Our venue is empty.
Okay, there’s a bartender, but he’s paid to be here. I take a breath and peek around the curtain to check one more time but all that greets me are empty seats and the accusing expanse of the scratched-up dance floor. Off to the side, my mom’s set up with a white wine and her iPhone ready. My dad leans against her table, a video camera bag dangling off his shoulder. While I watch, she rolls her eyes, lips pursed against a smile, then he leans forward a little, saying something else. She laughs, bobbing her foot absently as her shoe dangles from her toes.
I grimace. An event where only your parents show up is almost worse than being alone. When they try to cheer you up, every syllable in their too-perky voices says they’re feeling your failure right along with you. It doesn’t help that as much as she hates to see me unhappy, I know Mom would be relieved if a disaster gig convinced me to give up the band. She hates the music industry after the front row seat she had to my dad’s roller-coaster ride of a career. And as proud as Dad says he is of me, I know he was playing bigger shows than this when he was my age.
I let the curtain fall shut. It’s the first time we’ve played at a venue that could even afford a curtain, much less the gorgeous light system Jax keeps fidgeting with.
“Jax, you’re going to break something. Chill.” I snatch the clipboard out of his hand, every item on it already checked off and then X’d for the double-check. “Do I need to put our lucky song on?”
He glares at me. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, but you don’t have to brag about it,” I tease, because I know it will cheer him up. He is looking pretty good, but then he probably spent more time in front of a mirror than I did. And admittedly, tonight I logged a little mirror time.
Since it’s a special occasion, I curled my hair, the light and dark streaks winding in dramatic spirals around my face. I went all out on my top, too, with a black tank made entirely of crisscrossing straps of thin mesh and chunky metal buckles. It’s enough layers to be opaque, but thin enough to breathe once I get really moving. I even played a rehearsal in it to check the buckle placement. There was an unfortunate show in a sparkly top last year that left me with some kind of sequin road rash everywhere my arms rubbed while I played.
The outfit is exactly what I want to be feeling—tough and maybe even a little bit sexy. I’m determined not to let anything on the other side of that curtain ruin my night.
Jax smiles, but it’s weak, so I yank my phone out of my pocket, unwind the earbuds from around it, and nestle them into his ears. When I click on my phone to select Macklemore’s “Ten Thousand Hours,” there are no new messages. I’m not really surprised. If Jacob was going to text to confirm he was bailing, he would have done it hours ago.
Jax drops down to sit on an amp, my phone dangling between his knees as he closes his eyes to listen to the music. I hope this does the trick. Our lead singer puts on a great strut for the pretty girls but he’s a squishy-hearted little nail biter underneath.
When I turn around, Danny’s the one sneaking a look around the edge of the curtain. I raise my eyebrows. “Et tu, Brute?”
“He’s not here.” He turns, his hazel eyes tight at the corners.
“Like I care,” I sputter. Then I remember I didn’t tell him I invited Jacob. “Wait, who’s not here? The CEO of Tower Records? Pretty sure he RSVP’ed for the second half.”
“Your ‘friend’ Jacob. Figured he’d turn up if you had a gig this important.” Sometimes Danny gets an edge before a show, like he needs to get laid, or maybe punch someone. Today is definitely looking like the second option.
I cross my arms. “You look like a girl when you air quote, you know that?”
“You look like a girl, too.” He stares me down, and suddenly the eyeliner and lip gloss I slicked on feels very heavy. “For the first time in about a year.”
“It’s a big show. I didn’t want to play it wearing one of your hand-me-down shirts, so fuck off.”
He crosses the stage and takes my face in his hands, reminding me that I might have put on a tiny bit of foundation, too. Which he is now smudging. “Jimi, I’m going to say this one more time. Andy never came to your shows because he was an asswench.” He glances at Jax, who’s still got earbuds in and his eyes squeezed closed. Danny drops his voice anyway. “It’s not because you did anything wrong.”
