Clearly, Misty’s was where the money was. Even though it was in the basement of the old building that shared the dive upstairs, the strip club had been renovated over the years and both felt and smelled clean. Literally, it smelled of bleach. Which I supposed was a good thing. Everything was shiny, glittery, mirrored and/or pink—including the girls.
Everyone, especially the scantily-clad female staff, flocked to take care of the guys in the band, treating them like—well, like rock stars.
Maggie was right. My brother—and his friends—did live a charmed life.
Okay; the modeling biz was pretty sweet too, what with being paid to look pretty and all. But I’d also spent the last ten years of my life dieting, exercising my ass off and, once I’d outgrown my rebellious phase, going to bed early, while my brother partied the night away, drinking, eating and generally doing whatever the fuck he wanted. He worked out a lot, too—he definitely wasn’t born with those washboard abs the girls liked so much—but shit.
It was moments like these that reminded me my brother and his band weren’t just rock stars… they were rock royalty.
Elle was treated just the same, Snake setting her up with her entourage of girlfriends at a big table in the corner with their own waitress.
Maggie sat me at a table with Jimmy and some other people I sort of knew and told me to chill the fuck out, and while she did the rounds, doing whatever Maggie did to keep things organized while everyone else had a good time, Jimmy talked my ear off. I had to admit it was flattering that he never took his eyes off me, all the while a very curvaceous blonde got naked about six feet from his face.
I wasn’t quite sure if I was glad that Brody hadn’t shown up yet, since the strippers were doing their thing, but it did make me more nervous. Because where the hell was he? And yes, I was a lingerie model. But yes, it still made me uncomfortable to think of Brody in a room full of strippers. Especially when my nerves were already so raw—and getting rawer with every minute that passed without him showing up.
There was no way he’d skip out on a Dirty show just because I was here, right?
No. No fucking way.
After a while, Roni showed up and joined our table. Katie showed up, as did Ash, along with more friends of the band, gradually filling the seats around us, and I could almost forget we were playing a show tonight; it just felt like we were having a party. Even the strippers became just part of the scene, kind of like sparkly curtains.
For her part, Katie took the entertainment in stride. Though she’d barely been with my brother for six months—hard to imagine when you saw them together, so seemingly in sync all the time—she seemed pretty accustomed to all of this by now. She sat on his lap with a smile on her face, laughing and covering her eyes when the stripper working the pole in front of their table—to a classic Dirty song, “Get Made”—got too close. She sipped her drink and periodically made out with my brother, and not for the first time, I admired her ability to just be herself no matter what was going on around her.
It helped my nerves. A bit.
When Brody finally walked in, right before show time, he stopped by the bar to talk to Bear and his wife. He saw me staring; at least, I thought he did, but he looked kind of through me. Maybe he was looking past me, at the naked blonde hanging off the stage, the one Roni was currently misting with a spray bottle.
He definitely looked at Jimmy, who had his arm slung around my shoulders. I was wearing my stage clothes, which meant cute, high-heeled ankle boots, tight jeans and a silver halter top with a low back, and Jimmy was running his thumb back and forth across my bare shoulder. I let him because it was Jimmy and Jimmy was a flirt, but he was harmless.
Brody didn’t seem to find him harmless, though, which just made me more nervous—because now what? He was more mad at me? For hanging out with my friends? For letting another guy put his arm around me?
When he was “done” with me?
He was full of shit, that’s what he was.
At least he didn’t seem all that interested in the entertainment. Maybe because he’d seen it all before. Maybe because I was in the room? But mostly because he was too busy shooting Jimmy death looks.
By the time everyone headed back upstairs for Dirty to start their set—the band and key crew heading backstage, the rest out into the bar to watch the show—I was a wreck of nerves and adrenalin. As the band prepared to take the stage, my anxiety grew; this was definitely not the way I felt backstage at a fashion show. Modeling had never really freaked me out; maybe because I’d started doing it so young?
Or maybe because Brody was never there when I did it.
