by Ashley Grace
"Becca, come on!" I said. "We're not even supposed to be in here. The crowd outside is going crazy about something. The Belletrists could be here any minute."
"Just… uh… just a minute… ah… Anne," she said. "Ohhhh."
God, she must have really been excited—she sounded like she was about to have an orgasm already. Or maybe it was always that easy for her. I felt a little pang of jealousy on top of the mortifying embarrassment.
Whatever. I decided I didn't want to have to sit there and watch it. Hearing her in her dorm bed late at night was bad enough, but at least I could pretend to sleep through that. Here, I didn't have any such pretense.
I spun on my heel, striding back toward the door, eager to get out of there before Becca made it to the big O. My hand went to the doorknob, and I shoved the door open, practically throwing myself through it.
And on the other side, I came face to face with Trace LeBeau.
Chapter 8
Trace
Bernstein took me by the arm, his thick little fingers gripping me firmly, and guided me away from the limo. The door to the club was just a few paces away, and I passed through it quickly, hearing the crowd's roar going quieter as they lost sight of me.
Micah was in the hallway just past the door, flicking his knife open and then folding it closed against his side, doing it again and again like a nervous tick. Even after ten years together and tours all over the world, I had no clue what he was thinking right then.
His eyes met mine.
"Hell of a little, secret, hush-hush type of show," he said to me. "Must be a thousand people out there, but Bernstein told me this club only holds two hundred."
I looked up at him. Micah's eyes were a striking, a light-green color almost like the color of a cat's eyes, and right then the pupils were massively dilated—deep black pools surrounded by thin rings of green. I wondered what he was on.
"I sense a shift in the air," he said. "This tour is changing from a viability test to a promotional campaign. They're getting ready to put us back in the field."
I met his eyes, nodding my head. "I think you're right," I said.
I heard the knife click shut. He slipped it into his pocket, and then put that hand on my shoulder.
"And how do you feel about that, Trace?" he asked. "Are you ready to go back to active duty?"
"I guess. At least, I'm ready for something to happen. I feel like I've been adrift for a long time. I'm ready to try something new."
He kept those eyes trained on me for long enough to make me a little uneasy. And then a touch of softness came into his expression, and he nodded.
"Good," he said. "Good. I've given ten years of my life to this band. I'm ready for us to be back in action. I'm ready to be part of a team again, watching each other's backs. I'm ready to go to war."
A strange light seemed to shine in his eyes for a moment, and then he patted me on the back and smiled.
I moved past him, turning his words over in my mind. What was going on with Micah? Since I'd started taking the mood-stabilizers, I wasn't always sure what I was feeling (when I felt anything at all)—but right then, I was pretty sure I felt a little creeped out.
There was a door farther up the hall, with the word "Green Room" painted on it. I walked toward it, reaching my hand out for the doorknob. But before I could touch the door, someone inside opened it.
I stuttered to a stop, barely managing to keep myself from walking right into the opening door. For a moment I hung there, trying to regain my balance.
A young woman came through the door, her hair a rich brown, her skin flushed rosy from her cheeks down to her chest. And quite a chest she had—lovely, bountiful, caught on the verge of spilling out of her tiny top.
She looked up at me, startled. Her eyes were beautiful, large and dark and deep, warm brown like polished mahogany. And when she recognized me, they sprang open so wide I could see white all around her irises.
For a moment, I was captivated by those eyes, caught like an animal in a trap. Deep within my chest, a sudden throbbing ache cut through the dull fog. It was like someone ringing a bell in a quiet room, the sound clear and bright, filling up the stillness.
"Hi," I said.
"Oh," she replied, "shit."
And then she stepped back into the room, and shut the door in my face.
Chapter 9
Anne
There he was, so close I could reach out and touch him—Trace LeBeau.
He looked exactly like he did in the pictures, exactly like he looked on the poster I'd hung above my bed. His hair was as black as wet ink. His skin was so pale it looked luminous, otherworldly, as if it glowed from some internal light. His dark-lashed eyes held an intensity that made the rest of the world drop back, like a 3D image in a 2D room. Even under those garish hallway lights, he looked gorgeous. And staring into his eyes, falling into them, I felt nearly hypnotized.
And then I heard Becca crying out behind me, the sound high and loud and very obviously sexual.
My face flushed even hotter, mortifying embarrassment flooding across my skin. I stuttered out a curse and nearly fell back into the room, pulling the door shut behind me. If I didn't have such a firm grip on the doorknob, I might have fallen flat on my back.
"Oh shit," I said again. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."
My eyes were fixed on the door, but the image of Trace—of that bottomless gaze that seemed to swallow me whole—was stronger in my mind than anything else.
I turned around, leaning back against the door, holding my hand against my forehead as if my brain was about to explode. Becca cried out again, even louder than before, and that sort of snapped me out of my daze. My eyes went to her and Ronnie—the mental image of Trace finally dissolving—and I saw my roommate in the very moment of her climax.
Becca gripped Ronnie's wrist with one hand, pulling him tight up against her, and her other hand clutched at her own chest. Her head was tilted back, her eyes closed, her mouth open and moaning. Her hips seemed to buck and jerk, and shivers ran down through her knees and up to her shoulders, her whole body shaking like a leaf in the wind.
