by Emily Snow
I laugh. “Pretty much.”
“And now you want to know what the mysterious front man does to get ready, huh?” He scratches his head and looks kind of embarrassed.
“Only if you’re comfortable telling me,” I answer, although I’m really hoping he’ll share this part of himself with me. For some reason he is like a puzzle I’m intent on solving. There are so many facets to him. I want to discover each and every one and try to assemble an entire man from them.
He clears his throat. “Well, what I do to get ready for a show is, uh, not get ready.” He quirks an eyebrow at me, and I look at him questioningly. “See, if I think about it, I’ll get too nervous, so I do whatever I need to avoid thinking about it. That usually means sitting down and working. I was doing some writing when you came in. A new song for the next album.”
“Really?” I’m surprised. “So no special vocal warm-ups? No superstitions about what you need to eat or who you should talk to or anything?”
“Nope. Just work. I write songs and sometimes go over paperwork, listen to some tunes I enjoy, maybe even read a book. No special anything. Then, when it’s time to go up front, I go and walk on stage blind. I trust my crew to have everything set up the way it should be. I trust my band to be ready and I trust myself to put on the best performance I can.”
I watch him for a moment, blown away once again at the unexpected answers he’s given me.
“I figured you for a control freak,” I say frankly.
He laughs. “Oh, I am, but that’s what goes on days and weeks before the actual event. By this point, if it’s not right, it’s not going to be. I hire the absolute best people in the business and ride their asses like a fucking dictator. If we can’t pull it off by the time we get to the performance, then we all deserve to crash and burn in public.”
He walks over to where I’m leaning back against the makeup counter that runs along one wall. He leans next to me, peeling the label off of his water bottle.
“How about you, Mel? You’re pretty damn good at what you do. Are you a control freak?”
I ponder his question for a moment. “No. The youngest kid never has much control, especially with an older sister like mine. So I’m the one who can go along with all sorts of things and doesn’t need to be in control. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions or can’t stand up for myself. Just that I’m flexible.” I turn my head and he’s looking directly at me. His green eyes are so vivid. I know exactly what all those women wait in lines for. The possibility that you could get this close to those eyes and that face is enough to convince you to wait for years, let alone hours.
He leans in even closer to me and reaches out to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. I’m breathless.
“That’s good to hear,” he says so quietly that it’s almost a whisper. “We’ll make a good pair, you and me. I can be in control, you can be flexible, and we’ll get along just fine.”
Holy crap. My heart is racing. He’s in my space, and I feel lightheaded. I can hear him breathing, and his velvet voice sinks deep into my gut.
“What if I don’t want to be controlled?” I nearly gasp out.
“Mmm. You might like letting me be in control. At least some of the time,” he rumbles.
“Five minutes to show!” a voice yells out in the hallway. Joss and I both jump back, and I can feel my face flush. He picks up his water bottle and chugs the rest of it in one.
When he’s done, he tosses it into a trashcan across the room. Then he turns to look at me. “You gonna watch from backstage?” he asks, a big grin on his face.
I nod, still not sure I can form coherent words.
“Let’s get you set up then.” He takes my hand and I walk to the tour opening Lush show on the arm of the lead singer, who might be the sexiest man in recorded history.
Chapter Thirteen
Joss
I’ve always imagined the feeling I have onstage is something like what a competitive swimmer must feel in the pool. I don’t hear anything else or see anything else but my band mates and the music. For all of our problems, we work together like a well-oiled machine. Even Mike and I smooth out when it’s show time.
The first night of a new tour is always nerve-racking, but tonight there’s a different energy in the air. I’ve set Mel up in the wings of the stage where she can see us. She’s on a tall stool, and one of her freelance guys is alongside her while the other two are down on the floor behind the security lineup so they can shoot pictures of the crowd at eye-level without being crushed.
As we open up with our lead-in song, I glance over and see Mike going rock star on his guitar, facing Mel the whole time. She has her camera out taking shots and he’s hamming it up like crazy. I’m feeling envious until she lowers the camera and I see her give me a heated look. I can’t help but smile at her, and she blushes before I walk farther out onstage so I can give the audience some attention too.
I’ve never once noticed someone offstage while I’m performing. Like that swimmer in a pool, I’m always absorbed by the performance, the words, the music, and the mass of energy that flows to me from the audience. But I’m hyperaware of Mel. I can see her clearly whenever I look her direction, and I think I’d know it if she walked away at any point during the performance. I realize I’m grateful that she doesn’t.
When it comes time to sing Your Air, the auditorium goes still. The stage lights go low and a single spot shines on a stool the crew has set up for me. We’re not metal, but we’ve got a big sound—Pearl Jam, Coldplay. Your Air is a ballad, something we don’t do very often. As I sit and hold the microphone through the opening chords, I glance offstage at Mel. Her camera lies abandoned in her lap as she watches me raptly.
I’ve always figured Tammy knows Your Air was written, if not about her, at least because of her—not that she gives a rat’s ass. It came to me several weeks after we slept together and just wouldn’t go away. So I took the chance, even though love ballads aren’t really our thing. The guys were ambivalent about it, but Dave, who knows gold when he smells it, said it was going to hit, and he was right.
