Sweet Seduction

by Anthology

  “Yeah. I would have. I would follow you anywhere, Maggie, which is why I needed you to go home.”

  “That makes no sense!”

  “Love doesn’t have to make sense.”

  I gasped, then held my breath. Love. He’d said it.

  Love.

  “Rerouting. Click Accept to change routes and save eight minutes,” the GPS announced. Tyler grabbed my phone and tapped the screen.

  “Thirty nine minutes,” he said. “That puts us there at 7:21 p.m.”

  “Talk about tight,” I said, trying to make my heart beat enough to stop the dizzy feeling inside me. I ran hot and cold, my ears ringing. Who was I? Who had I become? And what was this between us?

  I sped up, changing lanes, and spent the next five quiet minutes going out of my mind.

  Tyler just stared ahead, as if he hadn’t just plunked an emotional hurricane inside my gut.

  “You said love,” I whispered.

  His jaw locked. He said nothing, just stared at the GPS.

  Three minutes went by. Nothing.

  “You can’t just leave that hanging,” I hissed.

  Apparently, he thought he could, because he...said nothing. For ten agonizing minutes.

  “Tyler!”

  “What?”

  “Say something!”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say whatever you want to say!”

  “I don’t want to say anything.”

  “What? No. You can’t just drop a bomb like that and then go quiet.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “No, you—Jesus fucking Christ, Tyler, I don’t know whether to hit you or kiss you.”

  “I’m pretty sure if anyone can find a way to do both at the same time, Maggie, it’s you.”

  A sign for the concert hall caught my eye.

  And it was a good thing, because if he didn’t get out of this car soon, I really was going to kill him.

  While kissing him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tyler

  I grabbed Maggie’s phone and called Darla. “We’re close,” I said.

  “How close?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Then get in here!” She gave me directions for how to get past the crowds, and told me where Maggie could park. A chicken squawked in the background. I didn’t ask.

  I had enough words in my head and in the car with Maggie nattering on about everything but the one word I’d said:

  Love.

  I didn’t mean to say it. I really didn’t. But sometimes the words come when you least expect it and it was true. Whatever this was, it had love in it. What that meant was still a mystery. I wanted to say whatever Maggie needed me to say. I really did. But I wasn’t going to say the wrong words just because she needed to hear some words.

  I wasn’t going to lie.

  That didn’t mean I knew what the truth was, though.

  “Seven nineteen. Fuck!” Maggie shouted. “And one point three miles to go.”

  I reached for the door handle. “I can run for it.”

  “Carrying a guitar? No way. We’re two exits away.” She pulled into the right lane with an aching slowness, then got into the breakdown lane and floored it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you there!”

  “A cop’s gonna get you.”

  “If a cop gets me, I’ll have you close enough you can make a run for it to the concert.”

  “Make a run for it? That’s the fastest way to get shot in the back.”

  “No. Arguing with me is.”

  “That’s the fastest way to get kicked in the balls.”

  “Are you going to argue or let me get you there?”

  I shut up.

  “Point nine miles,” the GPS announced as the car moved forward at seven miles per hour. I made my decision. The clock read 7:21 p.m. I opened the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I can run there in under ten minutes at this point. Meet me backstage.” I leaned over and gave her a fast kiss. “I mean it. If you followed me this far, follow me all the way.”

  I took off at a dead run, and this time I was certain that she would be right behind me.

  My sore legs stopped hurting. They felt like ribbons of light, flowing between cars and on the sidewalk, dodging the pedestrians and wending my way through the thickening crowds. Only stop lights made me halt, and after what felt like an eternity I was there.

  Darla’s anxious face popped up behind the security guard working one of the back doors.

  “TYLER!” she screamed. “You little shit, you made it. You actually made it!” The guy flinched but moved, and in seconds I was inside.

  Inside.

  I did it.

  We did it.

  I was there, with thirty-one minutes to spare before showtime. A loud sound, like rushing water, filled my head.

