Yeah, that was pretty much the case here, too.
They were screaming. They were writhing. Panties would occasionally fly up on stage; bras, too. And at least two dozen times, I saw women flashing their bare breasts from the pit – usually while they were perched on the shoulders of some guy, probably either a very whipped boyfriend or some dude placed perpetually in the Friend Zone.
I’ve never seen such a display of unbridled, lustful longing – or should I say felt, because it was almost like an invisible electrical field, the kind of sensation from power lines that made the hairs on your arm stand up, or something deep inside you buzz. Except the power source was desire and longing and sex.
It was weird. It was hard reconciling the Derek I knew with Derek Kane, Rock God – because I had all the memories of the gyro place after Eastern Promises, of him admitting he cried during Dumbo, of the picnic in my dorm room, of him saying he loved me before I drove away in tears.
I also had the memories of the songs on the radio, the talk show appearances, the pictures on TV and in magazines and on the internet of him playing before tens of thousands of adoring fans.
You know that line, “And never the twain shall meet”? Yeah, well, finally the twain had met, and it was… disconcerting. It was like finding out someone you knew really well – or thought you knew really well – had a double life. Was a spy, or a gigolo, or had two separate wives and families on opposite sides of the country.
Which is weird, because I knew he was a rock star. It’s not like it was a secret.
It’s just that I knew it the way I know E=MC2, not the way that I know the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Meaning I intellectually knew it, but I didn’t feel it in my bones. Not till I saw him perform.
It’s hard to explain.
It also bothered me to see him the object of so much female adoration – women who would have done anything to spend a night with him. Pay him, debase themselves, fulfill whatever fantasy he commanded them to – just for one night.
I’d had that chance, and I’d thrown it away. Or at least shortchanged it. And for what? For a creep of an ex-boyfriend I’d dumped five months later.
As I watched all those rapt, adoring, beautiful faces out there, the pouty lips shrieking his name, I felt the pain from the photographs on Facebook all those years ago when he and Ryan were just starting out: hotties hanging all over him, women throwing themselves at him…
Jealousy.
Gnawing, biting jealousy, deep in my gut, bitter and acid and relentless.
I’m not a jealous woman by nature. I never was jealous with any of my exes, never asked where they were when they went out with buddies, never worried about them talking to girls.
Of course, none of them were nearly as hot as Derek…
…and I had never wanted any of them as much as I wanted him, either.
And he wanted me, too. He’d made that clear.
But I didn’t want to be a cheap lay, a one-night fuck, a checkmark on a list – Yup, finally banged her. I wanted something more.
At least, my brain wanted something more.
My lady parts were pretty much raring to go.
And my heart… my heart was torn between the two.
Which is why it took me by surprise when he started singing “Still Into You.”
It’s a hit by the band Paramore, which is fronted by a tiny, flame-haired pixie of a woman (although she has a voice that can belt it out with the best of ‘em). Anyway, the song is a fun, energetic romp – but it’s pretty girly, all about butterflies and love and holding hands and still being into her boyfriend of five years.
And here Derek was performing it.
He must have told the band when I wasn’t listening, because it hadn’t been included on the set list they’d decided on in the limo.
He’d planned it, with the sole intention of surprising me.
I was a little amused at how many ‘chick songs’ he had performed tonight – Katy Perry? Hayley from Paramore? (Although Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction has a higher voice than either of them on “Been Caught Stealing.”) A less secure rock dude might not have opened himself up to the snarky comments. But every song originally sung by a woman, Derek turned into something unmistakably masculine – sometimes dark, always driving and aggressive and testosterone-soaked.
And he was singing it to me.
He was gazing right into my eyes as he belted out the chorus.
“Still Into You.”
Like a coded message for me alone.
And then he turned back to his adoring female fans, and jealousy surged up and gnawed at my guts a little more.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one affected by the green-eyed monster, because I looked over and saw Mara looking at me like she wanted to kill me.
