The Way It Hurts

by Patty Blount

  “Madison, I’m pretty sure I saw you rockin’ out during our duets. Tell us.” Elijah waved toward the camera. “Are you Team Elijah or Team Kristen?”

  Madison turned toward the camera and laughed. “Oh, I’m Team Ride Out!” she answered smoothly. “This is Madison Kelly at Bear River Mall, rockin’ out with Ride Out.”

  The guys all flashed rock fingers and cheesy grins at the camera, and then we were done.

  “Thanks, Madison. That was really fun.” I held out a hand.

  She shook it and smiled wryly. “You guys are like total pros. Especially you, Elijah. Way to duck the question. Seriously, what does that pogo stick line really mean?”

  Elijah just grinned and shrugged but said nothing.

  “Okay, so we’ll probably air this later tonight, starting with the six o’clock edition. For what it’s worth, I’m totally Team Kristen.”

  “Aw, you wound me.” Elijah pressed his hands to his heart.

  “Good luck to you all. I had a great time and will definitely be following you online.”

  “Great! Maybe we’ll see you at our next gig,” Elijah said, pulling out a flier I’d never seen before. It bore the same logo engraved on the leather cuffs we all wore.

  Elijah sure put a lot of effort into getting noticed. I wasn’t sure why that hurt me.

  But it did.

  21

  Elijah

  BryceG: Okay, so @BroadwayBaby17 has a decent voice. But she’s not metal, guys. Just put her in some rockin’ leather pants, some studs, something hot.

  SHARES: 288 LIKES: 497

  “God, that was painful,” Nick groaned once we were safely back inside the office.

  “Chill, bro. It’s exposure, and we need it.” I fell into a chair, grabbed a bottle of water, and chugged it. “We didn’t lose our shit. We didn’t come across like unprofessionals. All that matters.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m with Nick,” Sam said. He grabbed two more bottles and tossed one to Nick. “That chick was out for blood.”

  Kristen sat quietly in a corner, watching us debate Madison Kelly’s interview. The office was small. There was a single metal desk in an L that had been cleaned of anything office-related. Someone had brought in a tabletop mirror that lit up and plugged it into a power strip on the side of the desk. A small plastic cooler sat on the floor under the desk.

  “What was all that shit about inviting her to the show? Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Shit. “Oh, I, uh, kind of forgot.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” I tied an elastic around my hair. “I saw her tweet the Kris versus Eli hashtag, so Kristen and I pounced on it.”

  “Kristen and you,” Sam said, a dark look on his face. “You guys hang out regularly now?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Yeah, Sam, we do when we’ve both been up for thirty hours straight after sitting in a hospital.” I stepped forward, ready to pound him into a fucking pancake.

  Sam let out a long sigh and held up his hands. “Okay, I’m sorry. I forgot about Etta, Kristen. And your parents, Eli.”

  I nodded and waved a hand. I was too tired to keep fighting about this shit. Kristen didn’t say anything. What the hell was up with her?

  “Guys, now may not be a great time to bring this up, but have you looked at your phones?”

  All eyes swung to Nick, who was scrolling feverishly through his phone. “I um…I think we’re trending.”

  “No way.” Sam grabbed his phone and so did I. “Aw, fuck. We’re not trending. That stupid ‘Kris versus Eli’ hashtag is trending.”

  “Same thing, man,” I reminded him.

  “No. It’s not. This should be about the music, not some battle of the sexes drama,” he said, flinging his arms out wide.

  I disagreed. “Whatever works.”

  “Eli, in case you forgot, Ride Out has three members—sorry, sorry!” He put up a hand before I could protest. “Four. It’s not just the Eli and Kristen show.”

  “Fine, you want a hashtag too?” I started tapping on my screen. “How about hashtag SamVersusEli. Or better yet, hashtag SamLovesEli. People love a good bromance. Or, wait, wait, wait—I got it! Hashtag Sam’sEgo. ’Cause that’s what this is really about.”

  “Fuck you, Hamilton.”

