I turned and shot him a smile. At least we had one fan here, although if he thought that was enough to get him into my pants, he was sorely overestimating himself.
Now that I was at the club, I just wanted to get on stage. That feeling wasn’t helped by the metal guys, and the strong smell of curry and stale farts that enveloped them. I left the room and wandered out to the passageway. It was a short corridor, filled with drum kits and other gear. At one end was the stage, at the other end, a fire exit. There was a locked door, as well as the backstage room.
Ferdie and Pete found me pacing and handed me a drink.
“Vodka and cranberry,” Pete said. “That’s what you drink, isn’t it?”
I’d never drunk vodka and cranberry before in my life but I took it from him. Pete had trouble with everyday life details, like what people drank or their hair colour or details like that. If it’d been Ferdie, he’d have known exactly what I drank, which brand and the perfect temperature.
Pete looked up, staring at something behind me. His face turned ashen. I slowly pivoted to follow his gaze.
Alex walked through the doorway.
Tension rose up in my stomach before I had time to put on my tough chick mask. I was glad I hadn’t eaten that pasta. My revenge plan was great on scope but lacked a bit in the finer details. This feeling was one of those details.
Alex
Well, I’d been mistaken when I’d thought Dee would have her say then quietly leave town. She hadn’t left town and, up there on the stage, she sure as hell wasn’t quiet. When I’d seen her getting ready to go on, I wondered what kind of madness it was. She was in a band? Surely that was a joke.
It was no joke. Not even close. I guess that made sense. Jake had been a brilliant musician and she had that gift too. Any band with a hot blond in a skimpy skirt out front would get attention from the regulars but she got something more. Respect. She knew how to perform. Even more, she radiated a charisma that made people sit up and take notice.
If anything, I’d expected her to be doing a cutesy chick thing. All breathy vocals and sweetness. But this wasn’t cute and it wasn’t sweet. It was raw and violent and insane. Pent-up anger released on stage in a way that should’ve had me shitting my pants, since I could guarantee it was aimed at me.
It’d sure given me a jolt to see her backstage, guitar slung around her, looking like she owned the place. Before I’d had a chance to say anything to her, Sally interrupted us.
“Time to go on,” she said, and gave the band a broad grin. As her gaze went from Dee to me and back again, the grin slid off her face like it’d melted. She had no idea what was going on but she sure realised that there was something. Hell, even I had no idea what the thing was between us. Dee hated me but she wanted to be around me? That did not bode well.
It was then I’d noticed Pete standing behind Dee. The last words he’d said to me were “don’t be a fucking idiot.” How do you greet someone after all that? We’d been band mates, we’d been friends and now we were nothing.
I have him a curt nod. He gave me one back. Awkward. Made me wish he’d slammed his fist into my face. Least that way I’d have a ground zero to build from. The other guy, Ferdie, I knew him too. Just a face and a name, nothing more. I wanted to talk to Pete, like old friends, ask him about Steve, ask him how he was coping. But that was a distance I couldn’t hurl.
I followed them out and headed to the bar to watch. There was no way I was going to miss this. Pete was a decent bass player, probably better than Fabian, the bassist in my band. Pete never did anything startlingly original but then, do you want that in a bass player? Someone steady and reliable, that’s what a good bass player should be. Pete was all that and he knew how to pick up what I was putting down. I didn’t need to explain things in minute detail like I did with Fabian. But then, that’d been the old days. That band had a whole different dynamic than the one I had now.
Still, I’d like to have a jam session with Pete some time. If we could ever bridge things between us.
There were about five regulars in the bar when they got on stage, and about as many staff. No one paid them the slightest bit of attention. Until Dee started playing. She wasn’t technically brilliant, not even close, but she had a fiery passion that came close to igniting the room. I’d heard a thousand bands play in this room. Some, I never even understood why they bothered. They had no guts, no balls. But Dee had the fire.
She jumped around the place, all taut energy. She screamed and she wailed. Her white hair streamed out behind her, moving as though it had a mind of its own.
The pain in her voice was my pain. I wanted to run from the room, to escape the accusations that were there, but I’d become mesmerised.
I’d drown in her voice rather than tear myself away, as though caught in a rip that dragged me along, more powerful than my own body. All I could do was give up the fight and move with it because any struggle would just exhaust me and leave me for dead.
The woman was a witch.
They finished their first song but the applause of a few people barely made a ripple in that small room. During their second number though, the guys in the second band came out from backstage, staring in awe. They’d be on soon and they didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up that level of tension.
People came in slowly, still nowhere near a full house but enough to make their cheers heard. A decentish crowd for a weeknight.
Dee flashed a grin at the room and slammed into the next song. The two guys were just there to prop her up. She was the focus, the energy, the force.
A few guys around the room looked at her with more than just musical appreciation. The girl oozed sex. Her hips ground against her guitar, her breasts rose magnificently above it. She intimidated in the way a lot of guys took as a challenge. I wanted to grab every single guy that looked at her in that way and pull them out of the club. If I could, I’d throw them down the stairs and sprawl their bodies on the street outside. They had no right looking at her with that lust in the
ir eyes. She was mine.
Except she wasn’t. She never would be. Every single guy in this place, even the old and decrepit, had more chance with Dee than I’d ever have.
“She’s fantastic,” said Holden, sliding into the seat beside me. “I’d have never thought she was capable of this, shy little thing sitting at the bar the other day, as though she’d flee any moment.”