Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  He’s quiet for a long time. A long time. And then he looks over at me, his green eyes making my heart beat faster, just like they always do. “Do you believe that?”

  I shrug a shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Are you half a person?”

  In the depths of his eyes, I feel like I might find my answer . . .

  “Are you?” I ask, stopping myself from searching.

  “How would I know?”

  “I guess you wouldn’t.”

  The silence doesn’t have answers, and neither do the ribbons that rise out of the horizon. Blues, pinks, purples. Shawn and I sit out there, content to watch them dance.

  “So you’ve never been in love before?” I ask the air between us. I don’t know why I need to know, but sitting up here on my roof, with the sun setting just for us, I do.

  “No.” His answer comes quickly. He doesn’t even glance at me.

  “Not even once?”

  When he finally looks over at me, I almost regret asking. “Have you?”

  I look away, not giving myself time to think about it. “No.”

  “No boyfriends? You had to have had boyfriends . . . ”

  “Of course I’ve had boyfriends,” I scoff. Still sitting guru-style, I try to tuck my feet in the creases of my knees to warm them—and fail miserably. “I just never loved any of them,” I say as I try to tuck a foot into the opposite leg of my jeans. “Do you want me to tell you about each one? Because I can tell y—”

  “No,” Shawn interrupts, scooting over and tugging at the crisscross of my legs until I’m nearly toppling backward. My feet get pulled into his lap, and I grip his shoulders for balance as he wraps warm fingers around my toes. We’re suddenly inches apart, and when he turns his face to look at me, there’s nowhere for me to run, nowhere for me to hide. “Trust me,” he says, “I really don’t want to know.”

  Chapter Seven

  THE NIGHT OF the roof, with my feet in Shawn’s lap, we talked about everything and nothing. Or, more accurately, he talked . . . and I just kind of squeaked back a reply once in a while.

  Long after it got dark, long after he left, I snuggled tight under a mountain of heavy blankets and smiled into the cold breeze that blew in through my open window. The night air smelled like him, or maybe he smelled like the night air, but either way, I let it in. I closed my eyes, and with the kiss of the wind on my cheeks . . . my nose . . . my lips . . . I could almost imagine he never left.

  Even now, I can still feel the way he held my legs in his lap, and that memory has been both inviting and haunting over the days leading up to tonight, our first performance at Mayhem. He and I haven’t been alone since the roof. Instead, we’ve seen each other only during group practices, and that has made the day of the sunset feel like a dream, a fluke. Shawn goes back to being Shawn, and I go back to being Kit—a punk rocker who doesn’t do embarrassing things like blush and giggle and act like a total girl. I’m a guitarist, one of the guys, and I regret asking Dee to make me a dress for tonight’s performance.

  In the only private room of the band’s double-decker tour bus, I finish putting it on—a flattering black miniature thing, adorned with blue safety pins that barely hold the slinky garment together. Dee made it from one of the dresses she already had in her closet, and even though she warned me it had been short even on her, my eyes go wide when I realize how super short it is on me. I take a deep breath and ignore how much pale skin is showing, using a compact mirror to cake on my lengthening mascara. I apply an extra layer of super-strength deodorant and brush my hair until it flows like water over the bristles.

  “Are you nervous?” Shawn asks from the other side of the closed door.

  Nervous about the crowd? No. Nervous about opening that door? I stare down at my legs again.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “You rocked soundcheck this morning,” he assures me. “Just bring that same confidence tonight and you’ll be fine.”

  I sit on the edge of the black satin bed and tighten the strings of my combat boots. If Dee knew I was wearing this dress with these boots . . . well, it might reignite some of that fire missing from her eyes. “You can go in without me. I’ll be done in a minute.”

  The silence that stretches and stretches tells me he took me up on my offer and I’m finally, really alone. I finish tying my second ass-kicking boot, let it fall back to the ground, and take another rib-straining deep, deep breath. Nervous invisible butterflies swarm in my stomach until I heave them out in a heavy sigh.

