by Arden Powell
The way he looked at Angel, he might have already found one.
Tom paused in his walk and glanced over. He brightened and waved. Kris and Angel waved back.
“I’ll introduce you,” Angel said. “Never too early for him to start practicing sermons, right?”
“Oh, I gave him a head start on that already,” Kris said.
“Okay,” Rikki said, turning so he was nestled more securely against Angel’s shoulder, her hair brushing his face. “I’d like that. Anything you want.”
Angel hummed and held him close.
“So, back to the White Rabbit, huh?” Kris said. “You’re done with the music industry?”
“Not until this tour is over,” Angel said. “I’ll get Rayne set up with a new makeup artist long before I call it quits. The Chokecherries will get by fine without me. I miss my club; it deserves some undivided attention for a time.”
“Course it does. It’s your baby.”
“And we’ll still see each other,” she added. “Hell, Rayne will probably book you to play there before the year is up. We’ll be just fine.”
Kris wasn’t worried. He felt on top of the world, like he had everything he’d ever wanted. It was hard to worry in that state.
“Tell me about your club?” Rikki asked.
Angel smiled and tipped her head back to look up at the sky. “It’s a burlesque club. You know anything about burlesque?”
Their parents came to say goodbye that afternoon, whisking Kris and Cassie out for lunch one last time before they parted ways. Brad had been left behind at the hotel, apparently sulking like a toddler but unwilling to start another fight with his leg in a cast and his ribs bruised to hell and back, in almost as bad shape as his dignity—that, and the fact that Freddie Mercury was still roaming the grounds as part of Rayne’s ensemble.
“The doctors say he’ll recover just fine,” their mom said as they sat around the diner table, “though he’ll be sore awhile.”
“As soon as he’s come down from his painkillers, we’ll be giving him a talking to, you believe me,” their dad added. “It’s not how we raised him—not how we raised any of you—and we won’t stand for it any longer, not as long as he calls himself a Golding.”
“I’m sure that’ll go over great,” Kris said. “Rayne’s offering to help pay the medical bills, by the way.”
“Oh, dear—no, we couldn’t possibly accept that,” their mom said, visibly flustered. “Tell him thank you, but we’ll get by.”
Kris shrugged. He had protested the idea too at first, but Rayne was as stubborn as he was loaded, and the battle had been short-lived.
“I’m not a saint,” Rayne had said. “I’m not offering because I think he deserves a second chance. I just want to see his face when he realizes he owes me his life, and I won’t let him pay me back to settle the score. Anyway, your parents shouldn’t have to shoulder his bills all by themselves.”
Kris was confident Rayne could win his parents over as well.
“You and Rayne, though,” his mom said.
“Us,” Kris agreed.
“The young man he was seeing earlier wasn’t serious?”
“That’s a funny story, but no. They’re not together. They never were.”
“But you two are? Should we expect him for Christmas?”
“I think so, and . . . I don’t know? But it’s good. I’m happy.” He let his grin burst out. “I’m really happy.”
His parents beamed back at him as Cassie leaned over for a fist bump.
“So, Knocks is getting his cast off in a couple of weeks,” Cassie said, smoothly changing the subject as she chased her waffles through a sea of syrup, “but the guys have been talking.”
“Knocks has been playing rhythm guitar in the meantime,” Kris supplied for their parents.
“He likes it,” Cassie said. “A lot. So much, actually, that they asked if I wanted to stick around for the rest of the tour.”
“Is that something you want?” their mom asked.
“Hell yes, absolutely. This is the best thing I’ve ever done. I was thinking . . .”
Their parents looked at each other in trepidation.
“About what happens after the tour. Assuming I stay on as their drummer, of course.” She speared a waffle piece with a strawberry on it and popped it in her mouth. “Because they said they like playing with me, and if Knocks wants to keep playing guitar, well, after the tour they’re going to start work on their next album.”
“You want to join the band for real,” Kris said.
“Obviously.”
