by Hazel Jacobs
But D had insisted. He’d also insisted that she bring Jackie. No matter how hard Tessa had protested, he’d paid for their tickets as well. Promising that it was no big deal and that he had an arrangement with the band. When she’d asked why he didn’t answer her. They were so well-practiced at avoiding specifics that he’d probably done it without thinking.
Tessa had let it slide. She can ask D when she sees him. She stands on her tiptoes to try and see over the heads of the people in line, searching for her sister.
D: ill b in the severus snape T-shirt what will u b wearing
Ordinarily, when D asks her what she’s wearing it’s in a different context.
Tessa: White blouse over black jeans. With a Ravenclaw bow in my hair.
D: not sure that the guards will no what a ravenclaw is ;) ill give them a pic and tell them to be on the lookout for u
Tessa: Not everyone knows the ins and outs of Hogwarts houses like we do.
D: and that breaks my poor hufflepuff heart
They still hadn’t shared their names. She knows his Hogwarts house is Patronus—an otter, and the size of his penis fully erect, but not his name. They are about to meet face-to-face, but she still doesn’t know what his name is.
It was a tough thing to explain to Jackie.
She’d been ecstatic to hear that Tessa would be bringing her to the Black Lilith concert. Tessa had enjoyed about five minutes of Jackie bouncing around the room, still in her skating gear. But then she’d stopped and asked, worry all through her posture, where Tessa had gotten the money to pay for the tickets.
“A friend of mine gave them to me,” Tessa had replied wearily. “As a gift.”
“What friend?” Jackie had asked, cocking her head like a confused poodle. “Have I met them?”
I haven’t even met him.
“No, he’s from New York.”
“Oh.” Then Jackie had grinned slyly. “Is he a special friend?”
“Mind your damn business.”
“That’s not a no.”
And Tessa hasn’t heard the end of it.
Just as Tessa is starting to think about sending a text to her little sister, she sees a blonde ponytail running toward her. Jackie’s arms wave as she sprints to Tessa, her skirt flying behind her. Tessa feels a relieved smile spread across her face as she turns toward Jackie and catches her in a hug.
“Looking good,” she says. “You’re not tired after practice?”
“Nah,” Jackie replies, pulling away. “I’m totally excited. I can’t believe we’re really gonna see them! Do you think your special friend can get us backstage?”
“Let’s not impose on him any more than we already have,” says Tessa, running her hand over Jackie’s hair to smooth down some flyaways. “Come on, he said that we could meet him at the seats.”
So they walk over to the line. Well, Tessa walks. Jackie half-runs, dragging her sister behind herself and practically skipping. But the closer Tessa gets to the security guard, the more nervous she feels. D had told her that she would be able to skip the line and get their wristbands straight from the guards, but now she’s wondering if that won’t actually happen.
What if D was pulling her leg?
What if this is all a big joke, and she’s gotten Jackie’s hopes up for nothing?
What if—
And then they’re standing in front of the guard.
He takes one look at the bow in her hair and grunts. “You here for the reserved passes?” he asks.
Jackie’s the one who nods because Tessa is pretty much rooted to the spot. “Yep, two of them.”
He puts the bracelets on Tessa and Jackie’s wrists. Tessa stares at the sparkling, golden band, still not entirely sure whether this is really happening, even as she feels a wave of relief gently washing over her. One of the guards waves for the two girls to follow him, and they’re escorted into a hallway beyond the gate. None of the other people in line are shown into this hallway.
D must have a lot more pulling power over this band than he’d let on.
Tessa pulls her phone out of her pocket and sends a quick text.
Tessa: We’re here. Where are you?
Her phone pings within seconds.
D: make urselfs @ home ill cu soon
The United Center is a massive, indoor arena that can sit almost twenty-four thousand people. Most of the seats are already full with people who’d probably started lining up yesterday. But Tessa and Jackie are escorted past them, all the way to the front.
“No fucking way!” Jackie breathes as they’re escorted to their seats.
Front row, center.
Tessa stares numbly at them for a moment before pulling her phone out.
Tessa: WTF is with these seats?? They must have cost a fortune?
Even if he has connections, surely these seats should be reserved for celebrities?
Jackie is already settling herself in. They had bypassed the snack stands, and the guard offered to go and get them something to drink, but Tessa waved him off with a grateful smile. She’s still reeling from seeing their seats. Jackie pouts until Tessa promises to take her to the merchandise hall later and buy her a shirt. Since they’re saving money on these kick-ass seats, after all.
Tessa stares around for a man in a Severus Snape shirt. Someone with large shoulders and blond hair. She thinks that he’s blond. Not that his dickpics had backed that up. She checked her phone. D hasn’t responded.
Tessa: Where are you?
Tessa: The show is about to start.
Tessa: Starting to get worried.
“So, this guy… is he your boyfriend?” Jackie asks as Tessa joins her in the seats. They’re hard and dip at the back, but they’re still excellent seats. She only has to tilt her head slightly to look right into the eyes of where she imagines the band will be standing in a little while.
“No,” Tessa replies absently, still checking her phone.
