A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love

by Arden Powell

  There were four of them now, and they had set up camp off the side of the highway, their bikes parked in the shade of the towering cacti. The desert stretched out vast and orange in all directions as the sun began its descent.

  “Purple Sage,” Leif said, looking up at the clouds. One of their old members would be there—Calloway, who had turned his back on them, seduced by the call of worldly fame and fortune. Leif didn’t have any intention of trying to win him back to the fold, but they had parted on poor terms, and he wanted closure. The new kid who had replaced him just wasn’t the same. And the peacock had liked Calloway, before he’d left. Had barely screamed at him at all, and never tried to peck at him the way He did Red and Boar.

  Leif sighed. Nothing was the same anymore. He wondered sometimes whether he should have founded the order at all. A selfish part of him wished he’d never called Red that day, all those years ago, that he had kept the peacock a secret between him and the universe. Would that have been such a terrible life?

  The peacock screamed and rustled His wings warningly, and Leif abruptly cut off that train of thought. “Purple Sage,” he repeated, more firmly this time. He’d made his choice, and he wasn’t going to back down now. He couldn’t. “We’ll find new people there.”

  They were three hours out from the festival grounds, and Kris could already feel the change. It wasn’t just that it was drier, the desert soaking up the sun and chasing every last shred of moisture from the air: everything looked sharper in the desert, more vivid, like reality was suddenly realer. The atmosphere crackled with expectation, and Kris couldn’t keep still.

  “I’ve never been to a music festival before,” he said to Cassie on the phone. He was curled up in his bunk as they trundled down the highway, trying to block out the band’s chatter. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “You’d never been to a gig anywhere bigger than a dive bar, either,” she said reasonably. “You’ll figure it out. We’re coming to see you, by the way.”

  “Wait, what? Who’s we?”

  “All of us,” Cass said. “Me and Brad and Mom and Dad. We’re on the road now. We should be there tomorrow. We wanted to see you play live!”

  Kris tensed up instinctively. “Why is Brad coming? This isn’t his scene.”

  “He said it had been a while since you two hung out.” He imagined her offering a careless shrug. “He said we should have gone to a closer show, but Mom and Dad thought it’d be cool to make a whole trip out of it, so here we are.”

  “Well, shit. Okay. We’ll be here.”

  “And you’ll be awesome. I have to go, but stop freaking out! Go find Rayne and make him give you a hug.”

  Kris sighed. “Say hi to everybody for me. Love you. Bye.”

  “Bye!”

  He ended the call and climbed out of his bunk. While he hadn’t been avoiding Rayne since the hotel, he hadn’t been actively seeking him out, either. He found him on the couch chatting with Lenny, and sat down beside him and buried his face in Rayne’s shoulder, slinging his arms around Rayne’s waist. Rayne put his arm around Kris’s back without missing a beat in his conversation.

  “Hey,” Kris said during a pause, mostly to Rayne’s hair. “My family’s coming to see us play tomorrow.”

  “That’s great!”

  Kris groaned.

  “Is it not great?”

  “I’m worried my parents are going to give me some kind of talk about life choices because of the makeup and stuff, and the last time I talked to my brother we yelled at each other, and I need you to not kick me out of the band after you meet my sister.” He chanced a glance up. Rayne’s eyebrows were raised, and Lenny looked amused. Stef and Maki came over to join them, likely drawn by the promise of drama.

  “That’s a lot,” Rayne said eventually. “Is there a reason I should kick you out of the band?”

  Kris shrugged and nestled closer. “She’s a fan. She has posters of you in her bedroom. It’s weird.”

  “As long as she doesn’t have a shrine and an altar, it should be fine. And if your parents or your brother start giving you shit, text me, and I’ll say it’s an emergency and I need you onstage right this second, no excuses.”

  “Thanks.”

  Rayne’s hand drifted up to Kris’s hair, and Kris purred and leaned into it as Rayne scratched his scalp.

  “It’s going to be fine though.”

  “Course it is,” Kris agreed. “I’m not even panicking. It’s totally cool. What’s the festival going to be like?”