“You’ve got your last year of college starting in September,” their dad pointed out, in a careful, nonjudgmental voice.
“That’s the part I was thinking about,” Cassie said. “I can put school on hold and go back next year if this doesn’t work out, but I won’t get another chance to join a band like this. Not without starting from scratch and forming my own, you know?” She looked back and forth between them.
“This isn’t something you should jump into,” their dad began.
“Like I jumped into drumming for them?”
He held up his hands. “It’s your future, Cassie, and your education on the line. You’ve only known them a week.”
“We’re not saying don’t do it,” their mom added. “We’re saying sleep on it a little longer.”
“These are all hypotheticals,” Cassie said. “We have to finish the tour first. Hell, we have to get Knocks’s cast off first. I just . . . I think it would be really cool. I’m happy here. I feel like I could do it forever.”
Their parents softened.
“Both my babies growing up and joining bands,” their mom said. “Touring the world. What a turn.”
“I’m twenty-five,” Kris said, without much rancor. “I’ve been grown-up for a while.”
“You look like you’re going through a second puberty, though,” Cassie pointed out cheerfully. “You’re wearing more makeup than I did in high school.”
Kris kicked her under the table and she kicked back, grinning.
“As long as you’re happy,” their mom said again.
“We are,” they chorused together, and Kris had never felt anything truer in his life.
When they returned to the festival, he called Brad. He was still angry; Brad getting thrown through the wringer hadn’t changed that.
“Hey, listen: we’re heading to LA in a day and then we’re going for the international leg of the tour, so we won’t see each other again for a while. I wanted to make sure you knew something, before I left.”
“What?” Brad croaked. He sounded terrible, but if the doctors said he was going to be fine, Kris wasn’t going to worry about it.
“We hooked up, me and Rayne. I sucked him off and he told me I was pretty, and we had a really good time. And in another day or two, after we’re back on the road, we’re going to book a hotel and I’m going to ask him to fuck me, for real.”
Brad sputtered incredulously over the line.
“And I’m going to fucking love it, Brad, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He ended the call before Brad could respond and turned off his phone with a smile. Though his heart was racing, he felt insurmountable.
“Are you going to be okay?” Kris asked.
He and Calloway stood by The Chokecherries’ bus. Passionfruit was wrapping up their final show, and he was due to take the stage in a few minutes. The last show of Purple Sage.
“I feel like I owe everyone an apology, though I’m not sure what to say,” Cal said. “I’m grateful Rayne’s not pressing charges.”
“He’s good like that.”
“I should have spoken up as soon as I saw you with the bird. But I was scared the label was going to drop me if I caused the slightest problem, and I hoped . . . you know. I hoped I was wrong about the cult and everything. I hoped the whole thing would blow over before it could come to a head.” Cal rubbed the back of his neck. “I fucked up
on that one, and I’m sorry for it.”
“No lasting damage done,” Kris said amiably, “but yeah, an earlier heads-up would have been nice.”
Cal nodded. “I feel like I should apologize on behalf of the label, as well, for that whole publicity stunt. I suppose I got in the way a bit, didn’t I?”
“The stunt definitely wasn’t your fault. I fucked that part up on my own. We all made our fair share of mistakes the past week or two.”
“I suppose we did. Granted, some were bigger than others.” Cal shook his head with a wry smile. “But you and Rayne are an item now, I hear? That’s good. He was fucking pining for you, man, as sure as you were for him. Absolutely painful to watch, I’m telling you.” He tentatively touched Kris’s shoulder. “I’m glad you got it sorted. Sorry I wasn’t much help.”
“Sorry your stunt got cut short,” Kris said sincerely. “I guess you never got enough press coverage to really boost your career like you wanted, huh? Now all people are talking about is the hostage-cult thing.”
“Ah, it’s for the best, I think. I’m not sure I’m ready for the sort of fame Rayne has. I’ll take a few years to grow into it.” Cal tipped his head back to squint at the sun. “Actually, I thought I might take a break once this bit of touring is over, see a counselor, maybe. Talk about the whole cult scenario, get it off my chest.”
