“Did you make all of those?” I ask, nodding toward the bracelets I now see stacked on the lower half of her right arm. She nods, her cheeks blushing red again.
“I know it’s lame,” she says. “This isn’t a Taylor Swift concert, but…I don’t know. I thought it’d be fun.”
“It’s not lame,” I say. “May I?” She nods and I move closer. I take her hand in mine and turn her arm slowly, studying the bracelets that adorn her arm. I recognize lyrics from what I assume are her favorite songs and some of our album titles, but there are a few that contain only numbers, and those ones have me stumped. “What do the numbersmean?” I ask, looking up into her eyes. She looks away and nervously chews on her lip.
“Timestamps,” she says, finally looking at me. “This one,” she says, pointing to a blue and yellow beaded bracelet with the numbers 3047 on it. “The blue and yellow were the colors of your logo on the cover of theShattered Illusionsalbum. Song three, forty-seven seconds.”
I think for a moment to get my bearings. OnShattered Illusionsthe third song is “Whispers”…
“What’s at forty-seven seconds of ‘Whispers?’” I ask.
“When you come in,” she says, looking away again. My heart does a weird little squeeze in my chest at her words. The first forty-six seconds of that song is just Max on his acoustic and Josh’s voice. And then, as she just mentioned, Kevin and I come in and Max switches to his electric, and the song gets heavy. It’s one of my favorite songs, and it’s a lot of fun to play live, even though we took it out of rotation a while ago. The idea that she loves it enough to do something like this does something to me.
I take my hand and gently grip her chin between my thumb and pointer finger, forcing her eyes back to mine.
A knock at the door forces my head out of the trance this woman seems to have me in, and I drop her chin as I look to the door to see Dani standing there holding Ty’s clothes. “It’s time for sound check,” she says, stepping into the room and hanging the clothes on the rack next to mine. I thank her as she steps back into the hall, and I turn to look at Ty.
“Want to come?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“To sound check?” she asks, eyes wide. I smile and nod. “I get to come to sound check?” She squeals, jumping off the couch and to her feet. “I mean…yeah,” she clears her throat and slowly sits back down. “Okay. Cool.” She flashes a bright, beautiful smile and I am frozen in place. She’s smiled a few times since she’s been here with me, but this is the first one that I know is real, and it steals the breath from my lungs.
I stand from my spot on the couch and extend a hand to help her up. She places her hand in mine, and I pull her gently to her feet. She tries to pull her hand free, but I hold onto it for a moment longer.
“Can I have one?” I ask, looking down at the bracelets, then back up to her eyes. “That’s the point, right? You give them away?”
“You…want one of my bracelets?” She asks, and I nod. “Alright,” she says. I turn my attention back to her arm and know immediately which one I’m choosing. I gently pull the 3047 bracelet from her wrist and place it on my own.
“I’m going to head down to sound check. I’ll let you change back into your clothes and have Dani bring you down when you’re ready.” She nods and I smile. Something I’m apparently doing a lot of today. “See you out there.”
THREE
Ty
? The Ecstacy of Gold - Metallica ?
As we head to sound check, Dani explains that the sound at the side of the stage is shit, so she leads me into the arena and in front of the sound board near the back of the floor. The band is halfway through their latest single, “Black,” and Josh is killing it on vocals. It takes me a second to remember that, according to Dani, this only the second song in their warmup and I’m even more in awe of the strength of his voice.
After they finish the song, the sound guys ask Eric to do a few things so they can adjust his volume, and then they talk amongst themselves to determine what song they want to do next.
Eric counts them in with a few clicks of his sticks and I smile when I realize it’s “Whispers.” My heart does something in my chest at the gesture. He knows it’s one of my favorites, and he’s making sure I get the chance to hear it live. They play through it flawlessly as I stand there in a trance.
I’ve always known they were good at what they do, but experiencing it in real time, it becomes obvious why they’re one of the best hard rock bands of all time, selling out arenas and dropping multi-platinum album after multi-platinum album.
They run through the rest of their warmup tracks effortlessly, as if they could do this entire show from start to finish with their eyes closed, before Dani and I make our way to stand in front of the stage.
“Well?” Eric asks as he approaches us.
“Nailed it,” Dani says, looking over to me.
“If that was just the warmup, then sitting outside in the freezing rain for seven hours woulddefinitelyhave been worth it,” I say.
“Oh, shit,” I hear Josh say. “This is her? You’re the one who was sitting outside?” I cringe and look up at him, expecting to be met with a judgmental glare fitting for the weirdo I am, but am met instead with a stunning smile. “Josh,” he says, crouching down so he can reach out a hand.
Josh Calloway has been the face of Velvet Shadows for the last ten years, and I’d always known he was a good-looking man, but in person? He’sdevastating. He’s wearing gray sweatpants that hang low on his hips, a backwards baseball hat, and, in true Josh Calloway style, no shirt. His dark brown waves fall just above his sculpted shoulders, and I force myself to swallow before I start drooling.
“Ty,” I say, thankful the lights are low, and he can’t see my cheeks flush or hear my internal fan girl screaming,“Oh my god!You’re holding Josh Calloway’s hand!”
“Nice to meet you, Ty,” he says, letting my hand fall back to my side. “Will you be watching from backstage?”
