Sure, she could spin some story about how she was actually a reporter and had been “pretending” to be homeless, but she was already knee-deep in deception as it was. If she had to spin even more lies on top of that, she might drown. Added to which, people in the shelter had trusted her with their stories, related to her as a fellow homeless person. There was no way she could betray them by pretending to be something she wasn’t. And they would feel betrayed.
“Do you want to come to our morning meeting? They only last about ten minutes. LJ just goes through the day’s activities, which will be this one excursion and the show. You’re coming to the show, right?”
Was she? “I don’t know. Do I need a ticket?” Because she had fourteen dollars to her name and she was sure that a concert ticket would cost more than that.
“No, you’ll be backstage. You can watch from the wing if you like.” He shrugged like he didn’t really care about the answer, but his eyes searched for hers. She recognized the look as one she saw a lot on the streets and wondered why a pop star would be so insecure. Or maybe it was just about his performance onstage. Or maybe he was the Shy Guy everyone called him.
“I’d like to watch, if I won’t be in the way,” she said.
“Nah.” He floated a hand over the small of her back to direct her back toward the stage. “There’s a platform above the stage on each side so you can see us, but we won’t run into you when we’re trying to do a costume change. No cell phones are allowed backstage, though.”
Not a problem, since she didn’t have a phone anyway. “Okay.” Her stomach was churning worse than it ever had on the street. She was a fraud, and she wasn’t used to the constant nagging feeling from lying about who she was. It was giving her a new kind of stomachache.
They arrived at the meeting, held in the front row of the arena. “Um, would you, um, do you think you’d want to ask me any questions while we’re alone here?” he asked.
He was so weird when he was hesitant and shy. But he was right, she should be better at this. Maybe if she concentrated on him, rather than how she was feeling, she’d do a better job. A professional job.
“Sure, why not?” She scrambled for her notebook. “Umm. Hang on.”
He laughed quietly at her.
“What? What’s so funny?” she said, flipping over the pages, trying to find the place where she’d written some initial questions. Hell, why couldn’t she remember them?
“Nothing. I just figured you’d have like twenty questions off the top of your head that you’d want answers to. Maybe even questions I’d never been asked before.”
She stopped her flicking. “You want me to ask you questions that you probably haven’t been asked before? Okay. What’s your second favorite breakfast food?”
A blank expression came over his face and she took a turn to laugh at him. “Come on, Will. These are the things that readers of WowSounds want to know.” She shrugged and licked the tip of her pen as if she was ready to write down every single word he said. Nodding encouragingly, she said, “Come on…it’s an easy question.”
“Second favorite breakfast food? Okay, if you insist. It’s fried bread.” He crossed his arms and sat back in the stadium seat.
“Fried what?”
“Fried bread.”
“I’m not sure…is that even a breakfast food?” She wasn’t sure it was food at all. It sounded totally gross.
He threw an arm out melodramatically, a million miles from the stuttering boy he’d been a few minutes earlier. “Imagine, if you will, a perfectly cooked breakfast. Sizzling bacon, fried eggs… But what’s that I hear you say? We need some carbs? And we don’t have any biscuits? Well then. Take a slice of totally ordinary Wonder Bread and chuck it in the fat the bacon and eggs have just cooked in. Fry it until it’s all nice and crispy and serve with the egg on top.”
“I thought you were a vegetarian. Or was that one of the other guys?” Gah, she wished she’d known that she was only going to be able to interview Will. She’d wasted a bunch of time scanning fan sites and she’d forgotten who was who.
He went white and his lower lip went all stiff. Oh, maybe he was the vegetarian. Why was he so scared? Maybe he had some kind of a marketing deal with a vegetarian company? “Don’t worry, even vegetarians get a pass on bacon. I mean, how can you not? Ah-ha!” She’d found the questions she’d listed. “Found them.”
