Anya and the Shy Guy (Backstage Pass)

by Suze Winegardner

  “Sorry, just finding the right place,” someone shouted from behind her.

  She craned her head and saw a man with headphones standing on a platform in the middle of the seated area. He looked older. Friendly.

  What kind of secrets did he have in his back pocket? Hell, what kind of secrets did all of the stagehands and roadies have about the band? They’d probably seen things no one would believe.

  A plan started to formulate in her mind. Maybe she could write nightly blog posts for WowSounds from the perspectives of the ordinary people on the tour, and then she could do the longer interviews with Will every other day or so. Maybe she could get questions from the readers to ask Will during the day.

  She whipped out her notebook and started to take notes.

  By the time she looked up, satisfied that she had figured out a way to manage this without messing it up, music was playing and four other guys were on the stage getting miked up by a man who had his own headset on.

  It seemed that they used head mikes, so they didn’t have to hold an actual microphone. In turn four of them said, “Testing, one two, one two,” into the microphone, and their voices bounced around the stadium like they were in some kind of echo chamber.

  The last guy wore a black T-shirt that showed off a bunch of tattoos. He said, “Fuck this shit, fuck this shit,” in the same way the others had done their sound check. Satisfied, he gave a thumbs-up to the sound guys. She guessed that was Ryder, the Bad Boy.

  Anya smiled to herself, but the guys onstage looked anything but amused. Was there tension here? Oh God, she hoped so. She wanted to blow the lid off something that could earn her decent money.

  She huddled over her messenger bag and pulled her feet up to the seat. The lights went out and a groaning piece of stage equipment, like a huge arch, eased forward on tracks to the front of the stage. It stopped over the boys who were standing in a line, shifting from foot to foot as if they were anxious to get it over with.

  Spotlights flicked on as the music started. The beats vibrated through Anya’s body, and she realized how unique it was to be watching a band as the only person in the audience. Will started to sing, but she could barely make out the words as his voice reverberated around her. Then the others harmonized, and she started to get into it.

  She’d never heard this song before, but where would she have? She did all her band research at the library, where it was definitely frowned upon to have music blaring from the computer speakers. Her head bobbed to the bass line, and a smile crept across her face. It was good. Who would have thought?

  And then they stopped singing, someone shouted at someone else, and in a split second, they were shoving each other and yelling. What had she missed? The backing track ground to a halt, and LJ ran onstage and held a mike to the speaker. The feedback whine was so loud, Anya swore they could have heard it in Atlanta. Then he spoke.

  “What the fuck are you doing? If you can’t be professional in front of a fucking reporter”—he pointed at Anya—“then I will send you back to the little town piss pots you came from, unnerstand?” He didn’t wait for a reply, just threw the mike at their feet and stalked off the stage.

  Whoa. Do not get on his wrong side. Do not get caught lying to him about my age. Or anything.

  …

  It was always Ryder who couldn’t keep it together. What was up with him? Matt wished that he’d interrogated Will about the personalities in the band as much as he had the music. He just didn’t get most of them. Maybe Ryder was pissed because his girl Mia was out of town for a couple of weeks.

  There was silence as LJ left the stage. As much as Matt hated him, he couldn’t entirely blame him for being pissed at the constant sniping and barely concealed agitation between the band members. When they said in interviews that they were like one big family, it was this agitation and frustration that they were referring to. According to Will, it hadn’t always been this way. They were tight friends, and would do anything for one another, but the intense time they spent together sometimes fueled petty disputes and arguments that thankfully usually ended in laughs and the busting of chops.

  “All right, let’s hit this one again, shall we?” Trevin asked with fake politeness. That guy sometimes seemed to have the weight of the world on him, as well as Will and Matt’s problems.

  Although no one said a word in response to his request, everyone assumed their starting positions again without complaint. The music gave them their cue, and Matt started to sing, channeling his twin with every inflection. He might get the words wrong here and there—no thanks to Will—but Trevin had been right about one thing. Matt was getting closer to Will’s sound.

