by Vivian Lux
Until that morning, as I stretched in our broken-up driveway and looked across our pitted, brown lawn to see her dead on.
She was standing on her porch, stretching, dressed in running shorts that rode just a little too high on her thighs. Those thighs, because that's where my horny teenaged eye went immediately, were long and coltish, like a gazelle's, and she moved like one as she stretched, light and easy, her talent for not calling attention to herself making her movements short, controlled and fucking beautiful.
I stopped in my stretching and smiled appreciatively, taking in her height, tall for a girl, her tits, small but perfectly round, and especially the flatness of her sixteen-year-old belly and the thick rope of honey blonde hair that swung in a long ponytail as she moved.
She looked up from bending at the waist. I smiled, then I waved.
She drew herself up and tossed that rope of hair behind her shoulder. And then she began to run.
Scarlett Sawyer ran like a gazelle, a cheetah. She moved with an easy feline grace, her feet barely touching the ground as she rapidly put distance between the two of us.
I had a new goal, a new project to work on.
I was going to catch her.
My first day out as a runner kicked my ass. I was man enough to admit it. She lapped me, and then some, and when I finally arrived back on our block, red-faced and wheezing, she was standing in her drive with her hands on her hips.
But she smiled at me, and that's what counted. That's when it all started.
I made it a point to go out the same time the next day. And the next. We started running together. Well, not together. Not at first.
First, I had to catch her.
That's how it started with Scarlett. With the literal thrill of the chase.
I opened my eyes, and for some reason, I was smiling.
I chased her down back then. She always ran faster than me, until I fixed that. I worked my ass off until I could catch up with her, get to know her, bring her around again.
Wasn't this just more of the same?
Chapter 14
Scarlett
The biggest, loudest band in rock 'n' roll is asleep, rocking gently inside the metal spaceship that carries them swiftly down the highway.
Inside this great metal beast, all is quiet, but I know it won't be for long. The Wilder brothers like their music like they like their life--loud and chaotic. I know this firsthand, having grown up next door to the chaos.
I flipped my notebook shut and stared out of the window. The rain that had been threatening all morning was finally falling, beading up in a light gray mist that obscured the view of the passing highways.
Ruthless had spent the last week playing a series of dates in California. We were now headed out east on I-10, our early morning start calculated down to the precise second to land us in Phoenix in time for the sound check. Everyone had fallen asleep almost immediately, so in tune were they with touring. But I couldn't help but feel the snub. They were back there, snug inside the lushly appointed bunks that lined the back of the bus, and I was up here writing about them.
I knew them all, but no one had bothered to even say hi.
The first time I became aware of Keir Wilder, it was not from sight.
It was from sound.
I leaned back again, trying to put my thoughts into words. I grew up with music that had no consequence. It wasn't expressly forbidden, more like something we just didn't "do." Music was background noise in the grocery store and the pop station piped in at my father's dental practice. I didn't know that music could make me feel until the start of the afternoon run I always tried to squeeze in before dinner and homework took me past the Wilder garage at the precise moment the fledgling band called Ruthless started playing.
I had seen Keir before, jogging through the neighborhood. Sometimes he caught up with me and we jogged together. I thought he was hot in a dangerous sort of way, and also thought he was way too old for me.
I had seen him before, yes. But that was the first day I heard him.
I felt the vibrations reverberate through my chest. The soles of my feet tingled.
And then Keir started to sing. A bluesman's wail, a honeyed scream. Ragged and raw and full of all the emotions I had never been allowed to feel. I stopped short on the sidewalk, my run forgotten as I felt the power of music for the very first time.
I didn't know how long I stood there, but by the time Keir finished his song, I was a different girl. The kind of girl who nodded when he beckoned me into that dirty garage.
I set my pen down again. The next part was too painful to share. But the words were flowing too fast to stem the tide. I picked it back up again and turned to a blank page in my notebook.
Walking into his house after practice felt like I was breaking some taboo. "Want something to eat?" he asked casually.
"It's not dinner time yet," I pointed out.
He looked over his shoulder. "What does that matter?"
"Well, it's not time to eat."
He let out a small laugh. "I literally just heard your stomach growl," he said.
I felt flush on my cheek. How did I explain that hunger didn't matter? Meals were at set times, with food my mother chose. Just doing this? Just walking in and taking food from the unlocked fridge? It was making me feel distinctly uneasy.
"Scarlett," Keir said gently. "What do you want to eat?"
I tried to quell my rising panic. "Do you have a piece of fruit?" I asked, my voice high and tight.
He chuckled as he opened the fridge. "Maybe? Not really sure. I think we're going to head up to the grocery store pretty soon."
"You guys do your own grocery shopping?"
"Yeah." He slammed the fridge shut with a bang that made me jump. But no parental figure jumped out of the woodwork to yell at him for making too much noise. "My dad works a lot. He needs us to help him out."
