The green room’s big and comfortable, but it only makes me feel smaller and more out of place. Paula’s on the couch, tapping out rhythms on her knees as if she’s already out there, in front of the thousands of fans screaming so loudly we can still hear them through the thick walls of the backstage area. Aaron’s beside her, his eyes closed, hands folded, meditating. Brian’s leaning against the wall, re-tuning his guitar for the twentieth time. They look more or less poised, professional. Ready to go.

Me, I’m pacing around the room like a rat looking for the exit of the maze.

The runner knocks on the door, opens it, and leans in.

“It’s time,” she says.

Everyone gets up – except for me. I take a step back.

“Time? But you just said we had ten more minutes?”

The runner looks at me with a mixture of confusion and sympathy.

“That was over ten minutes ago.”

“Come on,” Brian says, putting an arm around my shoulders. “It’s going to be fine.”

I let him walk me out of the green room, along the hallway that leads to the side of the stage, until suddenly he leaves my side and runs ahead. For a second it almost seems like he’s abandoning me. But then I look up, and see Brando standing in front of me.

He might be a liar. He might have hurt me. I might hate him.

But right now, there’s nobody else I’d rather see.

I look into his cocksure eyes, waiting for him to say something, pleading with him to use that deep, reassuring voice and that commanding presence he has on me. Right now, I need something solid to hold on to, to ground me, and it doesn’t get more solid than Brando.

He steps toward me and cups my cheeks in his strong hands.

“Everything you’re feeling will disappear the second you hit the first chord,” he says, somehow making it sound like the most truthful thing in the world.

“What if I choke? I can’t even remember the first song. I’m nervous just hearing those people out there, what about when I see them? I can’t do it,” I say, raising my hand. “Look, I’m shaking. I can’t play guitar. Tell them I can’t do it—”

“Haley,” Brando says, leaning in so close I can taste his breath, “you’ve dreamed of this moment since you were a kid. Lived it over and over again in your head. I know you have. The big venue, the screaming fans, the flashing lights, you’ve dreamed it all, right?”

I nod, my skin brushing against his rough palms.

“Do you choke or forget the words in the dream?”

“No.”

“This is just like that. Just like your dream. A little bit louder. A little bit realer. But just the same.”

He strokes my hair away from my face and I hear the screaming rise a full twenty decibels as my band makes it on stage. Brando pulls away and steps aside.

I cast one last look at the firm belief in his eyes, gathering the last bit of strength I can from them, and then walk down the hallway and step out onto the stage.

It’s just like he says, like a dream. I walk out and feel like a hurricane hits me. A sea of faces and arms shouting and wailing. A wall of sound that almost blows me back.

I hit the first chord, and before I know it I’m almost done with the last song of the night. If I felt like I was on fast-forward earlier, it’s as if someone pressed the skip button through the concert. But even so, judging by the audience applause, it seems that all those years of relentless practice have finally paid off. I didn’t totally bomb.

“That was awesome, Haley!” yells someone from the group of strangers that mob us as we exit the stage, carrying us in a crowded mass back toward the green room.

“Was it?” I say, barely able to hear myself speak over the excited laughter and whoops of the crowd.

“Holy shit!” Brian says, putting a hand on my back. “I never heard you do that before!”

“Do what?” I say, looking for him as I get pushed and pulled into the green room. “What was I doing?”

“The ad-libs! Talking to the crowd!” Paula says, emerging at my side and holding out a beer toward me. “They loved you!”

“Fuck,” I say, bringing a hand to my head to stop the spinning. “I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

Somebody slams two glass bottles together to get people’s attention. We all look in the direction of the sound and see Mike the guitar tech standing on a table.

“First show of the tour…and we fucking nailed it!” he screams, shooting his beer-carrying hands into the air and spraying everyone.

The room erupts. Stage techs, roadies, anyone with a backstage pass – they’re all jumping and shouting as if whatever the fans are experiencing outside is contagious. As if on cue, Lexi’s show starts, and the room becomes a congested mass of noise, beer, and post-orgasmic energy.

“Haley,” Brian says, leaning in close so I can hear him over the crowd, “you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, laughing the last of the butterflies away, “I feel like I just woke up from a coma – but I’m alright.”

Brian doesn’t pull away, and I notice that he’s letting the crowd push his body up against mine.

“You’re amazing, Haley,” he whispers into my ear.

I pull my head back to stare up at him. He’s giving me a look I haven’t seen before, a look that makes me feel like we’re the only two people in the room.

“Thanks,” I say, slowly. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

Brian smiles at the joke, but his eyes have no humor in them. They’re the eyes of someone seeing something they want badly. He holds my gaze, and I wait for it.

“You make me kinda nervous,” he says, awkwardly.

I sip slowly from my beer. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ve just grabbed the biggest opportunity in my life and made it – I feel invincible. Like I can do anything I want, and do it without thinking.

“Aren’t you always kinda nervous, Brian?” I say, cocking my head to the side, and rubbing the beer bottle against my cheek.

“Only when I’m around you,” he says.

I giggle and lean into him.

“And why’s that?” I purr.

It takes Brian a few seconds to change his expression from nervous surprise to keen excitement. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he says anything, his cute, boyish face is replaced by Brando’s hard lines and manly stubble, as he sweeps Brian aside like a soft blanket.

Brando stands over me, his loose shirt hanging over his broad shoulders, the faint outline of those neck muscles I liked so much teasingly traced in soft fabric. His eyes are hard and narrowed beneath his dark eyebrows, two planets that pull me into their orbit.

“Just like in your dreams, right?” he says, fixing me in place with the symmetry of his face.

I press a hand against his torso, feeling the grooves of his six-pack on my palm.

“So far,” I whisper, as I roll my hand up and down his bicep, along his forearm, before locking fingers with his. I feel a flicker of excitement seeing the lines in his face get a little harder, a little more intensely focused upon me, as he sees where this is going. A small dimple on one of his cheeks where he smiles. He leans in until his mouth is almost touching mine. Our eyes lock. Then he hesitates, as if he’s not sure this is the right move.

But I know exactly what I want.

I grab the back of his neck and our lips meet hungrily, moving together in perfect equilibrium, soft and wet, plucking the sweetness from each other. I feel his stomach tense up under my hand as he struggles to control himself. His tongue flicks against my lip and I pull back to flash him a teasing smile. I tighten my grip on his hand, lower my face to look up at him through my hair, and lead him out of the room.

Chapter 7

Brando

I let the sway of her hips in those tight, black jeans hypnotize me as she pulls me by the hand. Out of the green room, down the hallway, and then turning off down a set of stairs that gets darker with every step.