by Hazel Jacobs
She delays looking at Tommy. When he climbed into the limo, she got an eyeful of his ass in dark jeans, and she knows that the rest of him would look good enough to eat as well. He’s sitting across from her now, next to Dash and Slate, while Logan slides in between Mikayla and the door so that the two girls are side by side.
Sure enough, when Sersha finally raises her eyes to look at the bass player, she takes in his tight black vest and a purple button-down, his hair artfully tousled and his blue eyes bright. He looks lean and casual, but with an air of elegance that can’t possibly be faked. Sersha spends so long taking him in that by the time she looks back at his eyes, she realizes that he’s watching her as well. He seems to be taking in her dress and hair, lingering over her hands which are folded in her lap. Sersha needs to concentrate to keep herself from fidgeting.
“You look nice,” Tommy says simply. Sersha feels herself blushing.
“You look like an elf queen!” Dash says, leaning back in his seat and putting up two thumbs. “And Mik… you’re looking gorgeous as well.”
“Thank you, Dash,” replies Mikayla.
The limo takes them to the gala. Sersha hardly notices. The men of Black Lilith put her at ease almost immediately with their light bickering and half-hearted rehearsing of the song they’d all learned the week before in that session she’d sat in on. They had played together for so long that the music they performed felt natural, even when they were encountering a song for the first time.
When they arrive at the gala, Mikayla whips her phone out and sends a text.
“Jack and Finn are already here,” she says.
“Who are Jack and Finn?” Sersha asks.
“Our security,” Tommy tells her. He leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “Mik got them for us after the ‘incident.’”
Sersha is about to ask before she remembers the knife attack. She glances over at Logan and catches him frowning at his brother. Sersha couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Dash. He’s like a kitten or a one-legged duck—harmless but adorable.
Within moments, the limo door is opened and two toneless men are standing on either side of it. Sersha can see flashing lights outside and hear screams from the crowd. Her bubbles come to the surface, making her lips stretch in a huge smile and her fingers clench with excitement. The cold air from outside hits her like a slap in the face, but it’s still no worse than a bad night in Galway. So it’s nowhere near enough to ruin the high that she’s starting to feel.
Logan climbs out of the limo first, ducking his head so that he doesn’t scrape it on the limo’s roof. The moment he’s out of the vehicle, the crowd erupts. Women and girls start screaming his name over and over. Mikayla immediately follows, and Logan holds his hand out to draw her onto the bright red carpet at his feet. The screaming of the crowd starts to resemble a hornet’s nest.
“Right, let’s do this,” Dash says, clapping his hands together.
He slides out of the limo after his brother. Slate follows him with a quick wink to Sersha. She lingers behind, unsure of whether she should get out with the band or wait until they’ve gotten a bit of the way down the red carpet before she gets out.
She looks to Tommy for guidance. He seems to understand what she’s thinking because he gestures toward the door.
“After you,” he says.
“Such a gentleman,” says Sersha.
As she moves forward, she hears Tommy slyly reply, “Maybe I just wanted to get a look at that dress from the back.”
She feels the blood rushing to her cheeks, but she covers it up by shaking her ass and looking over her shoulder.
“Feast your eyes, boyo!”
Tommy laughs at her. She loves that laugh. It might just be her favorite thing about him.
The security guards, Jack and Finn, nod to her as she climbs out of the limo, completely unperturbed by the fact that they have six charges instead of five. Sersha knows that Mikayla must have told them that Sersha would be with the band, but she gets the impression from their blandly expectant faces that they wouldn’t blink an eye at a hundred women climbing out of that limo.
When Sersha is out, she stares around at the venue. The flashing lights turn out to be paparazzi lining the red carpet, taking pictures of everyone as they walk past. Screaming at the women to pose and look at their cameras. Sersha feels Tommy climb out of the limo and invade her space, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder, and she instantly relaxes. The lights around them are hot, but his cool hands keep her grounded.
