by Elle Bennett
I let out a laugh, he continued on and whispered something to Chad before they started on their next song. I bobbed my head, tapped my feet to the beat. A few girls walked in and went straight to scoping out the band members. As long as they stayed far away from Andrew, I didn’t care what they were up to.
As Andrew sang, I took a picture of myself in front of the guys playing and sent it to Erica.
Me:
Look! I’m alive!
No reply. So much for Erica being concerned about me.
As Andrew finished out his set, he let the crowd know that we’d be selling merchandise by the door for a little while and that he’d happily sign CDs if anyone asked. He went off to the side and I followed to help him with the equipment. I wrapped my hand around his elbow and he turned around to give me a quick kiss on the lips. I saw some of the girls in the store glare at me out of the corner of my eye as I pulled away.
“You’re amazing,” I said. “I loved that set. Especially that one song that might be about a certain somebody who looks like and might just be me.”
He smiled and kissed my cheek, then whispered in my ear, “As if it’d be about anyone but you.”
I kissed him again.
CHAPTER SIX
You can blame me for all
The wrong things in your life
Blame me for the big, the small
Fall with me, it’s all I ask
Take a risk
Jump
“Gap-Toothed Vixen,” Peristerophobia
We’d traveled through half of California within a week. I’d never spent that long inside of a vehicle before. I’d never used a complete stranger’s shower before, or slept on the living room floor in the house of a friend of a friend’s cousin’s friend’s friend’s boyfriend. I’d never slept in the van in an abandoned lot before.
It wasn’t an easy lifestyle, more demanding and busier than I was used to. But for the first time in a long time, I was truly happy. I was working with instruments, listening to music constantly, helping Andrew with his creative process (though most people would refer to it as “fooling around”). I was living the life I never thought I’d get to have, not after I threw my hopes and dreams down the drain years ago.
My days on tour were some of the greatest of my life. Except for when the guys walked in on me getting dressed. That happened one too many times.
“Whoops,” Ken said, leaving the van door wide open, leaving me standing there, braless, holding a shirt in front of my naked chest.
“Get the fuck out of here!” I screamed.
“Did you want the door shut?” he asked, still holding it open.
“Andrew, can you please get your perverted bandmates to give me two minutes to myself so I can get changed?”
Andrew took one last drag of his cigarette and threw the butt on the ground, crushing it with his heel before he walked over to the back of the van, laughing and pulling Ken away from the door, closing it behind him.
“Dude, if I don’t get to see her naked yet, neither do you,” Andrew said.
“Phrasing!” I called through the door, quickly throwing my bra on.
He wasn’t kidding, though. Despite all the time we’d spent together on the tour, he had yet to see me naked. I had plans to change that the moment we got some time alone. Unfortunately, the few times we got alone, we always got interrupted before we got to the good stuff. I was almost ready to jump him, even if the guys were watching. But because that was not my kink, I just kept myself busy.
I spent most of my time on tour sitting at the merchandise table, selling the shirts, stickers, buttons, and albums. I was fairy certain that my couple years of being obsessed with the band had been preparing me for that exact moment in life. If anyone could sell the shit out of Peristerophobia merchandise, it was me.
The moment the guys were supposed to take the stage, I left the table under the care of a helper for a so-called bathroom break. Really, I just wanted to see some of the show. I stood above the stage in a small room that was meant for stage tech, and watched as the guys performed their hearts out below me.
I’d seen them play so many times, but from a different angle, it all seemed brand new.
There were little things I could see that I would have never noticed from the crowd. Doug fiddled with his drumsticks while Andrew pandered to the audience. Ken pointed his guitar to the section of the crowd that cheered the loudest during a song. Chad stared out into space like he had no fucking clue where he was.
Andrew looked up at the tech window for a moment and smiled at the sight of me.
After he played “My Favorite Month,” he introduced the next song, explaining that it was the first one they’d ever written together, how it caused the creation of the band. I knew the story well. I’d heard it many times, at many of their concerts. Plus they had it on their website.
They’d all been in different bands in high school, and all their bands fell apart around the same time (as high school bands tend to do). Andrew knew Ken for years, but they’d never been in the same band before. When their bands broke up, they got together to jam, and invited a couple of their other friends to join them - Chad and Doug. With that one jam session their senior year of high school, Peristerophobia was born.
Granted, they weren’t called Peristerophobia at first. They went through many different band names before they voted on Peristerophobia a few years ago. They were once called Barely There, The Hooligans, and Summertime Suede. None of the names fit them right, and when they landed on Peristerophobia, everything clicked into place. They got more gigs. Their music started to get local radio play.
And now they were big enough that Konfusion wanted them to play in their stores across the west coast. I was so proud of them, and I couldn’t help but smile down at Andrew on stage. He played his guitar, sang the song, and I began to zone out, not really paying attention to the music or the crowd. I stared down at Andrew and only at Andrew, concentrating on his lips as they formed each individual word, staring at his hands as they moved along the fret of his guitar. He stood on his tiptoes when his voice grew louder, like he was trying to make himself taller along with his voice.