I blush hotly, grinding my teeth at his implication. Andy pulled away a little after we started sleeping together, yes, but even before that, his schedule was always packed. When he did squeeze in one of my shows, the best he could do was nod along a little behind the beat. When it was over, he’d paste on a smile and tell me that no, hard rock wasn’t really his thing, but the concert was great. That was the only word my non-music-literate ex could ever come up with. We were so...great.
“You always think people are judging you, being disappointed in you, but they’re not, Jera.” Danny frowns. “Probably not even Andy. Idiot just had bad taste in music.”
“Yeah, let’s definitely talk about this five minutes before our biggest gig ever.” I stalk toward the edge of the curtain and the bar beyond it, deciding my no-pre-show-drinking rule is stupid.
Danny slips in front of me, crowding me back away from the edge of the stage. “If this guy doesn’t show up, he’s an asswench, too, and I will buy you a beer for making it through another day asswench-free. Deal?” He holds out his knuckles, and I scowl at him.
“It is definitely not your hand I want to bump with my fist right now.”
“Hit me, then.” He doesn’t budge, his voice low. He just stands his ground, knowing every humiliating thing I’m thinking, and I know he’d take a punch or even ten if that’s what I needed to feel better.
I exhale, and hug him around the waist instead, leaning my head against his chest. It’s stupid, it’s so stupid and I blame romantic comedies. Somehow I really thought Jacob would show up at the last minute.
The hollow little feeling that leaves beneath my heart has me holding onto Danny twice as hard. “I really tried not to give a shit this time,” I mumble into his shirt. “Why can’t I stop doing this to myself?”
Danny’s muscles twitch beneath my hands. It’s a sore spot for both of us, ever since junior high. If I like somebody enough to stick around, sooner or later they start getting irritated by the same things about me they used to think were cute. They get offended when I zone out into a song I’m writing, or they’re annoyed by how fast I talk when I’m nervous, or they think I’m secretly in love with Danny. I’ve seen dozens of girls do the same thing to my best friend. They line up to get in his bed but then they start wanting him to wear nicer clothes, and talk about his feelings, and not spend every weekend in my garage. Sometimes, he tries for a while. Mostly, he doesn’t.
“Ass,” Danny says. “Wench.”
Jax jumps up off the amp. “Quit screwing around, you guys. Let’s do this.” He shoves my phone at me. Through the earbuds, I thought I heard my text message alarm chime, but now there’s no time to check.
“We can’t play yet. There’s nobody here.” I let go of Danny and leap for the curtain, peering around it. “Okay, there are like fifteen people here.” I’ve played smaller shows than that, but this place is so big, the audience looks like ants sprinkled into a football stadium.
“It’s twenty after posted time. We can’t wait anymore.” Jax grins at me. “You know what turns a crowd into a party?”
“A keg?” I ask weakly.
“Music.” He jerks his chin at the pulley ropes to the side of the stage. “Danny, get the curtains. You guys stay behind them until I call you.”
“Uh, there’s not exactly a side stage,” I remind him. “There’s like a foot of space back there.”
“So spoon. You’re both skinny.” Jax runs a hand through his hair, deliberately mussing it, then blows into a cupped hand, checking his breath.
Danny heads for the curtain pull. “Man, that microphone cares if you sound pretty, not if you sme
ll pretty.”
“Maybe that’s why your girlfriend is so grouchy all the time.” Jax shrugs into his guitar and points at him. “The full presentation is always important, D.”
I crowd up next to Danny as he starts to crank the curtains back. “You’re seeing somebody new? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He blinks. “Why?”
I roll my eyes. “I have got to get some female friends in my life.”
As the curtain parts, Jax takes a step into the gap and rips a distorted chord that blazes through the room, quieting the hum of conversation.
“Hello, Portland!”
The curtains are almost all the way open, and I can tell we’re not going to be able to fit behind them. How embarrassing is it going to be when the audience sees us trying? Screw waiting on Jax’s master plan.