“What?” He still seemed shocked, and she couldn’t figure out why. Was she really putting on such an amateur show that he was stunned she found her questions? She needed to get her game on—the last thing she needed was for Will to complain about her to LJ. She had to stay.
She cleared her throat. “How do you like being on tour? Do you get homesick?” There. That sounded like a question a trained reporter might ask.
Color came back to his cheeks as his face relaxed into a normal expression. Mentally she fist pumped. Nailed it. Now she sounded professional.
“We love touring. We love seeing our fans and putting on the best show we possibly can. I do miss my mom, though,” he said.
Luckily, she could write fast. But shit, now she needed a follow-up question. “Um. What do you miss most about your home? No. You already told me that. Okay, describe your bedroom to your fans.”
He laughed out loud at the question. “You’re getting very intimate now. I think I’m not going to answer that one. If I found a special fan…maybe, just maybe I’d let her see my bedroom herself.”
“And has there been a special fan who’s seen your room?” She was rocking the reporter-chat now.
He sat up straight and looked past her with a blank expression. Then he sighed heavily, a little dramatically. “I haven’t found that special girl yet. But I keep on looking. At every tour stop, I keep on looking.”
“Nice answer. I bet you have embarrassing posters on the wall, don’t you?”
“If I did, and that’s a big ‘if,’ they would definitely have disappeared by the time anyone saw them, I can tell you that!”
Before she could reply, the rest of the band appeared in a loud group. Anya looked down at her notebook and tried to relax, but boisterous people set her nerves on edge, and she fought an instinct to slink away. An instinct that had kept her safe on the streets. Jude had taught her that. A homeless war veteran, Jude had found her during her first month on the street and had given her plenty of advice. Loud men indicated either alcohol, or a euphoria/adrenaline rush that lowered inhibitions. Where they may walk past her on a regular day, in this state—amped up guys together—they could mean trouble.
But not these guys. Not today.
She took a deep breath.
Chill out, girl. Chill. Out.
Someone grunted and dropped into a seat near her. She glanced over and saw…LJ. Not looking at her. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching her.
Okay, that thing about chilling out?
Not going to happen.
Chapter Six
She was weird. Fucking sexy, but weird. She was shaking in her chair like she was having a seizure, but she wasn’t. She was doodling in her book. So weird. He wondered if she knew she looked like a child hiding. She was a freaking hop, skip, and a jump away from curling up in a ball and rocking back and forth.
Huh. She’d seemed comfortable enough yesterday. What had changed since then?
His eyes found LJ’s again. The manager had been staring at Matt while he was answering Anya’s questions, just waiting for him to say the wrong thing, he just knew it. That’s why he’d gone off on the “special girl” bullshit. It was “on message,” approved by their PR team. He couldn’t pull him up on anything. But then LJ started to eye Anya, and before he knew it, Matt was out of his seat and had plonked down in the one on the other side of Anya, putting himself between Anya and LJ.
Don’t fuck with her, too, you bastard.
She was probably bat-shit psychotic, but she was his bat-shit psychotic.
Before he had a chance to question his own san
ity for caring about what happened to the weirdo he had to charm, the PR lady started to speak. She read them in on the homeless shelter, which made Anya stop shaking. Small miracles. But after reading her article about life on the streets, he was pretty happy that today was the homeless shelter. Maybe she would be more likely to warm to him.
After the meeting, they were left alone in the stadium, as Anya didn’t make a move after everyone else had left. So he just sat beside her, waiting for her to finish her doodle. It looked like a man…maybe. He craned. Could be a chicken. Drawing probably wasn’t one of her talents. But as he watched the picture take shape, he saw it was a man, bundled up in a hooded coat, with a rucksack on his back. Okay, so she was no Monet, but it wasn’t bad. At least he could tell what it was now.
“Who’s that?” he asked as she applied the last few lines of shading on the ground beneath him.
