by BB Easton
“I know you do, Knight. I know.”
Then I opened the door, climbed inside, and pulled it shut.
As I drove away, I glanced one last time at the man in my rearview mirror. I will never forget the way he looked, standing in the street, illuminated by my taillights. Knight was red, red, red.
Inside and out.
I wanted to go home, but when I pulled up to the corner, my car didn’t turn right, toward the modest gray house in the suburbs where I kept my things. It turned left, toward the Masquerade. Hans was my home now, and I had to find him. I had to tell him that I didn’t care. That it didn’t matter if someone else had touched his body. My body. One day, our bodies would burn, just like all the others before them, and our souls would hold hands and dance around the fire.
When the Masquerade came into view at the bottom of the hill, my heart leaped into my throat. Baker’s white panel van was still parked in the loading dock. My foot flattened the clutch as I prepared to pull in, and my sweaty palm slid off the gearshift when I yanked it down into second. I turned left onto the access road that ran beside the old factory and then left again into the gravel loading area behind the building.
My headlights illuminated everything from the fire escape to the half-wall, but the guys were nowhere to be seen. I cut the engine and got out of the car, but I didn’t hear them either. All I heard was the repetitive electronic pulses coming from the bottom floor of the building.
Hell.
I left my car parked there and ran around to the front entrance. Flashing my wristband yet again at the door guy, I blew past and dashed up the stairs to Heaven. The crowd had dissipated. The bars were vacated. And the stage contained nothing but some speakers, a few mic stands, and a blow-up sex doll, probably tossed onstage by an enthusiastic fan. Dashing up the stairs to the elevated platform, I peeked into the curtained backstage area and found a couple of guys wearing CREW T-shirts, smoking a joint.
“Hey,” I panted, “do you guys know where Phantom Limb went? Are they still here?”
The curly-haired one took a big hit and held the smoke in his lungs as he squeaked out, “Yeah…I saw Trip down in Hell not too long ago.” He exhaled and coughed.
His long-haired friend added, “Dude, I want whatever that motherfucker’s on.”
“I know, right?” Curly passed the joint with another small cough. “Little dude’s on fire tonight.”
“Thanks!” I chirped, hauling ass back down the rickety metal staircase.
I passed through the layer of smoke that clung to Purgatory, the world’s saddest blues bar, and turned left at the bottom of the stairs, into a huge warehouse-style rave. The black lights and strobe lights and disco balls were in full effect. Everyone was wearing fluorescent clothing and day-glow body paint. You could practically smell the ecstasy being sweated out by the writhing, grinding, glow-stick-waving, pacifier-sucking ravers on the dance floor. The concrete vibrated under my feet to the unce-unce-unce of the DJ’s house beat. And standing on the bar, spraying a bottle of champagne on the crowd below, was Triple X.
I pushed my way over to the bar, sidling up next to Baker and Louis, who were being loved on by a couple of girls in sexy Rainbow Brite costumes, but I didn’t see Hans anywhere.
Not wanting to interrupt Louis’s and Baker’s little flirt session, I tugged furiously on Trip’s too-baggy vinyl pants. “Trip! Trip!”
He glanced down at me with foggy, smiling eyes and slurred, “Hey, errrybody! Look who d’cided to grace us with her presence!”
“Where’s Hans?”
Trip wobbled on his feet, then sat on the bar, dangling his legs over the edge. The bartenders kept serving drinks to the fluorescent ravers on either side of him, as if he wasn’t even there.
“You missed it, baby cakes!” he shouted in my ear. “That scout came, the one from Violent Violent. Violet Violent. Vi—you know what I mean. That muhrfucker came. And he said he wants us…to play a show…in Times Square…on New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh my God, Trip! That’s amazing!”
“Yeah.” He nodded enthusiastically. “Go tell that to your boy.”
“Where is he?”
“Prolly cryin’ in his beer like a lil’ bitch with all the other sad bastards.”
Purgatory.
“Thanks, Trip! Congratulations!” I hugged Trip around the neck and got the fuck out of there.
