“Come on!” I said, grabbing her wrist. “I want to get closer!”
I tugged her toward the crowd that was pressed in tight around the stage, and fortunately she didn’t fight me. I squeezed through the other fans, leading Meghan closer and closer, until finally there was nothing else in front of us except the railing that separated us from the stage.
I gazed up at the lead singer, who was only ten feet away, and my breath caught in my lungs.
Seeing him for the first time was like getting caught up in the gravity of something dangerous and beautiful. Pressed up against the barricade, I was so close I could see the sheen of sweat on his skin, and the dark tattoos that crawled up his arms like a tapestry of stories. He gripped his electric guitar like it was an extension of his own body.
The first chord hit, low and brutal, and I could have sworn the note rattled straight through my ribs and into my heart. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t look anywhere else but at the face of the man singing into the microphone. His hair hung in damp, dark strands over his forehead, and his eyes cut across the crowd like he was an emperor looking out at his adoring masses.
“Holy shit!” Meghan said. “Lookat the front man!”
I barely heard my friend—that’s how intensely focused I was on the lead singer. Every time his fingers slid along the strings, every time his mouth parted like he was about to sing orbitesomething, my body answered like itneededhim before my brain could catch up.
For the rest of their opening song, I stood there, breathless and stupid, letting him ruin me from ten feet away without ever touching me.
The song ended, and my trance-like state fell away. I screamed with such excitement and intensity that I probably looked like one of those women seeing The Beatles play on the Ed Sullivan show for the first time.
“Wow,” Meghan said.
“No kidding!”
My eyes searched the rest of the stage, passing over the muscular bass player, and the slender shirtless drummer, and the pink-haired female keyboard player. There, on the largest drum, was the band name.
Cherry Midnight.
“How have we never heard of them before?” Meghan asked.
“I don’t know!”
“Hello, Austin,” the lead singer said into the microphone. He had a deep, smooth voice that practicallypurred. “We’re Cherry Midnight. Thanks for coming out. This next song is about finding love in all the wrong places.”
The bassline thrummed to start, followed by the crack of drumsticks. Then the guitars crashed to life with a grunge-like sound that reminded me ofNirvana.
Once again, I was mesmerized. The lead singer had a captivating quality like Mick Jagger or Robert Plant. He quickly brushed back the dark hair from his eyes before diving into the song.
And his eyes locked onto me.
For the next four minutes, it felt like he was singing directly to me. Because his eyes never left me. The song ended and the next one began, and once again it seemed like he was giving me my own private concert.
I even glanced behind me to make sure he wasn’t looking at someone else. But when I returned my eyes to the stage, the lead singer pointed his guitar pick at me while singing the lyrics, “It’s you I dream of, it’s you Icrave…”
“I think he likes you!” Meghan shouted over the crowd noise.
The rest of their set was a blur. I guzzled the rest of my drink, then jumped up and down and screamed like I was Cherry Midnight’s biggest fan. And maybe I was, based on the way the leader singer kept smiling down at me.
My entire body was alive for every second of the performance. I’d never experienced anything like this before, not even the first time seeing Rainknife.
“We’re Cherry Midnight. Goodnight, Austin!” he roared at the end, and the fans all around me screamed back at him.
Disappointment flooded my body that the show was over… but then he walked over to the edge of the stage, just five feet away. He nodded down at me, then tossed one of his guitar picks in my direction.
Before I could catch it, the guy next to me snatched it out of the air and let out a cheer.
“Bro, what the fuck!” Meghan shouted.
“He tossed it to me!” the guy argued.
“Bullshit! It was for my friend with the enormous rack, not you!”