Not an attractive look on a 17-year-old… and not attractive on a 23-year-old, either, I told myself.
I went back to watching the show, and tried to tune out all the lithe, nubile female forms out in the audience gyrating to the music and beckoning with their bodies.
But the jealousy was still there.
14
Thirty minutes and two encores later, Derek concluded the show with, “Good night, Los Angeles! Now grab somebody next to you and go get laid!” before he walked offstage to rapturous female screaming.
I guess that’s another reason guys liked Bigger concerts: they had a better chance of scoring afterwards.
As the band walked offstage, they were dripping with sweat. Derek and Riley in particular looked like they’d been dunked in a swimming pool.
On most people it would have looked gross. It certainly did on Riley.
On Derek Kane, it looked like a personal invitation to have your brains fucked out.
And the smell of him – not just the musk of his deodorant, but the testosterone or pheromones he exuded – it was enough to drive me wild. I’d heard about some woman who started a speed dating thing were you had to sleep in a t-shirt for three days, then bring it to the meet-up. The idea was that attraction really is chemical, and you’ll know someone you’re attracted to by the scent they give off. If you can get past the idea of a bunch of strangers smelling each others’ clothes, it’s actually kind of ingenious. She said that she got the idea because even when her boyfriend smelled ‘objectively bad’ – as in, other people would have wrinkled their noses – she still thought he smelled good.
Derek Kane smelled like that.
Like sex.
Like delirious, animalistic sex.
I had to contain myself as he walked up to me, all smiles beneath his sunglasses. “So – did you like the show?”
“It was pretty good,” I said, the Queen of Understatement.
“Pretty good,” he scoffed. “We rocked.”
Then he turned to Mara and Casey. “What did my two girlfriends think?”
“IT WAS AWESOME!” they screeched simultaneously, at a pitch only fully audible by bats and dolphins.
Ryan walked up behind him, a dour look on his face. “I thought you were going to tone it down.”
Derek grinned. “That was me toning it down.” Then he turned to Mara. “You didn’t mind, did you?”
She shook her head ‘no’ and squealed.
“Yeah, well, I’ll let you explain that to my mom,” Ryan said with a dark smile as he walked on past.
“Great,” Derek muttered humorously. “Casey, Mara – you go with Ryan. Kaitlyn… you come with me.”
“What?” Mara asked, crestfallen. “Why can’t we come with you, too?”
“I’ll be along in awhile. But we have to go do an interview.”
“Oh,” Mara said. She shot me an angry look, then followed her brother and her sister backstage.
An interview! The first one with him, one-on-one, just him and me alone.
I didn’t realize it was going to be in a shower, though.
15
We walked down the concrete hallway, sandwiched between two heavy-set security guards, one in front, one in back. As we went, people – stadium employees? Music label people? Band crew? – shouted and smiled their hellos at Derek, with an occasional high five or fist bump on the way. Most of them were men – and most of them took one look at me and then gave Derek a knowing little smirk.
I could tell what they were thinking, and it bothered me.
Not so much that they thought we were going someplace to have sex (although their leering was pretty disgusting)… but that he’d probably done something like this with other girls. Enough of them that it was what everybody expected.
We finally reached a locker room. Derek led the way inside. One guard came in and checked every nook and cranny for stalkers, then went back out to join his partner guarding the door.
I looked around. It was the locker room for the LA Lakers – their purple and yellow colors were everywhere, and I saw some famous last names on the tiny placards adorning the burnished wood lockers. There was a pleasant, minty tang to the air, like sports liniment.
On a nearby bench sat a small pile of plush towels, a pair of designer jeans, sunglasses identical to the ones Derek was wearing, a high-end t-shirt, black boxers, socks, bad-ass black boots, a pair of shower flip-flops, and a bag of toiletries.
I looked down in shock. “Um… what’s this?”
Derek grinned as he pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them on the bench next to the change of clothes. “You don’t expect me to go meet all my adoring fans looking like this, do you?”