Purgatory was worse than I’d expected. I’d never been in there before, and I could see why. Purgatory had nothing to offer but jukebox blues, overflowing ashtrays, and plenty of dark corners to wallow in.
I spotted Hans immediately. He was sitting at the bar in the center of the room, staring into the heavy glass beer stein cupped between his palms. His black hair flopped over one eye. His broad shoulders were hunched. And every frightening face on his right arm stared at me in disapproval. He didn’t look like a guy who’d just been asked to play a concert in Times Square by a record-label scout.
He looked like a guy whose girlfriend had run off in the middle of his show.
I walked up behind him, unnoticed, and wrapped my arms around his torso. His black wifebeater was still damp with sweat, but I pressed my cheek against it anyway, relieved to have him back in my arms.
Hans flinched in surprise, then relaxed and hugged my arms where they crisscrossed over his taut stomach.
“Hey,” I said, kissing the tan skin on his shoulder blade.
“Hey,” he echoed, tipping his head back to rest it on top of mine.
I don’t think either of us knew where to begin. Or maybe we didn’t want to begin at all. Maybe we just wanted to let our feelings and our body language have the conversation for us.
Eventually, Hans broke the silence. “Why’d you leave?” The hurt in his voice drove a spike of guilt into my heart.
If I had just stayed, none of this would have happened.
“I felt like I was gonna throw up, so I went outside to get some fresh air. But when I came back in, I saw you kissing that girl from the grocery store, and I…I freaked out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”
Hans pulled my arms around him tighter. “No, baby. I’m sorry. I didn’t kiss her back, I swear. She just…attacked me.”
Somebody attacked me tonight, too.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay if it hurts you.”
Hans let go of my arms and turned around on his barstool to face me. Pulling me to stand between his legs, Hans glanced up at my face, and I watched as all the color drained out of his.
“Oh my God!” Hans lifted both hands and swiped his thumbs across my cheeks. I didn’t flinch when he did it. I closed my eyes and relished his touch. “That’s it. I’m telling Trip we can’t do the kiss contest anymore.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Seriously. It’s fine. The crowd loves it.”
“Fuck the crowd! Look at you!”
I opened my eyes and tried to imagine what Hans must have seen. Black makeup streaked down my face. Wild hair. Puffy eyes. I hadn’t planned on telling him about Knight, but I couldn’t let him think he’d done all that to me. That guilt didn’t belong to him.
“Knight was waiting for me at my car,” I blurted, dropping my eyes to the floor. My heart pounded against my ribs as I debated on how much more to say, waited for the questions that would inevitably come. I could feel Hans’s entire body tense and heat up. I could sense his eyes scanning me from head to toe.
“What did he do?”
I couldn’t say it. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t even sure I knew what had happened myself. Something bad. Something that I didn’t want. Something that could change everything. Right then, I just needed Hans’s love. Not his sympathy, not his judgment, not his anger or his hurt. I needed him to hold me and tell me it would all be okay.
“Baby?”
His sweet voice was almost enough to break me, but I kept my eyes on the ground. “I don’t wanna talk about it, okay?”
“Hey…what happened? You ca
n tell me.”
I shook my head.
“Did he touch you?”
“Hans…”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Please…”
“He put his fucking hands on you, didn’t he?” The anger in his voice had me squeezing my eyes to keep the tears from falling out.
I didn’t need more male aggression. I needed somebody to fucking hold me.
“Where is he? Tell me where the fuck he is!”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.”
Hans slumped back against the bar and stared at me, shell-shocked. “This is my fault. If it wasn’t for that kiss, you wouldn’t have gone up there alone.”
It was the exact reaction I’d hoped to avoid. He wasn’t comforting me. He was looking at me the way you would look at your favorite lamp after a careless elbow had sent it crashing to the ground. Like I was broken. Like I was a situation that required cleaning up.
