by Corri Lee
“So, you seem way too hot to be a nerd.” The drummer, Jordan, forced a ceasefire with his observation. He was quieter but sharper, with keen brown eyes and long hair that fell to his shoulders. A pussy cat by nature without a doubt, and shy in bigger crowds. I could relate. “Hot and smart don’t really mix.”
“What can I say?” I pouted at him sarcastically. “I’m the whole package.”
“I’m not convinced. I think you hide your lies in your boobs.”
Blaze sat up poker straight and glared in his direction. “Why are you looking at her rack, Jord?”
He laughed back awkwardly, clearly not knowing where to put himself. It was strange seeing Blaze so on edge when he was usually such a gentle soul, so cool and collected in spite of his name. It was a revelation almost, seeing a crack in his composure.
The unease was contagious. Was he having second thoughts about introducing me to his friends like this?
“Before you humiliate yourself by acting like a complete idiot...” I warned him in a quiet but strong voice that might have seemed like a whisper if it wasn’t so audible. It was the hostilely sweet tone I’d learned after years of watching my mother berate Henry for telling racist jokes in public. “... remember what I chose to wear before you strolled into my life and took a rather large, spectacular crap on all that I know. You picked this outfit out and dressed me into it, commenting on said rack as you did so. Therefore you have no rational excuse to expect others to not notice, too. Unless of course you’re embarrassed to see me showcasing the assets I thought I understood you were quite partial to.” Patiently, I turned back to Jordan, who regarded me with the utmost respect, sparking the suspicion that people rarely spoke down to Blaze. “Try me. Challenge my inner geek.”
He stammered and shook his head, sagging back into his bowl seated arm chair. Obviously, I had him at a loss by putting him on the spot.
“Permission to antagonise?” Matt, their bassist raised a hand and shrugged at me, standing forth as the only one with the guts to take me on. I nodded my assent and smiled politely. “Ironman was the best hero DC came up with.”
“Wrong. Ironman was one of the best heroes Marvel came up with. Stan Lee would fuck you up for blurring that line.”
“She’s good. Though not too riled...” I bared my teeth like a dog and faked a snarl. “Okay, okay. Jar Jar Binks was the greatest science-fiction character to rise from the brain of the god of everything—James Cameron.”
I grabbed my drink, inwardly seething and leaned back coolly into my corner of the couch. He’d not so much antagonised as picked at the very sore point for all of nerdkind and done it in style. “Maybe Stan Lee won’t fuck you up. Maybe I’ll save him a job.”
“Yeah. She’s a nerd, all right.” Matt grinned across at me, tipping his glass towards me as an apology. “Sorry I had to put you through that, Emmy. We’re kind of a big deal, you know. We have to know that we’re not dealing with fakers.”
Secretly, I glanced across the room and clenched my jaw. I was a club owner, a mess, and technically a billionaire dressed in sheep’s clothing. Albeit a pretty slutty sheep, but I was possibly the biggest faker they could have hoped to never find. “Yeah, yeah. Your mouth is moving but all I hear is, ‘Did you feel that just then? That was me killing a piece of your soul with my sick, twisted mind games’.”
The light-hearted banter was disturbed by the guitarist, Scott, emerging from a dressing room and laying a hard slap on the backside of the girl who came with him—him looking pleased with himself and her not so much, rubbing at the smudged line of her lipstick. She looked younger than me, barely out of school. Assumptions were drawn. I presumed Scott had taken over Chase’s role as mouthpiece after his tiny bullying ‘indiscretion’ and flaunted the position of power to rope in groupies.
Whoever he was, I didn’t feel the same sense of familiarity with him as I did with his band mates. He was undeniably ‘off’ in comparison.
“You must be ‘the artist’.” His breath stank of hard liquor, detectable even at a distance. I wasn’t really sure what I’d expected from them, but maybe I should have had a more realistic view that at least one of them would be more than a little narcissistic.