She jumped, like whoa. He held his hands up in a gesture of ‘Hey, I’m not armed’ and said, “Don’t worry, it’s okay, calm down.”
She looked around and seemed startled that they were all alone. “Sorry. I… When did everyone leave?”
“About five minutes ago. It’s okay, I’d rather be here than playing World of Warcraft in the bus, which is all we do between interviews and visits.
“Wow. I’m sorry. I must have really…” She looked back at her drawing and bit her lip.
Sweet Jesus, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hug away whatever was wrong with her. “Who is he? Did you meet him when you wrote your article about the homeless?” He could see now that that’s exactly what he was: a homeless man.
She hesitated and ran her fingers over the pencil drawing, smudging it a little. “Yes. His name is Jude and he introduced me around, and then when I tried to find him again, I couldn’t. I keep looking, every time I’m in downtown Tulsa, but I haven’t seen him. I hope he’s okay.”
“Hey, maybe he’ll be at the homeless shelter we’re going to this afternoon.” he said.
“He never really liked them. I might ask when I’m there, though,” she said.
Silence descended. He had to do something to break the downer mood. He looked at the seats around him. “Do you know who comes to our shows?”
“Girls? Lots and lots of girls, I guess?” she replied, with a furrowed brow.
“Hang on a sec.” He raced to the sound platform in the middle of the arena and asked Jerry if he could find a file of “Not Tonight,” one of their up-tempo tracks that he could put on speaker.
When he got back to her, she was already standing and watching him.
“So when you’re onstage, a lot of times all you can see is the first ten rows or so of people, until they light up the whole audience at the end. So, whoever’s in the front rows really set the mood of the show.” The music came on. Loud, but not as loud as the rehearsal music had been.
“Let me show you how it goes. Come on.” He grabbed her hand and led her into the middle of the front row. “Some nights this is how it looks.” He sat in one of the seats, leaned back and crossed his arms. “So who am I?”
“Me?” she said with a giggle. “That’s probably how I’ll be sitting.”
Score. She was slipping out of her funk.
He assumed an outraged look on his face. “What? No way, sister. You’re going to be slamming some moves. I want to see you dancing whenever I look at you. If you don’t, you’ll get a dare at the end of every show. No. I’m a mid-level industry professional. I’ve been given tickets, and I’m here just so I can tell people I had front row seats at the Seconds to Juliet concert to show how important I am.”
“Wow. That happens?” she asked.
“More than we’d like, yeah. One day, I swear I’m going to stop singing and tell them they have to get up and dance. I’d probably be fired, but man, it would be worth it.”
She laughed, the sound penetrating the music and sending a warm feeling through him.
“Okay, who am I now?” He waited a beat and then started dancing, deliberately awkward and off the beat.
“Oh my God, like parents trying to be cool.”
“I don’t think you really believe that. Maybe you have to feel it. Come on. Dance with me.” She backed away a couple of steps but he caught her hand. He drew her in close and swayed her against him. Hell, she felt good. Her vanilla scent definitely came from her hair and he was in a perfect position to take a good whiff. He bit back a groan and spun her out. She rotated nicely under his arm, and then he made her dance like him.
“Like this?” she asked between laughs. She popped her arms out on the downbeat, and matched that with weird kicks.
“You’re a natural.”
“We are someone’s unfortunate parents, aren’t we?” she panted.
He stopped dancing and admitted, “We could be. But I was thinking more of LJ. Watch him tonight for a real treat.
“And now? He pressed himself to the barrier and screamed, “Ry-der! Ry-der! Ry-der I love you!” all through the music.
“Crazed fan who wants to get in Ryder’s pants?” she said.
“Maybe that one was too easy. How about this?”
He grabbed her and pulled her to him. Oh yeah, he was bad. He held her carefully with one hand in hers and one pressed against her lower back. He swung her around in time to the music. “Okay, I’m not actually going to do this, but imagine I’m totally grinding myself against you. Like we’re virtually having sex right here.”