“Yeah?”
Butch hollered at them from the stage, beckoning Kris over.
Kris clapped Cal on the arm. “Listen, it was cool meeting you, despite everything. Good luck with the band and the counseling, if you go that route. I think it’d be good for you.”
Cal smiled widely, the same smile from that picture Kris had seen way back before he’d met him. “Good luck to you too. We should keep in touch—Rayne Bakshi’s fake love interests. Though of course you’re the real thing now.”
“We should. We will,” Kris promised as Butch yelled again, this time with greater insistence.
“Go on,” Cal said, laughing. “Give him one last kiss from me, will you?”
Kris grinned and shivered—he could kiss Rayne now, he was allowed, and there was no one to stop him. Waving goodbye to Calloway, he broke into a run, heading to the stage for their last show as his heart tripped with excitement in the best way possible.
He arrived backstage just as Lenny drummed out his cue. Slinging his guitar strap over his shoulder, he ran to take his place in front of the crowd. Rayne caught him before he went out, pressing close to drop a kiss to Kris’s cheek. Kris twisted around to kiss him back—mostly teeth, he couldn’t stop smiling—before slipping out onto the stage.
Their intro song flared up around him as he shouted a hello to the crowd, which roared back at him in adulation. Standing there, soaking up the noise and the heat and the love, he felt like he was flying. He got to kiss Rayne again and mean it, and keep meaning it, for as long as they were together. He couldn’t think of anything better.
When Rayne took the stage, Kris could feel the crowd’s excitement all the way down to his bones. He kept pace with the rest of The Chokecherries as they careened through their intro song, and then everything dropped off, music and screaming cheers alike, as Rayne slunk up to the mike.
“This is our last show of the festival,” Rayne said. The crowd cheered. “But these kinds of things stay wild right to the end. Did everybody have a good time?” Screams. “Yeah? It got crazy there for a minute, let me tell you. But as long as it turns out all right in the end, that’s what matters. You have to remember that.” He turned to look at Kris. “Now, this show—I want to dedicate it to all the lovers out there. I don’t care if you’re fifteen or fifty or ninety-three, if it’s your first love or if you met an hour ago or if you’ve been married for thirty years. All the lovers, and everybody who’s still looking: this show is for you.” He paused for Lenny to tap out a beat. “So let’s get started. You know how it goes. You going to show me you love me?”
The crowd screamed and stomped and flung their hands up in worship, and Kris closed his eyes and let it all wash over him. When he opened them, Rayne was watching the crowd, leaning on his mike stand with both hands as he basked in their attention, the stage lights casting a halo down around his curls. He was larger than life, his skin shimmering with glitter, and Kris had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
“Yeah, just like that,” Rayne said. “Okay. Let’s roll.”
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Arden Powell’s A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love!
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Thank you first and foremost to my beta readers: Lin, for reading my very first draft and telling me about New York; Neurtsy, for assuring me it was funny and fact-checking my drug scenes; and K.D., for general encouragement and positivity, even when I’m sure I was driving her mad.
Thanks to my parents, Earla and Jamie, for listening to me ramble on about writing and rewriting for months on end, and promising to buy a copy (or ten) when it was done.
Thank you to my entire publishing team at Riptide, who made my book beautiful, but most specifically my editor: for pulling me from the purgatory of the slush pile, for excising my draft of errant semicolons, and for helping shape this book into something much better than I could have done on my own.
Reset to Zero
The Botanist’s Apprentice
Arden graduated from St. Francis Xavier University with an Honours degree in English literature and the realization that essay writing is just another form of making up stories. They also came away with an overriding and all-abiding love of semicolons, to the general dismay of their editors. Arden lives in Ontario with a dog, a fellow human, and an unnecessary number of houseplants.
Website: ardenpowell.wordpress.com
Twitter: twitter.com/ArdenPowell
Goodreads: goodreads.com/author/show/8053059.Arden_Powell
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