“You like that shit.”
Shay couldn’t deny it. Ollie was strange about lots of things—mainly himself—but when he did stuff like this, Shay fell for him a little bit harder.This is dangerous.But it was too late to get off that particular train, so Shay merely lay down on the stage, belly to the wood, and leaned down to kiss Ollie on the lips, not giving a single fuck who saw them.
Ollie blinked, clearly surprised, but Shay didn’t much care about that either. They’d shared a bed for four nights in a row now—their longest stretch yet—and Shay had kissed Ollie last night, too, and snuck his hands under Ollie’s ever-present hoodie. Ollie hadn’t flinched. Much. That had to count for something, right?
PDA done, Shay took the instrument back to the band. Only Mara’s face held a flicker of recognition, but Shay shook his head. “Don’t tell me what it is. It’s part of the other, uh, thing.”
Mara raised a perfect brow. “How are you going to learn to play it if you don’t know what it is?”
“I don’t know if I’m meant to play it.”
“If the boy gives it to you, it is for a reason, and what reason but to play it?”
Shay didn’t have an answer for that, but he took Ollie at his word and set the instrument aside to study later when he had time. First, he had the Portsmouth show to play, and it was going to behuge.He could feel it in his bones.
He picked up his banjo and resumed tuning it. Ollie’s presence made the back of his neck tingle, but he tried to ignore it. One more show, and then they had a few rest days before they hit London, and Shay couldn’t wait. Corina had promised them hotel rooms and total freedom from tour commitments. Shay was hoping Ollie would spend that time with him.We need it.Shay didn’t know much about him and Ollie, but he knew that. He flicked a glance over his shoulder, but Ollie was gone.
Dammit.Shay’s heart sank, though he couldn’t say why. Ollie had been to every show in Southampton and had given no indication that he wouldn’t be at this one, but Shay felt his absence like a kick to the guts all the same.And you call him a weirdo….
* * *
Hours later,the gig played out. Sweat soaked Shay’s back, and he raised his banjo to the roof, taking a final bow, his chest heaving with the exertion of their second encore. It was fucking magic, and for the first time in their latest run of shows, he remembered why they did this. He might not have known where his blood came from, but he knew what made it sing.
Ollie’s grinning face in the crowd was the icing on the cake.
The band trooped offstage. Shay jumped down the steps, sweat cooling as he left the heat of the crowd behind. Corina handed him a towel and a bottle of something cold and wet. He took it gratefully and tipped it down his throat, relaxing as it eased the dry mouth he’d been plagued with for the last half of the show. “Thanks—”
But she’d already moved on.
Shay tossed the bottle in a nearby bin and looked around for Ollie. Couldn’t find him. Irrational edginess threatened Shay’s postgig glow.Idiot. He was right there in the crowd five minutes ago.Which meant it would take him a while to fight his way backstage, and by then, it would be time to take the stage apart and load the van.Fuck, does this never end.
Apparently not. Shay’s prophecy played out. He eventually found Ollie at the back of the stage, unravelling a mess of cables and wires.
“How do you lot manage this when I plug them in all pretty and untangled?”
“Uh, blame Jumbo?” Shay shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Ollie grunted and turned back to his task. The odd irritation building in Shay’s belly crept up another notch, and he stomped away without bothering to reply.
He busied himself boxing up the microphones and guitar pedals, studiously ignoring the bustle around him. His sudden bad mood bothered him. He’d jumped off stage on top of the world, and now it seemed as though he was sinking to the bottom like a foul-tempered child, and he didn’t know why. He was thirsty too, so thirsty that the three bottles of water he downed didn’t touch the sides and yet still had him having to piss every five minutes.
Brilliant.
“Shay?”
“What?”
Mara narrowed her eyes. “It’s time to go.”
“Go?”
“Yeah, numbnuts. We’re driving to London tonight so we get an extra day off. It was your idea, remember?”
It rang a bell, but Mara was already walking away. Shay stared after her, trying to gather the threads of his exhaustion-addled mind, and then he gazed around the now-empty venue. Somehow he’d missed everyone leaving. Including Ollie.Fuck’s sake.
Shay gathered the boxes he’d meticulously packed and piled them up. He stood and bent to retrieve them, but his vision darkened and his legs wobbled. Cursing, he steadied himself on the stack of boxes and made an attempt at calculating everything he’d consumed that day and the insulin doses he’d taken to back it up, but his brain was too fuzzy.
He gave up and concentrated on getting out of the venue and to the van without dropping thousands of pounds worth of gear. But when he got to the carpark, he found only the bus waiting for him.
