The band came out and wrapped up with a few more songs. He’d saved his radio hit for the encore. Everyone in the crowd sang along. Me included. It felt like a communal event. I wanted to hug the strangers around me.
And then the show ended, and the lights came up. People left the theater, laughing and singing. Normally, leaving a theater had an anticlimactic, returning-to-normal isolation to it. But I overheard people talking to each other, already reliving their favorite parts of the night. I’d noticed the crowd consisted mostly of guys, but there were a handful of girls, giggling together over how hot Micah was and trying to figure out if they’d be able to catch the next show.
I smiled, smug in my knowledge that I had backstage passes and feeling so special until one girl said, “Do you have the backstage passes?”
Zion nudged me to keep walking since I’d come to a complete halt to eavesdrop, but the girls were moving with the crowd.
“Yup. I’m gonna go for Noah.”
“Not Micah?”
“As if.”
Their voices drifted away, and the crowd swallowed them up. A surge of adrenaline had left a strange metallic taste in my mouth. The girls had triggered some kind of competitive drive in me. I had an overwhelming urge to rush backstage and stake a claim on Micah to show those girls up. And I didn’t even know what they looked like. They were a pair of voices.
“Remind me not to get involved with a rock musician,” I said to Zion.
“As if,” he giggled.
The laughter helped diffuse the pent-up nervous energy. “Maybe we should just leave.”
“And miss this weird experience? No way.” As we merged into the lobby, he tucked a hand under my elbow and navigated the crush of exiting people.
“Where are we going?”
“Following those girls.”
Then I saw them. They both had two-toned blond hair and wore interchangeable clothes. They might as well have worn T-shirts that said “Sleep with me.” I glanced down at my skin-baring outfit and wondered if I looked any less obvious.
We followed them through a plain red door and down a narrow hallway to another door covered in peeling black paint. Through this door, we were confronted by a member of the theater staff who studied our backstage passes and handed them back to us.
“Vince, take these two to the visitor room.”
We eventually entered a kind of surreal cocktail party where groups of people clumped together around band members like they were planetary objects. I scanned the room for Micah, but since he didn’t seem to be there, Zion and I hung back to figure out the dynamic.
A pair of friends would slowly circle up to a band member, who stayed fixed in one place, chatting, signing things, taking photos with fans, and then chatting some more. The pair of friends would awkwardly attempt to engage in conversation, but only a few people managed to get the band member into an interesting discussion. Most of the talk seemed kind of lame. The pair of friends would then move around to another band member.
Others, like me and Zion, stood off to the side like wallflowers, waiting for the action to come our way. But it clearly wouldn’t.
“I wonder if we’re allowed to feed the animals,” Zion whispered.
I chortled. “And on your right, you’ll see homo musica in his natural habitat.”
Zion laughed out loud. “Please keep your hands to yourself at all times.”
“I hope not at all times,” a voice said in my ear from behind me. I turned and discovered Micah had snuck up on me. He’d changed into a different T-shirt, but his hair glistened either from sweat or the world’s worst shower. His scent hit me a second later—musk, smoke, Tide, and something indefinable. Something that made me breathe in deep and tremble.
Before I could formulate a response, all the people in the room siphoned off whichever band member they’d been trying to approach and encircled Micah.
He completely ignored the press of people and kept his eyes on me, a true professional. He clearly knew how to handle a mob.
“No camera?” he asked, looking down at my pocketbook.
“Right here.” I sighed, swinging it out from behind my back.
“Oh, right. I loved the pictures you took of Eden’s show.” He touched my elbow. “Can you hang out here a little while? I’d love to look at them, but I’ve got some people to meet first.”
That was an understatement. I swallowed the disappointment at his obvious interest in my photos and agreed. Maybe I should have bared more cleavage. But I couldn’t say no to spending another ten minutes shoulder to shoulder with him. And while I waited, I shot a few more pictures of him talking with his fans. It made me happy when he signed autographs for a couple of girls, chatted with them, and then turned to the next waiting pair of fans without any hint of flirtation or interest in meeting later.
