by Eden Finley
They so are, my stupid brain reminds me.
Unlike stage two, which is all EDM, and stage one, which is where all the big headliners are performing, stage three is a mixed bag of Please, can I cut off my ears? and How the hell did you get a better stage time than Radioactive?
When a band called Rabid Skunk takes the stage, I know I need a break.
I sacrifice my great view near the front—there’s no way I’ll survive until Radioactive’s call time—and make my way through the small crowd of people who are high, drunk, or both.
Stage three is right near the food vans, and the smell coming from the trucks reminds me I didn’t have dinner tonight, so I peruse the row of fast and greasy food and settle on ordering a dagwood dog.
The noise in this part of the grounds is a hell of a lot quieter. Or I’ve gone deaf. One or the other.
As I round the corner to find a place to sit, I put the phallic-shaped fried food to my mouth and freeze at the sight of Luce leaning against one of the food trucks and peering around the other side as if hiding from someone.
Then he turns and sees me, his mouth opens in surprise, and his eyes focus on the stupid sausage shoved halfway down my throat. His face hardens, but not in an angry way. His gaze burns with heat I can feel from here.
I bite off a piece and chew, talking while my mouth is full. “I was hungry.”
“Hungry for what?” he growls.
I chuckle. “Guess these things do kinda look suggestive.”
“Kinda?” His voice has a weird shrieky thing going on. “It should be illegal for you to eat one of those in public.”
“Everyone or just me?”
“Definitely just you.”
I step forward. “That mean you like what you see?”
Luce sighs heavily and looks around the corner of the van again.
“Who are you hiding from?” I ask.
He flinches. “I, uh … umm. I’m not hiding.”
“Liar.”
“Okay, I’m hiding. Come ’ere.”
I approach, and he lowers his voice.
“Can you go out there and see if there’s still security guys hanging around?”
“What did you do? Maybe I don’t want to protect a fugitive.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just … umm …” He hesitates, as if debating whether to tell me the truth or a lie. “I used to date one of them, and he got all stalker-like, and I’d prefer not to see him right now. Or all of his security buddies.”
Well, shit. I know what that’s like, thanks to a crazy stalker date I met on Grindr once. Called the cops on him and everything.
“Say no more.” I tilt my head around the corner and see two burly shadows coming this way. “Uh, don’t know what to tell you, man, but you might wanna run.”
The figures of the security guards also leave me disheartened. Clearly, if one of them is his ex, Luce is into buff and bulky guys. I only go to the gym the bare minimum of twice a week, when my brother practically drags me.
“How close are they?” Luce asks.
I peek again. “Umm, like you have three seconds to get out of—”
Luce grabs my arm, and I drop my food on the ground as he spins me. In a swift move, he throws his cap underneath the wheels of the van and then pins me up against the side of the food truck and presses his insanely delicious body against mine.
That’s not a problem though. The problem is his wet, hot mouth covering mine in a searing kiss that feels more than a ploy to shield his face from his ex-date-guy-whatever.
It comes out of nowhere and takes me a few seconds to get my bearings. My tongue licks the seam of his lips on its own, I swear, and even though the small gasp that comes from Luce is from shock, my tongue totally thinks that’s an invitation for more. Yep, my tongue. Totally separate thing from my brain. Not my brain at all.
Actually, I think my brain has completely melted by this point.
He smells like expensive aftershave and mint.
Footsteps crunch on the grass and then head away from us, but Luce doesn’t stop kissing me. In fact, he presses against me more and grinds that impressive cock against mine. Back on the tram, I could already tell he’d be huge and he was only at half-mast. Right now, it feels like he has a steel bar between his legs, and mine’s in a similar state.
His tongue expertly massages mine, but when I groan, it’s as if he snaps back to reality.
Luce pulls away but stays close enough that we share shaky breaths.
“That tasted better than my dinner,” I say and pull back a fraction more—giving us just enough space to see my discarded food on the ground at our feet. “Which is lucky, because it’s ruined now.”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Luce says.
Good, because I spent my last ten bucks on that thing. I don’t say that aloud though.
“Do you think they’re gone?” he asks.
“I want to say no so you’ll kiss me again.”
The grin that takes over his face is nothing less than breathtaking. This man should always look that happy. It suits him more than the judgemental guy I met earlier. “The sassy kid knows how to flirt.”
I grit my teeth. “Call me a kid one more time …”
Luce screws up his face. “I guess it’s not the most attractive thing to call you. Especially when I want your lips again so damn bad.”
I give him what he wants and press my lips to his for a quick, chaste kiss. “Mmm,” I hum when I pull back, “the old dude is a sweet-talker. Hey, is that grey hair I can see?” Reflexively, I reach up and run my hand through his hair, which definitely has grey streaks mixed with dark. It makes him look distinguished.
“I am not old.” He swats my hand away. “I started going grey in my twenties. Genetics suck.”
“Of course, you did … old man.”
“Kid.”
We both wince.
“Permission to stop with this weird-ass creepy role-playing thing now?” I ask.
