Not that I'd never tell her. If he texted me and we ended up getting married or something then sure she'd hear the story of how we met, but for now I stayed quiet.
Plus I didn't want to have her poking and prodding into my love life. I was already irritated enough at being here. Having her trying to play the love doctor, a role she seemed to relish, would only put me in an even fouler mood.
"So when does the band come on?" I asked.
The strains of a song that was almost familiar started blasting out across the place. It was particularly painful from our seats, which I had to admit were pretty damn good now that I was here.
Finally the obscure band finished. The lead singer waved out to the crowd but nobody seemed to care. He stood there awkwardly with his hands thrown in the air. The awkward stretched out for what seemed like an eternity, to the point that I almost felt sorry for the guy, and then they all kind of just slumped down and walked off the stage.
Okay, I definitely felt sorry for the guy. Except for the whole part where he nearly deafened me. Other than that, though, it was really kind of pathetic and cringeworthy.
Then the curtains came down and the lights came up.
"God!" Kayla said. "I didn't think that was ever going to end!"
I shrugged. "The torture isn't over yet."
"Watch it," Kayla said. She dug in her purse and pulled out her phone. "Come on. Let's take a selfie. I want everyone to be jealous of how close we are! Talk about one hell of a contest!"
So I smiled, mostly for Kayla, and let her take the picture with the stage in the background and the band's logo hanging huge and prominent.
Then it was more waiting. This was my least favorite part about going to a concert. Always being forced to sit through the opening band no one cared about, and then being forced to sit through the seemingly interminable wait between the opening band and the actual act. Why couldn't they run a tight ship? Why was it so hard to get everybody out at a nice clip?
I pulled out my phone and started tapping at a game for a few minutes until the lights went down again and suddenly every woman in the arena was screaming. It would've been earsplitting if I wasn't suddenly assaulted with an equally loud noise from the stage and the massive speakers hanging around us.
"An event a decade in the making!" an exciting generic deep-voiced announcer boomed across the arena. "You loved them a decade ago, and now they're back to rock your world!"
I rolled my eyes. Rock my world? I seriously doubted that. Still, judging from how every other woman sounded, judging from their high-pitched screams, it sounded like there were at least a few worlds that were being rocked just from the lights going out.
I felt sorry for the people who were going to clean off all the seats in the arena after the concert was over.
The generic deep voice boomed again. "Eric!"
A giant spotlight came on illuminating a guy with a close trimmed beard and a pair of giant sunglasses that reflected the stage lights as he looked around the arena from behind a drum set. His hand was pointed out and he swept the arena. As his finger moved the screaming grew louder and then moved back down to your regular everyday run-of-the-mill screaming.
"Blake!"
The spotlights opened on a guy in a ridiculously tight pair of pants holding a guitar. Blake. I wondered if that was a stage name. If it was his real name then that somebody really needed to invent a time machine, travel back to the past, and kick his parents' asses.
Blake was looking a little long in the tooth. The drummer guy with the beard still looked young enough. Blake, though… His face was projected on one of the many massive screens set up throughout the arena, and it was obvious there were crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. There were lines there that stood in stark contrast to his frosted tips and his hair that was spiked up with more gel than was probably strictly safe to use.
"Todd!"
Wow. I thought Blake looked old, but he was a spring chicken next to Todd. He held a bass and wore a tight fitting shirt. He definitely looked pretty muscular under that thing. He must've been the old one back when they originally started, and now he'd transformed into the ancient one!
"And last but not least ladies…"
The screaming was starting to reach a crescendo. Now that was interesting. It seemed like they were building towards something, and it seemed like all the girls in the arena who were familiar with the band were ridiculously excited about whatever it was they were building towards. I glanced to the side. Kayla was going crazy. It looked like she was in danger of passing out from jumping up and down so quickly.
Maybe it was the hot one. These bands always had a "hot one." Right along with the old one and the one with the beard. Of course there was no telling if he was still the hot one after all these years.
"Grant!"
Huh. That was interesting. Grant…
The spotlight came down on Grant standing center stage. The arena erupted in a high-pitched screeching that would've driven any dogs in the vicinity wild. Holy shit.
Tousled dark hair. A handsome face. Deep brown eyes that I could lose myself in. One of the most ridiculously sculpted chests I'd ever seen, and he wore a leather vest with absolutely nothing on underneath that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. That made it absolutely clear exactly what he was packing under that vest. Forget keeping himself in shape. It looked like this guy spent a couple of hours in the gym every day!
He also wore an impossibly tight set of pants with one hell of a bulge. Still the screaming was getting louder and louder. All he was doing was standing there in the spotlight, basking in the adoration of all of these women.
And yet none of that was why I was really surprised. Damn he was nice to look at, but I already knew that. I already knew that because I'd already met Grant. Grant up on stage was none other than Grant from the diner.