I stride into the lights. Somebody catcalls and Jax sweeps a hand toward me even though it could just as well have been meant for him. With a grin, he says, “Why yes, now that you mention it, gracing the stage tonight is our lovely drummer, Jera McKnight!” He lifts his voice at the end, and it pulls a few more yells out of the scattered patrons, heads turning away from the bar and toward us.
I stop and milk it for a minute, posing and waving, laughing like it’s a big joke and blowing a kiss at the crowd when the whistles break out again. Bowing, I take a seat behind my drums. It’s starting to fill up. There might be twenty or more nursing drinks at tables now.
“And just to even things out, our homely bassist, Danny O’Neil!”
Danny comes out and grabs his instrument out of the stand. He lifts the strap to his bass over his head with a quick, tight movement that makes it look like his body is one tall stretch of muscle. He takes a step forward, shoving a hand back through his careless black hair, the angle of the lights above leaving his face in shadow. He doesn’t do a thing more, but a table of girls in the back goes crazy, squealing high and loud. Clapping follows them and spreads across the whole room.
“I am Jackson Sterling.” Our singer comes in at just the right time with the applause so it sounds like they’re doing it for him. “We are The Red Letters, and we’re here to kick off everybody’s favorite music festival, Things That Go Bump In The Night!” He raises his arms and the few people in here start to cheer.
Jax is such a natural, at all of this. Some people play a guitar like they’re punching the keys on a typewriter but he plays like he wants to give it an orgasm. Give him the only stage in a deserted country and he would still own it.
But then the sound dies down, and the dance floor is still empty, a smattering of people standing around the edges with hands curled around their drinks as if they’re not ready to leave them just yet.
Jax doesn’t even appear to notice. He starts to talk to the crowd, joking with them and using the rhythm of his voice to relax the tension of an obviously empty room.
These awkward few minutes at the start of a show always remind me of a blind date. When you don’t know the audience, and you’re not sure if anybody will dance, or even bother to clap at the end of a song. Before it starts, you can never be sure if the chemistry is going to mesh.
Which is why I’m a drummer. As long as I make each performance just about the music, I’m okay. Jax actually has to work at getting our audience to have a good time, and if I put that kind of pressure on myself, I’d go crazy.
I do one last sweep for Jacob, but all I see is my dad getting ready to film the show for YouTube clips, and I mess with my drumsticks to cover the unsteadiness in my hands.
I just hope this show turns out to be something worth recording.
A DROP OF SWEAT RUNS down the line of my spine, and another trembles at the brink of my eyelashes. The music burns in me now, torching every tendon and vein, my muscles a sacrifice on the altar of speed. I don’t even exist except in my lyrics transfigured by Jax’s deep voice, my heart pounding a rhythm my drumsticks amplify for the rest of the packed room.
More people trickled into the bar with every song, and now bodies cushion the room, no bare bits of dance floor left exposed. All the colors of their clothes are a canvas I only half notice behind the rise of my drums, the pulse of lights ricocheting off my cymbals.
A change in the movement of the crowd catches my eye in the middle of the fourth song; a set of broad shoulders interrupting the surge of dancers, then a quick flash of a familiar face. Jacob claims a space right up next to the stage, and I skip a beat, my drumstick catching the edge of my drum instead of its taut skin. He’s here. Oh my God, he actually came.
Danny glances over when he hears my glitch, but I’m already back in the rhythm, my sticks bounding over brass and skipping across my toms. Jacob grins up at me, his face alight with excitement, and when the song finishes, he waves. I wave back, smiling, and it’s not until Jax turns away from the microphone that I realize he already introduced the next song. Belatedly, I count us in.
After those first two fumbles, I hit my stride, and the longer Jacob watches, the better I play. He somehow picked just the right spot so I can see him in the gap between two of my cymbals; his face always in my peripheral vision no matter which end of my kit I swivel to hit. He dances to some songs, but mostly he watches, leaning forward with me every time I bend to my microphone to sing backup, like he’s afraid he’ll miss something in a room lined with speakers. He laughs at Jax’s onstage antics, and bobs his head in perfect time to Danny’s bass.