He said it so casually. They were a team, I realized. His dad, his brother and him. Looking out for each other. And his father...his father trusted him to do the right thing when he went to the grocery store. He didn't need to be watching over his shoulder to make sure that he bought the right kind of milk, the right kind of bread. And I had a feeling that if he bought the wrong kind, there wouldn't be a three-hour screaming lecture to follow.
That night, my mother came into my room as I was scrambling to finish the homework I neglected that long, perfect afternoon.
I froze as she entered.
My mother allowed me my runs, but I was certain she'd be able to tell that I had skipped today's workout in favor of laughing in Keir's kitchen like I didn't have a care in the world. I was certain that she'd be able to somehow smell him on me, the traitorous mix of man and desire.
She stood in the center of my room, her eyes going everywhere. I waited, not saying anything, trying to see the room through her eyes. What had I missed? A speck of dust, a book out of place on my shelf? My bed was made, my windows were free of fingerprints, infractions that had earned me her ire in the past. I looked harder, wondering what it was that she saw, wondering why she looked so livid. From what I could tell, there was nothing that I had missed.
But there was always something I had missed.
"Do you remember what today was?" she asked me.
My whole body went on red alert. That's what I had missed. I had forgotten about her presentation to the library board. She was expecting me to ask about it at dinner, but I was still lost in my daydreams of Keir.
"How did it go?" I asked brightly, pasting a wide smile across my face.
But she wasn't fooled. "You forgot, didn't you?" she said. Her nostrils flared white.
"Oh no, no, of course I didn't,Mom.I'm so proud of you. I'm sure you did really well." I hoped that was enough.
She smoothed her hair. "Well, I was clearly the right choice for the coordinator position," she said.
I nodded enthusiastically. "Well, that's always been clear. You're way better than Beverly Wilshire."
"You are an awfully ungrateful little shit. I did not raise you to speak that way about your elders. Beverly Wilshire is very good at her job."
"Of course, of course. I'm really sorry, Mom."
"I raised you better than that."
"You did." I bit my lip. "That was wrong of me. I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "I should've known better than to hope that you would remember. You're so selfish, Scarlett."
She slipped from the room, and I breathed a sigh of relief in spite of her harsh words. Perhaps that would be all, just a cutting remark. Those I could handle.
Besides, some of them were true. I was selfish. Instead of staying home with my family, who had given me everything, I started spending every afternoon in the Wilders' garage. While my mother volunteered and my father managed his dental practice, I steeped myself in rock 'n' roll rebellion. I was there, watching, as they assembled the band. And I was there at their first shows around Buffalo, sneaking out of the house so I could be there, cheering them on wildly as their number one fan. I was there watching as Keir snaked his way under the microphone in those first few shows, stretching upwards like he was reaching out for a kiss. I was there, flushed and breathless watching him, desire boiling off my skin like a vapor.
The music of Ruthless was the soundtrack to my awakening. Keir and his songs made me love myself for the first time in my life, and the feeling of blossoming confidence was opiate in my system.
Of course,by that time, I had fallen madly in love with Keir Wilder.
Music and love boiled through my veins in equal measure, leaving me frustrated and restless, not knowing what the hell to do with myself. Suddenly, not just the house, the block, but the entire city of Buffalo was too small to contain me. I needed to get out.
Keir was my ticket out.
I set my pen back down again, appalled at what I had just written. This was too raw, too personal to allow it to be splashed all over the pages of Auteur.
I thought for a moment, then scratched everything out and started over again.
Chapter 15
Keir
Once you're in the groove of touring, when the roadies know their jobs through and through, and there are no guest performers to rehearse with and no more surprises to contend with, then it's okay to skip sound checks.
But this early in the tour, they were necessary. There were still a few kinks that needed to be ironed out.
Like the shit setlist, to start. Our opener was a snoozefest and I had insisted we rehearse something else, as a back-up.
"Let's run through it again from the top," Rane said. Those were the first words I had heard him say all day.
Twitch tapped out the count, and we tore into Black and Blue Bedlam, a cut from our first album we'd never played live before, with fresh verve. I mouthed most of my vocal parts, trying to preserve my voice for as long as possible, but hit my guitar for the rhythm portions like it had offended me.
Well, something had offended me, anyway.
The whole ride here, Rane hadn't said a word to me. Neither had Scarlett. Neither, really, had anyone. In such close quarters, this became very apparent, so by the time that we rolled up to Phoenix's Talking Sticks Resort Arena, the tension on the bus was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Twitch tiptoed around like a scalded cat, and Balzac looked like he wished he was anywhere else.
It was not an auspicious start to the tour.
I needed to fucking fix it, but I had no idea how. Other than break as many guitar strings as I could.
I tore into the bridge, trying to fade out everything but the sound of the music.
Then my monitor blasted me with an earful of piercing static, and I snapped.
"Are you fucking shitting me?!" I bellowed, ripping the piece from my ear and hurling it out into the empty arena.
"What the fuck!" Rane called across the stage.
"This piece of shit system can't handle our equipment!" I said. "We sound like fucking shit!"
