by Rae Kennedy
“I’m sure you’ll be great.”
He smiles, his hair perfectly disheveled, his brown eyes warm. “Doors open at seven-thirty but we should hit the stage about nine. Make sure to find us backstage before the show—I’m going to save you the best spot in the house.”
CHAPTER 8
The back hallways are a dimly lit maze, but I keep following the sound of the music. Logan was right, this pass literally gets me through any door, and the shower was magnificent. I’m wearing skinny jeans and a black tank top—am I underdressed? Should I have found some scissors and cut slits into the shirt or something? Do girls actually do that or am I just recalling stuff from movies?
Large men in black polos nod as I pass, showing them my badge. Other people rush around talking on phones and radios without giving me a second glance.
The music is louder. I can feel the bass, hear the drums. A big metal door with BACKSTAGE written on a plaque stands between me and the bands. I grip the cold metal handle and turn. It doesn’t move. It’s locked. Should I knock?
I knock.
I knock again harder. I’m sure no one can hear me—the music on the other side of the wall is too loud.
I feel so stupid, standing here alone. I’m not even sure how to get back out to the bus from here.
The door opens with a metallic screech before me. A tall guy with biceps the size of my head stands in the opening. I hold up my pass. He narrows his eyes.
“Gracie!” Logan runs up behind the massive guy and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
He ushers me in. The backstage area is cramped. Everything is black—the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the curtain separating us from the stage. There are all sorts of equipment, speakers, and scaffolding around the space.
I follow Logan up a short set of steps and then we are on the stage, just behind the curtain.
“Guys, she made it! We’re just about to go on. I was getting worried.”
I smile at him as we meet the other three.
Joey’s mohawk is styled so it sticks straight up, his My Little Pony T-shirt has the sleeves cut off so his colorful arms are on full display. Dean is wearing a black mesh tank top and I’m definitely not staring at his nipple rings through it. He has more metal in his face than usual. Small hoops cover the outside curve of his ears—he has extra rings and barbells and studs in his nose, eyebrows, and lips. He has rings on all of his fingers, his nails painted black.
Colin is standing the farthest away. He’s all in black, a long-sleeved Henley shirt and the same black ripped jeans from earlier.
“They’re wrapping up,” Colin says, looking beyond the curtain.
Then I realize the music has stopped. There’s screaming and clapping on the other side of the curtain and a guy yells to the crowd, “Have a good fucking night.”
Dean and Logan grab their instruments. Joey twirls his sticks and Colin gives them all nods.
“You ready for this?” Colin asks them.
They all grunt and put their foreheads together and I can barely hear Colin’s next words.
“We’re gonna kill it. Love you guys.”
They grunt some more, hitting each other on their backs.
Then guys are piling in from the stage—the opening act, I presume.
“Let’s go scope out tonight’s pussy,” one of the new guys says to his bandmate. He’s tall and lanky, his shirt drenched in sweat. Then he sees me and immediately strides over. “Who do we have here?”
Logan and Dean are instantly at my side. Joey stands behind me and Colin steps right in front of me, standing between me and Sweaty Guy.
“She’s with us.” Colin is eye-to-eye with him.
“All of you?” Sweaty Guy raises an eyebrow.
“Shut the fuck up,” Logan says.
Guys dressed in black are moving all around the stage, quickly switching out equipment and stealthily setting up speakers.
The rest of the other band, five in total, come to stand around Sweaty Guy, and my guys seem to close in around me. It’s sweet, actually, but it’s also making me a little claustrophobic.
I step forward and Colin side-steps, letting me pass. I don’t really want to touch Sweaty Guy, but I put my hand out to him anyway.
“I’m Gracie.”
“Jace.”
Jace shakes my hand. The smirk on his face is probably supposed to be cute or flirty, but it makes me feel weird.
“Are you going to be with us just tonight, Gracie?” He says my name slowly.