One song disappears into the next, all of them a blur of Jacob’s face and the galloping beat of my drums. Nothing has ever felt so perfect.
My arms scream and I can’t feel my fingers. I push harder, gulping air as I rocket the rhythm toward the gut-wrenching finale of my favorite song. Danny’s hanging easy, adjusting on the go so he can drop every deep note just where we need it, and then Jax howls the last line and we all break off at the same instant, the silence hitting like its own emphasis.
The crowd explodes.
People stand four deep around the bar and all the doors up front stretch open so our music can blast out into the street. I barely noticed the rest of the room once Jacob arrived, but we must be over capacity. The bouncer won’t let anybody else in, even though there are a few dozen stragglers listening from the sidewalk.
I swipe the sweat off my forehead and steal a look at Jax. He got way too into the last song and now he’s as winded as I am, gulping water. On the last swallow, it goes down the wrong tube and he chokes, water droplets flying from his mouth as he turns away from the crowd. Shit. I duck out from behind my drums and go to him.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Fine,” he manages, before exploding into coughing, bracing his hands on his knees. His face is red from more than choking, and my chest twinges for him. This is so not in tune with the sex god image he’s been building through the whole show, and I know how hard he’s probably going to take it. More importantly, he’ll need a break to calm his throat, but there’s no way I’m wasting this kind of crowd energy, or giving anybody a lull to decide if they want to check out the rest of the pub crawl bands.
I lay a hand on Jax’s back as he finally sucks in a breath, panting. “Take five. Danny and I can do our one duet.”
“Nah, I’ll be okay.” He straightens, combing a hand through his hair to get it from thrashed back to gloriously tousled. His neck stiffens as he holds his breath to keep from bursting into another coughing fit.
I tilt my head, pouting. “Come on, I’ve been dying to do that one in public ever since everybody went crazy for it over at Jimmy T’s.” It’s not just the water going down the wrong tube that’s got him breathing hard, I can tell. My pulse has already slowed down, while he coughs into his hand and dashes more sweat off his cheek. This is a longer set then we’ve ever done before, and I force myself to run at least four days a week. Jax rides a desk and lifts weights, which keeps him pretty but doesn’t do much for the cardio.
“You sure you’re ready? You guys didn’t rehearse that one.”
Jax backs away from the stage with a flourish of his arms that redirects all the attention toward us, and Danny pulls his microphone stand up next to me.
Jacob strains right to the edge of the high stage now, a grin breaking across his face as I adjust the microphone stand down to my height. I wink at him, mouthing, “You owe me...” because he promised me a favor if he could hear me sing. He’s getting lucky tonight, because it’s rare for me to take center stage. This song isn’t even on the normal set list because it’s so different from our other stuff. And because I won’t let Jax perform it.
Most of the time, I like that Jax’s voice, his identity, is the shield between my soul on a piece of staff paper and all the strangers’ ears it pours into. But this song is about Danny and me, and it wouldn’t be right for anyone else to sing it.
Jacob’s eyes warm when they touch mine, and I hold them even when nerves waver in my belly. A lot of guys get weird when they see how close I am to my male best friend. When I invited Jacob to see my band, though, I promised myself I was done making apologies. This is who I am, and if he doesn’t like it, the exit is clearly marked. Besides, if there’s any part of me I will never be ashamed to show in public, it’s Danny.
Ducking my head closer to the microphone, I murmur, “Looks like a few of you boys need a slow song if you’re gonna have any chance at getting lucky tonight. But don’t worry, I’ve got your back.” Laughter ripples through the room and the between-song buzz dies down. “This one is called ‘My Air.’”
I inhale, and the whole room goes so silent I can hear the traffic outside. When Danny plays a single soft note to key me into the song we created together, any hint of nerves is long gone. This, I can do.
I look over at the guy who has helped me clean up after every party I’ve ever had, and I begin to sing.
After we close the door
A Cruel Kind of Beautiful (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Series Book 1) Page 10