Winter Waites (Aster Valley 0.50)

And then he turned to leave.

“No!” I said into the microphone. “Wait!” But the man didn’t wait. He raced toward the back and disappeared into the crowd.

Bobby pushed his guitar around to the side and stepped closer to me before covering the mic. “Gent?”

I frantically searched the crowd for the dirty-blond head, feeling deep in my gut that I could not let this stranger get away. “Bobby, I need… That guy… There was a guy…”

Bobby’s confusion was no surprise. I was acting ridiculous. We had two more songs to go before the end of our set. But I couldn’t wait.

“I’m sorry. Just… hang tight.” And then I bolted off the stage. Right there in the middle of a sold-out concert. In front of everyone.

I ran into the wings, past the big security guy, and out the side door. The frigid Denver air hit my hot skin like a gift from heaven, and the relief lasted all of five seconds before the sweat froze on my skin. I looked every which way before heading to the main entrance of the venue. There was no sign of him. When I entered the main doors, I was stopped by a very confused ticket-taker.

“Have you seen this man?” I asked, tapping through my phone to bring up the photo. It was blurry and hazy, but it was enough to use for an identification.

“Uh, no, sir? Are you expecting him? Does he have a ticket?”

I wanted to pull my hair out. “He would have been leaving, not arriving. Is there anyone else who might have…” I looked around at several ticket-takers, concession workers, and security personnel. All of them eyed me like I was on some serious drugs, and none of them seemed to have any clue about a man in a white tank top.

“Thank you anyway,” I finally said, in defeat. “It’s just as well,” I muttered. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

After taking several deep breaths to calm my ass down, I politely explained who I was and made my way back to the stage through the crowd. The boys in the band had been riffing and playing around to stall, and I could see the relief on their faces when I made a dramatic entrance.

I hopped back on stage and took the mic again. “Sorry, everyone. When you gotta go, you gotta go.” The crowd roared with laughter, and Bobby chuckled under his breath. Mo on the drums made a little bah-dum-tsss on his instrument, and I couldn’t help but smile. “No, seriously. I thought I saw someone I knew. My apologies. What d’ya say we play a new one for you next?”

I looked around at the guys and mouthed the name of one of our new songs. We’d originally planned it for later in the night, but I knew they’d be cool with me switching it up.

As the opening notes to “Fool Me Once” began, I tried to let go of the little fantasy I’d had of the delectable man with the hot-as-hell biceps. The sexy stranger in the crowd had simply been that: a sexy stranger. There were plenty in every town, and many of them were mine for the taking. All I had to do was smile and wink, and if that didn’t work, pulling out the guitar usually did.

The rest of the concert went by without a hitch. The crowd loved it, the band did amazing work, and the managers fawned all over us afterward. I let the guys take me out drinking until the wee hours of the morning. It wasn’t until I got back to the hotel that I finally lost my cool and screamed out my frustration into the giant empty suite.

Other than my music career, I’d never wanted something as badly as I wanted that man. Why now? Why some random dude in a crowd?

I turned around in utter drunken confusion and punched a wall for the first time in my life.

That was all I remembered.

2

Winter

Have you ever been dumped by text? Yeah, me neither. But receiving a naked photo of my boyfriend from a random number had the equivalent effect.

I stared down at the image on the screen as my eyes tried to make sense of what I was seeing. I wasn’t nearly as angry at Brian for giving a guy head in my own damned kitchen as I was at whoever the fuck had left the door of my trailer open in the background of the photo. My cat was braver than she was smart, and there were coyotes in the woods behind the trailer park. Brian knew not to leave the door open. The last time she’d escaped, Dillie had stayed hidden deep under the house for three days, no doubt shaking with fear every time she heard the coyotes howl.

And I knew the photo had been taken the same day because Brian was wearing the same ridiculous bandage on his thumb that he’d put on there this morning after accidentally sloshing hot coffee on himself and crying about the burn.