Truth be told, I was most nervous about playing—and fucking up—in front of him.
But it was only one song, right? I was only joining Dirty onstage near the end of the set. Until then, I’d be watching the show from side stage, with Maggie and Katie and Jude. And Brody.
Fuck.
I knew I could walk out there and strap on my guitar without falling on my face, even in my high heels. I knew I could smile and look like I had my shit together, even if I felt like a hot mess. But what if my fingers shook?
What if I fucked up the song?
“Just keep playing,” Elle said, when I voiced my concern to her. “Don’t overthink it. Jesse will cover for you if you fuck up and no one will really notice. Whatever you do, just keep playing.”
“Uh-huh.” That wasn’t making me feel any better. “What if I forget the words?”
“You won’t,” she said. “They’re your words.”
Then she handed me a shot of bourbon, which my brother always had on hand before a show, and we all did a shot together, and that was that.
Zane didn’t do a shot. He smoked up with Snake at the side of the stage and watched the room from behind a wall of amps. Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” was rocking the place as the crowd’s excitement built. Backstage, though, everyone seemed so relaxed. Well, kind of relaxed-excited. Dylan sat with one foot thrown up on his opposite knee, in his kilt, idly drumming on his boot as he talked with Brody.
Brody, who hadn’t yet said a word to me or even looked me in the eye, even though I was still staring at him.
Yeah. I couldn’t do this.
I turned to Jimmy and gave him a smile he couldn’t refuse. “Can I borrow your hat?”
It smelled of Jimmy’s guy shampoo as I pulled it low over my eyes. Then I pulled on my leather jacket and slipped past Jude. If I left without telling him, though, he’d be pissed. Plus, he’d come looking for me. So I leaned into Maggie’s ear.
“Give me two minutes to get out there, then you can tell Jude where I’ve gone.”
“Oh, Jesus.” She gave me a sharp look of disapproval.
But she let me go.
I snaked my way out through the throng of security guys; they were too focused on keeping people from entering backstage to care about me exiting. And within seconds, I was in another world: the frantic beating heart of the crowd, pumping with blood; roaring like it was hungering for blood. I melted into it and managed to slither my way up close to the front of the stage.
People were packed in tight, bodies pressed together and facing forward, waiting for the show to begin, screaming and shoving and laughing and wrangling for position, for the best vantage point. For the best spot to see Zane’s face, or to be seen by Zane. But if you knew how to wait for the small openings, to shift when the crowd shifted, to make your gains foot by foot…
A guy stood back to let me in, and as I settled into the little notch of space in front of him, I heard him say to his friend, “Soon as the show starts, that ass’ll be wiggling all over my dick…”
He was talking about my ass, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t staying long anyway. Just long enough to see… to feel the show the way it was meant to be felt.
From the midst of the crowd packed in so tight they could barely breathe, so ravenous for Dirty, they’d let themselves bleed if they had to.
I stayed out the
re, willing to bleed, a lot longer than I meant to.
Once Dirty took the stage, I just couldn’t find the will to go. Zane was all gorgeous and spun of gold, like a sun god under the lights, or maybe a sex god, in his skin-tight white shirt with the sleeves cut off and his nipple piercing showing through, his smoldering, powerful voice ramming into every dark crevasse at the back of the bar. My brother was quite the god himself in his leather pants, wailing on his guitar. Ash, who’d joined the band just for the night to cover rhythm guitar, fit right in with his sexy tats and edgy vibe. Dylan, as usual, was a total powerhouse on drums, like an octopus with his arms flying around. And Elle, in her extremely short skirt and embroidered tights, her platinum-blonde hair in a killer fauxhawk, slamming on her bass, was a freakin’ idol to every girl who’d ever dreamed of rocking out.
I was blown over by the sheer force of it. Not just the volume or the energy but the giant, pumping fist of it, battering at the crowd, pulling us up by our hair and slapping us all silly.
I couldn’t walk away.
I kept telling myself, Just one more song… but I was a liar.