“Stop looking at me like that!” I cried far louder than I’d intended. “Just tell me it doesn’t matter! Please?” I could hear my voice cracking, feel my chin trembling, but I was too far gone to care. “Tell me you don’t care what happened. Tell me we’re gonna be okay. Just…tell me you still love me!”
Hans sat up and pulled me into his arms right as the dam burst. Running one hand down my back—firm, not gentle—he shushed my sobs and kissed my head. “Of course I still love you. Why would you even say that? You’re my fucking soul mate. I’ve loved you since the moment I met you. Not loving you isn’t even an option. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what this is?”
I nodded against his chest and wrapped my arms tighter around his waist.
“What is it then?”
I sniffled. “What?”
“This. Us. What is it to you? Because I know what it is for me, and if you think I can just fall out of love with you because of something you had no control over, then maybe you don’t feel what I feel.”
This was it. The moment of truth. The very thing I’d come back for.
I looked up at Hans’s gorgeous, angry, determined face and answered him quietly, “True love?”
With those words, the light was flipped back on. The one that illuminated Hans’s villainous features from within, making them appear warmer somehow.
Hans grinned down at me. Then he gave me a dramatic, confused look and mouthed, What? I couldn’t hear you.
An unexpected laugh burst from my lungs.
I replied silently, a ridiculous smile splitting my face, and exaggerated every syllable, I said, true love.
Blue glove? Hans smirked, holding up one hand to model where a glove would go.
Standing up so that we were eye-to-eye, I cupped my hands around my mouth, took a deep breath, then silently shouted, TRUUUUE LOOOO—
Before I could finish my pantomimic declaration, Hans leaned in and kissed my open mouth.
His touch was so different from Knight’s. He didn’t take from me; he gave. He gave, and he gave until I was so full of love that it leaked out of my eyes. I think that’s why I cried so much whenever he was around. Because I was overflowing.
Wrapping my arms around Hans’s neck, I kissed him back. Relief and gratitude flooded every cell in my body, making them all tingle at once.
How was this man actually mine? How had I gotten so lucky?
I didn’t deserve him. The events of that night proved it, but I was going to keep him anyway.
“True love, huh?” Hans whispered against my lips.
“Mmhmm,” I whispered back. “Something like that.”
New Year’s Eve 1999
“F-f-f-fuuuuck. Th-th-th-thisssssss.” My teeth weren’t chattering. They were crashing together at a rate of forty-two collisions per second. My bony fingers had turned into worthless flesh-cicles. And the steel shells of my combat boots had frozen through, encapsulating my toes in two matching ice prisons.
For some reason, I’d always assumed that freezing to death wouldn’t be that bad. I’d imagined that your body would just go numb, and then you’d fall asleep and wake up in heaven or haunting your old apartment or whatever. It turns out that hypothermia actually feels like having all twenty of your fingers and toes smashed by ball-peen hammers simultaneously while seizure-like convulsions racked your body.
I don’t recommend it.
Twenty-three degrees, one of the thousands of digital signs in Times Square announced.
Twenty-three degrees.
For an anorexic Southern girl whose entire winter wardrobe consisted of a few long-sleeved shirts to wear under her regular T-shirts, a flight jacket, and the Phantom Limb hoodie she’d stolen from her boyfriend, standing outside for hours on end in below-freezing temperatures was a fate worse than death. Even Hell would have been an improvement over New fucking York on New Year’s Eve.
At least Hell was warm.
“Steven, BB’s cold. You should go snuggle with her,” Goth Girl suggested, tonguing his ear.
I kind of wished that it would stick, like the kid who licked the flagpole in A Christmas Story.
“I’m f-f-f-fine,” I lied.
Goth Girl and Steven had tossed back a handful of ecstasy each before we got on the plane, so they were definitely feeling no pain. Juliet and her new boyfriend, Mike, had flown up with us too. But they’d wandered off in search of food and restrooms, leaving me to babysit Tweedledee and Tweedledum by myself.
