I make a pout. “I give a shit about you.”
He smiles. “Good. You’re the only one that matters here.”
A minute later we’re being escorted down the main corridor, the guys about ten feet ahead of us. The sound from the arena is deafening and Neil is lumbering beside me, still looking like he doesn’t want to go onstage. Excitement flutters start building inside me. I haven’t seen Neil perform in anything but a small club. He’s always gone out on the road without me.
The lights are shut off on the stage as we climb a short flight of metal stairs. Neil’s held back again, and his fingers clutch my hand tightly. His fingers do flexing motions around mine. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze. Then I feel the loss of contact and he is running on stage.
Clive points at an empty area just out of view of the audience. “You can stand here.”
The stark corridor below is flooded with people and the side stage entrances fill up. There is a deafening assault of guitars. The lights switch on. I try to keep up with the action in front of me. A raspy, powerful voice, velvety and yet haunting and laced with despair. A voice I know.
I spot Neil center stage, hugging a microphone, hidden under his unruly hair, but he doesn’t look at all like he did the last time I saw him perform. There is something supercharged about him, mesmerizing, coiled, and in control. It’s a sharp contrast to the Neil I found in the exit tunnel. A sharp contrast to the Neil I expected to see now.
I stare at him, unable to see anything else. Center stage adores him, and my skin grows numb with roiling emotions. Their music is raw and fresh, powerfully intense. The band is amazing, and Neil doesn’t hide beneath his hair on stage anymore. He is running wild, stirring the crowd into a frenzy. It didn’t even take one song and he has them totally engaged and with him.
There are stories all over the place in the entertainment press about how Arctic Hole is about to be the next big thing out of Seattle. But those stories are wrong. Neil and the band are not breaking into stardom. Christ, how could I get so much wrong? Miss so much about what was going on in Neil’s life? Simply not see? I was wrong about each and every thing I believed on the way to Seattle and then here.
Arctic Hole is not on the edge of breaking into stardom as a band. They’ve already broken, and it happened before today. Neil must have realized that. The guys know it. You can’t miss something like this, not when you’ve worked so hard to make it happen.
Arctic Hole has already made it. There is not a single reason why Neil should want me here. Every door is going to fly open soon. Opportunity everywhere. Possibilities everywhere. Girls everywhere. Whatever he wants everywhere.
Another guy would have left me in Berkeley in the past. Neil should have done the same. Instead, he brought me with him and I am in love with him for the first time in our life together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The stage shudders from stomping feet throughout the stadium. Neil is on the last song of his set, and the stage’s wings are packed with bodies to the point of being crushingly overfilled. People started pouring in from the tunnels when Neil climbed the rafters.
Jesus Christ, what possessed him to do that?
Still-water Neil hanging from twenty feet above the audience, somehow with the microphone still in hand and singing, and then dropping into the crowd beneath him. It was insane, and oddly exciting; his command of the stage, and I couldn’t guess what he would do next. It moved the packed arena into something beyond frenzied. The crazier Neil gets the more they love him.
I should probably cut out now to the safety of the green room before the band breaks. With the way the stage sides are packed it is going to be madness to try to keep up with Neil once he comes off stage, but I want to watch this as long as I can. He’s put on an amazing performance tonight.
The cluster around me starts fidgeting, alerting me that people are going to be in motion along the wings soon. Across the stage, security is already in place to cut a path for the band.
Pushing through the bodies, I slowly make my way back to the green room. Crap. Delmo and Scream are still here, drinking, laughing, and doing their rituals to psych up for on stage.
I sink down on a sofa, really not wanting to be in here. Thankfully Nicole hasn’t returned since Vincent shoved her from the room. Maybe I should go to Neil’s dressing room because security will take the guys there first.
I’m about to leave when the atmosphere of the room shifts abruptly as Neil and the band return from the stage, sweating, exhausted and excited. Flash bulbs explode from all sides, but Neil is focused on the guys, a saturated towel hanging from his shoulders and still panting from the exertion of performing. They are laughing, talking, and oblivious to everything around.
Neil is oblivious even to me. I didn’t expect that one, but it’s definitely petty that it bothers me. He’s got a lot going on, lots of people vying for his attention. It’s stupid of me to be butt hurt that he didn’t run to me first.
“You were fucking out of your mind tonight,” Nate Kassel exclaims in an overly animated way unlike him.
“What the fuck made you climb the rafters?” Josh interjects heatedly.
Neil shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I didn’t think. I just did.”
The stage manager comes in to give the two-minute warning for Scream. Delmo moves from his circle, pausing beside Neil. “Good show, kid, but if you keep that up you won’t last a year on the road.”
“Maybe you can’t keep it up for a year, old man, but I can,” Neil teases, earning an affectionate swat from Vincent as laughter and heckles erupt around them.
I watch their faces move close together as Delmo launches into what looks like a keep-private kind of conversation with Neil. I wish I could hear their words, and anxiousness moves through my digestive tract. God, I hope Vincent isn’t bringing up that hideous scene with Nicole. As Neil listens, surprise flashes on his face, followed by anger, then a no big deal kind of expression. Vincent pats Neil again on a bicep.
I wonder if I should continue to hang back or go to Neil. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I definitely don’t want to piss off the guys again by making the wrong move. Though that’s probably hopeless. Pretty much everything I do ticks off Josh.
In front of me the crowd start to move, blocking Neil from view. Scream is exiting the green room for the stage and I wonder if Neil is going to want to watch from the wings, but I don’t really want to.
Unexpectedly, Neil cuts through the bodies, takes my hand and pulls me to my feet. “Give us twenty minutes,” he snaps to Josh.
Startled, I stare up at him as he practically drags me from the room.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now.”
Fuck! What did Vincent Delmo say to Neil?
The tic in his cheek twitches the way it does when he’s angry, and I feel something restless and pulsing inside him. Crap, I don’t want him angry. Not tonight. I don’t want to ruin this night for him. Or for me.
He takes me to the dressing room. He bolts the door, and I hang back, silent, as he crosses the room.
“I need to rinse off,” he murmurs, not looking at me as he pulls off his dripping wet t-shirt and tosses it on the floor. At the doorway to the showers, he pauses and looks back at me. “The only person in the room I wanted to be with and you stayed away. Why, Chrissie?”
Crap. He sounds hurt as well as angry. I don’t want to fight with him and I don’t want to hurt him. Not anymore. Not ever again.
A knot rises in my throat. “I don’t know. Everything happened too quickly in there. I thought it best to stay out of the way since you were deep in discussion with the guys.”
His eyes rapidly search my face. “Don’t leave. Don’t move. I’ll be only a minute.”
I stand frozen on my spot, hardly in the room. I hear the showers turn on and sounds of him washing. The shower shuts off and Neil reappears, a towel draped low around his hips.