by Arden Powell
The intro finished with a flourish and the crowd roared as Rayne grinned and took the mike from its stand.
“Hi, guys,” he said, then waited for the cries to die down again. “It’s great to be back. A lot’s changed in the past two years—maybe you heard we got a new guitarist? Well, maybe not. We’ve been keeping him a secret.”
Kris twanged out a few chords in response and Rayne laughed. A ripple ran through the crowd.
“I like him,” Rayne continued. “I hope you guys do too. But first, let me introduce the more familiar faces. On bass, we have Stef Morganstern.”
Stef thumbed out something dark and sexual as Rayne swayed to the beat, center stage.
“On drums, Lenny Lawson.”
Every beat brought Kris closer to his own introduction, and his heart lodged in his throat, nervous and tight. The butterflies in his stomach were so intense he thought their hurricane might carry him away.
“On keyboards, the lovely Maki Ito.”
Maki played a little scale, so sharp it had teeth.
“And finally, on guitar.” Rayne turned to him. The lights lit him up from behind like he was haloed. “Our brand-new member, Kris Golding!”
Kris launched into his solo like he was throwing himself off a cliff. His hand stayed steady on the strings, though he couldn’t remember a single note they’d practiced together. He flew into an improvisation, barely knowing what the next note might be, and above it all, the crowd screamed their greeting.
“Now you know,” Rayne said, “this is his first time touring. In fact, this is the very first show over a hundred people that he’s ever played. So I want you to give him a lot of love, okay? Give him as much love as you can.” He let them scream themselves hoarse a minute longer before continuing. “And obviously I’m Rayne Bakshi, and we are The Chokecherries.”
If Kris hadn’t taped the set list to the floor in front of him, he would have been lost. As it was, he swam through the next few songs back-to-back with barely a pause to catch his breath. How Rayne did it, he didn’t know. Kris only got lost once, stumbling for a second at the start of the third track, but if anyone noticed they didn’t say. He invented a melody when he had to; it was too early to rely on muscle memory. But even when he couldn’t remember the name of the song they were playing, the words to the next verse, or exactly how his solo was meant to go, he breathed in the thick air, crackling with energy, and reveled in it.
There was nothing better than sweating through his shirt under the volcanic glow of the lights, basking in the attention of twenty-seven thousand fans, all screaming Rayne’s words back to him. He lost himself in the rhythm, concentrating on playing. Rayne was on fire, and the crowd was wild, swelling and crashing like a wave against the barrier. Kris looked up in time to see Rayne prowling over and a reckless feeling surged through him, his fingers never slowing against the strings. When Rayne was close enough to touch, Kris wondered what he was doing, but that wonder stuttered out in a split second as Rayne closed the gap, curling his hand behind Kris’s neck to draw their mouths together.
Kris shut his eyes and saw red, a flood of heat that started in his lips and surged through him like a bolt of lightning. Every atom in his body sang, and when he inhaled, all he could smell was Rayne: peppermint and citrus and sandalwood and sweat. His knees buckled and he keened, leaning into Rayne for balance, his guitar the only thing stopping him from melting into the embrace.
He opened his eyes when Rayne let go, dazed and dizzy, and Rayne smiled like a promise before turning back to the crowd. Kris fumbled a note before regaining his wits. His legs were still weak; he locked his knees and braced himself to keep from falling. Across the stage he caught Stef’s gaze. Stef winked and blew him a kiss.
Kris dropped his eyes back to his guitar, staring at his own hands like he was twelve and just learning to play. The rest of the show passed in a blur of colored lights and heat and a beat so throbbing that Kris could barely tell whether it was the bass, the drums, or his own pulse. As they crashed into their final track, Kris felt drunk from success. The last note from Stef’s bass ripped through the air, and he staggered offstage to untangle himself from his guitar and dump a bottle of water over his head. Rayne collided with him like a freight train, wrapping his arms around Kris’s chest from behind and pressing his face into Kris’s neck. Kris sagged back against him like he’d been waiting for it all his life.