Suddenly the way he'd been acting when we met in the diner was starting to make sense. All those times he stared at me as though waiting for something. Like he was waiting for me to recognize him and that moment of recognition never came. I had to be the only girl in a ten mile radius who could pull that off.
I looked over to Kayla, but she was still busy going crazy at Grant's reveal. Well one thing was for certain. He certainly was the hot one. I could understand why all these women were going so crazy. And yet at the same time I couldn't believe this was the same guy I'd met in the diner. He'd seemed so easy to talk to there. So down to earth. Nothing at all like how I imagined some huge rock star. And as I looked up at him, as I listened to the arena going crazy, I realized that's exactly what he was for all of the derisive thoughts I had about this band.
Damn. I'd been talking to a rock star, to apparently the main attraction in this group, and I didn't even realize it. No wonder he kept looking at me like I was slightly crazy. He kept expecting me to realize who he was, and I'd talked to him like he was just any other guy!
Not that I would've reacted that much differently to him had I known who he was, but still. I might've been a little star struck.
"Are you okay?"
I looked over to Kayla who was staring at me as though I'd sprouted a second head. And I realized that some of the surprise I was feeling must be pretty damn evident on my face. But who could blame me? And in that moment I realized that Kayla couldn't know about the diner. I'd never hear the end of it. She'd never let up. All of the questions. What was he like? How could I not recognize him? How could I just let a guy like Grant Whatever-his-last-name-was slip away?
No, that would turn my life into a living hell forever. We'd be at an old folks' home fifty or sixty years from now waiting to kick the bucket and she'd still bring it up. I could imagine her rolling down the hall in her wheelchair to berate me about the night I met Grant from Twenty Promises and didn't seal the deal. Because I'm sure that's what she'd try to do if she met him.
No, far better to keep my mouth shut. To never breathe a word of this to her.
"I'm fine,
" I lied. "I think something from the diner just made me a little queasy."
Okay, so it wasn't exactly a lie. It wasn't exactly the truth either, but she didn't have to know that the something from the diner that was making me queasy was the sight of the hunky guy I'd met there who also happened to be the leading man for Twenty Promises.
I'd take that to the grave!
They launched into a song that I recognized from high school dances back in the day. It did bring me back hearing them singing and playing their hearts out. Like I said, they'd been completely unavoidable back when I was in school. So it was almost against my will that memories were thrust upon me. Some of them good, some of them bad.
And through it all I continued staring in disbelief at the stage. Staring up at Grant as he did his thing. And then I felt ice gripping my heart as I realized he was coming down the part of the stage that thrust out into the crowd. He was going to walk right past us. And it looked like he was searching the crowd for something.
It was a ridiculous thought, but in that moment I was gripped by the terrifying certainty that he was looking for me. That couldn't possibly be the case, but still that terror was there. And I realized that the last thing I wanted was for him to recognize me in the crowd. That would be too much.
So as he passed by I made sure to look down so he couldn't get a good look at my face. When I looked back up the danger had passed, but I found myself staring at the most delicious ass in the world as he made his way down the rest of the stage and then started coming back up the opposite end.
Girls screamed and reached for him as he walked by. I thought it was odd how any one of those girls would probably kill for even five seconds one-on-one with him, and I'd had an entire conversation with him not realizing who he was. I'd gotten his phone number! I got the lead singer's phone number! Heck, we'd pretty much had dinner together. If you thought about it, from a certain point of view I almost had a dinner date with the lead singer of Twenty Promises.
Of course it wasn't anything like that, not really, but it did send a tingle running through my body. A tingle that I quickly and viciously stomped down on. The absolute last thing that I needed was to start getting excited about the lead singer of Twenty Promises as though I was no better than... well no better than Kayla who seemed to be doing all of her thinking with the brain between her legs when it came to this band.
I wasn't going to do that. Sure he'd been a nice guy, a fucking hot nice guy, but he was what he was. And it was ridiculous to think that anything had passed between us other than a quick fun conversation anyways.
They finished the first song and the arena went completely dark. It was immediately filled by the glow of people holding up their phones, but for just a moment we were in pitch darkness. Surrounded by women screaming all around.
6: Warm Fuzzies
I was buzzing. It was like I was really alive, and it was something that I only ever felt when I stepped out on stage for the first time and the lights came up illuminating a crowd of women all screaming for me.
Was it egotistical? Maybe, but you didn’t get into this business if you didn’t have a little bit of an ego. This wasn’t exactly the kind of career that was good for introverts.
“How you feeling man?” Blake asked.
I grinned as he held out his hand. I slapped my own into his as we went through a now familiar dance running through the maze of struts and supports under and behind the stage. The whole area was a dark labyrinth of exposed metal and hissing from hydraulics being put in place for various rises up through the stage, and through it all there was the high pitched roar of a crowd of women just beyond screaming at the top of their lungs as though that was somehow going to make us appear on stage sooner.
