Beat (Life on Stage 2)

“Like love and hate?”

“Exactly like love and hate.” Flynn reaches for his notebook and flips a few pages, then points to sets of words. The first set is love and hate. He smiles at me, then covers the rest of the page with his hand. “I was thinking of writing it like a bunch of sonnets. Fourteen lines for each pair of connected words…each verse a sonnet on its own. Okay, smarty pants, what else you got?”

“Hmmm…give me a minute, I don’t have enough caffeine in me yet.” We sit quietly for a while, then I say, “Pleasure and pain.” The blush creeps up my cheeks before I even get the words out.

“Very good.” He opens his notebook and points to the pair of words. “That pair is definitely all about the blur zone. The state of euphoria from pleasure as it dips in the range of pain, or pain as it dips into pleasure, is complete bliss. But push too far, leave the blur zone on the other side of the line, and there’s no coming back. It’s pain without any pleasure. Stay too far from the line on the pleasure side and you miss euphoria.”

I wiggle in my seat, a bit of a swell going on between my legs as I listen to him. It makes me wonder what the blur zone would be like with him. I attempt to steer the conversation to a more clinical place. “It’s the endorphins.”

“It’s about the feeling, not the chemistry. Plus, ‘Blur’ is a much better title than ‘Endorphins.’”

I laugh. “Genius and crazy.”

“I didn’t have that one. But you’re right. The blur between genius and crazy must be an awesome place to be. Imagine the incredible high your mind gets as the line between the two comes closer. Too bad people don’t get to stay there forever and genius sometimes turns into crazy passing through the blur.”

“Why can’t we stay in the blur?”

“I don’t know. But once you cross that line, there’s no coming back.”

We spend the next three hours spiraling through conversation. He hums some music that’s flowing through his head for the song’s rhythm. I tell him about my life on a tour bus with my dad. He shares stories about his niece, Laney. We’re so engrossed in our own little world, I almost forget there are four other people on the bus. Until Dylan opens the door to the back. He looks back and forth between the two of us for a moment and then comes to plant a kiss on my mouth, his head leaning down so it’s basically over the table, between Flynn and me.

“Morning,” he says. Then looks at the two of us again. “How long you two been out here?”

Flynn responds, “Not long.” He lifts his chin toward the other side of the room. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

Dylan turns around, opens the refrigerator and grumbles, “Don’t drink coffee.”

A minute or two later, Flynn excuses himself to take a shower. Dylan takes Flynn’s seat and I find myself looking across the table at my handsome boyfriend, wishing he were someone else.

We arrive in Miami at two in the afternoon. Our home for the next four days. Dylan has a busy schedule of radio station stops and sponsor meet-and-greets, so we agree to connect at the venue later tonight. The band has never played the American Airlines Arena and wants to get an idea of the setup before checking into the hotel we’ll be at for the next few days. Flynn and I are going to the arena early so we can work on his voice training.

The cavernous host to the Miami Heat is intimidating to say the least. With its modern white-and-glass façade and inviting views of Biscayne Bay, the arena reminds me how different Dylan’s tours are than my dad’s were. Dad’s stops were more like the bars across the street, waiting to take in the after-crowd from the main show.

“Wow. It’s beautiful,” I say after the arena manager lets us in. Easy Ryder’s tour manager called ahead and made arrangements for the two of us to spend some time here today. There are no performances tonight, so the tremendous complex is almost eerily quiet.

“It is,” the manager says and overtly licks her glossy lips. She’s looking at Flynn like he’s a mouthwatering steak and she’s a pit bull that hasn’t been fed in days. Seriously? She doesn’t even know my relationship with him, yet she completely disregards me. “What can I do for you?” She tilts her head, addressing Flynn, offering him much more than a tour of the arena.

“We’re just going to take a look around and then head to the stage, if that’s all right with you.”

“Anything you want.” She slips her card into the front pocket of his jeans. Into the front pocket of his jeans. Really? “My cell is on the back. Call me if you need anything.”

Flynn nods.

I wait until she’s out of earshot. Barely. “Could she be any more obvious?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Mr. Beckham. That woman practically threw herself at you.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yes. That. You make it sound so commonplace.”

Flynn shrugs.

“Oh. My. God. Seriously?”

“What?”

“That’s how women react around you?”

“Sometimes.” He looks down, almost a little embarrassed about it.

“It’s like having free room service at your fingertips.”

Flynn’s brows draw together.

“You know. You can whip out your phone when the mood strikes and pick whatever you want from the menu.”

Holding out his hand to me, a charismatic smile adorning his ridiculously handsome face, he shrugs. “Problem is, I’m in the mood for something that’s not on the menu.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head, but it’s really to cover the flutter in my belly. Then, hand in hand, together we tour the stadium.

An hour later Flynn is up on stage and I’m sitting in the first row. “Why do I need to be up here while you’re down there?”

“So I can see you in action.”

“You wanna see me in action?” He wiggles his eyebrows.

I smile. “It’s like when you run on a treadmill, you don’t run naturally…your feet have to fit the limited space that you have to run, so it changes your stride. When I watched you in the studio, it was different than watching you on stage. Performing in a real live setting will allow your natural habits to show through better.”

“Do you have any requests?” he teases.

“Just sing something that comes easily. What’s the most popular song you sang when you were on tour with In Like Flynn?”

“‘Back on Top.’”

“Okay, sing that.”

The song is one of his band’s slower ones, but it’s actually a perfect display of everything I need to see—range, reach, falsetto, reverb, movement. His voice is expressive, deep and rich at some points, with a flawless transition into the falsetto that makes women go crazy. He sings about being broken, climbing back to the top after falling hard. His delivery is so convincing, I find myself mesmerized by the story he’s telling, really listening to the lyrics when I should be watching him with a clinician’s eye.

As the song comes to a close, I softly sing along to the final chorus. “Wow. That was…incredible. You showed your feelings rather than singing about them. I felt everything you gave.”