“Just keep that smile on,” Tommy says, whispering into her ear so quietly that she has to tilt her head to catch his words. “We’ll get through this.”
His lips are so pink and kissable that it takes her a second to hear his words. When she does, she nods to him. She thinks that she must be grinning like a madwoman, her cheeks are already starting to hurt as she slides her hand into the crook of Tommy’s elbow and allows him to lead her down the red carpet.
The crowd is hidden behind the line of paparazzi, but once they get further down the carpet, the crowd starts to take over. Most of them are young women and teenagers. They have huge banners with Black Lilith’s name on them, band merch and tears in their eyes as the men move forward to start signing autographs and taking selfies. Mikayla takes over from Tommy, holding Sersha’s hand in the crook of her elbow and watching fondly as the band moves down the line of the crowd.
Dash seems to attract the younger girls. They scream in his face and jump up and down as he hugs them and takes their phones to get the selfies that they want. Slate moves straight to the women who are shivering in less clothing than seems appropriate for a February in Manhattan. Sersha feels goosebumps rising on her arms just looking at them. Slate takes some initiative and immediately pulls a couple of them into a hug.
“Typical,” Mikayla says, rolling her eyes. There’s no judgment in her gaze, though. Just fondness.
Tommy seems to be drawn to the women with more clothes and notebooks clutched in their hands. They bob up and down and excitedly offer him their books, opened at certain pages, and Tommy takes each of them, reads, and nods thoughtfully before saying something that makes the women swoon. Logan, meanwhile, makes his way methodically through each of the fans in the crowd, both the younger women, the notebook women and the girls dressed for Rio in July.
“They bring their poems for him,” Mikayla says, leaning into Sersha and nodding toward Tommy. “He always reads them.”
If Sersha hadn’t been smiling already, she would be now. Tommy’s altruism is once again proving too much for her. She wishes that she could run over and pull him into a hug, or a kiss, or just take his hands and put them on her body. Because that kind and gentle smile that he wears when the women in the crowd offer him their work is damn near the most beautiful thing Sersha has ever seen. She knows just how hard it is to have someone you admire read your work. Tommy seems to know exactly what to do to put these women at ease, encouraging them with every movement, smiling like there’s nothing in the world he’d rather do than stand in the cold and critique a stranger’s work.
Sersha watches Tommy a while longer until she realizes that Mikayla is shivering next her. She squeezes Mikayla’s elbow. “Maybe we should go on ahead and make sure that everything is set up for them?”
Mikayla nods gratefully. “Definitely,” she says. She puts two fingers into her mouth and blows a loud whistle.
Logan turns immediately. Mikayla mimes at herself and Sersha then points at the gilded entrance to the venue which waits at the end of the red carpet. Logan looks from the entrance to Mikayla and nods before turning back to the fans.
“Okay, let’s go,” Mikayla says, pulling Sersha forward.
The band plays an incredible show. They open with the song that Sersha and Tommy wrote together, and Sersha gets to watch as the gala crowd freaks out over it. Half of the audience has their phones out, recording the whole thing, and when she whips her own phone out she finds #BlackLilith and
#ThanksALot trending on Twitter. A grainy video of the band’s new song is making the rounds on Reddit.
“They love it,” she says disbelievingly.
Beside her, Mikayla squeezes her hand. “Of course they do!” she says.
The gala is being held in a beautiful old theater. There’s a chandelier hanging above Sersha that looks about the size of a small whale and will probably kill everyone in the room if it falls. Black Lilith is playing on stage while the crowd mills around underneath them, already reaching for their wallets, in such a good mood that they’ll probably end up giving their life savings to whoever asks first.
When the band finishes their song, they play an encore with Royal Blood’s Little Monster. People start to dance and Sersha wants to join them, but she’s glued to the spot by the sight of Tommy playing on the raised stage.