“She's traveling with us all summer,” Logan says. He looks weird, standing all upright instead of his usual casual stance.
Jace seems delighted by this news, complaining no one informed him they were keeping permanent groupies now.
“She’s not a groupie,” Colin and Logan say in unison.
The opening band’s name is apparently Donkey Lips—I don’t get it either. They all tell me their names while looking with various degrees of obviousness at my breasts. One of them goes by Boner, and there’s no way I’m going to remember the rest of their names after that, so they will hereby be referred to as Boner One, Boner Two, Boner Three, and Boner Four.
“You’re up,” a woman with a headset calls from somewhere out of my eyesight. Colin looks toward the stage, then back between me and the five guys from Donkey Lips, his jaw clenched.
“Here, real quick!” Logan places a light hand on my back and shows me to a little stool sitting off to the right. The guys from Donkey Lips walk off, disappearing in the dark hallway.
The stool is lined up perfectly so that I can see the entire stage, and I admire how the bright lights reflect off Joey’s iridescent drums. I sit, completely concealed behind the curtain. I can see about half of the crowd, which seems to be getting restless. It’s not a huge venue, but it’s packed.
Joey steps on stage to applause as he sits behind his kit, inspecting the surfaces and cracking his neck. Dean walks toward the front next, and the roar from the audience grows. Then Colin strides up front and center and the crowd goes crazy. People hoot and yell, women scream in the front row, and more push their way through to get closer.
“See, best seat in the house.” With a wink, Logan runs on to the stage to join the other members of Wicked Road.
Their set is a blur. I don’t register where one song ends and another begins—I only feel the music, the energy of the crowd, the rhythm of the bass, the melody of Logan’s guitar, Joey’s masterful beats, and Colin’s voice. On stage, he’s truly enigmatic. He’s constantly moving. At times he hunches over to belt out guttural notes, neck veins straining, screaming, growling, his face twisting as he emotes the lyric. Then other times, his voice is soft, smooth, and beautiful as it comes out of his perfect mouth, his face serene.
The audience eats it all up, shouting out the lyrics, dancing, moving, moshing. I see more than one pair of breasts flashed throughout the show. A little over halfway through their set, Colin pulls his shirt over his head and wipes sweat off his forehead before tossing it into the crowd. Women scream. Like, bloody murder scream.
He takes a sip of water from the bottle on the side of the stage. His stomach flexes as he gulps it down, and I take in all of his lean muscle and the giant chest tattoo of an eagle, wings spread across his chest.
And then it’s over and the guys are hustling off stage. Logan grabs my hand and I’m whisked down the hall with them to a small lounge where the boys from Donkey Lips are already hanging. There’s a table off to the side of the room with bottled water, little bags of chips, and sub sandwiches. The guys are practically yelling at each other as they shove chips in their faces and drink from forty-ounce beers. Not water drinkers, apparently.
“We’ll be right back.” Logan steers me toward the food table.
The sandwiches don’t look particularly special, but I’m starving so I eat two of the turkey avocado ones, hoping that if my mouth is full I won’t be expected to talk to Jace or any of the Boners. Luckily, they’re preoccupied gett
ing drunk, and I stay mostly off their radar until my boys come back in. They’re all freshly showered and changed.
Logan walks over to me with a smile and soon the table is wrecked, food devoured.
“Ready for this?” Dean asks.
Joey grabs the remaining two bags of chips, stuffing them in his pockets. “Ready.”
Colin sighs and heads toward the door. “Let’s get it over with.”
We all follow him out. I have no idea where we’re going. The halls are all so dark and there are so many turns, like why? We’re joined by several big guys in black and the lady with the headset again. We’re walking fast and she’s talking to Colin but I can’t hear. Donkey Lips guys are too rowdy.
“Hey, after-party in our room! You coming?” Jace yells over our little caravan. The other guys all seem stoked on this idea.
“Sure,” Joey says.