  Tonight is the night. Every choice I’ve made—picking up the guitar, dedicating the past few years of my life to it, auditioning for the band, not quitting after I threw a guitar pick at Shawn’s chest and had my chance to get away—it all comes down to this.

  When I slide open the door, Shawn pushes away from the hallway wall, his wide eyes traveling down, down, down. They linger on my bare thighs, which probably blush as pink as my cheeks, my neck, my ears.

  “I thought you went inside,” I stammer.

  His gaze is in no rush as it lifts back to mine. “Wow.”

  “Wow?”

  “I . . . ”

  When he doesn’t finish his sentence, I say, “You?”

  His eyes finally lock on mine, and he swallows and runs a hand through his hair. But then those eyes are dropping again, and when they catch my lips, I bite the bottom one between my teeth. It’s a nervous gesture that makes his eyes dart to the wall behind my head. “You ready to head inside?”

  “Not until you say what you were going to say.”

  I surprise even myself, and God . . . I don’t know why I want to hear it. I don’t know why I need to hear it. But the girl inside me, the one who never got a call from him, the one who giggled with him on the roof . . . she needs to know. She needs to know what he was going to say after “wow.”

  “You look . . . ” Shawn’s eyes start to wander again, but he stops them short of diving into the cleavage peeking out from behind bright blue safety pins that Dee strategically fastened in the dress. He drags that fiery green gaze back up, his fingertips wearing at an already-worn spot on his jeans while my heart pounds pulse-by-slow-pulse in the hollow of my chest. “Dee made this for you?”

  My inner rock goddess wants to take his fidgeting hands and fit them against my curves. Wants to suck his fingertip between my lips to make him think about other things he’d like to put in its place.

  My inner girly-girl is a pussy.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Do I look okay?”

  Do I look okay? In lieu of mimicking oral sex on his finger, I opt for Do I look o-freaking-kay?

  An amused smile touches his lips, and he answers with a slight shake of his head. “Yeah, Kit, you look fine.”

  It isn’t until he starts walking down the bus hallway and I fall in step just behind him that I finally find my nerve again. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  “Huh?”

  “Back there, when I opened the door”—I’m on his heels as we descend the stairs of the double-decker—“is that what you were going to say? That I look fine?”

  Outside, my combat boots hit the pavement, and we walk toward Mayhem side by side. “Does it matter?”

  When I stop walking, Shawn takes a few more steps ahead of me before he stops walking too.

  “What are you doing?”

  I level a stubborn gaze on him. “Waiting.”

  He steps closer so we can see each other in the dim orange glow of the parking lot, and it’s ridiculous what a perfect model he’d make for Goodwill—because it’s like every single T-shirt he wears beat itself up just to be with him. “I have no idea what I was going to say.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t,” he argues. “It was like my brain stopped working for a minute, so I honestly have no fucking idea.”

  Silence, and then giggling. From me. I can’t stop myself from doing it, and even though I feel dumb as hell, it does nothing to wipe the e
ar-to-ear smile from my face.

  A smile teases at Shawn’s lips too, which only makes me feel even dumber. “Happy?” he asks.

  I walk ahead of him to hide my goofy grin. “Maybe.”

  He opens the door for me, his hand finds my lower back to usher me inside, and that smile on my face blooms to epic proportions. I’m escorted backstage to catcalls and whistles from the staff, and I flash them my middle finger even though my heart isn’t in it. Even when Shawn’s hand drops away as we approach the guys, my mood is indestructible.

  Because I broke Shawn Scarlett’s brain. Shawn Scarlett thinks I’m hot.

  Mike whistles louder than anyone, earning me the sudden attention of the entire band. Rowan and Leti are backstage too, and when all eyes turn to me, I brace myself for their ambush.

  “Oh my,” Leti says, circling around me like I’m some kind of safety-pinned maypole. “Oooh my.”

  “You look gorgeous,” Rowan praises, rubbing her fingers over a safety pin on my shoulder and admiring Dee’s work.

  “That ass,” Leti admires from behind me, and I whirl around and smack him on the shoulder while he laughs.