“Encore in five,” Rayne announced, his hands trailing over Kris’s shoulders as he withdrew.
Kris paced backstage, running his fingers through his hair. The water had done nothing to the spray; whatever Angel used, it was impervious to the elements and kept Kris’s hair in place like a crown. When Rayne finally called them back to the stage, Kris felt more jittery than before, but stepping under those lights and hearing the roar of the crowd let him breathe again.
“We were perfect,” Rayne said.
They shed their instruments and most of their clothes backstage, downing water like they were dying. Kris peeled his shirt off, not caring who was watching, and all the while Rayne circled them like a shark, unable to keep his hands off anyone for too long.
“You like your first show?” Stef asked.
“Perfect,” Kris echoed, panting through his grin.
Rayne grinned back, catching his hand and tangling their fingers together, and for a second Kris thought Rayne was going to kiss him again. His enthusiasm was infectious, and so was his skin hunger. Kris launched himself at him, and Rayne wrapped his arms around Kris’s middle, lifting him off the floor. Burying his face in Rayne’s neck, Kris laughed.
“I’m in a band,” he said, breathless as soon as his feet touched the ground. “I’m touring in a band. I’m going to be famous.”
“As soon as those videos go online, you will be,” Stef said. “You’re Rayne Bakshi’s new boy toy.”
“There are worse things to be,” Rayne said.
He still hadn’t let go, though Kris was standing on his own two feet again. They kept their arms wrapped around each other, leaning in. Kris was trapped in orbit and wildly, excruciatingly happy. He felt so high coming offstage he thought his heart might burst straight from his chest—he understood why so many bands got caught up in drugs and booze and parties trying to sustain the sensation. He shivered at the memory of the kiss, his lips burning as he raised his hand to brush his fingers over them. Rayne just pulled him closer, one hand mussing through Kris’s hair as the other planted itself warmly over his heart.
“Yeah, there are worse things,” Kris agreed.
The band eventually separated, wandering off to find food or drinks or a bathroom, and Kris headed for the bus, needing to lie down before he fell over. His phone buzzed with a text before he even left the venue.
Cass: OMG YOU DOG.
It took him a solid minute to realize that of course his sister would have been scouring the internet for concert footage, and of course there would be a lot to find. He had kissed Rayne in front of twenty-seven thousand people—or rather, Rayne had kissed him, and he’d kissed back.
His parents were going to see that footage.
Oops? he replied.
She called him less than a second later.
“Hi, Cassie.”
“That show looked so good!” she yelled. He held the phone away from his ear. “You looked amazing—holy shit, I couldn’t recognize you at first! If I hadn’t known it was you, I never would have guessed.”
“Thanks?” he hazarded.
“So good,” she stressed. “Amazing. Was it good? Did you like it?”
“The show?”
“No, dumbass—yes, the show! I’m not actually going to grill you about the kiss,” she added. “If it was anyone else up there, I’d say it was hot, but as my brother, you made it weird.”
He decided not to dig into that. “The show was mind-blowing,” he said instead. “It was everything I ever wanted. You have no idea, Cass, it was . . . everything.”
“I bet
,” she said wistfully. “Shit man, I’m so happy for you. Mom and Dad watched the video, by the way. You should’ve seen their faces.”
“Uh, maybe not.”
“No, you should have! They’re going to call you next, you know, so you should call them first. They seem cool with it. I told them it was a performance thing. Fan service, you know? Lots of guys get freaky onstage for attention. Anyway, the video was pretty crappy; it was too low-res for them to get really scandalized.”
“That’s good?” Kris offered, hesitantly.
“Was it scandalous, though?”
Kris thought about the hot press of Rayne’s lips on his, the brush of his hair against Kris’s face. “I don’t know. It happened so quickly.”
“Did he slip you the tongue?”
“I thought you weren’t grilling me about this.”
She crowed in triumph.
“No!” he said. “No, he didn’t! Or—I don’t think he did. Or I did.”
They both paused.
