by Hazel Jacobs
As she’s walking toward the tents, Sersha hears the familiar deep tone of Tommy’s voice. She pauses mid-step and turns in the direction of a clump of trees nearby.
Did she really just hear Tommy’s voice coming from there?
Why the hell isn’t he getting ready with Black Lilith?
She shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the sound of the crowd, but her mind has become acutely attuned to Tommy. She could identify even the faintest note of his voice carried on the wind.
Sersha finds herself walking toward the clump of trees. As she gets closer, she hears another voice—Danielle’s—and slips in next to a tree, peering around it to see what’s going on.
Tommy stands in the middle of a small clearing, half-melted snow and mud at his feet, a heavy black jacket around his shoulders. He’s got a beanie on, his floppy hair sticking out from underneath it in a way that it’s unfairly adorable. His cheeks are flushed and his nose is red with cold.
Opposite him, standing so close that they’re practically nose-to-nose, is Danielle. She looks gorgeous in a skin-tight white snow suit. Sersha expects the pang of jealousy, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Maybe she ought to go and leave them to it. She doesn’t want to stand around like a creeper while the man she fantasizes about gets back together with his ex.
“You did miss me,” Danielle says. She’s smiling, but it’s triumphant and it makes Sersha want to take a bath in hand sanitizer. “You did.”
“Of course I did,” Tommy replies. He’s not smiling—he looks angry. The angriest that Sersha has ever seen him. “You left me. Deleted me on Facebook. You acted like you didn’t care—”
“I cared,” she interrupts. She leans forward as though she means to catch his lips in a kiss, but Tommy pulls away by taking a step back.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” he says.
“It was Logan who told me to leave,” Danielle tells him. “I would never have left you, Tommy.”
Tommy’s frown consumes his whole face. “Me or my bank account?”
“I never took from you,” she says.
“You take from my friends, you take from me,” Tommy replies. “For God’s sake, Danielle… did you just… What? Expect that I wouldn’t find out? Or that I’d let you keep doing it? Just… why?” he asks suddenly. “Why’d you do it, Danielle? Why’d you lie to us?”
A cold breeze blows through the clearing. Sersha feels it slide down the back of her jacket, making her shiver, but she’s too enraptured with what’s going on between Tommy and Danielle to think about the cold.
Danielle shakes her head at him like she’s surprised that he’s even asking the question.
“What did Logan tell you?” she asks.
“What does it matter?” Tommy asks. “Why do you keep asking what Logan said? Trying to check your story?”
“Trying to figure out how much he lied,” Danielle counters. She reaches up and puts her hand on his cheek. Tommy flinches, but then he settles into the touch. “Tommy, baby, you know me.”
“I knew you,” Tommy replies. He sounds so tired, and it breaks Sersha’s heart. “What do you want, Danielle?”
“I want us to go back to the way things were,” she says. “I made a mistake. I know I did wrong. I just want you to forgive me.”
The trees rustle above them. A stray snowflake falls onto Danielle’s cheek. Tommy reaches up to wipe it away with his thumb. When she moves in to kiss him this time, Tommy lets her. Sersha has to look away.
Behind the grandstand, Sersha can hear the crowd getting pumped up for Lost in Time’s first performance. Sersha wonders idly if they are missing their manager.
The sound of lips smacking breaks off and Tommy barks out harshly, “Stop it!”
Sersha turns back to look at the clearing. Danielle is a step away from Tommy now, his hands outstretched as though he’s pushed her. When she tries to step in and kiss him again, he puts his hands on his shoulders and holds her at arm’s length.
“I said stop, Danielle.”
“Tommy—”
“You haven’t even said you’re sorry!” Tommy says. “Every time I ask you why you did it you dodge the question. You can’t… you can’t just come back here and kiss me and pretend that everything is okay now. Goddammit Danielle, I can’t keep living like this!”
“Living without me?” Danielle asks. “Baby, you can have me. I’m right here—”
“No!” Tommy yells. He backs up so that his back is pressed against a tree. “I can’t keep looking over my shoulder and wondering why you’re back and why you’re acting this way. I don’t trust you, Danielle.”