“Well, why the fuck not?” Jackie asks. “I mean, tell me you’re at least sleeping with him? Or you’re planning to? Because these seats are worth a blowjob at the very least. Maybe even anal.”
“Young lady, you need to spend less time on Tumblr,” Tessa tells her. She’s pretty much immune to Jackie ‘shipping’ her with her friends by now. But she’s only fourteen and fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t even know what anal is.
Jackie snorts and takes a selfie, turning her body so that the stage is included in it. Tessa keeps craning her neck around, but the seats around them get filled pretty quickly, by women who are too busy squealing at each other to notice Tessa’s quizzical look. She can’t see any men in a Severus Snape shirt. Most of the men in the room are either in black shirts, or they’re wearing shirts emblazoned with the Black Lilith album cover.
She checks her phone again as the lights dim and the warm-up band takes the stage. The crowd roars so loudly that she tries to cover her ears and look at her phone screen at the same time. Not that it matters. Because D hasn’t texted her back yet.
The tickets might have been legit, but Tessa’s starting to think she’s been stood up.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Jackie asks, leaning over and screaming into Tessa’s ear even as she bops her head to the beat.
“He got held up,” Tessa screams back. She shoves her phone into her pocket. “He told us to enjoy ourselves.”
Jackie seems to take that at face value. Tessa notices the people around them starting to stand up, and she’s compelled to join them even though she’s not really feeling the music. It’s not really her thing, and the lyrics are a bit simple, though the band seems good. They’re very beautiful women. She tries hard to lose herself and enjoy it, but she keeps thinking about the phone in her pocket, which hasn’t vibrated. Where is D?
After a few songs, the support band leaves the stage, and the arena erupts with chaos as Black Lilith comes on. The women on the other side of Tessa are jumping up and down, reaching toward the stage as though they want to grab at the men t
here. Jackie is practically vibrating with excitement, though she’s at least chill enough not to start screaming.
Tessa recognizes the four men from the picture Jackie showed her. The man at the front has short, messy dark hair that curls around his ears and a long, blue sleeve of tattoos showing through his tank top. He stands in the middle of the stage and winks at the audience. If the crowd wasn’t deafening before, it is now.
“Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binaries… give it up for Lost in Time!” the guy in front shouts into the microphone. He waves toward the side of the stage, where the warm-up band had just disappeared.
A massive bear of a man takes a seat behind the drum kit, all black leather, tatts and heavy muscle. His blond hair falls into his face as he twirls his drumsticks and smirks at the guy next to him, who is the bassist with his coy smile and shoulder length brown hair. On his other side is a younger guy with a guitar slung across his back. He’s craning his head to look over the edge of the stage. When his eyes meet Tessa, he stops.
For a moment, she doesn’t understand why he’s staring at her. A famous guitarist like him can probably get any girl he wants, so lingering over some blonde in the front row would seem out of character.
Then she sees his shirt. The guitar strap slashes across his chest, but the picture of Severus Snape with a bright white doe coming out of his wand is unmistakable.
“No fucking way…” Tessa whispers.
The lead guitarist of Black Lilith keeps staring at her, his mouth slack, in a look that’s almost too adorable. If he didn’t have the body of a very well-structured wrestler, then Tessa thought he would have looked like a kid whose Christmases had all come at once. She didn’t know what her own face was doing, but it must have been something weird. Because there’s no way—no way—that D is a fucking rockstar and he never told her.
He couldn’t have kept something like that from her. Could he? Why?
She bursts out laughing. Her brain must be completely malfunctioning if she thinks for one second that her dorky, cheeky, D is some rockstar with a million fangirls. The shirt is just a coincidence, of course.
What the fuck had she been thinking?
She covers her mouth, but she can’t smother her mirth entirely. And the thing is, she knows that she’s technically laughing in the face of some rockstar. He’s staring her down right before a set, and she’s laughing at him. Maybe that’s his thing. Maybe he picks a girl in the crowd and just eye-fucks her all night. Maybe that’s how he gets groupies.
The guy, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind. He’s still staring at her, though, entirely shocked. He stares until Tessa’s laughter tapers off, and she’s starting to feel more confused than anything. He stares until the rest of the band starts to notice. The bass player with the floppy hair follows the guitarist’s line of sight until he sees Tessa. For some reason, he grins.
Then a drumstick comes out of nowhere and smacks into the back of the guitarist’s head.
Tessa winces while the crowd laughs gleefully as the guitarist rubs his head, glaring over his shoulder at the drummer. The drummer just wiggles his eyebrows at him while the other two on stage look amused.
But the hit has knocked that dumbstruck expression off his face because the guitarist quickly strips his guitar off—bearing a lovely line of muscle when his Severus Snape shirt rides up—and rushes across to the front of the stage.
“Uh, Dash?” the singer says, half into the microphone.
Dash… D… Dash?
Dash jumps off of the stage right in front of Tessa and Jackie. The crowd goes wild, and Tessa realizes that she’s standing up as well. She feels almost like she’s on autopilot like her body is reacting to him without even realizing what it’s doing.