  “What’s that sound?” I asked.

  One corner of Darla’s mouth went up in a smile. “That’s the crowd. Where’s your bass?”

  I held up Lena’s guitar. “You’re looking at it.”

  “Fuck. I forgot,” she muttered, turning away and grabbing a techie. They spent a couple of minutes huddled together, murmuring. A few more fast words between them and then she turned back to me. “They’ll get one for you.”

  “Where are Trevor, Liam and Sam?” I asked. My body flushed cold and suddenly I needed a beer and a bathroom. Not in that order.

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  “Parking,” I barked. “Where the fuck are the guys?”

  Darla’s eyebrows went up, her eyes looked down, and she scrunched her face in a weird expression. “About that...”

  “What about that?”

  “They’re not here.”

  “WHAT?”

  She grabbed my upper arm and pulled me gently against the wall, bending her head toward mine. “They’re on their way. ETA is fifty minutes or so.”

  I looked at a wall clock. Seven thirty-five.

  “Darla, that’s—”

  “Got a couple songs you can play on your own to stall?”

  I just stared at her. “I know you didn’t just say that,” I finally growled.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Because you would have to be one crazy fucker to expect a bass player to carry a song on stage in front of nearly twenty thousand people.” Twenty thousand. I was going to throw up.

  “Tyler, if you know anything about me, you must know I am a crazy fucker and I have no problem with being called crazy. Cuckoo. Nutso. Insane in the membrane.”

  “Oh, God. You’re serious.”

  “I don’t joke about performances. Or my sanity.”

  “You are nuts!” I screamed. Blood pounded through me like someone on a roof hammering shingles. “I can’t carry an audience like this with an electric bass! I might as well get on stage and just beat off!”

  “You think the crowd would go for that? ‘Cause if you can stretch it out for fifteen minutes we might get through to—”

  “I AM NOT GOING TO JACK OFF ON STAGE JUST TO BUY YOU TIME!”

  “I’d pay to see that,” said a very familiar voice from behind me.

  Maggie.

  Darla’s phone buzzed. She read the text. “Forty-nine minutes until they get here as long as traffic isn’t too bad.” She pressed her finger against one ear, listened to something in her earbud, then looked at me.

  “Fifteen minutes to showtime. Get out there and grab the bass they have.”

  Maggie looked at me. “You ready?”

  “The rest of the band isn’t fucking here!”

  Her face fell and she turned to Darla. “What?”

  Darla threw her hands in the air. “Nothing I can do! I flew out a day ahead of time and the guys were on the plane yesterday. Some mechanical problem, then they got bumped, and I am not going to vomit up the story right now when there are twenty thousand people out there starting to chant for whatev
er they’re chanting for. We’re nobody. Random Acts of Crazy is barely known out here, but they want More Than Nothing like you wouldn’t fucking believe. We’re already just filler for the crowd.”

  “We’re not even that!” I shouted. “Because there’s no ‘we’. There’s just me.”

  “Then get your ass out there and think about something you can do to stall. I can buy you until 8:10 p.m., and even that will piss off the folks here. More than that and it’s a no go.”

  “I can’t play the bass line to the band’s songs!” I called out as Darla walked down the hall, her fingers pressed to her ear. “I’ll get booed off stage! They’ll crucify me! I never signed up for this shit!” My body began to shake and I suddenly needed to pee.

  Bad.

  Pissing my own pants wasn’t going to improve my day, so I shoved my way down the hall until I found a men’s room and slid in, taking care of business. My hands were shaking so badly I turned my cock into a lawn sprinkler. It was all I could do to keep my jeans from getting sprayed with little drops.

  A quick wash of hands and a careful drying so my fingers could play properly and I was back in the manic rush that always comes before a concert. Ten times worse here, though. So many people.

  So many fucking people.

  “We did it!” Maggie shouted from behind me. I turned to find her grinning and bouncing on the balls of her feet. She jiggled nicely, and any other time I’d have admired the view, but my stomach was knotted like an Eagle Scout project and I could feel sweat soaking my t-shirt.