Danielle squints at him. She looks like she’s thinking fast. Sersha wants to step out from behind the trees, to intervene, to tell Tommy that he doesn’t have to stay and listen if he doesn’t want to. She can see the way his face has scrunched up and the hurt playing over his features. He looks lost. Sersha wants to run in there, take him by the arm and pull him away.
Danielle steps closer to Tommy again, crowding him in against the tree.
“I’m not asking you to trust me,” she says. Her voice is husky and deep and full of promises.
Sersha takes a few quick steps backward, until she’s about six feet away from the trees, and calls out, “Tommy?”
She hears a gasp from within the cluster. Sersha deliberately makes her footsteps loud as she approaches the trees again. When she gets there, she finds that Danielle has retreated to a safe distance, looking murderous. Tommy looks confused. His cheeks are red and his eyes are bloodshot as though he’s desperately holding back tears.
Sersha plasters a bubbly smile on her face. “There you are. Did you know Mikayla’s looking for you? Lost in Time starts soon, you know.”
“He knows,” Danielle snaps. “Leave us alone.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Tommy snaps back. Danielle sends him an incredulous look, which he ignores. He’s watching Sersha with an unreadable expression. “Sorry, Sersha… I didn’t realize we were gone so long.”
“No stress,” Sersha replies. She smiles her biggest smile, trying to get him to smile back, but his lips remain downturned. “Come on, if you’re coming. Or did you need another minute?”
“Yes, he does.”
“No, I don’t,” Tommy says. He looks over at Danielle and Sersha catches his lip quivering. “We’re done here,” he says firmly.
Sersha doesn’t look at Danielle. She doesn’t need to look at her to guess that a look of unbridled fury is currently pointed her way. Tommy steps through the clearing, his boots squelching in the mud, and offers Sersha an arm.
“Let’s go…” he glances back at Danielle, before turning away from her pleading eyes, “…Sersha?”
Sersha takes Tommy’s arm and allows him to lead her toward Black Lilith’s tent.
Sersha watches the show with a lump in her throat.
Lost in Time play first. They’re a good band, but they’re not on Black Lilith’s level. The fans aren’t assholes though, they listen to Lost in Time, applaud every song, and generally support the performance even though everyone in the audience knows that they’re not what the audience came to see. When Black Lilith is announced, the crowd goes wild.
Sersha watches from side stage as the men saunter into the crowd’s line of vision. Logan in his low-cut jeans. This is the first time Sersha has ever seen the man in long sleeves, covering his tattoos and probably breaking a thousand hearts at the same time. Dash is in his usual Superman shirt with the sleeves rolled up despite the weather, while Slate is wearing an ugly knitted sweater over jeans that look like they were painted on. He twirls his drumsticks in the air while the crowd applauds the band.
Tommy is the last to go onstage. If Sersha didn’t know to look, she wouldn’t have noticed his slumped shoulders, the way he moves sluggishly toward his instrument, and the fact that he’d needed his concealer reapplied under his eyes. They’re still red.
“Don’t tell anyone
,” he’d told Sersha as they walked toward the tent. He’d wiped at his face and pretended that he had something in his eye. “Danielle just wanted to talk. It’s not important.”
Sersha had promised, then promptly broken that promise by pulling Mikayla aside and telling her exactly what she’d seen. She spared no details, not even the fact that she was hiding behind a tree at the time and listening in on the conversation like a big old creeper.
“Shit,” Mikayla had said, rubbing her temples as she’d absorbed Sersha’s story. “She kissed him?”
“He pushed her away,” Sersha had replied. “But yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
Sersha had sighed. “Honestly, Mik, I don’t care about me right now. Tommy seemed really broken up and Danielle’s only making things worse by pushing this.”
Which was almost a lie, but not quite. Sure, Sersha wasn’t thrilled at the thought of Tommy kissing another woman, in the same way she hadn’t been thrilled when she saw him with the redhead, or woken him up that morning from what had clearly been a one-night stand. But this went beyond her own jealousy. Tommy had looked like he was in physical pain as he and Sersha had walked back to the tent. It was awful to see.