  “Festivals have a different energy than playing a show in a stadium for a few hours,” Rayne said. “More of a marathon than a sprint.”

  “It’s hard to describe,” Lenny said thoughtfully. “You have to let it happen and decide for yourself.”

  “You take a desert, right,” Stef chimed in, “and you fill it with drugs and music and kids looking for meaning, or love, or just a week of stories to tell after the fact, and mostly everyone’s there for the experience and it’s all good, but I’ve never played a festival where things didn’t get weird.”

  “Weird,” Kris repeated.

  “Not in a bad way,” Maki said, “but Stef’s right. Festivals are . . . different.”

  “None of this is filling me with confidence, guys.”

  Rayne squeezed him tighter. “It’s like if everywhere else is the real world, then festivals are just slightly off-kilter from it. Everything gets turned up to eleven.”

  Kris glanced out the window in time to see a biker gang pass by in a rumble of tattoos and black leather.

  “I don’t know if that sounds like a place I want my parents to show up,” he said.

  “They probably remember Woodstock,” Stef said with a shrug. “Bet they know more about the scene than you think.”

  Kris decided he’d rather not think about that too hard. “There’s still my brother.”

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Rayne asked optimistically.

  “He’s a Republican.”

  “Oh.”

  Kris buried his face in Rayne’s shoulder while Rayne patted his arm.

  “Maybe it won’t be that bad?” Rayne offered. “You’ll be pretty busy; you can avoid him if you have to. We’ll help run interference.”

  “We totally will,” Stef agreed. “Like secret agent bodyguards.”

  “At least Cass should have fun,” Kris mumbled into Rayne’s shirt.

  “You will too. We’ll get set up and play our show and meet Calloway and Dead Generation later on, and everything will be great.”

  Kris nodded and clung tighter for a second, savoring the contact, before straightening. Once Rayne and Calloway were involved, there’d be no more of that for a while. Kris and Rayne could technically keep sneaking cuddles in private where the press couldn’t catch them, but it seemed safer to stop entirely while Calloway was in the picture, so Kris wanted to store up what he could while he had the chance. “No, you’re right. Everything will be fine.”

  The last of the stages were still being built when they rolled in. The festival sprawled like an oasis in the desert, a tiny city of tents, trailers, and scaffolding all glittering hot as a mirage under the sun. Kris watched it unfold around him, his nose pressed to the window, as the bus made its way through to their campsite. They parked in a clearing, and it dawned on Kris that they were going to be living out of the bus for the next week until the festival wrapped up, outdoor toilets and showers and all.

  It was still better than being homeless on the streets of New York.

  By the time they started rehearsing, Kris’s anxiety had settled into a nervous thrum of excitement. The songs came easily now, and he barely had to improvise at all anymore. He had their set list memorized, and he could anticipate Rayne’s vocals as easily as he could his own solos. And he knew Rayne’s habits onstage too—how he looked when he was wound too tight, his expression and the set of his shoulders when he was about to prowl over and kiss Kris senseless. Kris kept one eye on him du
ring rehearsal, watching for the signs, but they didn’t come. They rarely did, except during the live shows, like Rayne wanted to bottle it all up until the pressure was too much and he couldn’t keep it down any longer.

  Kris liked it that way. It kept things clear between them, and clarity was what he needed, no matter what his traitorous body suggested to the contrary. A solid line between what they did onstage and how they were off it.

  He still thought about that dream when he was trying to fall asleep at night. He tried not to dwell on it, but it crept in through the cracks in his resolve, and before he knew it, he’d be half-hard from a memory that had never even happened.

  It was getting ridiculous.

  This stunt with Calloway was the best thing for it. And while Rayne and Calloway were busy, Kris would throw himself into the festival and play so hard his mind didn’t have time to wander. He and Rayne would cut down on the fan service onstage, and offstage, Rayne and Calloway would be boyfriends, at least while their pictures were being taken. It would all be good. And then later, when his head was clear—after the tour, when Rayne wasn’t influencing his decisions anymore—then he would come out as bi.