“I told you he was hot,” Cass said.
Kris sighed. “Bye, Cass. I’ll text you later, ’kay?”
“Bye, Kris! Give my love to Rayne!” She ended the call with a wet smacking noise and, from what Kris could tell, zero shame.
He texted his parents rather than call them, a quick note that he was heading out with the band and he’d call in the morning. Then, like a complete coward, he turned his phone off and hoped his brother wouldn’t find the footage along with the rest of his family.
As far as Kris’s hometown was concerned, he was straight. He’d never kissed a man before Rayne, and he’d definitely never done more than that. He might have thought about it with different people over the years, but since he liked girls and girls liked him, he’d seen no reason to push himself into uncharted territory that would have gotten his teeth kicked in in certain parts of town. That, and everyone knew some distant relative or friend of a friend who’d been disowned for getting involved with the wrong sex. Though Kris couldn’t imagine his parents doing anything like that, he couldn’t help but heed the warnings.
So he knew bisexuality was a thing, and that it almost definitely applied to him, but he’d never had the chance to take it for a test run, as it were, back in Kansas.
Being on tour with The Chokecherries was providing ample opportunity.
Anyone could see Rayne was attractive. Girls wanted him and men wanted to be him, and maybe there was a little crossover between the two. Kris wasn’t entirely sure on which side of the line he fell—though he had suspected it ran to the former, even before they’d kissed—but he had the chance to find out, and that was more than most people could say.
He shook his head. His post-show nap would have to wait; he needed to see Rayne.
Kris found him lounging on the couch in their dressing room, sharing a smoke with Angel. Rayne was still dressed for the stage, black from head to toe, with rhinestones on his boots and glitter in his hair.
“Want a hit before Butch drags us back to the bus?” Rayne asked, offering the pipe. It was glass, handblown, with a multitude of colors swirling around from stem to bowl.
Kris accepted it and took a drag. The weed helped bolster his courage. “Thanks. Can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Yeah, of course.” Rayne blinked, then visibly pulled himself together. “Oh—are we cool? I should have asked earlier. I get carried away sometimes, and boundaries, you know, blur.” He raked his hand through his hair, looking sheepish. “Do I need to apologize?”
“For offending my delicate sensibilities?”
“Or something,” Rayne agreed.
Kris’s lips tingled in memory of the kiss, and his gaze dropped to Rayne’s for a second of its own accord. Angel glanced back and forth between them, cleared her throat, and stood. “I’m going to go find Billie and the guys,” she said. “You guys just . . . have a chat.” She patted Kris on the chest as she left.
Kris took another hit as he considered how to best approach this. However interested Kris might be, Rayne was the one keeping him in the band and off the street, and getting involved with the boss seemed like a monumentally bad idea—especially with Brian threatening to watch for the slightest reason to kick him out of the band. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Rayne had kissed him and Kris had fallen instantly in love. He needed to draw a line, make sure they were both clear about where it lay, and then be careful not to cross it.
“The thing is, I like girls,” Kris said. “I’ve only ever been with them.
“Okay,” Rayne said slowly. “Are you trying to let me down gently or something?”
“I don’t want any, like, misunderstandings,” Kris said, sinking into the couch, his knee knocking into Rayne’s as he handed the pipe back. “I’m not complaining, like, at all. I like kissing. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“That I’m not harboring any latent, pent-up desires for you?” Rayne asked, lifting the pipe to his lips again.
“Right. Exactly.” Kris’s insides burned at the thought. He doused them with the threat of being kicked out of the band if things turned sour.
“I don’t know. Are you offering?” Rayne jostled Kris’s shoulder as he grinned. “No. It was a lot of adrenaline, and it was our first show together, and I got a bit overexcited. But I make a point not to get involved with straight guys, so it won’t happen again.”
“Why would a straight guy get involved with another guy at all?” Kris asked blankly.
Rayne shrugged. “They want to prove how open-minded they are, or they want to experiment, or whatever. Doesn’t matter. I won’t do it. That way lies heartbreak and misery, believe me.”