"OoooOOOOooooOOOOHHHHH!" she said. It almost sounded like some kind of perverted yodel.
"Becca!" I whisper-shouted. "Ronnie!"
I took a step toward them and then froze. Behind me, I heard a knock at the door.
"Um, hello?" a voice said, the sound muffled as it came through the wood.
"Ronnie! Becca!" I said, raising my voice a little.
Ronnie looked over at me, his eyes heavy-lidded, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. His hand was still stuffed down the front of Becca's panties, the skirt of her dress pooling over his wrist.
"Ronnie, they're here! Belletrists! Trace LeBeau is right on the other side of this door.
In a flash, Ronnie's face went from lustful to panicked. He jerked his hand up out of Becca's panties like he'd been burned, his head whipping back and forth, searching for an escape route.
Behind me, on the other side of the door, I heard voices—a low, brassy voice saying something, and Trace responding.
"Oh god, that was good," Becca said. She had a smile on her face, her eyes blinking slowly like she was just waking up.
Ronnie grabbed her arm and pulled her along with him, coming toward the door with purposeful strides.
"We've gotta go," he said.
And then the door jerked open, nearly spilling me out into the hall. There was a short, pot-bellied guy with a comb-over. He had a scowl on his face, and a gold chain shining in the chest hair spilling out the front of his collar. Trace stood behind him, a mildly amused look twinkling in his eyes.
The short guy opened his mouth to talk. "What the—"
"Mr. Bernstein! Great to see you!" Ronnie said, hooking his free arm under mine and sweeping me and Becca through the door. "We were just finishing the room prep. Should be all set!"
Ronnie didn't stop while he spoke. By the time Bernstein had a chance to respond, we wer
e already fifteen feet down the hall. My boobs were bouncing all over the place, and I nearly fell with every step—I never wore heels normally, so that was bad enough, but even in flats I would have had trouble keeping up with Ronnie's near-sprint.
Still, I managed to glance back over my shoulder as we went. I caught a glimpse of Trace and the short guy watching us, the rest of the band slipping past them into the room.
"Smells like sex in here!" somebody in the band shouted. "Perfect!"
A smattering of laughter came in response.
"Shit," Ronnie said. "I am so busted. Geoff is gonna kill me."
Becca was giggling and panting, her face flushed and her hair everywhere. But I felt quiet, thoughtful—and shifting toward exultant, an excited glimmer growing in my chest.
When I'd looked back, Trace was still watching me, his piercing eyes following my every stumble and step. And even though I knew I was crazy for thinking it, I could have sworn that I'd seen something in his expression.
He looked interested.
Chapter 10
Trace
I watched the brown-eyed girl as her friends dragged her down the hall. She turned and looked back at me once as they stumbled along, and I got that same little jolt, that same little burst of energy, when her eyes met mine. It was like the dull fog thinned for just a moment, like the muted colors of my world had been temporarily turned up.
And then the band was rolling into the green room—Joey shouting something and grabbing the bottle of champagne—and Bernstein wrapped a hairy paw around my arm and pulled me into the room too, closing the door behind us.
Joey popped the champagne's cork with a roaring shout, spraying the suds all over the room. I noticed he made sure to splash a little extra right on the blonde girl's chest—her shirt turning transparent as it got wet, her nipples poking through from the cold—but before anybody could say anything he was passing out glasses and filling them up.
"Here's to tonight!" he shouted, raising the bottle up over his head. "Here's to San Francisco, and here's to the Belletrists! We've been to hell and back, and we're not finished yet!"
"Salud!" Sergio said, throwing his arm over his cousin's shoulder.
Even Micah raised his glass, his other hand snapping the switchblade shut and slipping it into his pocket. His eyes looked like wet stones, shiny and hard.
Joey raised the bottle, pouring a stream of champagne into his open mouth and over his cheeks and his chin, his goatee frothing with it. I raised the champagne to my lips and took a sip, feeling the little bubbles biting my tongue, tasting the sharpness of the grapes. Bernstein stood near the wall, holding the glass near his mouth, his eyes watching us closely. I imagined that his mind was calculating our state of readiness, carefully planning the next step, and plotting the way to guide us through to a successful performance and disaster-free end of the night.
His eyes twitched over to me, met mine. He raised his glass to me, and I raised mine back and took another sip. And then his gaze went past me, over my shoulder to the door.
I turned around to look, and saw Sara coming into the room. For a second my heart seemed to stop.
It had been less than three days since the last time I'd seen her, at the little show we'd played at Pink Elephant's in Portland. But that had been on stage, under the colored lights. Now, in the fluorescent glare of the green room, the sight of her shocked me. She looked like she was wasting away.
Before I thought it through, I walked over to her and put my hand on her arm.
"Sara," I said.
She turned her face toward me. She'd lost so much weight in the recent past that her cheekbones stood out almost like a skull's, hinting at the bone beneath the flesh. It made her eyes looked unnaturally large, like one of those black-velvet paintings of children.
Her expression had been slack and neutral when she'd first come through the door, but as her eyes met mine her face went hard, the skin pulling tight across her jaw.