  The first night of the festival—when the shadows grew long in the setting summer sun, the last of the stages had finally been erected, and the lanes were flooding with crowds of thousands at a time—they took to the stage and Kris realized with a heavy drop of horror that his plan was not going to work.

  Rayne kissed him like he wanted to eat him alive. He tangled one hand in Kris’s hair, wrapped the other around his throat, and reeled him in like a fish on a hook and held him there, helpless, in front of their screaming fans. Kris’s knees buckled and he nearly fell, but Rayne held him fast, licking into every inch of his mouth like he had something to prove. Kris moaned, uncaring if Rayne’s mike picked it up, and licked back. His hands kept time on his guitar, moving mindlessly over the chords as his whole body lit up with want, his brain blank except for a chorus of Rayne, Rayne, Rayne.

  After the show, he stumbled backstage, dry-mouthed with a pounding heart and no plan except to douse himself in the coldest water he could find. It was better than nothing, though he doubted it would help. He had made it this far without rubbing one out because of Rayne, and he wasn’t about to start now. His guitar stayed on him like armor, even as the rest of the band pulled him into their customary post-show embrace, sweating and panting and bright-eyed all around. He returned it, still riding the high himself, but this time trying to hide his blatant arousal from anyone else.

  He didn’t know why he bothered. Rayne got worked up onstage all the time; it was a combination of adrenaline and elation and Kris didn’t want to flatter himself but he imagined he was no small part of it, either. There were entire websites dedicated to pictures of Rayne getting overly excited onstage, and Rayne never bothered denying them, so why should Kris?

  He adjusted the guitar across his lap and skittered back to their dressing room, a separate trailer set up behind the stage, to get changed and clean the makeup from his face. Rayne’s kiss had destroyed his lipstick, smudging it and making him look more wanton than usual. Rayne hadn’t escaped unscathed either, finishing the show with his own lips darker than usual, but it had only made his smile all the more enticing. The crowd had screamed and wailed, begging them to continue.

  “You good?” Rayne asked from the doorway. The lipstick was smeared around his mouth, berry-dark. “You bailed pretty fast.”

  “Needed water.” Kris managed a smile. “I’m good. It’s all cool.”

  Rayne sidled in, ignoring Kris’s attempted brush-off. “Still worried about your family coming?”

  Kris’s family had been the last thing on his mind. “Yeah, that.”

  “Calloway’s arriving with Dead Generation tomorrow morning; we’ll tone our shows down once he gets here. Your parents don’t have to see you and I doing all that in person. I still haven’t committed to anything, though. Not for sure.” Rayne’s expression was a mixture of tentative hope and nervousness, and Kris didn’t like seeing it on his face.

  “But you’re going to, right?” Kris asked, pushing aside the way his stomach flipped at the thought. “I think you should. If the label wants you to, then it must be a good career move. And who knows, maybe you and Calloway will hit it off for real.”

  Rayne’s face shuttered for a split second before he smiled. “Yeah, maybe we will.”

  Kris smiled back and adjusted his guitar strap, resolutely ignoring the way he felt faintly sick at the thought of Rayne getting involved, offstage and for real, with a guy who wasn’t him. “Cool,” he said aloud. Everything was going to be fine.

  Kris’s family arrived the next morning, hours before The Chokecherries were due to take the stage again. The festival was a hive of constant activity, with additional bands and attendees arriving every hour, the tents and stages bursting with music and partygoers day and night. Dead Generation arrived around ten, but Rayne said they were busy setting up, and he was going to find them later. The energy was unlike anything Kris had ever felt—maybe it was just because the air was hazy with weed and everyone seemed to be high on one thing or another, but it felt brimming with humanity at its best and most expressive, and Kris thought he could get high off that alone.

  There was really a lot of weed.

  But the combination of performing and connecting with fans he never thought he’d have left him feeling more at home in his skin than ever before, so when his family arrived on site he was dressed half in his stage clothes and half casually, with his hair ruffed up in a faux-hawk and eyeliner smudged around his lids. He wasn’t fully done up and wouldn’t be until closer to showtime, but he still got a thrill from seeing himself in the mirror with makeup on, so it was creeping further and further into his offstage life. He couldn’t apply a convincing smoky eye yet, but if all he needed was a bit of kohl, he was set.