His eyes are closed and there’s a soft smile on his face. He looks like he’s losing himself in the music, as though he’s forgotten that he’s playing in front of hundreds of people as if all that matters is the sound that he and the rest of the band is making. Dash is strutting across the stage bending his strings and laughing wildly. Logan makes love to his mic stand and only has eyes for Mikayla, while Slate bashes away at his drums, a huge grin on his face as he sings along with Logan. But Tommy looks transcendent. He looks like there’s nowhere in the world he would rather be than on stage with a bass in his hands.
Then he opens his eyes and they fall on her. Sersha knows that she’s smiling impossibly wide, dipping her hips in time with the beat even if she isn’t dancing, and she doesn’t care that he just caught her staring. His soft smile grows wider and he nods to her. Then he turns in time for Dash to go whizzing past. Tommy laughs at his bandmate and allows Dash to pull him into the weird, half-dance thing that he’s got going. Sersha laughs from where she’s watching in the crowd.
“Come on!” she says, grabbing Mikayla and ignoring her surprised squeak as she pulls her onto the dancefloor.
It’s just as if she were alone on her roof. Sersha accepted a long time ago that she isn’t cut out for proper dancing, even her jigs are a mess of flailing limbs. What she lacks in technique and sexiness, she makes up for with enthusiasm. And by the time Logan is shouting “so come out and get some!” Sersha has Mikayla laughing and dancing with her, only half-aware that people are giving the two women a wide berth.
When the song stops, the crowd calls for another encore.
“Just one more,” Logan says into the mic, after a brief glance at his bandmates. “Then we’ve gotta get off the stage so that ya’ll can really get this party started.” The crowd cheers. “Don’t forget to give generously. This is a great cause.”
Then he dips his head, thinks for a moment, and leans over the mic, singing…
We can’t trust anyone on earth,
What’s special to me is we know each other’s worth,
“Motherfucker,” Mikayla whispers next to Sersha.
Sersha glances quickly at her, but there’s a smile on her lips. An exasperated smile.
“Isn’t this—”
“Yeah,” Mikayla replies, ducking her head self-consciously and reaching up to touch the spot on her shoulder where Sersha knows a hickey is hidden. “This is the song he wrote for me.”
Sersha gives her a blinding smile. “Do you think he’ll mind if we dance?” she asks.
Mikayla shakes her head and Sersha pulls her into a slow-dance. She allows Mikayla to take the lead because Sersha certainly has no idea what she’s doing, and Mikayla looks over Sersha’s shoulder at the stage as they sway together. Sersha lets herself get lost in the sound of Logan’s lyrics, so different from anything Tommy had ever written for the band. Logan pours so much emotion into the words that they seem to take on a life of their own.
Sersha can remember where she was when she first heard this song. She was back in her mam’s studio, fighting gently with a young singer whose lyrics were, frankly, shit. Sersha had been trying to guide the woman toward some better rhymes. The woman was having none of it. Eventually, she’d gone into the booth to record, and Sersha had whipped her phone out, desperate for something to drown out the drivel that had been coming through the speakers.
She’d found the video of Black Lilith’s latest tour stop on YouTube. She’d watched as Logan had dedicated the song to a woman he couldn’t tell his real feelings to. When the song was over, she’d watched a brunette in a suit run onto the stage, meet Logan in the middle, and kiss him like she’d die without his lips on hers.
The crowd had erupted, the person who’d been recording shook the camera so badly that Sersha hadn’t been able to make anything out after that. But it was a hell of a way to introduce a song.
As the song winds down, Sersha feels Mikayla’s shoulders starting to shake and she clings to her more tightly.
You mean everything so sorry if I'm clingy,
When I'm with you, it's like life is so easy.
I've been holding back from telling you so long,
We confide in each other that's why our bond is so strong.
I know I am not wrong.
And I want to say thanks for making me belong.
When Logan stops singing, the crowd erupts with cheers. Mikayla pulls away from Sersha and applauds as well. She wipes away happy tears as she does. Sersha turns to the stage in time to see Logan mouthing the words, ‘love you’ at Mikayla. Sersha’s hands start to go numb with how hard she’s clapping.