The power of the show, like I’d predicted, could barely be contained on that tiny stage. I kept wondering, as the floor shook beneath my feet, if we were all going to die in a massive cave-in.
But what a way to go…
I just tried to be careful not to blow my voice by screaming too much.
I kept my jacket zipped and my elbows at my sides so I wouldn’t get groped. I felt the guy behind me put his hands on my hips, but he let go when I glanced back at him and shook my head.
I saw three different girls get topless in the crowd and wondered at their bravery… or stupidity.
I saw someone throw up, right in the middle of the crowd.
I saw people making out.
I almost got kicked in the head, five different times, once by a stiletto heel, as people crowd-surfed.
Halfway through the show, the guy next to me took out his dick. I was too shocked to believe what I was seeing; I couldn’t have gotten out of the way fast enough if I’d tried. For a split second I thought he was jerking off. Then I realized he was pissing in his beer cup.
He saw me looking and gave me a drunken, prideful grin. “Don’t wanna miss the fuckin’ show,” he shouted at me over the music. Then he raised the cup over his head, roared like some crazed barbarian—and threw the cup, piss and all, into the crowd.
Thank God he tossed it away from me. But I took that as my cue to get out of there.
My heart was pounding, blood thrumming through my body; I felt all weirdly disoriented as the floor I could never see through the tight crowd came up to meet my feet, everything around me at once off-kilter and hyper-vivid.
I’d once stepped onto a city street without looking. The noise of a jackhammer on concrete from a nearby construction site had blocked out the sound of an approaching bus, and the bus had whipped past me so close that it literally spun me around. I had never felt so uncomfortably alive as I felt in those first few seconds after near-death. Squished into that mad throng, as Dirty’s music beat the shit out of that crowd, I felt that same feeling.
So frighteningly, gratefully alive.
By the time I clawed my way out of the crowd and security let me backstage, and Jude looked down at me with a hooked smile and said, “Satisfied?” I was laughing hysterically.
As it turned out, I didn’t fuck up.
Once I was poised to strut onstage, I’d realized that all I really had to do was go out there and play a fucking song. Dirty would take care of the rest. Anyway, their fans were ravenous, insatiable and loyal, and in truth, there really wasn’t much I could do to fuck things up. A Dirty concert was a thing unto itself, and it was way the hell bigger than me. It was bigger than any one of us.
That was a freeing thought.
Zane said some beautiful things about me, about who I was and the work I’d done writing songs with the band, only some of which I registered; I just kept going over the song in my head, like if I didn’t it might suddenly vanish—the chords, the words, all of it. But at some point, I definitely heard Zane refer to me as both a “genius” and a “goddess.”
No pressure.
Dylan and Elle had just come offstage, following a killer performance of a Dirty classic, “Runaround,” which I’d co-written with the band. Elle hugged me and Dylan kissed my cheek. Jimmy handed me my guitar, I heard my brother say my name, and Maggie actually had to give me a little shove to get my feet moving.
I strapped on the guitar as I walked onstage, smiling. It wasn’t a fake smile. I saw Jesse and Zane beaming at me and took my place between them. I was aware of the screaming of the crowd, the vibrations of the applause in the old wooden stage beneath my feet. There were lights in my eyes, but I could see the sea of faces on the dance floor in front of the stage, beyond the shoulders of the security guys. I was still stunned by how loud it was out here, how many people they could jam into such a small place.
I thought of that guy tossing his cup of piss into the crowd, and just hoped no one threw piss at me. I figured we were taking a risk slowing things down for an acoustic song at this point in the show, but I trusted Dirty knew their audience. Really, we could probably piss in a cup onstage right now and the fans would eat it up. Zane would probably do it, too, if he thought the fans wanted it.
But we didn’t do that.
Instead, we played one of my favorite Dirty songs from Love Struck, “Road Back Home.” I knew people probably expected me to play “Dirty Like Me” with the guys, since it was our most famous song, but when they’d asked me which song I wanted to play, I chose this one. I’d written it with my brother after our mom died, and it was one of my favorites; I’d always thought it was a song she would’ve liked.