The band had to drive up the day before because of all their equipment, so I hadn’t really gotten to see Hans except for a few seconds before and after their show. Even though they were on a stage a few blocks away from Times Square and performed six hours before the ball dropped, people were already shoulder-to-shoulder that far back and then some. They’d estimated that over a million people would fill those streets by midnight, and Phantom Limb rocked the faces off of at least a few thousand of them.
I’d never been prouder of anyone or anything. It had been so surreal, watching my man, my person, fulfilling a dream right before my very eyes. All the guys had looked nervous as shit when they first came onstage—except for Trip, of course—but by the end of their second song, Hans was smiling. Not a huge smile. Not a cocky smile. But a two-dimpled smile, nonetheless.
His joy had felt like my joy. I’d gotten high off of it. Lost track of time on it. Danced my ass off on it. And the fact that they couldn’t do the kiss contest because of the barricades only made me that much happier.
After the show, Hans had given me a quick kiss over the barricade and told me that he and the guys had to haul their equipment back to the hotel and load it into Baker’s van but that they’d come right back.
No one had heard from them since.
It had been five hours.
Five more bands had played.
My high was long gone.
My cell phone sat silent.
And I was at risk of losing my lips, nose, and eyelids to frostbite.
The night, my mood, and my life expectancy had taken a vicious turn for the worse.
I stared at the digital clock just below the disco ball on a stick that was supposed to drop at midnight.
11:41. Where the fuck is he?
Goth Girl came over and wrapped herself around me like a mink shawl as I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket and checked it again. Still nothing.
“I’m just so happy right now. Aren’t you just sooo happy?” Goth Girl droned in my ear.
I nodded, my teeth chattering too hard to even bother trying to talk.
Yeah. I’m fucking ecstatic.
“We are in Times Square for Y2K. This is, like, the center of the universe right now. A new millennium is about to begin—right here, right now—and we’re gonna watch it happen together.”
“It’s gonna be fuckin’ crazy,” Steven chimed in, pulling his girlfriend back over to him. “They think the whole power grid’s gonna go out because their old-ass computers are gonna think the year two thousand is just zero
-zero. All of this”—he motioned at the digital jungle of animated billboards flashing all around us—“is gonna be pitch-black in a few minutes. Just watch.”
“It feels like the world is gonna end,” Goth Girl mused, kissing her man in a fit of madness.
“If the world ends, then at least I’ll melt with you.”
I rolled my eyes as hard as I wanted to, completely confident that neither one of them would notice.
“I saw that, bitch,” Juliet said with a smirk as she and Mike ducked under the metal barricade keeping the crowd on the street from spilling over onto the sidewalk. Her hands were full of wooly goodness. “Here. Can’t have your bony ass dyin’ on us.”
I accepted the bundle from her and began sorting through it. It was a beanie, gloves, and a scarf, all embroidered with the NYPD logo.
“Wh-wh-where did you g-g-g-get these?” I asked with hearts in my eyes.
“The police department has a table set up back there. They’re selling all kinds of shit for donations.”
“Oh my G-G-God, you’re my f-f-fucking hero.” I pulled on the cold weather accessories as quickly as I could.
“You have no idea. Look what else we brought.”
Mike appeared next to her, holding a cardboard pizza box.
“Never m-m-mind,” I said, eyeing the Sbarro logo on the side. “M-M-Mike is my h-h-h-hero.”
Mike smiled and puffed up his chest. He was a nice guy—kinda nerdy with his short, curly brown hair and glasses—and he was smart, funny, and worshipped the ground Juliet and Romeo walked on.
I was so happy for Juliet. Hell, I was even happy for Goth Girl—at least when she and Steven were rolling and in love. But, as I watched the clock approaching midnight on the most significant New Year Eve’s of this or any lifetime, I wasn’t happy for myself.
I was alone.
And slowly dying from exposure.
I checked my phone again. “What do you th-th-think is taking the guys so l-l-long?” I asked no one in particular.
Mike gave me a sympathetic half-smile and a shrug.
Juliet folded her arms over her chest and shivered. “I’m sure they just got held up. I mean, look at this place. You can’t get fucking anywhere. And the cell towers are probably all jammed.”