  Nick howled with laughter, but Kristen still said nothing. Sam turned his back on me, fluffing his hair in the mirror. I glanced at Kristen, not all that surprised to see her scrolling through her own phone.

  “Kris, what’s up? You okay?” I snagged another bottle of water and handed it to her.

  She cracked the cap, sipped, and shrugged. “I guess. Just worried.”

  “About Etta?”

  “About everything,” she said, sighing. “My family’s not happy about this,” she admitted, waving a hand around our little room. I got it. She meant singing with us.

  The tips of Sam’s ears went red. “Why not?” he demanded. “They embarrassed or something?”

  Kristen opened her mouth, but Sam shot to his feet.

  “You know what? Forget it. I don’t care.” He pitched his water bottle into the trash and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Well,” I said after a few moments. “We’d better go break down the gear and pack it all up.”

  Nick nodded, and we shuffled back to our instruments.

  “Oh my God, it you! It’s them! Ride Out! Please take a picture?” A girl bounced in front of me. I grinned and nodded, and that started the avalanche. We spent the next hour posing for selfies, signing stuff, and chatting with fans who lingered. It was amazing and awesome, and God—it was about friggin’ time.

  22

  Kristen

  @xxMakeKrisScreamxx

  @kristencartwright Saw u at Smith Point Beach show but u didn’t scream! When u gonna scream for us? #CatCall

  @xxMakeKrisScreamxx

  I tweet @ u every day but u ignore me. Scream for me! @kristencartwright #CatCall

  @xxMakeKrisScreamxx

  @kristencartwright Saw u at corner gas mart. Walked right by me. Bitch. Next time, I’ll make u scream for me. #CatCall

  @xxMakeKrisScreamxx

  Bitch should get raped! Metal’s for guys. Scream, bitch! @kristencartwright #CatCall

  @Rosebud

  Back off @xxMakeKrisScreamxx. #CatCall Threats aren’t cool. Reported. Blocked.

  @LIMusicScene

  Is @Ride_Out planning to FIRE @kristencartwright? Find out here bit.ly/LIMS89ghlc #CatCall #KrisVsEli

  “Is it true?” I quietly asked, my eyes pinned to my phone.

  I was in Elijah’s garage. I’d spent over an hour this morning blocking and reporting a whole new generation of jerks for inappropriate tweets. The Beat wasn’t much better. Rape threats, and now I’d just read an article on a local music scene website claiming that Ride Out wanted to fire me. Elijah, to his credit, seemed outright stunned when I showed him the post.

  It was the end of June.

  It had been more than a month since Madison Kelly interviewed us, more than a month since Etta’s stroke, and more than a month since our mall gig. Etta had been released from the hospital but not been able to come home.

  Mom and Dad found a rehab center for her that was supposed to be amazing. I now totally understood why Elijah wanted to keep Anna out of a residence program. His parents still had Anna on various wait lists, and Elijah was holding out hope that the band would hit the charts before any of them had an opening.

  Meanwhile, our numbers kept rising. We had more fans, more followers, and more online influence than ever, and that had begun opening a lot of doors. We’d been invited to play shows at a couple of bars along the beach and even at a music festival in Westbury. Elijah was trying to find us a manager and an agent and spent a lot o
f his time mixing demos for record companies.

  He rolled his eyes when I showed him the latest blog posts posing as news.

  “‘Ride Out fires only female member.’ Oh, hell, no. Come on, Kris. Don’t you know how to tell the rumors from the facts by now?” He laughed and lifted the headphones again.

  I gritted my teeth. “Oh. Rumor,” I mimicked, adding in finger quotes for emphasis. “Elijah, there’s a quote. From you.”

  “Kris, I never gave this blog an interview.”

  “Okay, so why aren’t you pissed off that they quoted you without permission? Shouldn’t you be doing something about this? They can say whatever the hell they want, and you’re okay with that?”

  “What are you getting so upset about? I told you it’s not true.” He swiveled on his stool to study me, and that only pissed me off more. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

  Or it should have been.