  And my gut felt like the gummy bears had invaded it again.

  “Tyler?” she said, grabbing my elbows. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  “Eight minutes!” someone called out as Maggie led me to the stage, her face wrinkled with concern.

  “Where’s Liam? How long?” I called out to a bushy head of blonde hair ahead of me.

  Darla turned around and grimaced.

  “Fuck.”

  “Thirty-eight minutes, they say.”

  Not gonna puke. Not gonna puke. Not gonna puke.

  “You look like you’re about to toss your cookies,” Darla said under her breath.

  Someone’s hands were all over me, attaching microphones, and a bass was shoved in my hands. My fingers immediately took to the strings. It felt like a giant, cool hand on a fevered brow. This I knew. The chords, the notes, the songs were all embedded in my hands’ muscles.

  This I could do.

  I peeked around the curtains and walls to see the crowd.

  Oh, fuck.

  That I could not do.

  “How long before we see Trevor, Liam and Sam?” Maggie asked in a high, scared voice.

  Darla and I turned to her.

  “They’re not going to make it in time,” Darla said grimly.

  “WHAT?”

  “Hey, feedback. Feedback!” a sound engineer shouted, glaring at her.

  “Sorry!” she muttered, panic in her eyes.

  “They’re in traffic. Thirty-five minutes to go.”

  “Six minutes!” someone called out.

  Maggie’s expression changed to dawning horror as her eyes met mine.

  “You have to go out there alone?”

  I nodded. Words hadn’t just escaped my mind. They’d fled, like fleas on rats on a sinking ship.

  “Darla!’ she shouted. “You can’t do this to him!”

  Darla was having a furious conversation with some guy in a suit, her face filled with anguish. The guy stormed off and Darla rushed over, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Five minutes!”

  “You know the words to ‘I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer’ and ‘Random Acts of Crazy’, right, Tyler?” she pleaded. “You can go out there and do an Eric Clapton imitation and make up a nice acoustic version.”

  “With a bass?”

  “Naw. Let’s get you a guitar.”

  “They’ll laugh me off that fucking stage! I don’t have the chops like Trevor and Liam.”

  “Yes, you do,” Maggie said, indignant. “You have a great voice.”

  Darla grabbed her arm hard. “He does?”

  “Yeah. We were stuck at a campground last night—God, was that just last night?” Maggie mused, looking at me, shaking her head.

  “Four minutes!”

  “And he sang? Get the man an acoustic guitar set up,” she barked at some techie.

  Maggie was luminous as she recounted our singing, her cheeks rising in sweet wistfulness as she told Darla the story. Her words sounded like they were coming from underwater, and everything suddenly became unreal.

  In four minutes I was going on stage alone to sing songs I’d only ever sung in private.

  At a campground.

  Wait.

  “Darla!” I bellowed. “Can you get a baby grand on stage?”

  “What? A what? Why would we—”

  I looked at Maggie and smiled right back, our look like electricity flowing between us.

  “Because we have a piano player. And I’m not doing this solo. It’ll be a duet.”

  Maggie

  A shock, like being smacked in the face with a saltwater slushie wave of oh, hell no the size of a ten-foot wall washed over me. A duet? Was he crazy?

  “Are you crazy?” I shouted. “I don’t play professionally!”

  “You’re as good as anyone else on a stage.”

  “In middle school! Not here, at a concert hall that seats twenty thousand people, you idiot!”

  Tyler turned to Darla and gave her a sharp nod. “Can you?”

  “Yep.” Darla muttered something into an earpiece and gave me a once over. “Guess that outfit’ll have to do. You two have that folksy neo-grunge look thing down.”

  “I have rainbow colored hair and he has rainbow arms!”

  “Great. Neo-grunge brony hipster. Perfect. Someone get you some thick-framed glasses and vegan shoes and you’re perfect.”