  As the others joined in, the song got faster, until it was almost a rap. Then, at the climax, there was a pause, sound effects of thunder and lightning flashed, and then the rain came.

  That was where it almost always went wrong. The rain machine opened up on them as they segued back into the sultry opening of the song. They sang as they got soaked. And in the last chorus of the song, they did what drove all the girls crazy.

  They did a few dance steps in sync. Synchronized dance steps weren’t their thing at all. But in the last chorus of the last song, they went for it.

  If the crowd had voices left, they screamed at the sight of them doing their dance under the shower. Ryder nearly always ripped off his shirt at the end. Sometimes one of the other guys did, too. But Matt couldn’t. Too much to hide.

  As finales went, though, this was hard to beat. They just had to finish without injuring themselves, like Will had done.

  The stage was slippery when wet, and even some of the rubber stripping was a deathtrap if your feet got stuck to it, or if, in Will’s case, it had peeled off in the middle, making a loop that he’d caught his foot in, wrenching his knee.

  It was a huge hazard, but no one had come up with a more impactful way to end the show. They took their last dance step, which was kicking the water into the front row of the audience. Actually the rain machine flicked up at the same time, which made the front rows feel like they were getting wet from the stage water. “Trevin got my T-shirt wet” merchandise went for a minimum of $50 on eBay. But here, they were really getting hosed by the machine. He tried to see the reporter-girl, but the “rain” decreased visibility. He wondered what she thought of the number.

  After the last note of the backing track faded, the spots clanged off and the stage lights came back on. There was nothing like nailing a song in rehearsal to put everyone in a good mood, even Ryder, so they bumped fists and laughed together as they waited for the okay to leave from the choreographer, Moses.

  “Okay, guys, that looked good,” Moses said. “I think the diagonal rubber tape seems to provide less of a trip hazard now. You all okay with that?” He nodded as they all affirmed. “Okay, you’re done for the day. There’s a meeting tomorrow morning at ten a.m. sharp to go over the last details of your appearance and script changes for Tulsa. After that, you have free time until six p.m. Then it’s makeup and stage-wait until showtime. Now get lost, all of you.” He grinned as he dismissed them.

  Matt jumped off the stage and made his way to whassername. Shit, he couldn’t believe he’d already forgotten her name. She was huddled in the front row, hair soaked and T-shirt clinging to—he swallowed hard—every part of her. “Shit, I’m sorry. I told you to stay out of the front row.”

  “I didn’t hear you. And by the time I figured out what you’d said, I was already mentally figuring out how to build an ark.” She blew a heavy wet strand of jet-black hair from her face. As her gray eyes met his, he immediately remembered her name: Anya.

  Anya. A silence fell as her name ran through his head, backward and forward, until it became a part of his regular vocabulary. Like “water,” and “air,” and “sexy as hell.”

  What? Out of all the girls I’ve met since becoming “Will,” I get the hots for the one here to dig up our secrets.

  Great going, Matt. Great.

  “Jus
t call me Noah,” she said as if she was reading his mind, the way his twin sometimes did.

  He recovered his train of thought and laughed, relieved that she had such a great sense of humor. “If it’s any consolation, I’m a lot wetter than you, and I have to do this nearly every evening, whether it’s eighty degrees out or forty.”

  She frowned. “Dude, you’re in the South. It’s never going to be forty degrees here.”

  Busted. “True. I was really going for the sympathy vote.” He shrugged and grinned, heartened to see that she was grinning back.

  “I’m not one for the sympathy vote. I vote practical all day long.” She stuffed her wet notebook into her wet bag and stood up.

  “Good to know. And on that practical note, we should change into some dry clothes.”

  “No kidding.” Her smile had gone, and right there, he knew he’d do anything to see that mischievous grin again.

  Dammit. Get a grip.

  Diversion. Quick.

  “Hey, if you’re writing about us, don’t mention any details about the number you just saw us rehearse,” he said. “It’s the finale, and although people can’t help but post photos of it, we try not to mention the specifics…just to maybe surprise the people who aren’t on the fan sites.”