“Maybe, I like to keep my options open.” Dean plays with his tongue piercing, twisting it with his teeth.
“Hell yeah, I’m in,” Logan calls over to Jace. He turns to me. “You want to come?” We’re still walking briskly, being ushered closer and closer to the exit.
I’m a little out of breath. After-party? This is what I signed up for, right?
“Sure.”
Logan tells me to stick close to the security guys, and the one with the enormous biceps gives me a little nod in acknowledgment right before the big metal doors open and we are swept outside.
It’s dark outside and cars whiz past on the street. The air is cooling off and smells faintly of cigarettes and asphalt. There’s a small crowd of twenty or thirty people outside the back door—lots of women. Biceps security guy hovers by me and keeps me near the building, staying between me and the fans.
The guys go up to the crowd. I can’t make out individual conversations over the ruckus and occasional screams. Girls reach out to touch the guys and grab their shirts. There are lashes batted and body parts exposed for the guys to sign—and they sign every stomach, boob, and butt like this is an everyday normal thing.
Jace and the Boners take special attention of some of the girls, whispering in their ears and touching their shoulders. Logan is his normal, outgoing self, giving out high fives and winks to everyone. Joey stands a little back, shy and pink-faced the whole time. Dean has disappeared. And Colin is signing some girl’s hip and then he smiles at her.
He smiles.
Like, a real smile with teeth and everything. I already feel this gravitational pull around him, like a moon orbiting a planet, but when Colin smiles, he's the sun. He gave it so easily you’d think he smiles all the time. All I’ve seen him do these last few days is brood in dark corners and look bored or annoyed. What did she do to earn a smile?
“Come on.” Logan waves me over with a huge smile and I scurry over to him.
The crowd is starting to disperse and he lays a protective arm around my shoulders. Several girls are plucked out of the group by Jace and the Boners (that really should have been their band name) and we all start moving down the street.
“Where are we going?”
“Hotel, just over there.”
“Hotel?”
“Yeah. We’ll sleep on the bus on travel days—which will be most days—but our show tomorrow night is only a couple hours away, so the label’s paying for a hotel tonight.”
We’re surrounded by people—Joey is near my right and I recognize Jace in front of us walking with two girls, an arm around both of them. We’re a tiny, noisy swarm as we cross a five-lane boulevard and reach the hotel. It’s in a tall building and it looks fancy.
Everyone runs and giggles and shoves into the elevators, getting stern looks from the front desk. We ride up to the sixth floor, becoming a loud mob in the corridor. Then Colin is walking toward us from the other direction.
“Hey! Wolfe!” Jace gives him a high five, which Colin glumly returns.
As we walk by, he catches my eye and jerks his chin away from the group. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I look over to Logan, who’s being carried away by the group. Literally swept down the hall like a wave. He glances back to me, calling out to go to room six-seventeen, before he and Joey are swallowed up and they turn a corner.
I turn back to Colin. The buttons at the top of his shirt are undone and I find myself staring at the tips of the wings that are inked along his collarbone.
He crosses his arms. “I just need to know if you need your own hotel room or if you’re wanting to share.”
Share? Is he asking if I want to share a room with him?
“Share?” I’m confused as fuck.
He rolls his eyes. “Were you planning on sharing a room with Logan?”
He says it like it should have been obvious. Should it have been?
“Um...”
He uncrosses his arms. “Look, I don’t give a shit either way. You’re an adult, do whatever the fuck you want. I just need to know if we need to get you a room or not.”
“I’ll have my own room. But I can get it—I mean, I can pay for it.”
Flustered, I take a couple of steps back toward the elevators, then realize I turned in the wrong direction.
“I’ll take care of it for now and when you check out, you can have them charge it to your card if you want.”
“All right. But I will pay for it,” I say, keeping my head raised proudly.
He’s unimpressed. “You go have fun.” He gestures down the hall in what I presume is the correct way to room six-seventeen.