“That’s kind of gross,” she said, smiling.
“Imagine trying to sing a song and just not being able to take your eyes off them. Yeah, some guys totally use us to score with the girls. More power to them, I guess. But I won’t lie, sometimes I feel like we need to have a hose onstage for people like that.”
The music faded to silence.
“It must be pretty distracting to see that while you’re trying to perform,” she said, oddly quiet despite the silence of the stadium.
He looked down into her eyes and hesitated. “I think I might have a new distraction tonight.” Where the hell had that come from?
Her cheeks flushed red and her eyes dropped to his chest and then up again. She took a step back and wagged her finger at him. “Don’t think you can sweet-talk me into going easy on you.”
“Busted!” he replied. Except…no. It was better for her to think that it’d been a joke. Better. Safer. More honorable? Crap. She was messing with his head. Was she doing it deliberately? Was this shy-girl persona just a routine to reel in the shy guy?
Come on, Matt. You need to keep your wits about you. Stop sabotaging yourself. Keep her at arm’s length.
He lightly punched her shoulder, like he would a sister. “You caught me. But I’m serious. Watch LJ tonight. You won’t regret it. It’s a dance for the ages. Come on, let’s go get in the van. You’re about to witness the insanity of us getting off the compound!”
…
Insanity was right.
As the bus wove through the congested city roads, honking car horns and people banging on the sides of the bus punctuated their trip. Each time a bunch of girls screamed and threw themselves against the doors, Anya jumped out of her skin. It was like the Hemsworth brothers were in town. Or…well, there wasn’t really anything else to compare it with.
It seemed to her as if the guys in the band barely noticed the commotion they were causing. Mostly their heads were down, eyes on their phones or iPads.
She should spend her time writing in her notebook about Will. Nothing earth shattering, just the details she could use in her long article.
Off the record girlfriends?
Psycho Fans.
“They banded together…” Distant from the others?
Fried Bread.
Vegetarian?
Will sat across the aisle from her with earphones on, so when she was done writing she just watched them in their own little worlds. She wondered who was texting a girlfriend, and who was playing Candy Crush. Will was obviously immersed i
n music and she wondered what he listened to. Even though she strained to hear, she couldn’t.
The brakes screamed to a halt in an area she knew well. St John’s in the Vale shelter. It was run by a church, in fact it was attached to a red brick church. The priest knew her. Had always been concerned about her and she really hoped he wouldn’t blow her cover. Her anxiety rose to the surface, creating a vacuum in her stomach that was as familiar to her as her hand. The street was totally stopped up with crowds of people, heaving like it was filled to the brim with shoppers on Black Friday.
Police had created a tiny path for the band to get into the shelter.
“Are you ready?” Will asked her, taking off his headphones.
“This is crazy.” Kneeling on the seat, she peered out of the window. “I…it’s scary out there.”
“No kidding. Just smile as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.” He took his place in line at the front of the bus.
The tour director said, “Boys first. Extras will be disembarked a minute after they get inside the building.” Anya sat back down again since she and one other woman seemed to be the only “extras.” The screaming rose to fever pitch outside as the boys descended the steps. The band was instantly rendered invisible by the crowd.
Her gaze fell on Will’s headphones. While taking a quick look around the bus, she grabbed the headphones and pressed play on his iPod. Holding them to one ear, she instantly recognized the song Will had just made her dance to in the stadium. He was still listening to the band’s own music. That was…borderline…strange? She filed that nugget of information and made a mental note to ask him what other bands he listened to.
“Extras. Follow me,” the tour director said over the hiss of the automatic door.
Anya followed her. The crowd was less frenzied, but she was stunned when people started to aim their cell phones at her. She ducked her head. The last thing she needed was her mom or anyone recognizing her. Oh hell, even anyone at WowSounds. That would be really bad.
Anya and the Shy Guy (Backstage Pass) Page 5