Scott was it, probably what you’d now call the Monday’s Miracle pretty boy, and he damn well knew it. “How are you tolerating his bullshit?”
Figuring he was talking about Blaze, I cleared my throat and leaned over the back of the couch to look at him deadpan. “I was fine until he brought me out in public. Are you my enemy, fool, or my way out? Will you reel me in or cast me free? Am I leaving here with you tonight, or the idiot I brought with me?”
Apparently baffled by my knowledge of their lyrics, a stunned silence spread across the stage before it was fractured by raucous laughter and the unexpected shower of glitter from a large, spontaneously popped balloon hanging from the light rigging overhead. “Oh, Jesus. Close your mouths! If you swallow too much of this you’ll be shitting it for days.”
“How in hell would you know something like that?”
“I have a friend who tried to cheer me up with glittery space cakes when we first met.” It was a fond memory I had from the early days of my friendship with Chris, back when he thought that he could storm in like a white knight, fix me and take the rescued damsel in distress as his prize. He couldn’t stand to see me so miserable on my birthday, so let himself into my flat while I was at work and waited in the dark for me.
He scared the hell out of me, and I laughed with him through the haze of the cannabis, but I was no closer to recovery then than I was at that moment in The Roses. It took a long time to accept that I’d always be ‘in recovery’—Daniel liked to call it my remission. It just meant a lot that he’d tried.
“What’s with the glitter, anyway? Seems kind of misplaced.”
“Glitter—” Chase started, rolling his eyes when Scott flounced off with his plaything, uninterested in the conversation. “—lost a lot of credibility when the whole ‘sparkly vampire’ thing became pop-culture. We’re trying to prove that you can rock it without being queer about it.”
“You’re trying to prove that one of the campest decorations in existence isn’t queer?” I pulled a face and mumbled into my glass. “Your logic is flawed.”
“Precisely!” Their faces seemed to light up, leaving me confused and needing an explanation. “It’s totally fucking flawed, that’s the beauty of it. It’s a direct contradiction of itself and still, we’re doing it proudly. Everyone is flawed, no matter how much they want to deny it, but flaws should be embraced and celebrated. We’d all be pretty boring without our fucked-up-ness; no interesting tales of woe to rivet people or any sour experiences to shape us. Think of someone ‘normal’ who’s never suffered at the hands of negativity, then think of someone who’s a mess. Who’s more interesting?”
Immediately, I thought of my sister, Tallulah, who never paid much attention to the fact her little sister was trapped in her own personal hell. She lived the high life everyone else could only wish for, and she was boring as sin. That was her flaw, that she was flawless.
“I get it.” I nodded, and I did understand. Blaze’s philosophy of appreciating how screwed up I was wasn’t as exclusive as I’d first thought. There were a whole host of people out there who wore their quirks almost proudly on their sleeves, and after years of feeling like I was the most damaged person in the world, it wasn’t until I was sat in the company of an ex-blackmailer reliant on psycho-stimulants to not be a complete bastard that I realised that my life could be so much worse.
I was already drunk when we were ushered off the stage so the roadies could do their last minute checks and open the venue doors, swaying slightly on purpose to make the light cast off the silver sparkles on my skin. A sense of warm euphoria filled me instead of the usual moodily lull, along with the vague sense of guilt that I should have been sharing the experience with my friends.
Still, I’d heard that when life hands you lemons, you sh
ould make lemonade, and while I didn’t have the necessary equipment to start a production line for carbonated beverages at my disposal, I did have some sort of alcoholic lemon cocktail in my hand. It seemed like a fair compromise.
“So where are we sitting?” I wandered between the seats, running my free hand over the soft suede fabric of the seats as I walked. “Or standing? Are we standing?” Blaze grunted quietly and jerked his head towards the stage. He’d been unusually quiet since his telling off, speaking only in response to a question. “You’re freaking me out.”