Oddly enough the semi-dangerous maze felt like home. I’d spent so much time down here in the past year, first when we were doing rehearsals and then in our first run of shows. Even though it was nearly pitch black down here aside from the occasional light hanging to mark the way it didn’t feel claustrophobic at all. Not that we spent enough time back here to feel claustrophobic anyways.
“I’m feeling fucking great!”
“Lots of women out there,” Blake said. “A target rich environment!
“Almost makes me wish I was still in the game!” Todd said as he came up behind us. He joked like that once in awhile when we were down here and he knew Lisa wasn’t around. Not that he’d ever follow through so much as he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
I shook my head and laughed. “You don’t mean that and we both know it.”
He shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. The married life is pretty great so far. You should try it sometime!”
I winced and it must’ve been pretty damn obvious even in the faint light cast by the LED clamp lights the crew had set up at intervals under the stage. Todd’s usually infections grin turned to a frown.
“Hey man, I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking, really.”
I held up a hand to stop him, both because I should be over it by now even if I wasn’t and because now wasn’t the time to have a deep conversation with one of my bandmates about the Incident anyways. Not that I’d ever really had a conversation anyone other than Blake anyways.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s ancient history.”
Yeah, it should’ve been ancient history, but the way I was feeling the pain was still pretty damn fresh even after all this time. I pushed down on that viciously just like I always did when those feelings came up. That was in the past. It was over. I wasn’t going to think about it.
Todd slapped me on the back. “Right. Ancient history. So you should seriously consider getting back in the saddle! Lord knows there’s plenty out there who’d be willing to saddle up and take you for a ride. Just listen to those screams!”
I grinned more because that’s what I felt like I was supposed to do than because of any happiness I was feeling. Yeah, there was a reason I’d been avoiding anything to do with the girls who gathered at these concerts, and I didn’t plan on that changing any time soon.
And yet.
Hadn’t I already broken that rule in a big way? I’d already been tempted by a pair of pretty blue eyes attached to a killer body tonight which made any thoughts about not approaching the fans seem hypocritical seeing as how I’d already approached a fan with my big head and inflated ego thinking I was going to give her the thrill of a lifetime.
Yeah, that had worked out so fucking well. I set out to give a fan the thrill of a lifetime and instead I end up getting the surprise of a lifetime from a girl who turned out to be anything but a fan.
Of course that was probably part of the reason why I found myself so drawn to her. Why I found myself still thinking about her as I was buried beneath the stage getting ready for our next number.
Mia was out there somewhere, though she probably wasn’t adding her voice to the throngs of screaming women. No, if my judge of her in the brief few captivating minutes we’d been talking was anything to go by she was probably standing with her arms crossed acting disinterested. I’d seen girls like her at concerts before, though they were rare. I certainly never thought I’d find myself mooning over a girl like that!
And yet that conversation had been so much fun. It felt so easy. It felt so natural. Sure it was a conversation where I was making fun of everything I’d built, everything my life had revolved around, over the past decade, but there was also some truth to what she said.
There were times I thought it was ridiculous we were even doing this tour even if we were making money hand over fist. I hadn’t believed that would be possible when our manager first floated the idea of getting the group back together, but I couldn’t argue with results.
I also couldn’t argue with how captivated I was with Mia. With the strange girl who hated Twenty Promises and had no idea who I was. With the girl who thought I was gay because why else would an unattached guy be going to a Twenty Promises concert?
Yeah, t
hat had been fun. That had been nice talking to someone as Grant the man rather than Grant the “hot one” and lead singer of Twenty Promises. For a few minutes I was able to be myself, and she treated me like just another guy.
Was it a silly thing to go on? Was it a silly reason to be thinking about what our kids names would be? Sure, but I couldn’t deny that at the very least she’d caught my attention.
Of course there was one little problem. She was out there somewhere, and that meant that she probably realized who I was by now. There was no hiding it now. She’d no doubt seen the opening number where my face was plastered across every huge screen in the arena.
How would a girl who hated everything to do with Twenty Promises react to suddenly knowing the guy she was flirting with in the diner before the concert wasn’t a gay aficionado of the band, but instead was the lead singer? Something told me that for once in my life being the lead man for Twenty Promises was going to be liability in getting the girl rather than the major advantage it had been in the past.
Trying to get the girl? Was I really thinking like that? Particularly after the Incident and the promise I made to myself while I was dealing with the fallout?
Yet there was something that felt different about this girl. There was something about her that gave me warm fuzzies deep inside, as ridiculous as that sounded. It was the only way I could think to describe a feeling that was so different from the pure lust I’d felt towards girls on past tours. Pure lust I’d acted on repeatedly in numerous cities all across the country which set the stage for the damned Incident.
No, I had to get to know this girl. I was going to have to track her down and get her attention in a major way before she had a chance to leave the arena and write me off as a chance meeting that was never going to go anywhere because of who I was, though given my reputation I could understand why a girl would want to avoid getting entangled because of who I was.
Rock Hard: A Bad Boy Rock Star Romance Page 4