  “Look!” I practically threw my phone at Elijah. “Do you see what they’re saying now? It’s not the band anymore, Elijah.” The latest group of tweets from some jerk calling himself @xxMakeKrisScreamxx on Twitter had seriously upset me. I hadn’t stopped shaking since I saw them. “They’re following me now, Elijah. This guy was in the same physical space as me, and I didn’t even know. Do you not get how this is like a hundred times scarier than that jerk at the grocery store? There is a fan out there right now who hates me. He could be waiting for me so he could…so he could…”

  Suddenly, I was crying and sobbing. I could be jumped. Beaten up. Raped. I didn’t have fans—the band did. I had haters. I had challengers—morons and jerks who actually thought they would be the ones to make me scream. And Elijah? Instead of doing something about it, he was looking for a way to leverage this.

  He shook his head and tried to hold me. “Kris, it’s okay. Shh, shh, shh, it’s okay. This is just talk. That’s all.”

  I wrestled away from him, shaking my head. “Elijah, you have to pull the plug. I’m scared. Do you understand? I’m scared.”

  Frowning, he looked away. “Pull the plug on what? The Kris versus Eli hashtag? I haven’t tweeted that since the grocery store incident. I can’t control who else is still tweeting it.” He lifted a shoulder like I’d just handed him a Pepsi instead of a Coke. What’s the big deal? They’re both cola, right?

  I stared at him, trying to see, trying to understand why this didn’t matter to him. Why I didn’t matter to him.

  “This is a Frankenstein monster now, Elijah. These assholes can say whatever they want! They threaten me. They say they’ll make me scream if you can’t. And now, they’re following me. Jesus, I just told you I’m scared, and you say it’s just talk?”

  He stood up and rubbed his hands up and down my shoulders. “Okay, look. I get that it’s scary, but it’s harmless. It’s just people venting because they think their little accounts on Twitter or the Beat actually get read. The key is not to get upset, not to react. The numbers are what’s important.”

  I flung my arms up in the air. “Do you hear yourself? The numbers, the numbers! I’m so tired of hearing about these stupid numbers. These numbers don’t mean anything unless they buy tickets. We played three shows last week alone—how many people came?”

  He shook hair out of his eyes and shot back, “More than we had the week before, which was more than the week before that.”

  I sank onto a stool and buried my face in my hands. He didn’t get it and never would. He was a guy. He didn’t understand rape threats. “Elijah, I get scared when some jerk posts that I should be raped for daring to sing metal with you guys. Why don’t you get that?”

  He stared at my phone for a moment, and a muscle in his jaw twitched when he read the latest series of comments. He grabbed a stool and sat in front of me. “Kris, it’s one guy. And he’s obviously an asshole. If you want me to, I’ll call him out on this, but it’s probably not gonna help. He’s a troll. He wants the fight. The only way trolls go away is when you ignore them.”

  My eyes popped. “Ignore him. You want me to ignore a rape threat, pretend I’m not completely freaked out? Would you ignore it if this jerk threatened Anna?”

  He looked at me sharply. “No. No, I wouldn’t ignore that.”

  I bit my lip. Of course he couldn’t ignore that. For Anna, Elijah was a white knight.

  “Kris, Anna can’t defend herself, so it’s my job to do that for her.”

  “And me? I agreed to sing in your band. I agreed to this stupid online war. And you’ll just watch these morons come after me?”

  “Nobody’s coming after you, Kris.”

  “They did once. They could again…”

  “They won’t. These guys are all a bunch of pimply wusses! The keyboard is the only real weapon they’ll ever wield. In real life, they’re faceless and gutless. Trust me. It’s all just talk. It goes with the territory. The price of fame.”

  Trust him? I had just told him I was scared down to my bone marrow, and he wanted me to trust him. Inside me, something cracked, the something half in love with the soft side of Elijah Hamilton.

  “Yeah, well, maybe if we were actually famous, it wouldn’t be so terrifying. At least then, I’d have a security detail…maybe a hot bodyguard.”

  He lowered his head, holding my gaze. “I’ll guard your body anytime.”