“What?” As much as he tried to make it look like he had, he didn’t snap out of his bad mood. “I’m sorry, I’m just distracted.”
“No shit. Do you wish I’d stayed at home?”
“Yes, but not for the reason you think.” Sighing, his chin dropped to his chest. A sign of defeat. “I like having you to myself. I like being centre of your attention and it’s not that way tonight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Setting my drink down on a table, I cupped his face in my hands and forced him to look at me. “Just because I’m not looking at you doesn’t mean I’m not caught up in analysing how you feel. You’re driving me fucking crazy with your silence and making question why. I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong and what big mistake is going to stop you from going home with me tonight.”
“But Scott—”
“Oh my God!” I threw my head back to laugh. Blaze caught me in his arms when I staggered back and lost my footing, cradling me against his hard, also slightly sparkling body. I lost my senses for a minute, drunkenly stupefied by the glitter. “ ‘I was wishing that I could believe you were real. And I was wishing that I wasn’t afraid’.”
“Did you... did you just Bella Swan me?”
I fanned my face with my hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. Though with my inhibitions stunted, I can promise that the sentiment is true. Scott was just a challenge- I was showing off to some unsociable arsehole. That’s the usual response to meeting people you idolise, but I don’t lo—”
Blaze cocked his head at me when I stalled, cutting myself off before I said something stupid. It had almost fallen from my mouth without thinking; a four letter word with the potential to ruin my life.
But yet, he dared me with a look, goading me to sabotage myself. “Don’t what?”
“I don’t...” The alcohol fuzz turned into a nervous churn in the pits of my stomach. I needed to think of something else, and fast. “I don’t... look at them like I look at you. They’re almost fictional to me, people I’ll probably never meet again. But by your own admission, you’re a constant figure in my life. You brought me here, so I wouldn’t disrespect you by leaving with someone else. You’re my first choice for everything these days and I can’t see that changing, not when you keep making out that you’re going to marry me or something.”
“Marry you?” His face flattened and became expressionless, plunging me into a realm of panic and regret. Oh, Jesus, that’s not what he meant. It was never what he meant. When he talked about permanence, he meant nothing more than being a weekly fumble for the foreseeable future.
What were you expecting? A live in lover, patiently waiting in the wings until you decide you don’t want Hunter anymore? Yes, remember him? Why would he ever change his mind when you’ve pushed him to the back-burner? You just need someone to love, don’t you? You just need something hopeless to cling to. You wouldn’t want Blaze if you could really have him. You’d just fuck it up by getting too fat...
“Emmeline?” Blaze clicked his fingers in front of my eyes to halt Fat Emmy’s tirade. “Whatever she’s saying, it’s not true.”
“What?” Flustered, I stepped back out of his arms and folded mine protectively over my torso. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it seriously.”
“Shame. Could you imagine the honeymoon?” Simpering at my feeble squeak, he reached for my hand and pulled me towards an ornate wooden balustrade that twisted around the back of the room, inclining slowly towards a balcony that housed the dressing rooms. “Stop worrying about saying something to scare me away. There’s nothing you can do to get rid of me.”
“I’m a post-op transsexual with a taste for necrophilia.”
“If that were true, you’d be happy to wake up next to me. I sleep like the dead.”
The dressing rooms were the epitome of Hollywood chic. Harshly bright bulbs were set into the frame of a mirror that spanned the entire length of a wall above a wide shelf that normally would have been used for the likes of face paint and make-up. In Monday’s Miracle’s case, it was used as a drinks counter and desk, cluttered with MacBook’s logged into their social networking accounts, media players and an entirely too extensive collection of mobile phones. Chase, Jordan and Matt sat quietly together while Scott and a girl—not the girl he’d been with before but just as young—dry-humped in a dark corner.
Between the three well-behaved musicians sat a petite girl with acid green hair styled into a tall quiff. Below the spectacular ‘do, her face was childlike and youthful. Why were they surrounded by young girls?