  “Vegan what?” I groaned.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tyler said in a soothing voice, his hand taking mine. I was sweaty, my palm slipping out of his dry skin like a baby seal caught in an oil slick. “You look beautiful.”

  “Awwww,” Darla intoned.

  “Shut up,” I mumbled.

  She did not like that, but she closed her trap.

  “I am not going out there,” I insisted. I couldn’t even look Tyler in the eye.

  “It’s you and a baby grand or me with a mop bucket and a wooden spoon singing ‘Uptown Funk’,” Darla said.

  “Sold!” I said, turning away.

  “Maggie,” Tyler said softly, his hand unyielding, holding me in place.

  “Piano! Setting up stage! It’s 8:01, people!” someone shouted.

  “Tyler, I can’t. I really can’t.”

  He swallowed, looked down, then pinned me in place with excited, blazing eyes. “This is the last thing I am going to ask you to give to me.”

  Oh.

  He started to breathe hard, like he was running. “There are twenty thousand people out there, and Liam, Sam and Trevor are on their way. We need to kill about twenty minutes. I know how beautifully you play and sing. You know I suck at singing but I can manage a guitar. Together we make a sound that is better than either of us apart. And right now, you’re my only hope.”

  Oh, God.

  He squeezed my hand. “I know this is insane. Trust me. But there’s the kind of insanity that comes from pain, and there’s the kind of insanity that comes from the absurd. Embrace this. Go with it. Take a leap and see where you land. I promise I won’t let you fall. I promise you that, Maggie. I won’t fail you.”

  “MAVIS! MAVIS!” the crowd started to chant, my ears ringing with a thousand gongs that I knew weren’t there.

  “That fucking chicken,” Tyler muttered.

  As if on cue, Darla walked by with a cat carrier containing a chicken wearing a sweater that said “Mavis for President.” And the chicken was on a...leash?

  “See? Absurd,�
�� Tyler said, pointing to Mavis.

  “You think this is absurd?” Darla cracked as she walked past. “Try being in love with her campaign manager.”

  I didn’t laugh.

  Tyler gently guided me to the stage, where a huge baby grand piano was being set up under bright lights. The sound of the crowd was like a pressure wave, as if thousands of people were inches away and about to angrily rush the stage. I could feel their noise coming through the curtain, like palpable fingers all trying to scratch my skin and take a piece of me until I disappeared.

  “You want an awful lot, Tyler,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been these past few years to become as nondescript as possible? To fade into the background and go invisible?”

  His face twisted with confusion. “What? The words Maggie and nondescript don’t go together.” He reached up and ran a lock of my hair between his fingers.

  I cried, then sniffled. “I don’t mean like that. I mean on social media. In the news. Aside from the fact that twenty thousand people are out there chanting for anyone but me to be on that stage, if you go out there and announce my name, people will notice. Maybe only a handful, but a handful is all it takes nowadays. And tomorrow my rape case will be splashed all over the internet and...” I let the sob that rested in my throat come out.

  He got it. His face fell, but he got it.

  “Forget it,” Tyler said, squeezing my hands and searching the area for Darla. “I’ll figure something out.”

  I should have felt relief.

  I should have let it go.

  I should have—

  “No,” I choked out, wiping my face as ten thousand thoughts whipped through my mind, all of them focused on him. An image of poor Tyler out there, alone, on stage with just a guitar made me feel for him. A piano and a guitar could fumble through something. He needed me.

  He needed me.

  “I heard your no, Maggie. And I’m respecting it,” he said, letting go of me to find Darla. I chased after him, the stage literally shaking with the force of the crowd’s chant.

  Mavis, Mavis...

  “Wait!’ I said, catching up to him at the very edge of the stage. I saw the grand piano, the way the lights shone on its bench and the lonely chair next to it, how the stage was set up for a quiet, intimate song. The rock band set up was off to the right, but the lights were being focused on where Tyler and I would play.