  I slapped his arm hard. “Will you be serious? I’m telling you, I’m afraid somebody’s gonna leap out of a shrub and attack me out of some misplaced loyalty to you.”

  Elijah took my hands. “Okay, look. Maybe you’re right. Maybe these people are taking this whole battle thing way too seriously. If you’re scared, then we’ll stop. No more posts except for appearance information.”

  “So no more battle of the sexes, no more make Kris scream?”

  He held up his hand. “Swear to God.”

  “Okay.” I sighed in relief. “You’d really do that?”

  He leaned closer and repeated the vow. “I promise, Kris.”

  And just like that, I forgot why I was mad at him. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even blink because I was afraid he’d let go. This was the part of him I adored. I clung to him for a long moment, and when his gaze drifted to my mouth, I wondered if—hoped—prayed—he’d finally kiss me.

  And then, Etta’s voice suddenly spoke inside my head. “Well, my God, darling, it’s the twenty-first century. What on earth are you waiting for? You can kiss him.”

  I could. Yes. Yes, I could just lift my head and lean in and kiss Elijah Hamilton like it was a normal, ordinary occurrence.

  Right. Like kissing Elijah Hamilton would ever be ordinary?

  I’d watched him kiss that girl at the mall and was sure I’d memorized all the steps in his routine. He’d move in, grip my face between his hands, run his thumb along my jaw, and finally, glide his arm down around my body, pulling me against his own, all the while, peeking through his lashes to see if I enjoyed it.

  I wasn’t sure when I decided—even what made me decide. I just touched my lips to his and waited.

  It took a second or two. But then there was a sudden, tiny squeak from him, and I felt the pulse in his wrist leap under my fingertips. And then, his hands were in my hair, angling my head just the way he liked it, his tongue brushing against mine, so soft it might have been my imagination…except imaginary kisses were never so intense. He kissed me like I was a song he wrote, lips wrapped around every word until it hummed with hidden meaning and promise, and his hands held me the way they held his guitar—like the music would stop if he let me go.

  It went on for a long time, and when we finally broke apart to breathe, I saw his eyes were all the way closed, and I smiled because this kiss was nothing like the one he’d given that mall girl.

  “Whoa,” he whispered, his hands still gripping me hard. “I’ve wanted to do that since the day I met you.”

 
I blinked. “Yeah, right.”

  With a sigh, he dropped his hands and sat back…away from me. “I promised Nick and Sam I’d stay away from you. They were afraid there’d be drama, and you’d quit when I—”

  Oh. When he dumped me. My face burst into flames, and I turned away.

  “Kris, don’t.”

  His voice was quiet and pleading. I spun around, studying him. He stood there, face naked—no smirk, no teasing glint in his eyes, not even a long look aimed at my chest. He’d dropped the act and removed the rock star costume.

  There was only Elijah, and I liked it. Oh God, I really liked it.

  “Kristen, I don’t know how to be somebody’s boyfriend. But I really want to try.”

  Try? Jesus, was I a pair of shoes at some department store now? The ridiculous urge to start talking like Yoda struck, but I managed to ignore it.

  “I don’t want to try, Elijah,” I began, but hesitated when his shields came back up with a visible snap. A shiver ran down my back, and I quickly added, “I want us to work. I want you to put effort into us the way you do this band. I want you to want me—”

  “I do want you.”

  “Not that way!” I flung up my hands and thought of my parents and how they shouldn’t work but did. They were such different people but genuinely liked being together. I wanted what they had. Elijah and I…we really weren’t all that different. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one. I only knew that I wanted us to work. “I want you to want me around you, the way you want Anna. I want you to respect me.”

  “I do,” he repeated. “Kris, if I didn’t respect you, I would have made a move on you weeks ago.”

  “Oh, really.” I shot him a glare.

  “I’ve rewritten chunks of music because I respect the talent you bring to this group.”

  “Yeah, I know that but—”

  “You don’t believe me.” His hand shot up, and his face went tight. “I get it. You don’t trust me. Even after all these weeks, you still don’t see me.” He nodded, lips flattened into a line intended to mask the pain I knew I’d just caused him.