Now, as I sing the lyrics that describe a relationship doomed from the moment the principals touched, Your Air takes on new meaning.
If I could only watch one view, it would be your face
If I could only touch one place, it would be your skin
If I could only feel one force, it would be your love
If I could only breathe one thing, it would be your air.
Instead of an ode to something dark and wrong and painful, maybe Your Air could be my anthem of hope, the possibility that someone might actually love me back.
I look at Mel, and I smile.
When we come offstage for the last time, the guys are amped. It was a great opening show, only a few lighting glitches, not anything anyone but the stage manager and I would ever notice. Walsh throws his sweaty ass all over Tammy when he reaches the wings, and she quite predictably shrieks and starts smacking at him. Mike is high-fiving the crew guys he typically parties with, and Colin grabs some groupie who managed to get backstage and lays some French on her. The poor girl is speechless for five minutes afterwards.
I know I’m grinning like an idiot, but there’s only one person I want to see, and she waits quietly for me as I stride toward her. She’s wearing that flimsy sundress and those cowboy boots that make me want to saddle up the nearest horse and ride off with her. Her red hair is glowing under all the colored lights, and her lips shine like a couple of jewels begging to be worshipped.
“So what did you think?” I ask when I reach her.
She grins back at me. “It was amazing,” she says, and my heart stills for a minute before it resumes beating much faster than the normal rate.
“I haven’t had that much fun at a performance in a long time, Mel. I think you’re my good-luck charm.”
She flushes. “It’s the camera. It makes people more aware of everything and gives them a reason to fake it ‘til they
make it.”
I laugh. “Fake it ‘til they make it?”
“Yeah,” she responds as she packs her camera away. “They try to look perfect for the camera and eventually they feel perfect too.”
I shake my head. “You’re something else, Mel DiLorenzo. You know that?”
She just smiles.
“Hey, Joss!” Walsh calls.
“Yeah, man,” I say, tearing my gaze away from the stunning redhead at my side.
“You ready to party?”
I look at Mel questioningly. She nods her head vigorously.
“Yep. Let’s hit it, bro.”
And we all head back to the green room to get things underway.
Chapter Fourteen
Mel
According to what Tammy told me during our prep for tonight, the guys always start the post-performance parties in the green room. Where there were sodas and snacks beforehand, there is now dinner and booze. Lots of booze. Everyone grabs plates of food and beers, whiskey, tequila—whatever booze they might want—and sits around in the large room on sofas and armchairs. Joss is off taking a shower and changing. Meanwhile, Colin has broken out a bong, and I wonder how he gets away with that everywhere he goes as if it weren’t still illegal in most states.
I watch Walsh too, curious as to how he handles all of this since he’s in recovery, but he seems fine with it, and Tammy stays glued to his side. More and more people filter in. Crew, security staff, and as I look around, I realize groupies too. Here is the side of rock and roll I’ve always heard about but never seen. As the security staff comes in, they have women tagging along. Blondes, brunettes, redheads.
They all have one thing in common, they look slutty. Yeah, I know it’s not very sisterly of me to say so, but it’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve never seen so much T and A in one room before in my life. There is cleavage oozing, asses bouncing, and legs spreading every which way, and I wonder how the hell Tammy stands this.
I watch as two of them sidle up to Mike and he throws an arm around each, letting his hands drift down to their chests at the same time. Both girls squeal when he squeezes their tits. When I look five minutes later, he’s got one on the couch, making out with her, his hand up her shirt, while the other one straddles his lap and grinds on him as she sucks on his neck. I nearly throw up in my mouth a little.
I see that there are far more groupies than band members, and I realize the groupies also give their affections to the crew. Suddenly I understand why these guys give up months at home and spend their days lugging around all that equipment in order to be a roadie. It’s a job with some serious benefits.
I go to the buffet table and look skeptically at the food, debating whether I should have told someone to photograph this, when a freshly showered and dressed Joss comes and stands next to me. His hair is still damp and the bottom sticks to his neck in little pieces. He’s clean-shaven and smells like some sort of beachy cologne. He has on a button-up shirt, cut narrow and untucked over jeans. It’s open far enough at the neck that I get a glimpse of firm muscle and golden skin. It makes my stomach twist in a knot with wanting. A wanting I know is bad for me.
“You got everything you need, Mel?” he asks as he nurses a beer.
I’m suddenly uncomfortable with him and angry for reasons I can’t understand. I wonder how often he screws women like those filling this room. Does he take one back to his hotel after every performance? Does he ever learn their names or ask how old they are? Because I’m pretty sure some of these girls are underage, and that’s not a comforting thought.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I say woodenly.
He dips his head and watches me carefully. “You sure? Everything’s all right?”
“Yep.” I look straight ahead instead of at him. “It’s all good.”
My stomach twists as I see Colin start dancing with a blonde who has her hand on his crotch and just snorted a line of coke up her nose.