"Trace," she said.
For a moment I froze. The image of Lucy came to me, and I didn't know what to say.
And then Bernstein was there beside us, a hand on either of our shoulders.
"Good evening, Sara," he said. "Lovely to see you. I made sure the club supplied the Oolong Kombucha blend that you love. There's a pitcher of it over here in the fridge. And Trace, you better keep an eye on your boys, make sure they're clear on the set list for the night. You know I love Joey—he's a real mentsh—but sometimes he needs a bit of reminding when it comes to what's planned, just to keep him on track."
And just like that, our manager succeeded in sending us in two different directions.
I walked over to Joey, who was licking champagne off the blonde girl's chest as she threw her head back in laughter, but I kept my eyes on Bernstein and Sara. He had his arm over her shoulders—his forearm nearly as thick as her neck—and he was guiding her like she was a lost child.
"Trace, my man!" Joey said, snapping me out of my dazed observation. He affected a British accent, "I say, chap, are you quite ready to rock?"
I looked over at him, and I thought I caught a glimmer of worry in his eyes, showing through the bravado. He'd seen my interaction with Sara, and he'd recognized the tension. The Belletrists still carried more than a few wounds, and I guess Joey wasn't sure whether we'd live through them or not.
I felt a sudden urge to reassure him, like a little spark in my heart. But no sooner had I felt it, the murky waters of my medically-induced indifference flooded in to snuff it out.
I raised my glass anyway, clinking it against the nearly empty champagne bottle in Joey's hand.
"Why not?" I said.
Chapter 11
Anne
The hallway ended with a staircase leading up to the stage on the right, and a heavy velvet curtain that led out to the main floor. Ronnie pulled the curtain aside and hustled us through.
Adjusted as I was to the glaring brightness of the back hallway, I could hardly see anything when we first came through the curtain, and into the darkened concert hall. So the first thing I noticed was the change in the air—it felt as hot and wet as a jungle in there, the atmosphere thick with the smell of perfume and close-packed bodies and the piney-skunky reek of weed. The next thing I noticed was the sound—hundreds of voices trying to talk over each other, until they all blended together as a single indecipherable rumble.
My eyes started to adjust. I saw that there was a barricade between the main floor and the stage, with a few big-as-gorilla guys standing in the space between. And on the other side of that barricade, crammed together shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, was the crowd.
As soon as I saw them, the glimmer of exultation in my chest fizzled. If the crowd outside had been intimidating, the crowd inside was even worse. For every ten faces lined up in the front row, only one was a man's. The rest were women—tall, sophisticated-looking, beautiful women. Seeing them made me feel like a dowdy pygmy stumbling into a circle of Amazons.
Ronnie brought us over to one of the gorilla-sized bouncers. "Hey Kevin," he said. "These are my friends Becca and Anne. I gotta get back to the bar, but take care of them for me, okay?"
"You got it, little buddy," Kevin said, nodding his head. He grabbed a section of the barricade, pulling it open. "Back up, folks! Make way!" he boomed.
Reluctantly, some of the Amazons stepped back a little, though they made sure to give Becca and me withering glances as they did. We stepped through, and Kevin shut the barricade behind us, trapping us in the crush of the crowd.
"You guys want anything from the bar?" Ronnie asked us. "I can send something up with one of the cocktail waitresses working the crowd."
"Can we get two vodka-redbulls?" Becca said. "Anne here needs to loosen up, but I don't want her falling asleep. It's past her bedtime already."
"You got it, babe," Ronnie said. He grabbed her and planted a huge kiss on her lips, and then he turned and plunged through the crowd.
"OMG!" Becca said
once he'd gone. "This is so fucking awesome! We've got the best view in the house, right up in the front!"
I glanced at the women we'd displaced, who now surrounded us, raining glowering stink-eye looks down on us from above. The lady on my right towered over me, her frowning mouth just above the level of my eyes. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, digging her elbow into my shoulder as she did so, making me wince. I hunched down a little, holding my hands together in front of me, trying to make myself as small and inobtrusive as possible.
And then the scowling Amazon tried to step on my toe with her stiletto heel.
A little while later a cocktail waitress came wading toward us through the crowd, her arm straight up in the air carrying her tray of drinks. She handed two glasses over and then waded away again. I took a sip and nearly choked—it was so strong it burned like a shot.
"Oh, god," I said, once I'd caught my breath.
"I know, right?" Becca said, taking a big gulp. "Ronnie hooked us up!"
I'm not sure how long it took before the Belletrists finally took the stage, but it felt like just short of forever. Each time the lady next to me jabbed her elbow into my shoulder or stepped on my toes it made me just a little bit more uncomfortable, reminding me of the ill-will our prime viewing had cost us. Eventually I felt so unbearably awkward that I almost wished we hadn't come at all, and I sucked my too-strong drink down pretty quickly as a result.
But when the dim lights dropped even dimmer, and Trace LeBeau and his band finally took the stage—moving in the darkness like ghosts—I felt my heart swelling in my chest with excitement. My hands gripped the barricade so tightly that my fingertips tingled, and the whole packed room went still in an expectant hush.