  “Well it certainly surprised me. No problem. I won’t mention it,” she said.

  Suddenly he pictured her totally wet, dripping from the rain or the shower. Her hair down, a real smile on her face, just for him. Water running down her shoulders, maybe clumping her eyelashes together…

  Clumping her…? Jesus, Matt. Shut up, you wimp.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “The homeless shelter we’re going to tomorrow,” he lied. “We’re hoping to raise the profile of the place to show people that they need more public housing in the city. We’re also donating money to the organization that supports getting the homeless back to work.” Yup, I’m going to hell. “You’ll be there, I guess. If LJ has told you to stick to me like glue.” He grinned at her as they stopped at his bus. “Meet you back here in ten?”

  “Sure,” she said, although she didn’t look happy at all.

  Oh come the fuck on. How could you not be charmed by a charity-loving superstar?

  Except in real life he was neither of those things.

  Shit.

  Chapter Four

  Shit. She’d been to almost all the homeless shelters in Tulsa. They knew her there. How could she get out of going with the band and not be thrown off the tour? The anxiety she’d quashed while watching the rehearsal reared its ugly head and was making out with the panic that was decorating the space it had taken in her stomach.

  Or was that hunger? She wasn’t sure her body knew how to register hunger anymore. A book in the library had said that if a body went without food, it could forget to alert the brain that it was hungry. Sometimes she’d gone without eating for days and not even thought about it.

  She shrugged out of her wet clothes and draped them on one of the curtain rods that gave the bunks some privacy. Since it was only her and Natasha in here, she’d used the one next to her bunk. Carefully, she opened her backpack all the way and looked at the clothes carefully washed, folded, and rolled, all in order of color and warmth. This bag was the one tiny area of her life that she had complete control over. To Anya, it was a thing of beauty. Everything she needed in its own space. She gently extracted a pink T-shirt, her jean skirt, and a pair of flip-flops. She peeked into the tiny bathroom and used two old hair clips to pin back the worst of the wet bangs.

  She looked in the mirror, but she didn’t see herself. She saw Will onstage. She couldn’t believe she got to talk to someone who looked so good. He didn’t have the confidence of the others, but she guessed that was why they called him the Shy Guy. He seemed nice. Normal even. Cute. Fun, too.

  A butterfly fluttered in her stomach when she thought of him standing in front of her, completely wet like he’d been caught in a rainstorm, looking as if he was going to whisk her off, rescue her from a castle, pull her onto a huge white horse. Whoa, there, sister. Keep your eyes on the prize, not on his pretty face.

  She pulled herself together. She was here for a reason. An important one. And she wasn’t going to be swayed by a cute guy who looked like heaven.

  Before she left, she spun the ring in her eyebrow. It was her call to action. Her reminder that the way she looked, the way she’d chosen to look, was designed as protection. Protection from prying eyes. Protection from people who thought she might be an easy victim. And protection from well-meaning people who wanted to get involved in her life.

  She slipped out of the bus with her notebook and pen and walked past three trailers until she reached the band’s vehicle. Just as she was about to knock, Will came down the stairs, still buttoning his shirt. For a second all she could see was his broad chest, and her breath hitched. He was tan and smooth, with an evident beginning to a six-pack.

  Get a grip, Anya.

  Her reaction scared her a little, but she didn’t want fear to join forces with panic and anxiety. Two out of the three was quite enough, thank you.

  “I thought we’d hit the greenroom. I’m pretty hungry. You?” he asked.

  “I could eat,” she said carefully, wondering what a greenroom was. Obviously somewhere there was food, at least. She cursed herself for not bringing her bag. She always tried to doggie-bag as many meals as she could whenever she found some. Eat what was going to spoil first, and save the rest for later.

  Would she have to pay to eat anything in the greenroom? Or would it be free? She dropped back a pace and checked Will’s perfectly formed ass. Nope, he didn’t have a wallet with him. So he wasn’t paying for anything. But then, he was a rock star.