  “Did Dee make this?”

  I turn back around to find Joel studying me, the rest of the guys gathered around. His eyes are for the dress and not at all for what’s underneath, and when I confirm that she did, his answer is blankness. No full smile, no half smile, no frown, no nothing. He nods and walks away, and everyone stares after him with no right words to say, because no right words exist. Shawn and I exchange glances, and when he replies to my worried expression with a slight shake of his head, we both let Joel go.

  “You’re going to have a fan club,” Adam tells me with his arm draped heavily around Rowan. He’s grinning like he’s about to award me some kind of secret honor, and I grin right back.

  “Good. I’ve always wanted a fan club.”

  “Not this kind of fan club,” Shawn warns, like I have no idea what it’s like to have fans, like I’ve never had guys in the pit shout my name. First, he thinks I’ve never had a boyfriend, and now, he thinks I’ve never had someone try to hook up with me after a show? I scoff at him.

  “What, the kind that jerks off to my picture at night? I think I can handle it.”

  Mike bursts out laughing and maneuvers his way to my side. He wraps his arm around my shoulder and diffuses me with a warm smile. “You ready to bring the house down?”

  “Always.” I beam up at him, and he turns back toward the rest of the guys.

  “Sounds to me like she’s ready.”

  “This girl was born ready,” Leti praises, and I wink at him before prepping for the show. I strap my guitar around my neck. I insert my in-ear monitors. I shift from leg to leg as I stand between Adam and Shawn at the darkened side of the stage.

  “I’m going to play up the fan club thing,” Adam says with a devilish smile. “Don’t hate me for it later.”

  I think I hear Shawn sigh to my left, but when I look over at him, he’s busy adjusting the strap of his guitar.

  The lights of the house cut to black, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust, but then the guys are walking onstage and so am I. The crowd goes fucking crazy. The screams are loud enough to make the soles of my boots shiver and the blood in my veins hum. In the dark, a roadie helps me get plugged in, and I take a deep breath. I adjust my in-ear monitors. I wait for my mark.

  Shawn’s Telecaster starts the band’s most popular song, and I try to not go completely fangirl about sharing the stage with him, with Adam Everest, with Joel Gibbon, with Mike Madden. My face breaks into a huge smile, and then Joel’s bass joins in, then my Fender, then Mike’s drums. Adam’s voice carries into my ear, but I know the crowd is hearing it blare from the massive speakers at the sides of the stage. Their arms are in the air, bouncing up and down, up and down, in a turbulent sea of bodies. I know that feeling—that feeling of having your pupils get big, your skin blaze hot, your blood turn electric. But onstage, that feeling is multiplied by a hundred, a thousand. I’m high on the crowd, the music, the dream.

  By the time the first song ends, the entire crowd is screaming its collective head off. It’s been over two months since The Last Ones to Know performed here, and it’s obvious their fans missed them.

  Still, Adam baits them.

  “MAYHEM!” he shouts, tugging his mic from its stand and walking to the very edge of the stage. “God, I’ve missed you!”

  The girls in the pit start screaming that they’ve missed him too, that they love him, and Adam turns to Shawn and smiles. He tugs his shaggy brown hair away from his face and glances across the stage at me with sparkling gray-green eyes before turning back to the crowd.

  “We’ve got some new songs for you tonight! But first, do you see this smoking-hot chick we’ve brought with us?”

  A deep voice in the pit shouts, “HELL YEAH!”

  Adam chuckles into his mic. “That’s our new guitarist, Kit. We went to school with her, and she’s talented as hell.” He walks the length of the stage, engaging the entire crowd. “How many guys here want to join Kit’s fan club tonight?”

  The deafening cheers that spring from the pit this time are different from when Adam’s silhouette first walked onstage—now, male voices dominate the noise. Most of the guys are probably here with girlfriends, but none of them seem to care as they answer Adam’s call.