Kris opened his mouth with no idea what he was about to say. Before he could find out, Butch stuck his head around the corner, eyed them, and waved them over. “Bus time, guys. Up and at ’em.”
“Hold that thought,” Kris said to Rayne as they got up, each taking one more long drag on the pipe. He needed a minute to get his brain straightened out. That line he’d drawn looked a little shaky.
Kris thought about the kiss for the next hour, tucked away in his bunk as the bus trundled down the highway to New Jersey for their Camden and Newark shows. He lay on his back, his guitar across his ribs, strumming up and down the frets with no real intent. When, after sixty minutes of practicing riffs, he couldn’t shake the memory of the kiss from his lips, he set his guitar aside and went to find Rayne. The weed was still curling through his thoughts, heavy and sweet, urging him to erase lines and push boundaries.
Rayne was stretched out along the couch in as private an alcove as there was on the bus, his boots propped up on one arm with his head on the other, looking like a giant cat, relaxed and languid.
“Hey,” Kris said, testing the limits of his faculties, which were rapidly expanding in all directions. “So I was thinking about that kiss.”
Rayne rolled his head to the side to glance at him. “What about it?”
Kris took a deep breath and let his words out in a rush. “You want to do that again?”
Rayne perked up, lifting his head.
“Onstage,” Kris clarified. “For the show.”
“As a regular thing?”
“Yeah, like, to amp up the tension and stuff. They’ll eat that shit up. Or that’s what my sister says, anyway. You said no straight guys, but I’m—” He cut himself off before he could out himself, and changed tracks. “I mean, if it’s just for the show, that doesn’t count, right?”
“Kissing,” Rayne said.
“Or more. I’m not asking you to maul me out there, but I thought. I wouldn’t mind?”
Rayne’s eyebrows were up near his hairline. “Straight.”
Kris shrugged. He didn’t want to publicly commit to a label until he was a hundred percent sure of it, and if Rayne thought he was straight—ish—in the meantime, that kept things simple. That, and his Midwest upbringing left him cautious of announcing he was any variety of queer at all, even when he was surrounded
by the most welcoming people he could imagine. He just needed the chance to figure out what he liked without the risk of anyone getting hurt, and if Rayne was into it . . .
“You’d let me do . . . anything?” Rayne asked.
“I’m pretty sure there are public decency laws and stuff, but anything legal, sure.”
“Kris Golding,” Rayne said, like he was savoring the taste. Kris liked how his name sounded in Rayne’s mouth. “You’re a bit of a wild card, aren’t you?”
“Is that a yes?”
Rayne sat up, dropping his feet to the floor, and stood, tall and suddenly looming. Kris tilted his head back and waited, his breath caught in his throat, as Rayne moved his hand to Kris’s hair. He went slowly enough that Kris could duck away if he wanted, but Kris didn’t move. Rayne threaded his fingers through Kris’s crown.
“You’ve never been the center of attention before,” Rayne said in a low voice. “You sure you want that?”
“As your boy toy?” Kris asked, repeating Stef from earlier. “You worried people might think we’re fucking?”
Rayne’s grip tightened for a second. “No. Aren’t you?”
Kris butted his head against Rayne’s hand. “Nah. It’s just kissing. We’ll tell everyone it’s for the show; it’s not like I joined a band and suddenly turned gay. The fans will love it, my family will understand, and you can handle the press.”
Rayne’s eyes went dark, the green almost eclipsed by pupil.
“We don’t have to.” Kris bit his tongue, needling the tip with his teeth as he waited.
“Honestly? I’m wondering how far you’ll let me push it.”
Kris prodded him in the chest, under the collarbone where his chains and pendants started to tangle. “Probably pretty far. Try it and find out.”
“Kissing,” Rayne said.
Kris’s lips buzzed with a phantom touch.
“Hair pulling?” Rayne tugged on a lock to demonstrate. Kris leaned with it, sparks zinging through his scalp.