  Free food would be an unbelievable bonus. But it also reminded her of the homeless shelter where she’d tended to get most of her meals.

  Crap. The homeless shelter. They were going there tomorrow. What if someone recognized her?

  “In here.” This time Will just grabbed her hand and led her through a door and along a warren of corridors in the stadium. The place smelled damp like the old waterworks she’d once called her home. For a few weeks at least. She passed a door sign that said Visiting Team Lockers. Ah, that’s why the smell was so bad. Football changing rooms.

  Will still hadn’t let go of her, and she hadn’t snatched her hand back. What was wrong with her? She pretended to stumble and pulled free to grab a doorframe.

  He looked around with concern. “Are you okay?”

  “Yup.” She straightened, smiled, and tucked her hand in her skirt pocket. Suddenly she felt off balance, as if she wanted to hold his hand again. But before she could figure out what the hell was going on with her head, he ducked through a door.

  “Here we are.”

  She swore he almost moaned as he said the words, as if he hadn’t been fed in days. A man in black pants and a starched white shirt was hovering over the food, moving a plate an inch this way, turning a bowl that way. Anya watched in fascination. So. Much. Food.

  There were hundreds of small sandwiches, peeled and sliced fruit, strips of vegetables around various dips, potato chips, and bread. “If you want hot food, there’re menus on the tables,” Will said, scooping up a handful of chips.

  Unable to speak, she picked up one of the menus and looked at it, unseeing. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears. She hadn’t seen this much ordinary food in years. Years. Soup, stew, and rice she’d seen a lot of at the city church kitchens that fed the homeless. But food arranged like this, like it was art, was so alien to her, her stomach almost rebelled. Almost.

  She placed the menu back on the table and turned to the buffet again. She reached for a piece of melon and snatched her hand back. Could she? She looked at Will, who nodded with a bewildered look. She tried to restrain herself. Really she did.

  In seconds, she was tasting a ham sandwich. The grainy mustard made her taste buds tingle, and she moaned. Next was
a slice of pineapple, a strawberry. The juiciness flooded her mouth as if the sugar had set off an explosion. She took some chips and a hunk of French bread.

  “Jesus. How hungry were you?” Will said from behind her. “Well, I don’t think anyone needs to see this, do they?” He turned and shut the door.

  Oh my God. She swallowed her mouthful, mortified that she had forgotten he was there for a moment. She met his eyes, shame flushing her cheeks. He cracked his neck, laced his fingers together, and popped them as he stretched. What…?

  He rolled up his sleeves and stood next to her. “You probably think you’re all that, but frankly, you’re a rank amateur. Watch and learn, grasshopper.”

  In, like, two seconds he had two sandwiches in his mouth, and was double fisting one hand of chips, and one of grapes. He was…freaking awesome. She eyed him and grabbed some more bread. He gave her a deadpan look as she met his eyes.

  Okay then. She smeared the bread on a stick of butter and ate it, slowing down marginally.

  He raised his eyebrows at her as he grabbed a banana. He bit off the end and started peeling it with his teeth, since his other hand still had some kind of cold cuts in it. She paused to watch in fascination as she finished her own mouthful and then grabbed a banana, too.

  She’d taken two bites before he seemed to choke.

  “Oh no. It doesn’t count if you throw it all up, you know,” she said. “You totally lose points for that.”

  He swallowed, the back of his hand pressed to his mouth as if he was keeping the food well and truly inside. He cleared his throat. “Put that banana down. That was cheating.”

  She paused and looked at it in her hand. What? Ohhhhh. She flushed, then giggled. She opened her mouth, eyes wide, as if she was going to eat the whole thing in one bite and then, as his eyes flickered down to her mouth, she threw it back on her plate. She immediately grabbed another hunk of bread and whispered “sucker” as she got a head start on him. It took him a good two seconds before he stopped staring and started chomping on his cold cuts. She grinned at him as best she could while her mouth overflowed with the warm bread.