There were a few nasty clicks, followed by the squeal of feedback as Rane tore the power cord from his guitar. "Well, of course it sounds like fucking shit," he said, as calm and measured as if he were talking to a mental patient. "We haven't rehearsed this one since we played it in the studio. Why the hell are we doing things last minute here?"
"The setlist needs a better opener," I insisted. It was a point I'd been trying to make from the very very beginning. The audience wasn't here to listen to our new stuff; they wanted the big, loud, crowd-pleasing jams we kicked out in the beginning of our career. Black and Blue Bedlam fit the bill, as far as I was concerned, provided we could remember how to fucking play it.
"We've worked the setlist backwards and forwards. I don't know why the fuck you're trying to introduce new shit at the last minute here." Rane shook his head. He was angrier than he was letting on. "Let it go."
"Let it go?" I laughed. Somewhere out in the arena, Scarlett was watching this. We had arrived right in the midst of load-in, and our roadies got right to work. There had been no time to hash out the Scarlett situation.
Well, no time like the present, anyway.
"That's fucking rich, coming from you, you know that, Rane? You love to say let it go, but you hold on to shit just as tightly as I do."
Rane's eyes flashed. "What are you saying?"
"You know exactly what I'm saying. Fucking deal with it."
"Deal with it? That's your solution? Since when?"
I stood with my feet planted shoulder width apart and raised my fists. "Since now," I said, beckoning with my left hand.
Rane nodded, planted his feet...and then leapt towards me, wrapping his arms around my waist and knocking me flat onto my back, driving the breath from my lungs.
"I'm not letting you do this!" he snarled, closing his fingers around my throat and shaking me. "You're not doing this to yourself again! Send her home, get her out of here, get her away from us!"
He punctuated each word with a savage shake that made my teeth rattle inside my skull. Three times, the back of my head hit the stage floor, and I was starting to feel woozy.
"You don't get to make that call," I choked.
Then I landed a solid right hook across his jaw.
My brother was bigger and bulkier than me, but I was quicker and leaner. I knew how to fight him from years of experience, and he knew the same. At this point, our fights were more like a choreographed dance. He tried to overpower me, I ducked and clocked him.
But this felt different. This felt...desperate.
Something was changing.
"Don't be an idiot, Keir!" he yelled, right as his fist caught my ear. For several seconds, I could hear nothing but a deafening ringing.
"Don't be an asshole, Rane!" I said, shouting over the static in my ears as I landed a solid punch to his gut.
I could feel eyes on me. Balzac, Twitch, Pepper... And somewhere out in the audience, Scarlett was watching too. What was she thinking? Was she writing all of this down? Did she even know that this was all about her, her? Her? Did she care? Did she care at all that I was fighting to keep her here, even when I knew it was bad for both of us? Why was I fighting for her at all?
"Stop!" a voice rang out, high, female.
Hers.
I turned, and goddammit, I smiled.
Chapter 16
Scarlett
I'd covered the rock and roll beat since joining my university's paper when I was a sophomore. Since then, I'd sat in dive bars, cheered in arenas and watched live music everywhere in between. If you counted my time in the Wilders' garage, I'd been to more shows in five years than most normal people would see in a lifetime.
I'd seen it all. And not much impressed me by this point.
But I had ne
ver seen anything like Ruthless's setup.
Some bands thought that big stacks of amps were what they needed for big sound. But those of us who covered music, who lived and breathed and worshiped music, knew that all those giant walls of speakers did was impress the people who didn't know any better. The real skill was coaxing giant amounts of sound out of a much more modest setup.
Ruthless's setup was tight, not an ounce of wasted space or splash anywhere. I watched the roadies and techs loading in around the band, delivering a bewildering array of amps, pedals and effects boards. I counted seven different guitars in Keir's kit alone, and his tech sat tuning each of them expertly, precisely, during sound check. He seemed to anticipate when and which guitar Keir would reach for even before Keir stretched out his hand.
I sat in the back of the arena, trying to take it all in. Trying to reconcile the band in the garage with the band in front of me doing their sound check with as much enthusiasm as if they were playing a live show.
"You must be Scarlett."
I turned, startled to be noticed all the way back here, and saw two men with smiles on their faces and guns in their holsters.
The larger of the two, clearly the one in charge, was an imposing black man with the swaggering demeanor of an ex-cop. He wore his past like a badge, right down to the mirrored shades he was wearing indoors. The house lights glinted off the shiny skin of his shaved bald head.
Next to him stood a man who could not have been older than I was. Baby-faced and smiling boyishly, he looked no older than sixteen but for the gun at his side and the badge around his neck.
"Rick Dalton, head of security," the first man said.
"Scarlett Sawyer," I faltered, rising quickly, only to fumble and drop my notebook.
"Hey, don't freak out. I know he's an ugly one, but he doesn't bite," the boyish one reassured me.
Rick growled something under his breath that made the second man laugh out loud.