  The downside to his increase in comfort was that he forgot he was wearing the stuff when he met his family.

  To his parents’ credit, they didn’t comment. Cassie did, but nonverbally—she pointed at him from behind their parents’ backs, exaggeratedly miming at his face while grinning and giving him the thumbs-up. Brad stiffened and said nothing. Kris opened his mouth to apologize preemptively, then changed his mind and smiled instead.

  “Thanks for coming all the way out here. You really didn’t have to.”

  “Of course we did,” his dad said. “If you’re going to go off touring the world, the least we could do was come see you before you left the country.”

  “I appreciate it. I, uh, I guess Cassie’s been keeping you up-to-date on all the shows?”

  “You do look like you’re having fun up there,” his mom commented mildly, and Kris nearly choked on his tongue. “That Rayne knows how to put on a show, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s a natural all right,” his dad agreed.

  Cass elbowed Kris in the ribs, still grinning.

  “Lunch?” Kris blurted. “Let’s get lunch. They’ve got decent food here, unless you want to drive out to an actual restaurant.”

  “Here’s good,” his mom said. “We’re here for the experience, after all.”

  Kris led them through the picnic area to the food trucks, where vendors of every possible cuisine had set up shop, from the vegan elites to the place where you went when you were drunk at 3 a.m. and the fridge was empty. They ordered their food and sat at a picnic table. Kris tried not to fidget. He was in his element, and his family was happy for him.

  Except Bradley. Brad didn’t seem happy.

  Kris resolved to ignore him until he couldn’t anymore.

  “You’re going to introduce us to the band, right?” Cass asked, shoveling rice into her mouth. “And Passionfruit too? They look fun. Do you think anyone would let me try their drum kit?”

  “You can ask about drumming. And I already warned Rayne you were coming, so sure, you can meet everybody,” Kris said. “That won’t be weird for me
at all.”

  “We met your last band,” his dad pointed out.

  “In high school,” Kris replied. “This is a bit different.”

  “Your last one didn’t dress you up like a girl and grope you in front of a million people,” Brad said.

  Everyone stilled and Kris sighed internally. Of course he wouldn’t be allowed to ignore Brad.

  “It’s for the show, Brad,” he said, repeating their press line with as much patience as he could muster.

  “Hell of a show,” Brad replied.

  “I think it’s great,” Cass cut in. “People are loving it. Don’t crush his entertainment dreams, Brad.”

  Brad held up his hands. “I’m not here to crush anything. I just want you to realize how it looks to other people.”

  “It looks fucking punk,” Cass insisted.

  “Okay,” his dad said, “let’s everybody cool down. Kris, why don’t you tell us about the rest of the tour? What are your plans after the festival?”

  Kris dived in gratefully, talking about the band’s plans and where Rayne wanted to go, and where the international tour would take them—not that Kris was officially signed on for that part—but he kept stealing glances at Brad out of the corner of his eye. Brad didn’t interrupt again, but he didn’t relax, either. Kris finally texted Rayne under the table, demanding that he show up and provide a distraction.

  Rayne came over a few minutes later; Kris knew his arrival by the sharp intake of Cassie’s breath.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Rayne said, and Kris let out a sigh of relief. He loved his family, he really did, but negotiating Bradley’s idiot ideals of masculinity was the last thing he wanted to deal with. “I was going to borrow Kris for a minute, but if he’s busy . . .?”

  Kris stood, grabbed Rayne by the wrist and made a gesture like Vanna White. “So hey, this is Rayne! Rayne Bakshi. Rayne, this is my family.”

  His parents smiled and Cassie gazed at Kris imploringly, stars in her eyes, pleading for him to stay. He relented, grudgingly abandoning his plan of escape. “You guys want to walk us back to the . . . stage? Bus? Where are we going, Rayne?”