I’m an average girl. I party. I have dates. I’m not a virgin. And I’ve spent my share of nights worshipping porcelain. But there is something different about this, something so anonymous and without conscience or purpose.
I’ve had sex with boyfriends, and I’ve even had a one-night stand, but this is far beyond a one-night stand. I know Mike didn’t ask those girls their names. I know he won’t bother to find out how they’re getting home, and I know he doesn’t care what happens to them after tonight.
They aren’t people to him. They’re vessels to pour his sexual energy into so he can go on his merry way with a load off. And just as bad, they view him the same way. He’s not Mike the funny, irreverent, talented musician. He’s a celebrity—someone they can brag about fucking when they go out partying with their friends the next night—a status symbol, not unlike a Mercedes or a pair of Prada shoes.
I stand like a statue and watch it all. I’ve gotten myself into something a lot heavier than I realized. I suddenly feel woefully naïve and stupid. The same sort of naïve and stupid I was with my professor. How many times do I have to put myself in situations like this before I learn? How could I not have known what this was? How could I have really thought Joss Jamison was someone I could be friends with? Or even something more, if I’m totally honest with myself.
Maybe Tammy can have a relationship with Walsh because they grew up together. She was here every step of the way when he discovered all this, and because of her, he’s maybe never really participated in it. But Joss? Joss has been at the center of it all for years. The quintessential rock god. I remember the blonde from the day we left on tour, and it seems so much more revolting now than it did then. How many? How often?
“So have you gotten a chance to eat some dinner?” Joss asks through my fog of deteriorating thoughts.
I barely register him before I’m out the door, headed back to the hotel.
Chapter Fifteen
Joss
Between the time we walked off stage and the after-party, something went seriously haywire. The vibrant redhead who watched me perform, sending me heated looks and sparkling smiles, has been replaced by a pissed-off, closed-off woman who just walked out on me. I’m fucking clueless, and I don’t like it. I don’t do clueless. I know what to expect and when, especially on my own damn tour.
Hell, maybe DiLorenzo women are just that mercurial. Maybe they don’t really care about anyone for more than a few hours. But I know that’s not true. Tammy has loved Walsh for thirteen years. Hardly fickle.
I throw myself down in an armchair, debauchery continuing on all around me, and I wonder what the hell happened. I go back over our conversation as we walked to the green room. I remember the sexy little look she gave me when I told her I was going to shower and change. She wasn’t pissed at me. I know she wasn’t. I’m not a total idiot about women. Well, at least not all the time.
A buxom brunette approaches me. She’s sultry and wearing something that actually approaches clothing, unlike most of the women in here. She says some flirty thing to me, but I reply, “Not tonight, all right? Nothing personal.” She winces and retreats quickly.
My mind drifts back to the angry little redhead. Something happened while I was gone. Something changed her mind about me. The only thing I can think of is Tammy. Fucking Tammy. And this time she’s gone too far. I slam my beer down on the end table, causing it to foam up and spill everywhere. I don’t even give it a second look. I pay people to clean up after me. Let them deal with the shit.
I stand and walk over to where Tammy is sitting on Walsh’s lap as he tells a story to a couple of the crew.
“I need to talk to you,” I say abruptly.
I see wariness pass over her face, but she fights me on it anyway. “I’m sort of busy here, Joss.”
Walsh has quit talking and is eyeing the two of us, undoubtedly wondering what the hell is going on.
“Sorry, this will just take a minute.” I try to tone it down so she’ll cooperate.
She sighs and then leans forward and kisses Wals
h on the lips. My gut roils, but it’s almost more out of habit than any actual feeling.
“I’ll be right back, baby,” she tells him. He smiles at her but looks at me questioningly again. I know I’ll have to give him some sort of explanation eventually, but he’s going to let it go for now.
We walk out into the hall and shut the door.
“What the hell, Joss?” she spits. “I thought we weren’t talking unless it was about work?” She throws my angry words from earlier back in my face.
I grit my teeth, willing myself not to go berserk on her. “What the fuck did you say to Mel?” I ask harshly.
She smirks. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. Between the time we came backstage and now. What the hell did you say to her?”
Her face falls. I suddenly feel as nervous as I do angry.
“Nothing. I haven’t even talked to her since the show ended. Why?”
I’ve known Tammy a long time. She’s telling the truth. I’ve hit a dead end. Maybe someone or something else upset Mel? Maybe she simply took a closer look at me and didn’t like what she saw? I run my hand through my hair in frustration. How will I figure it out if she won’t talk to me?
“Joss? What’s going on?” Tammy asks, looking concerned.
“Nothing,” I respond sharply. “Nothing’s going on. Go back to your boyfriend, Tammy. Forget I said anything.”
“No, I won’t forget it. What the hell did you do to her? So help me—”
“Tammy. I didn’t do anything to her except ask if she’d had any dinner. She took off suddenly and I thought maybe you’d been badmouthing me to her, as usual.”
Tammy huffs out a bitter laugh. “Actually, not today. Haven’t had the chance.” She gives me an evil smile. “But it sounds to me like she’s coming to her senses, thank God.”