“Okay, thanks.” I turn down the hall as he puts his hands in his pockets and goes the other direction but then I stop. “Colin—”
He turns back to me, his thick, dark lashes almost completely obscuring his blue eyes.
“Are you... Will you be coming up to the room too?”
“Have I given you the impression that I party?”
“Uh, no.”
“That’s because I don’t.”
“Oh. All right, then.” I tuck my hair behind my ear as I look away to keep it out of my face, and I can feel his eyes on me, discerning any tell or hint of emotion I betray.
“But I might stop by later,” he says, his voice low and casual before he walks away.
It’s not hard to find room six-seventeen. I just have to follow the sound of the loud voices and laughter.
Boner One opens the room for me. He isn’t wearing a shirt. Everyone else seems to be dressed, though. One of the Boners, I think Boner Three, is hardcore making out with a girl in the corner, and Jace has a girl on his lap, a beer in one hand and her ass in the other. Joey is sitting on one of the beds, Logan lounging next to him on his side, telling Boner Four a story, when he spots me and waves me over to sit with them.
Joey offers me a beer and I take it. It’s gross. I sip it anyway as I listen to the rest of Logan’s story.
“Hey, how’d you like the show?” he asks.
“It was amazing. I loved it.”
Logan makes an exaggerated relieved face. “Now I can sleep tonight.” He smiles at me and takes a drink of his beer. “If we were ranking items on your Fuck-It list, how’d it compare to skinny dipping?”
“Definitely right up there, but with less cardio.”
“For you, maybe.”
We chuckle and then Boner Two hands Logan something. Logan puts the little blunt to his lips and closes his eyes as he takes a drag. He turns to blow the smoke away from us, nodding his head in appreciation. I’ve never seen pot before, but I lived in the dorms so I know what it smells like. He takes a second puff then holds it out to me.
“Want a hit?”
I’m unable to speak for a moment. Do I want a hit? Not really. It is on my list, though.
Fuck it.
I take the joint in my two fingers, staring at it. I have no idea what I’m doing. You just put it to your lips and suck, right?
Wrong.
Whatever I just did, it was wrong.
I’m coughing, my throat burns,
smoke is billowing out of my nose and I’m afraid I’m going to be hacking up this taste for the rest of my life.
Warm fingers touch mine, slipping the joint out of my hand. I look up and Colin is standing there, his hard stare on me as he brings it to his lips. He takes a long pull, never breaking eye contact.
“Wahoo! Colin came to party. Old times, bro.”
“No.” Colin passes the joint along to one of the Boners. His eyes are still on mine and I’m glad he didn’t hand it back to me. “I just came to give her this.”
He pulls a key card out of his pocket and hands it to me. The envelope it’s in says room eight-eleven.
“Thanks,” I say quietly, my throat feels raw.
Colin looks at me, his face unreadable. “I can show you where your room is, if you want.”
“Nah, dude. I’ll walk her to her room when we’re done,” Logan says.
Colin glances to Logan, his expression the same but somehow harder, before returning his gaze to me, waiting for my response.
“I’m okay, thanks.” I mean, does he think I can’t figure out how room numbers work? I hold my mostly full can of beer up with a reassuring smile.
He tongues the inside of his cheek but doesn’t say anything. Then he turns and leaves the room.
It’s starting to really stink in here. Thankfully someone opens a window. The girl with Boner Three in the corner of the room definitely has her hands down his pants and the possibility of them having sex in the room with us seems quite high. Jace has moved on to girl number two, sharing the joint with her while Joey tries unsuccessfully to get girl number one’s attention.
I sit and listen while Logan and Boner Four trade tales of late-night drunken shenanigans. They’re entertaining, but I can’t really relate, nor do I have any stories to contribute to the conversation.
I drink more of my beer. It still tastes bad.
I look toward the door and realize Colin was giving me an out. And I wish I’d taken it.
CHAPTER 9