“Oh, Blaze.” She smiled brightly from her seat and heaved herself up to stand. “Are you ready?”
He shot her a smile that got his usual stammer inducing reaction of near-disgusting desire and tugged me over to a couple of folding canvas directors chairs facing the mirror.
“You’ve lost me.” I blinked at his brightly illuminated reflection. “Ready for what?”
“Oh, I’m going on stage for the first part of the set tonight. Didn’t I mention it?”
Even Scott stopped his entirely too graphic necking session to watch my reaction.
“You? On stage?”
“Sure. It probably won’t ever happen again, so when they asked me this morning, I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have watching me from the sidelines. You want to be my groupie?”
“Oh, Blaze.” Sighing dramatically, I slouched down in the chair and draped an arm weakly over my face. “I want to be a lot of things right now, but a groupie is only second on my list.”
“What’s first?”
“On your face.” The whole band cracked into laughter again, reflecting the type of girl I’d been pre-Hunter—the girl who offered little more than vulgar humour to a situation. It was bitter sweet, being someone who made people laugh so effortlessly but would never be seen as anything more than the clown. I was well-liked or ridiculed, but never a face that people would pick out in a crowd as exceptional. Living proof that brains weren’t as favoured over beauty as people liked to make out.
As ever, my perception was flawed. Scott unfurled himself from girl number two and left her sat alone in the corner to join the rest of his group. “Well, damn, Blaze. Your girlfriend is awesome. Muy caliente. Muy bien.”
Feeling my face turning puce, I tried to hide behind my hand and tease the residual glitter from my hair.” Oh, I’m not—”
“Yeah.” Blaze’s arm snaked around my shoulders and stunned me into an obedient silence. “She’s the best.”
And without even asking me, that was how I became that woman in his life without the complications of being that woman in his life. Monday’s Miracle would use my ‘label’ in an interview about their secret gig the next morning, an interview that would get me into trouble. My background would remain a secret, but the world would know that Blaze had picked his woman from billions and I was her.
Neither of us would make any demands for more time. His long absences would carry on and I wouldn’t chase him. We both seemed to accept each others reluctance—no, inability to make an emotional investment. But on the outside, we looked just like any other couple out with friends.
Nothing would change. The words ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ meant nothing. They were just name tags we wore so the world knew who we were to each other on some deep, fundamentally fucked up level of fantasy we didn’t care to debate. Maybe he’d steal a couple more cheeky kisses and hold my hand when it
wasn’t necessary, but it wouldn’t be uncomfortable or intense. Just natural. As natural as breathing. As natural as the storm that would definitely follow when our uncomfortable truths and complications came into the light.
But I took that moment and grabbed it with both hands. My ignorance was indeed blissful, my head swimming, and my ‘boyfriend’ about to go out on stage for the first and only time in six years, ready to sing his heart out to approximately three hundred lucky people. I was the luckiest of them all.
Chase joined me on the sidelines as Blaze took his place at the microphone for the first four songs on their set list. I barely noticed him though, partly through the desire to honour my promise that Blaze’s was the only face I saw, but mostly because of how nervous I was for him. Of course, he hid any nerves he might have had well, hopping between the balls of his feet to the music that played out to the crowd that roared when they saw four shadows walk out onto the stage.
The gap between the recorded music ending and the live music beginning was torturous and agonisingly long. The first chord hit me like a bolt of lightning, charging every nerve with static and standing every hair on end. Already, I was captivated, and tipped forward on my tiptoes waiting for the sound everyone was waiting for.
His voice triggered a wave of red hot, molten and raw emotion that pooled into my chest and choked me. I hadn’t known what to expect, but as ever I’d underestimated just how soulful and deep he could be in so many ways.
The stage lights lit him up like a divine entity, the reds, blues and whites reflecting off his bared forearms while he strummed at a guitar, yet his eyes still looked vividly emerald no matter what colour shone at them.