Mikayla had agreed. “You’re right. Leave this with me. I’ll talk to Logan. I won’t tell him how I know…” she’d reassured when she saw Sersha’s face, “…I’ll just hint that Tommy could use a friend right now.”
Sersha would put money on Mikayla telling Logan everything.
But that’s beyond Sersha’s control. She’s told Mikayla about what Danielle did, and now she watches as Tommy slowly loses himself to the rhythm of the music as the band begins to play. The lights are high, illuminating everything on stage from the threads in Slate’s sweater to the shiny bedazzled trim on Dash’s jeans. The audience is already screaming. Sersha knows from her own concert going experience that many of those people will have lost their voices by the time intermission rolls around.
Tommy begins playing jerkily, technically hitting all the notes but doing it in a way that makes it seem like it’s causing him trouble. Like he’d rather be anywhere than there. It isn’t until the third song, ‘A Little Bit of Everything,’ that he starts to loosen up, closing his eyes and moving in time with his bass line the way he had at the charity gala. Sersha grins when she sees that.
The fourth song is a cover of Fun’s ‘We Are Young,’ which sets the crowd off all over again. Nothing gets a bunch of hipsters up and dancing like that song. Logan, as usual, makes love to the microphone as he croons the lyrics, “…my friends are in the bathroom, getting higher than the Empire State. My lover, he’s waiting for me…”
Sersha is proud of him for keeping the pronouns the same. If there’s anyone in the world more open and comfortable with their sexuality than the men of Black Lilith, Sersha hasn’t met them yet. Beside her, Mikayla watches the band play with her hand on her chest and a smile on her lips. She’s only got eyes for Logan. Sersha’s eyes flit between the men, though she will admit to staring at Tommy the most. Relishing in the way that he enjoys himself.
After the fifth song, Sersha feels a hand curl around her elbow.
“Can we chat?” Danielle asks, showing Sersha all of her teeth in a smile that makes Sersha feel like a minnow in the path of a shark.
Danielle doesn’t wait for an answer. She pulls Sersha backstage, behind the massive metal structure that holds the grandstand together. Mikayla doesn’t notice, she’s too engrossed in watching the show. Sersha can feel Danielle’s nails digging into her flesh as she’s pulled along, and she quickly sizes Danielle up. The woman is curvier, but Sersha might have more muscle.
Could Sersha win in a fight with her?
Sersha’s only ever been in one fight before, with a girl named Chloe in year ten. Sersha had won that fight, but she’d had to resort to biting.
Danielle drags her around the back of the stage where there’s privacy. The music is dimmed but still very present, and the lights from the stage reach them enough to cast a white glow on both of their faces.
Then Danielle rounds on Sersha. “What did you hear?” she demands.
“When?” Sersha asks.
“Don’t waste my time, sweetheart,” Danielle snaps.
Sersha raises an eyebrow. Maybe she couldn’t take Danielle, but as Sersha starts to feel the anger building up in her chest, she thinks that she would at least get a few good hits in.
Isn’t that what fights are all about?
“Call me sweetheart one more time and I’ll feed you that Gucci jacket,” Sersha tells her. Mikayla wouldn’t mind if Sersha borrowed the threat. “Which looks great, by the way.”
Danielle’s hackles raised. “Just tell me what you fucking heard.”
“I heard nothing,” Sersha says. “Why? Are you worried I heard something that might make you look like a shitty person?”
“You could take it out of context.”
“Maybe,” says Sersha. “But the band’s already explained your history to me, so I doubt it.”
“Everyone’s got a story,” Danielle growls, stamping her foot on the slushy ground. “But has anyone asked me for my side?”
Sersha cocks her head. “Well, what is your side?”
Because Sersha is all for defending a fellow woman if she’s been wronged or misrepresented. If Logan got the wrong end of the stick, or if there are circumstances that explain Danielle’s behavior, then she’s happy to hear them. Even if she has seen what Danielle has done to Tommy. Even if Danielle refuses to give Tommy the closure he needs, or explain herself to him. If Danielle has a reason for why she did what she did, then Sersha will listen.
