By the time Jay said pants for the last time, Evie’s anger had dissolved into giggles. She could hear laugher booming out of the greenroom in deep male voices as Grip re-enacted the scene for the members of both bands and assorted production people. She could see Jay’s frustration convert into shamefaced amusement.
“You were singing, Evie.” He palmed his forehead, trying to find some composure. “I haven’t heard that incredible voice for so long. I wanted to see you, but you were on your goddamn knees with Grip’s junk in your face and I don’t know what came over me.”
“It was only a zipper.”
“I have no right to an opinion about you touching anyone’s zipper whenever you feel like it.”
“No, you don’t.”
He pointed to his head. “I know that here.” He pointed at his chest. “I have a problem accepting it here.” He sighed, and it sounded like it came from his feet and fought dangerous skirmishes with ligaments, joints and organs to find release from his lips. The urge to throw her arms around him came on so suddenly she wavered and took a step away from him to regain her balance.
“None of that is your problem,” he said, eyes dodging hers, shoulders down and restraint coiled in his pecs and biceps.
Ridiculous to be noticing his pecs and biceps, and she wasn’t supposed to be feeling sympathetic to his obvious struggle to reconcile this reality of who they were to each other with what they’d once been. She shouted and sneered at him because she didn’t know how to deal with the way her body felt when he was near; like she’d entered a different orbit and the gravitational force of Jay was a promise of pleasure, inexorably sucking her in. She got in his face with outrage because otherwise she’d fling herself in his arms, climb his body and find old comfort and new delight in his closeness.
And unless she was very wrong about what just happened, he was fighting the same sensation.
They were one false move away from angry kisses.
What the fuck was she supposed to do about that?
“Hey Evie,” Grip danced out into the corridor, denim flapping, underwear on show. “Think you can safety-pin me. It’d be so punk.”
She looked at Jay’s spare jeans hanging limp from his hand. She couldn’t go on like this with Jay, palpable sexual and emotion tension every time they crossed paths.
“I could start a new fa
shion,” Grip said. “Come on, Evie. Pin me.”
There was no time to worry about inappropriate urges now. Grip couldn’t go on family TV safety-pinned together, but his situation would make for excellent fan content. She calculated the attention Grip’s appearance and the story of how he got that way would get in clicks and shares while she took the jeans from Jay and flung them at Grip.
“You’re not going on prime-time television like that, but let me get my camera.”
Grip whooped and disappeared inside the greenroom, satisfied he’d get to show his arse no matter what.
“You’re not interested in Grip, are you?” Jay asked.
“Interested? Yes, I’m interested. I’m invested in him, like I am in all the boys. But he might as well be my fourth brother at this point. I would no soon sleep with him than I would you, so you can quit getting jealous over nothing.”
“Right.” Jay nodded, his chin almost on his chest as he turned for his greenroom.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she said. “You have to pay for that stunt with the scissors. Come on.” She angled her head in the direction Grip had taken and didn’t wait for Jay to respond. She knew he’d follow.
Half an hour later, she’d taken stills and shot video of a Grip’s torn pants and Grip and Jay told the story of how they got that way, leaving out Evie’s role in zipper fixing and focusing on how the jeans were once Jay’s and were well and truly unlucky now, but destined to be framed and auctioned for charity.
What she posted was Abel ironing his shirt and Isaac doing his hair, pre-promo for the interview and performance that would appear tonight. Grip’s piece of fun would wait, along with the footage of Jay with the wizard at the signing, for a slow moment when they had nothing else going on.
All that done, she slipped into the back row of the studio audience beside Errol and Janina and watched as Lost Property opened the show and then as Abel and Jay were interviewed.
Jay looked stupidly at ease, was funny and humble and she already knew he looked great under lights. In comparison, Abel looked like he needed a good massage and stiff drink. He’d been interviewed dozens of times but mostly by music journos, not talk-show hosts, and his inexperience was showing in his awkward posture. Probably no one other than the three of them were going to notice that Jay kept rescuing Abel, helping him find the right story to tell and filling in unfortunate silences. Janina was too much of a pro to say anything.
Abel got a big, warm cheer when he left the stage and Errol stopped grinding his teeth. Jay got a bigger one when he moved from the couch on the set to the second stage where World’s End waited to play and Evie started grinding hers.
There was a reason why Jay had hit the big time. Talent, hard work, charisma and the sheer magnetism of his physical appeal.
He moved like he knew all your secrets and he loved you for your worst impulses. She’d deliberately never watched him perform, knowing it would turn her inside out and she’d meant to slip out at the end of the interview to avoid that fate, but she was stuck to her uncomfortable fold-up studio-audience seat, riveted to Jay’s every word and move.
On stage, guitar on his hip, he made every woman in the audience salivate over him, fantasize being with him, and he did it unconsciously, naturally, joyously, as if singing and playing were what his heart was made from, what his blood pumped for.