Jackie’s squeal is drowned out by the crowd when Dash pulls Tessa into his arms, crushing her in a fierce hug.
“T… is that you? It has to be you. Holy fuck!”
T—that’s her codename. They came up with codenames after the third time they texted each other.
This is D. Dash is D.
And suddenly she understands why he never told her. Rockstars who share dickpics with strangers are risking a lot, but as long as they were using codenames—and D is the one who insisted on calling them ‘codenames’ because he is, and always will be, a fucking dork—he was free to send her whatever he wanted. Every naughty suggestion, every pic. They never showed each other their faces. It was safe.
Tessa wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him back. “You fucker!” she says, but there’s no heat in it.
He just laughs.
D’s body is warm already, flushed from the lights onstage. Tessa can feel his muscles beneath the shirt, feel his back taut with the strength hidden there, as he holds her tight enough to let her know that he’s not letting go, but clearly not as tight as he could. He could probably crush her with this bear hug, but instead, she feels warm and happy because he’s D and he’s here, finally.
When he pulls away, she takes a moment to really look at his face. He’s handsome, with a strong jaw and light, sparkling blue eyes that crinkle at the corners when he looks at her.
“You’re fucking beautiful,” he says, shouting because the crowd is screaming. And when did the crowd get there? Tessa had almost forgotten that they were there. “It’s not even fair!”
“Fair?” Tessa shouts back. “You want to talk fair… you’re a hot as fuck rockstar?”
He laughs. Tessa hadn’t realized until now how much she’d been looking forward to hearing that laugh. He pulls her in for another hug, and she nearly gasps out loud when she feels a distinct bulge in his jeans. Not that he’s hard, he doesn’t need to be. With equipment like that, he just needs to press against someone for them to know that he’s there.
Goddamn…
“Sorry, folks,” the singer—Logan. It’s Logan, D’s brother—says into the microphone. “Dash is just having a bit of a reunion right now. But he needs to put the pretty girl down and come back on stage.” The last part sounding more like a command than anything.
Dash’s shoulders heave with laughter under Tessa’s hands. She lays her head in the crook of his neck, just for a moment, before tearing herself away. He’s so strong, he could easily hold her in place. But he doesn’t.
“Go,” she says, shoving his chest and meeting dense but pliant muscle. “Go… we’ll talk in a bit.”
Dash is still grinning as he nods, eager, like a puppy. But then something changes in his eyes and they go from sparkling blue to dark as the deepest ocean. He reaches up to cup her cheeks, holding her in place and leans over to whisper huskily in her ear, “Don’t you ever take your eyes off of me. Okay?”
Tessa feels his voice shuddering through her and thinks, not if my life depended on it.
But she doesn’t say anything. She waits until he pulls away and looks at her one last time, and then Tessa nods. He grins again, and the dark ocean is gone. Then he’s dropping his hands and turning around to scramble back onstage.
Tessa puts her hand on her chest, admires his ass in his jeans, before sitting back down. It’s only when she’s sitting that she realizes she’s throbbing.
Holy shit, when did that happen?
Immediately, her arm is snatched by Jackie.
“Explain!” her sister shouts as the crowd cheers Dash. “Now!”
“I didn’t know it was him—”
“How do you know Dash Todd?”
“He’s my friend—”
“You’re special friends with the guitarist from BLACK LILITH?” Jackie shouts.
“It’s a long story—”
“I can’t even! I have lost my ability to even!”
And then the music starts and Tessa, dutifully, turns away from Jackie to direct her gaze squarely at Dash. Dash, who has his guitar slung over his shoulders again and is picking through a series of scales. His eyes are on her as well. Even though she knows that the speakers are all over the arena, she feels like the music he’s making i
s being directed at her.
“Thank you for gracing us with your presence, you little shit,” Logan says, giving his brother a wave. Dash shrugs and doesn’t take his eyes off of Tessa. She couldn’t tear her own eyes away if she wanted to. “Now, let’s do this.”
The crowd screams. Dash runs his fingers over a riff and Slate—because it has to be Slate on drums, from everything D said about him who else would it be—picks up a beat. Then Logan is singing.
I found my way home the night before last,
thinking back on you, standing in the crowd, shouting out to me.
Holding me up above the waves,
so I can breathe and sing and laugh.
The crowd screams so loudly that Tessa has to cover her ears, but she still won’t look away from Dash. Beside her, Jackie is up out of her seat and bopping in time with the music. Tessa can see her lips moving out of the corner of her eye as Jackie sings along.
Tessa keeps watching Dash, but she notices little things about the other men on stage. Like the way Slate thrashes at the drums with the reckless abandon that D had said was typical of the man. He’d described Slate as ‘the best backup, totally reliable, but an asshole’ and looking at him now she can see what he means.
Tommy, the bass player, was described as ‘a cinnamon roll who could definitely kill you’ and she’d had to go to Jackie to have that translated into normal human speech. Apparently, it meant someone adorable who could beat you up. The bass player is the most adorable person on stage, so it has to be him. He just smiles through the song, nodding his head in time with the beat as he plucks at the bass and looks offstage every few moments like he’s searching for someone.