He went back down, flat on his feet, then looked up to the tech window and grinned at me. I smiled back and formed a heart with my hands, resting my chin on top of them as I leaned against the window. He gave me the same heart in my direction, then moved his hands right back to his guitar.
For a moment, I felt like the crowd looked up at me, so I stopped leaning against the window and hid in the darkness of the tech room, hiding my face from them.
“You guys are amazing!” Andrew said after he was done with the song. “How the fuck are you?”
The crowd cheered loudly, and Andrew laughed as they jumped up and down, making as much noise as possible.
“That’s the best reaction I could ever get from a crowd, don’t you guys think?” Andrew asked. He turned towards Ken, who stood to his left. Ken nodded and adjusted the strap of his base. “Ken’s kind of quiet. If you guys can get him to talk to you, I’ll do something crazy.”
“No you won’t,” Chad said into his microphone.
“Fuck you,” Andrew said to Chad, giving him the finger. My boyfriend was so classy. “And we haven’t heard from our drummer yet tonight. Doug, say hello to the audience!”
Doug hit the drums a few times, finishing it out with a single tap to the cymbals.
“That’s his version of Morse Code. He said, ‘Thanks for coming out. Who else wants Andrew to shut the hell up and start singing again?’” Andrew said before adjusting his hand on his fret, getting ready to play the beginning chords to “Taunting Me.”
For a moment, I wondered what it would be like to be next to Andrew on stage. I could imagine it would be better than the stages I played on when I had piano recitals. It would definitely be more exciting to have Andrew introduce me, rather than a teacher saying my name and expecting me to play Chopin perfectly.
I
could practically hear him in my head, calling me out after Ken, telling the crowd that I belonged to both the band and to him. I imagined a keyboard to the side of Ken, my fingers gently pressing down on it as I sang along with Andrew. My heart began to speed up at the thought, and my fingers gripped the charm on my necklace so tight that for a moment, I thought I might have broken it. I let go of it and looked down. It was still intact, but there was an imprint of the flower on my fingers.
With a shake of my head, I left the tech room, walking away from the window and back down to the merchandise table. If I thought about selling stuff, I wouldn’t think about the horror of what it would be to perform again. Plus, if I sold enough things, we could eat something other than ramen for dinner.
After the show ended, I met up with Andrew backstage. I had all the merchandise boxed back up and ready to go into the van again. We’d sold out of the medium Pigeons Scare Me shirts, which I had to attribute to my excellent sales skills.
Well, either my skills or Andrew’s face.
“Hey, want to go to a club with the guys?” Andrew asked after giving me a kiss hello. I touched his arm, my fingers lightly caressing the red spot from where he’d run into the microphone stand during his last song.
“Actually, if they’re all going out, I’d like some alone time with you.”
Andrew gave me a knowing smile and grabbed my hand.
“I like your plan,” he said.
We finished putting away the equipment and told the guys that we would drop them off at the club and park in a nearby lot off the freeway, where they could walk to after they were done for the night.
The moment we parked in the darkened, abandoned lot, I pulled Andrew to me and kissed him. We crawled to the backseat and he kissed me with abandon, not slowing down, tugging every piece of clothing off as fast as he could, my hands pulling at his clothes in tandem.
“God,” he said as he pulled off my shirt, “I can’t believe we haven’t done this yet.”
I pounced on him and kissed him again, my mouth attacking his with fervor. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t done it yet either. I hadn’t gone this long without sleeping with someone I was seeing in a long, long time. I was probably a sophomore in high school last time I’d waited this long to sleep with someone, honestly.
My mind wandered away from the fear I felt in the tech window that night. He helped me forget. He only made me feel.
All I could think of was Andrew. Andrew’s skin, Andrew’s lips, Andrew’s hands, Andrew’s everything. We held each other tight, his hands on my ass as I sank down on top of him. My mind went blank with the sensation of him inside me. It was sex and nothing else running through my brain.
He pulled me closer to him and kissed me deeply as I continued to ride him, trying to hold in the noises that were fighting to come out of me.
“Let go,” he whispered in my ear.
I did.
We were sitting in the backseat of the van, panting and sweaty after we’d both come. He turned to me, smiled, and tucked a piece of wayward hair behind my ear.
The moment right after sex with someone new for the first time was always a bit awkward for me. There was the cleaning up to consider, and hoping you hadn’t said anything too awkward or revealing during the fits of passion. But with Andrew, it didn’t seem as awkward. Maybe because we’d spent so much time together before we finally fucked.
I’d never been emotional about sex. It wasn’t that I’d never been in love before. I had been. Not that I was in love with Andrew yet, but I was getting there.
Either way, love or not, sex was just sex. It was two bodies (or more, depending on what kind of sex you’re having), reacting to each other naturally. Sometimes it was simply something to do to forget your troubles. That was what I’d meant for that particular session to mean with Andrew. Yes, we were together, but it wasn’t supposed to make me fall harder for him, or to be in awe of his skills in the bedroom (or van). It was supposed to be a distraction, a way to get my mind off of everything I’d felt that night.