He laughs again and pulls completely away. “Agreed. So, dinner?”
My stomach beats me to replying by rumbling loudly.
4
Luce
Maybe I’ve lost my mind, because this isn’t me. I’ve always chosen work over anything else. The end of my last relationship five years ago proves that. He left because I never made him a priority.
Yet here I am, following a cute guy and buying him dinner when there’s other shit to be done. On my list of priorities, it should be: stay away from security—none of whom I’ve ever dated. I lied about that. Second should be finding a way backstage so I can fix the clusterfuck my second-in-charge has created since I was kicked out of here this afternoon.
This festival was supposed to be Australia’s Coachella, but with how it’s going, we’ll be lucky to get another year out of it.
Amanda had promised me she knew what she was doing. The bigwigs of the label forced me to take the weekend off even though I’m the one who organised this whole damn event.
No way was I staying away, and now that I’m here, I should want nothing more than to storm backstage and take over—fix the mess Amanda made. Acts are going overtime, the changes between bands is way too fucking long, and from what I can see from the sidelines, none of the bands or their management are happy. This is my baby—the thing I’ve worked on for eighteen months straight. When I was told I couldn’t work this weekend due to contract law and doing so much overtime that my salaried hourly pay rate had fallen below that of a sweatshop worker, the first thing I’d thought to do was go to the Heart2Heart charity event to win the tickets I’d donated under Joystar Records’ name to get back in here. Morally grey area, maybe, but I’ll be sure to make an extra donation to Heart2Heart to make up for it.
Mum calls me a workaholic, but that has negative connotations. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being invested in your work. That’s what separates you from the rest of the pack trying to get ahead.
The festival is fa
lling to pieces in front of me, but all I can think about is buying Marty some food and hopefully getting to experience his mouth again.
One kiss has me knocked for six. Up is down, left is right, and the world spins the other way now. No one has ever kissed me like that before.
Is it possible for one kiss to cause a lobotomy effect?
At least I don’t have to worry about the food side of the business. It’s running smoothly, if a little busy, but that means more revenue. And I don’t think anyone knows how long the wait or how shitty the food is when they’re all wasted.
Near the front of the line, I turn to Marty. “Are you sure you want another dagwood dog? I can’t guarantee it won’t end up on the ground again. Especially if you wrap your mouth around it the way you did before.”
The innocent smile he sends my way isn’t fooling me. “You’ll just have to keep buying me one until you can restrain yourself.”
The alcohol van catches my eye, and I grab out my wallet. “You want a drink too?”
He stares at my wallet and then at me, and he bites that lip I’m quickly becoming obsessed with. “Dinner and drinks?” he asks. “You trying to win back brownie points for being a dick earlier, or you trying to get me to put out?”
“Would that even work?” I ask.
He hesitates just a fraction before leaning in and whispering, “After that kiss? I don’t even need the dinner.”
Oh, holy mother of hell. Where did this guy come from?
I have to restrain myself from throwing him against the side of another food truck.
“Get what you want, but can you grab me a Jack ’n Coke?” I hand him a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“I can get anything I want?” he asks. “The most expensive drink they have?”
“That’ll be the cheapest beer on the market with how much they mark up in these places, but sure.”
He laughs. “Okay, I’ll be back soon.”
When he turns and walks away, I realise his ass is just as tempting as his mouth.
We take our food and drinks to the stage three field where my ears are assaulted by a horrible band with a screeching lead singer.
“What the fuck?” I mutter.
“I know, right? How did these bands get stage time over Radioactive? It’s been shitty act after even shittier acts. I guarantee whoever organised this thing is deaf or has never heard these bands play.”
I would be offended—hell, I want to be offended—but he’s right on the money. I’m not deaf, but I haven’t heard every band I booked. I looked at sales, social media followers, and tour schedules before booking them, and then I chose their stage time accordingly. I guess this is a good lesson in knowing quantity of fans doesn’t always equal quality of music.
“Maybe we can find a patch of grass toward the back where we can’t hear them so …” I try to think of the perfect word because loudly doesn’t seem to cover it.
“So our ears won’t be murdered?”
Perfect. “Exactly.”
Marty and I sit on a small hill, a fair way away from the lights, the people, and the sound coming from stage three. I have to look the other way while he eats his food, because I know if I don’t, I’ll run the risk of pouncing on him.
The cool night air blows past us, but it’s refreshing. From back here, the festival doesn’t appear in shambles. It’s a perfect night weather-wise, the loud cheers filter through the dark, and I can smell a mix of beer, grass, and the smoke coming from the allocated bonfires.
God, the arguments I got into with the bosses over those damn bonfires. Safety hazard, insurance premiums, permits, wah, wah, wah. They provide ambiance, dammit, and I wanted them.
Can’t really think of a reason why now, seeing as I’d never planned on enjoying them like this.
“Dinner, drinks, and what some people would call music,” Marty says. “Looks like we ended up going on the date we won after all.”
The date neither of us wanted. Yeah, I’m so not telling him that after I was an ass about him coming for the wrong reasons. I’m just as guilty.