The men of Black Lilith slap each other on the back, enjoying the applause. Then they leave their instruments on the stage and make their way to the edge, climbing down straight into the crowd. Mikayla goes directly to Logan, allowing him to kiss her right there in the middle of the crowd, which of course only makes people clap louder. Slate, Dash, and Tommy move around the happy couple, shaking hands with people in the audience and making their way slowly to Sersha.
Dash gets there first.
“That was bloody brilliant,” she says.
There’s a wide grin on his lips as he nods. “Thanks,” he says. “Logan’s a big sap. As soon as we got the second encore, I knew he’d want to play Mik’s song.”
“It’s lovely.”
Slate comes and slings an arm around her shoulder. “Ever had a man write a song for you, Galway Girl?”
“Yes,” Sersha replies. Then she shudders. “It was rubbish. Killed any affection I’d had for the man.”
Slate and Dash both laugh. Tommy wanders over at the sound and grins. “What’s funny?”
“Sersha’s love interests writing songs for her.”
Tommy winces in sympathy. “You have to stop yourself from giving them a critique,” he says to her.
She nods and yelps when Slate suddenly drops his arm from around her shoulder, jostling her out of the way so that he can reach a waitress with a tray full of champagne flutes. Sersha watches as the man gives the waitress a dazzling smile and come hither eyes. She comes hither, bringing the tray with her, and Sersha, Dash, Tommy and Slate each take one. Mikayla and Logan have come up for air and wander over as well, also taking a flute each.
“To Black Lilith!” Slate says.
“To Black Lilith!” the rest of them cheer.
They drink. Around them, the excitement from the gig seems to be dying down, the applause and cheering drifting off into chatting and laughing as the people in the room talk amongst themselves. During the show, Sersha had almost forgotten that this is a gala and that she’s in a formal dress with hair that took forever to get right, and that she’d been surrounded by people in the same situation. It had just felt like a regular gig, but now with the house lights up on full and the band off the stage, she can see the women—mostly in their forties and fifties—with the massive diamonds that Mikayla had promised her, being swung around the room on the arms of graying men. There were younger people as well, in their twenties and thirties. They look just as at ease as their elders as they walk through the room, introducing themselves to e
ach other with a handshake and conspiratorial wink.
“Trust fund babies,” Tommy says, leaning over to speak into Sersha’s ear.
“I would have thought they’d be more into Mozart.”
“They’re probably telling themselves that they only hired Black Lilith because we’re so popular,” Tommy tells her. “Just to prove that they could get us. Later on, they’ll tell each other that they were only cheering because they didn’t want us to feel bad about how mainstream our music is.”
“Sounds like a tedious life.”
Tommy grins. “To unironic enthusiasm!” he says, raising his glass to hers.
“To dancing like a loon in public,” she replies, clinking their glasses together. Her bubbles are fizzing so hard that she thinks she might start vibrating.
They sip. “I liked your dancing,” Tommy says.
Sersha ducks her head so that her traitorous pale complexion won’t show her blush. “You’d be the first.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
He’s not in the same league as Slate, who already has the attention of two lovely waitresses and is getting some thoughtful looks from a third. But Tommy has this way of making Sersha feel as though his interest is genuine, as though the fact that he’s clearly well-practiced in flirting wouldn’t even be relevant unless she were around to show off to. It’s enough to go to Sersha’s head.
“I like watching you play,” she tells him. “You look like you’re in your own little world up there. It must be a nice world.”
“It usually is,” he replies. “Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”
She feels a wide smile growing on her lips again. “First, I think you’ll need to be showing her,” she says, and ducks away just as a sixty-year-old woman in a dress made for a thirteen-year-old elbows her way through the crowd, her eyes fixated on Tommy.
Tommy takes a moment to flash Sersha a look of betrayal before plastering a grateful smile on his face. He turns to the woman and shakes her hand when she arrives. If Sersha didn’t know any better, she would think that there’s nothing he’d like more than to meet her.