But it didn’t work. It didn’t make me forget everything about my past, my dreams, my life.
For a brief moment, it did. Then it all came rushing back the moment I rolled off of him, everything at once. It was like my heart had been shattered and put back together in the amount of time it took me to orgasm.
So what was a girl to say after that kind of feeling? I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d just used his dick as a distraction. I wasn’t about to tell him that it only worked for a moment of pleasure. So instead, I said the other thing on my mind.
“It’s really hot in here. Can we crack a window?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, leaning over and rolling down one of the windows with the manual crank on a side door. His breath was coming out heavy and uneven, though I did most of the work. “I’d say we could take off our clothes, but we already did that.”
I let out a snort of laughter, then moved back to his lap. Maybe I could get distracted again. I kissed him, and his body responded to mine automatically, his hands running through my tangled and sweaty hair. I pulled my lips away from his and rested my forehead on his.
“I adore you, you know?” I said.
He smiled and wrapped his fingers around mine, our limbs linking together in the simplest way possible.
“Have I ever told you that you’re amazing?” he asked.
“I’m amazing, or I’m amazing in bed?” I joked.
He laughed and kissed me again.
“Both,” he whispered, his words softly grazing my lips. He pulled away, but stayed close enough that I could still feel his breath on my face. “I’ve never felt this way about someone before. It’s like… I don’t know. It’s like you’re mine, and I’m yours, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. You make me want to be part of an ‘us’ for a very long time. You’re perfect.”
“I’m far from perfect,” I said.
He pushed my hair back from my face again as it fell into my eyes. I had my arms around his shoulders, my lips so close to his, ready to touch him again.
“You’re really good at feigning perfection, then,” he said.
In a moment, my mouth was on his again, my tongue running gently against his. He pulled me closer and deepened the kiss with a sharp breath. I could feel him getting hard beneath me again. Yet he pulled away with a determined look in his eyes. I knew that look. I knew what he needed.
“There’s a song waiting to come out of you right now, isn’t there?” I asked.
“How did you know?”
I smiled and moved off of him so he could grab a pen and paper and get to work. I threw his boxers at his face. He put them on.
“I don’t know the lyrics yet, but they’re there somewhere,” he said.
I leaned over and kissed the top of his head as I shimmied back into my underwear. I threw his shirt on instead of my clothes so I could still smell him close to my skin.
“You’ll figure them out. You always do,” I said.
I sat back and leaned against the back of the seat, stretching my arms out. My entire body ached in the best way, making me feel both exhausted and relaxed. I closed my eyes for a moment and quickly opened them back up so I could stare at the guy who made me feel that way.
He bit the tip of his pen and looked back over to me. He had the biggest smile I’d ever seen on his face, the kind he had when he was performing in front of a crowd. It was the same smile he had when he found me working at Cranberry.
“You’re the only thing running through my mind right now,” he said. “There’s this melody that sounds just like you playing on a loop in here. The only lyric I can think of right now is your name, over and over again. April, April, April. It’s you. Just you. The curve of your breasts, the freckles on your sternum, your smile, your… Everything. You’re everything.”
I smiled and crawled into the very back of the van so I could lay down. My eyelids began to grow heavy, and I didn’t have enough energy to k
eep them open. I heard Andrew move from the backseat to the very back with me. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck, his lips drifting down my back, then back up to my shoulder, where he rested his chin.
Surely, it couldn’t get any better than this.
“Andrew?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you…?” I began to ask, but it was a silly question, and I thought for a second about not asking it. It was something that had been on my mind for a while, though.
“What?” he asked.
“Did you ever notice me in the audience? Like, before that show when we actually met? Did you ever look out into the sea of people and see my face?”
He thought about it for a moment. The silence seemed to last for hours.
“Well, the lights make it kind of hard to see the audience most nights. But, yeah. In smaller shows, I noticed you every now and then. I’ve always thought you were beautiful. I wanted to talk to you before we met. I wanted you to be mine. And when we talked at the merchandise table once, I thought about maybe asking you out for a drink after, but I don’t know. You had a vibe that made me think you were unavailable. Made me hold back.”
“I was, kind of. But I would have said yes if you’d asked.”
“I’ll kick past-Andrew in the ass for not asking,” he said.
I tucked my head into his chest so he couldn’t see how badly I was blushing. He held me tighter and we heard the van door open. I jumped up in shock,then covered myself out of instinct, forgetting that I had Andrew’s shirt on.
“Aww, look at the lovebirds, all snuggled up and nauseating,” Ken said. “It smells in here. Crack a window if you’re going to fuck, guys. Common courtesy.”
I rolled my eyes and looked over to the window in the backseat that was very much cracked.
Ken, Chad, and Doug all hopped into the van and I suddenly found my ass smashed up against an amp. So much for having a nice moment with Andrew.
I woke up the next morning with Andrew’s arms around me. The guys were all sitting around the van, eating cereal dry, straight from the box, ignoring the fact that Andrew and I were still sleeping peacefully.