One of the most painful things about losing her, for me, was that she’d died before she got to hear our songs.
I thought about her now as I played, and a calm overcame me. Not a numbing calm or a pretend calm, but a deep, genuine calm. The music flowed. I was pretty sure I sounded better than I did in practice at the church, but maybe it was the sound system or the acoustics in the place, or maybe it was just that I was so happy.
For just those three-and-a-half minutes, up there onstage with my brother and Zane, singing our song, I felt truly at home. I could pretend we were just playing for our friends, around a fire, and it felt right.
As the song ended, I exhaled in the silent pause. I saw the sparkle in my brother’s eyes, maybe because he was getting sweaty and sparkly all over under the lights, but maybe it was the emotion of the song. Then the crowd went ballistic, the guys hugged me, and Zane shouted “Jessa Fucking Mayes!” into the mic as I walked offstage, giving the crowd a final dorky wave in answer to their whistles and screams.
Elle and Dylan hugged me tight, then they headed back onstage as Zane started telling the crowd some story. Maggie, with a giant smile on her face, wrapped me in a hug and said, “You’re amazing. You know that, right?” Katie jumped up and down and kissed me. Jimmy kissed me, too.
Brody met my eyes, but he didn’t say a thing or move to touch me.
And I just felt relieved that it was all over.
I got in position to watch the rest of the show from side stage; I knew they only had a few more songs to go, so I could just enjoy this part of the show and try to get my heart rate back to normal, now that my part was done.
Except that it wasn’t really done. I still had Brody to deal with.
“So, as you all know, my favorite guitar player in the world cut a solo album last year, and then he went on tour,” Zane was saying onstage, obviously talking about Jesse, “without me.” There were boo’s from the crowd at this. “I know. It was brutal. And he had a great time. Sold a fuckload of albums and blah-ditty-blah, oh, and he fell in love, with this totally cool chick.”
He paused as the crowd’s applause and hoots and whistles drowned him out for a good minute or so. Katie was next to m
e, grinning, and I put my arm around her.
“And meanwhile,” Zane went on, “while I was bumming around down in L.A. just kinda feeling sorry for myself,” —pause for sympathetic aww’s from the crowd— “I was walking down the beach one day and I heard this guy playing guitar, and it was really good.” Now the crowd gave up some boo’s on Jesse’s behalf. “Naw, guys, it was good,” Zane said. “So good, my heart kinda stopped.” The crowd quieted down to listen, something in Zane’s voice holding everyone captivated. “I went over and I told him, you gotta come play with me sometime. So he did. And we had a great time.” I had no idea where Zane was going with this, but tingles were creeping down my spine when he took a breath and said, “So great, we asked him to come tonight and play a song with us. Come on up here, brother.”
I peeked out over the crowd as people started shuffling around, craning to see. A couple of security guys were moving through; they were escorting someone to the stage. He had on a trucker hat, pulled low over his wavy brown hair and freshly-shaven face, but the crowd started recognizing him just as I did.
“Seth!” I heard a girl up front scream, and a wave of female gasps and shrieks went up—like it was 1964 and the Beatles had just walked in.
My brother reached down a hand to help him up onstage. Ash handed his guitar off to Seth and bowed to him, like he was some kind of legend. Which maybe he was. Then Ash came offstage and the band tore into “Dirty Like Me.” The crowd went apeshit. My heart drummed along in a rapid-fire rhythm with the song, knowing every beat.
I felt kind of shell-shocked, and it was over fast. When the song ended, the band surrounded Seth for a bunch of back-slapping hugs. Elle threw herself into his arms and kissed him on the cheek—twice. Then the lights went down, and they all came offstage.
I got the hell out of the way. They were swarmed anyway, all of them; Seth included. By the time Dirty went back onstage to rip into an encore performance of one of their greatest hits, “Down With You,” Seth was gone. Vanished, as mysteriously as he’d materialized… just like he’d always been so good at doing.
Dirty Like Brody: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 2) Page 23