is smooth but for cut bunches of muscle that roll and dip in all the right places. I’m not so stuck on those, but the tattoos that cover one side of him from hip through to sleeve, leaving the other side of his back as unmarked as it was the day he was born. Two sides of a coin, perfectly delineated by his spine. Angel wings and words, tribal markings and Celtic knots, all woven together in a masterpiece painted on his skin even though I know they’re hiding a multitude of scars. It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful.
I swallow and tuck my chin to my chest, shocked by the increased speed of my pulse, my breath, and the stirrings of other long-forgotten human needs.
“Hello,” Jesse greets the crowd as they erupt in deafening noise. From my vantage point, I watch as the lights illuminate the thousands of faces before us. Girls swoon while their boyfriends try to appear unaffected. Jesse looks over at Jensen, who’s dressed up a lot more than the other guys in his navy blazer with elbow patches over a t-shirt. They smile at each other in a shared moment, seeming to know the other so well they can communicate without words. Jensen shoots me a glance in the crowd and a thrill of unease hits my stomach as Jesse turns back to the crowd.
“We’re going to take you back in time, with some songs off our first album,” he says into the microphone, as he picks up the acoustic and strums a few chords. Tanner chimes in with his hint of an accent, “if you’re thinking this is about you, it is,” he jokingly says and the crowd laughs, even though I know the truth laced in his words.
Jesse’s shoulders hunch forward as he launches into “Promises,” the third single from their first album. I hate this song. Even though he performs it beautifully, every word is a bite into my heart as it tells the story of the lying bitch, me, who broke all her vows to the boys she loved.
The crowd doesn’t share my hatred of the song and sings along with unabashed abandon. Jesse looks down at me while he sings the song, and despite the nastiness of the song, I feel intimately connected to Jesse in that moment, like we share a secret.
The show boulders on, and the guys all work the stage, throwing their entire body into every motion. They are all exemplary performers; they pull out all the stops. As a band, Sounds of Us is in perfect sync. Their group energy is contagious, and they move as one, dancing around the stage and encouraging the crowd. However, I wish that their energy wasn’t devoted to pounding in my head every lyric that testifies just how much they hate me, how much I ruined everything, how much I broke their hearts. Song after song makes sure that I can’t miss their message.
They quake into the grand finale, lights blazing and drums crashing in a final crescendo. Back at the drums for the last few songs, Jesse throws his drumsticks into the crowd, and the band exits the stage as the masses cry for more. As for me, I just cry.
10
Then
“We did it,” Tanner says as he rushes into the room, immediately grabbing me and spinning me around. “Brandon just called with the news. We’re going to L.A. to record our album,” he tells me. His face is glowing, and I want to capture a picture of his happiness so that I can carry it with me always.
“That’s amazing,” I tell him, burying my face in his neck and breathing in his scent. They’ve worked so hard for this. I always knew it would happen for them. How could it not with how talented they are? There was nobody like them.
“When do you leave?” I ask breathlessly, lifting my head to peer into his silver eyes. They’re framed by long dark lashes that would make any girl jealous and the rest of the package is just as gorgeous. All three of my boys are beautiful, but Tanner was definitely the one you could classify as “pretty boy” handsome. Tall, sexy, and confident, with just a touch of a British accent in his smoky voice, my heart always felt like it was about to beat out of my chest whenever he was looking at me.
“Friday,” he tells me with a broad grin that never ceases to take my breath away. It dims after a moment. We both realize at that same time that I still have a whole semester left of school. I won’t be able to go with them like we’ve always talked about until it’s done.
“We can tell them we had something come up, that we have to delay for a few months,” he says, trying to pretend like what he’s saying is a possibility, like that wouldn’t mean the death knell for their career before it even began. I wouldn’t let them fail because of me.
“Four months will fly by,” I whisper, smoothing down a section of his hair that was trying to fly away. “We’ll talk every day. You won’t even have ti
me to miss me.” I smile tremulously, feeling my eyes start to water as I think about them leaving me behind. They were my whole life and had been for over a year.
But I could do this. They had been taking care of me since I moved here, I could take care of myself for four months.
Tanner takes my chin gently in his and tips up my face so I’m looking at him. My mouth begins to water being this close to him. “Ari…” he begins before the door crashes open and Jesse and Jensen come stalking into the room, their gazes both intent on me.
Like always, there seems to be less oxygen in the room when the three of them are all in it. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that life isn’t just about them. They’re a force of energy that pushes out anyone and anything out. I couldn’t remember what it was like when they weren’t around me.
“What’s wrong with her?” barks Jensen, and I can’t help but smile. Jensen is my protector, willing to do anything to make me happy, even if he has to go against one of the guys. He’s also the one that has always been able to see right through me. He’ll be the hardest to convince that I’ll be alright when they’re gone.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell him with a slow smile. It’s slow because I can’t summon up the happiness necessary for a quick one. “We were just celebrating the news. I’m so proud of you guys,” I tell them, the end of my voice tailing into a squeak. I bury my head in Jensen’s shoulder so the guys can’t see my face. I need to get it together if I’m not going to ruin their lives like I have with everyone else that’s ever known me.
Jensen sticks his face in my hair, inhaling in the way that makes me feel like I’m his favorite scent in the world. I abruptly get pulled away.