But Danielle just sneers at her. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Why not try me?”
“Why bother?” Danielle says. “You’ve already made up your mind.”
“I’ve just told you twice that I’m happy to listen,” says Sersha. “Either tell me your side or stop fucking offering to.”
Danielle crosses her arms. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Throwing her arms up in exasperation, Sersha turns to leave, only to feel those nails digging into her again—hard enough to leave bruises.
Danielle is hissing through her teeth, and there’s an almost manic look in her eyes as she glares Sersha down. “Listen,” she says. Sersha curls her fingers into a fist. “I saw you hanging all over him at the gala. Tommy is spoken for.”
“Is that so?” Sersha asks, feeling as though she’s been thrown back into high school. She’s never thought that she’d still be fighting over boys as a grown woman. “If Tommy is spoken for, then you shouldn’t need to worry. I’m sure he would be faithful to his girlfriend if he had one.”
“You have no idea what we’ve been through,” Danielle tells her. Her voice is rising as though she’s in the middle of a play and this is her big scene. But at the same time her eyes roll around, searching for any potential witnesses. She needn’t bother—they’re alone. “You’re just going to confuse him—”
“Are you actually insane?” Sersha asks. “Or is this just a really good impression of a crazy person?”
Danielle draws her hand back. Her palm is out and her fingers are splayed. Sersha braces herself for the blow. Later on, when she’s explaining herself to Black Lilith, she’ll be able to say that Danielle struck first.
Everything about this conversation is making Sersha want to hit something—preferably the woman in front of her. She has never in her life been so angry. To have seen Danielle forcing her lips onto Tommy, to have seen her crowd him into a tree and try and force herself into his life at every turn, for her to turn around and accuse Sersha of being unwanted. Sersha may be willing to stand aside while Tommy sorts out his feelings about Danielle, but she’s not about to bow out just because Danielle has a problem. Quite the opposite in fact.
And if Danielle wants to get physical, then Sersha will give as good as she gets.
But the slap never comes. Danielle
seems to rethink her actions, slowly lowering her hand. Behind them, the music falls silent and the crowd cheers. Sersha can hear Logan greeting them, calling out for all the ladies to tell him if they’re having a good time. The crowd screams.
“Wise move,” Sersha says. The adrenaline is pumping so hard in her ears that she thinks her body might start floating at any moment.
Danielle bares her teeth again. “This isn’t over. Tommy is mine… I mean it. Stay away from him.”
Another song begins. It’s got a deep bassline that Sersha doesn’t recognize. Probably one of the band’s newest songs, one of the ones that Tommy had written before Sersha had been hired.
“Tommy is a grown man, not a pet,” Sersha says. She bares her teeth too, hoping that it has the same effect on Danielle. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I can destroy you,” says Danielle, her voice dangerously low. “You have no idea the connections that I have. I can sink your career before it even starts.”
“Really?” Sersha asks. She steps in real close so that she and Danielle are practically nose-to-nose, and Sersha is painfully reminded of the moment in the trees when Tommy and Danielle had been nose-to-nose. She remembers seeing Danielle kiss him. He’d pushed her away. “Prove it,” she finishes.
Danielle is so close that Sersha can smell her minty toothpaste and the heavy jasmine scent from her hair, overwhelming the natural smells of damp wood and cold air all around them. Danielle is breathing hard as though she’s run a marathon, but the flicker of doubt in her eyes is all Sersha needs to know that she’s been bluffing. As if there had ever been a doubt.
Sersha steps away and walks back up to the grandstand, ignoring the flutter in her chest from the still-surging adrenaline. She hadn’t managed to throw a punch. She’d thrown the gauntlet instead. Danielle had just threatened Sersha’s career, and whether she actually has the power to hurt Sersha’s career is something that she’ll just have to find out in time. Hopefully, Sersha’s work will speak for itself. If not, then she’ll have to hope that Black Lilith and Mikayla will be able to prevent any havoc that Danielle can wreak.