  I’ve played for crowds before, but none this size, and never with a lead singer like Adam. He knows just what to say to get the fans worked up, and I follow his lead by blowing a kiss down at the pit. The girls in the front row cheer me on, screaming at me like I’m some kind of hero.

  Adam grins at my showmanship, fueling me with his approval. “Sounds like you have a few takers. Ready to give them a show?”

  I play a riff on my guitar that leaves the crowd screaming, and even Adam doesn’t interrupt the applause. With the walls threatening to come down, I glance at the other guys to find them beaming at me—Joel behind me, Mike in the back, and Shawn at the other side of the stage, illuminated in blue light. Then, before I know it, Adam introduces the next song, and the next.

  I lose myself in the music—in the heat of the lights, in the sound of Adam’s voice, in the beat of Mike’s drums. I focus on my instrument, letting my fingers do what they were trained to do and giving in to the high. My mind is present on the stage and above the stage and in the crowd, and beads of sweat are pooling at the base of my neck and trickling down my spine. By the time the first “last song” ends, my skin is blazing hot and my brain is completely fried. When I walk out of view of the crowd, it doesn’t even feel like walking. It feels like floating, like flying. It feels like dreaming.

  “You were fucking AWESOME,” Adam praises backstage before our encore. The fans are already shouting for one more song, one more song, one more song, and I want to give them a thousand more. I want to play until my fingers fall off, and then I want to glue them back on and keep playing.

  “You guys!” I shout, bracing my hands on Mike’s shoulders because I desperately need to latch on to something. “That was AMAZING!”

  When Leti taps me on the shoulder, I spin around and throw my arms around his neck.

  “How great was that?”

  He laughs and asks me if I need to be “spun around or something.”

  “YES!” I shout, barely getting the word out before he whips me around in a circle. My feet leave the ground, and I squeal and feel like kissing him or finding religion or, hell, stripping naked and going back onstage that way.

  We played some of the new stuff, and the crowd ate it up. Not that I doubted that they would, but to hear them applaud the songs I helped write . . . songs played by The Last Ones to Know . . . it was indescribable.

  “Here,” Shawn says, handing me a water, and to keep myself from jumping into his arms instead of Leti’s, I take it and gulp it down.

  “I told you there was nothing to be nervous about,” he says, flashing me that heartbreaker
smile that makes my skipping heart remember exactly why it was so nervous. His dark band T-shirt is damp with sweat, his messy black hair soaked at the tips and curling at the base of his neck. His skin is flushed and probably as scorching hot as mine, and I wonder if I pressed up against him, if we’d both burst into flames.

  “One more song!” The crowd’s chant gets louder, pulsing under the soles of my feet. “One more song!” My scalp prickles, sending electric waves down my spine. “One more song!” My guitar pick calls to me even though the pads of my fingers are numb. “One more song! One more song! One more song!”

  “You ready?” Adam asks me, and I nod as I finish my water. I wipe my arm across my mouth and toss the bottle in a bin, and then my guitar is strapped heavily around my neck and I’m walking back onstage in a line. Joel, Mike, me, Shawn, Adam.

  The Last Ones to Know.

  Chapter Eight

  THE GUYS AND I play one final crowd favorite before we exit the stage, followed by a deafening roar of screams and applause. I almost feel bad for the post-concert hangover we’re leaving those kids with, knowing that each one of them is going to be going through withdrawal for days.

  But for now, there’s only mayhem as we march right into the thick of the crowd. Shawn tells me to keep close, but in the chaos, I get thrown into a cyclone of fans and pictures and autographs—more fans and pictures and autographs than I’ve ever dealt with in my life. Sometimes, the pictures are of me and the band. Sometimes, they’re of me and a few girls. Sometimes, they’re of just me and a guy. And most of the time, those guys offer to buy me a drink or take me home.

  “After merch,” Shawn manages to shout to me over the noise while Mike and I are taking a picture with a fan, “we’ll go to the bus.” Our group has been broken up by the crowd, with Shawn and Adam being swallowed by the teeth of it.

  I shake my head and shout back at him. “No way! I was promised like thirty freaking drinks at the bar!”