“So, tell me,” I say, changing the subject, “what’s so good about Radioactive?”
“What’s not good about them?” Marty’s face lights up, and he starts rambling about how the band changed his life. “Jay’s lyrics are so relatable. It makes all the bullshit seem okay, because it’s not just you going through it, you know?”
“You sound really attached.”
Marty shrugs. “Haven’t you ever been that invested in a band or a piece of music? Or something that makes you feel like you aren’t alone, even though you are?”
His passion doesn’t fill me with warmth like it probably should. It fills me with a sense of longing which makes my chest ache. I hate it. The intense fandom he has for this group of people he’s never met makes me remember why I wanted to get into the music business.
“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.” Even if I haven’t felt that connected to music in a really long time. Working in the industry has ruined it for me. It’s work now. Not an escape like it once was.
I want to feel Marty’s level of excitement about music again. Not only because it makes my life seem empty to be without it, but the way Marty sells it, it looks really good on him. I’ve never seen someone glow from talking about music—the thing I claim is my life.
“My first cassette—”
Marty coughs the words “old” and “man.”
“Ignoring that. The first cassette I ever bought was Pearl Jam.”
“Eddie Vedder is sexy.”
“I was ten.”
Marty shrugs. “I was in nappies.”
“Fuck.” I laugh. “Anyway, they were kind of my gateway drug into that nineties, grungy-pop genre. Nirvana, Green Day, Sister Hazel, Counting Crows, U2 …” They’re the reason I do what I do, but the enjoyment is gone.
“Yet, you know who Radioactive are but have never heard them.”
“How do you know I’ve never heard them?”
“Because when I talk about them, you have nothing to say. You look at me like my friends do when I talk about them—like you want to pat me on the head and tell me I’m precious. Like it’s cute to be this obsessed over something, but you don’t actually care.”
My lips quirk. “What if I’m just mesmerised by you and can’t find any words to say?”
Marty pulls back, with an almost shocked expression clouding his face. “Wow, you’re really trying to get lucky tonight, aren’t you?”
“One hundred percent serious. I love how animated you are about this stuff. It … well, shit, I’m only going to sound older now, but it reminds me of when I was a teenager.”
“I’m not a fucking teenager,” he says.
“I know. That’s not what I meant. I meant I haven’t felt that way about anything since I was a teenager. When I left school, my life became about proving myself to the world, and when you’re too busy trying to build a life, you don’t get much time to actually live one. I’m envious you were able to hold on to your passion.”
Marty stares blankly at me for a few seconds, as if trying to figure out why in the hell this random guy on a random first date would bare his soul, but when he blinks out of his wonder, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, and then he grabs his earphones out of his other pocket. “I want you to listen to something.”
“Okaaaay.” As I put the buds in my ears and Marty loads up a song, the opening rifts pull me into another mind. Another life.
And it’s sad and happy and bittersweet all at the same time. To have no support and to be alone, and then finding that one person who fits into your life perfectly and makes everything better.
A lump gets caught in my throat at the raw emotion, and I can see why Marty is in love with this band. When the song ends, I reach over and tap his phone so it repeats.
Marty doesn’t say anything, because he understands.
After the second time, I take the earbuds out and hand them b
ack, but I have no idea how to put in words how touched and affected I am by the song.
I go for the best defence mechanism and misdirection technique known to man: humour. “Sounds like your man’s already taken.”
“He’s single.”
“You said they write their own songs, right? That song is way too personal to be made up.”
“I’ve tried stalking online and have read everything I can on the song, but no one knows who it’s truly about, and the band hasn’t said anything publicly.”
“Ooh, intrigue.”
“I suspect Jay suffers a broken heart—that it didn’t work out with the guy from the song—but it’ll be okay, because I’ll be there to mend it.”
I know I’m supposed to laugh again, but I can’t bring myself to do it. “And what do you think your man will say if he finds out you’ve been kissing a much better-looking guy tonight?”
Marty shrugs. “Have to kiss some toads before I meet my prince.”
There’s that damn mouthy attitude that I somehow find charming.
“I’m pretty sure if you kiss toads, you hallucinate. They have that poison-y thing on their back. I think you mean frogs.”
He nudges me, and the spark of humour in his eyes does things to me. “You’d so fit in with my friends, Mr. Useless Trivia.”
“I’d … uh, say the same about you if I had any friends.” And isn’t that fucking sad?
“You? The guy who refuses to tell anyone his real name and within minutes of meeting me said something offensive has no friends? Shocking.”
I finally find my laugh. “Hard to believe, I know.”
A silence falls between us, and I have to avert my gaze from his scrutinising stare. The truth is when work and sleep take up ninety-five percent of your time, friends drift away. It’s a fact of growing up … or so I thought.
Marty makes me question everything about my life, which is intense for a guy I met only a few hours ago.
His gentle hand slips into mine. “I’m not completely delusional, you know. I know Jay won’t see me from the stage and know we belong together. I just thought I’d clarify in case you think I’m batshit crazy or something. It’s a fantasy. I came for their music.”
