I lose myself in the music—in the heat of the lights, in the sound of Adam’s voice, in the beat of Mike’s drums. I focus on my instrument, letting my fingers do what they were trained to do and giving in to the high. My mind is present on the stage and above the stage and in the crowd, and beads of sweat are pooling at the base of my neck and trickling down my spine. By the time the first “last song” ends, my skin is blazing hot and my brain is completely fried. When I walk out of view of the crowd, it doesn’t even feel like walking. It feels like floating, like flying. It feels like dreaming.
“You were fucking AWESOME,” Adam praises backstage before our encore. The fans are already shouting for one more song, one more song, one more song, and I want to give them a thousand more. I want to play until my fingers fall off, and then I want to glue them back on and keep playing.
“You guys!” I shout, bracing my hands on Mike’s shoulders because I desperately need to latch on to something. “That was AMAZING!”
When Leti taps me on the shoulder, I spin around and throw my arms around his neck.
“How great was that?”
He laughs and asks me if I need to be “spun around or something.”
“YES!” I shout, barely getting the word out before he whips me around in a circle. My feet leave the ground, and I squeal and feel like kissing him or finding religion or, hell, stripping naked and going back onstage that way.
We played some of the new stuff, and the crowd ate it up. Not that I doubted that they would, but to hear them applaud the songs I helped write . . . songs played by The Last Ones to Know . . . it was indescribable.
“Here,” Shawn says, handing me a water, and to keep myself from jumping into his arms instead of Leti’s, I take it and gulp it down.
“I told you there was nothing to be nervous about,” he says, flashing me that heartbreaker smile that makes my skipping heart remember exactly why it was so nervous. His dark band T-shirt is damp with sweat, his messy black hair soaked at the tips and curling at the base of his neck. His skin is flushed and probably as scorching hot as mine, and I wonder if I pressed up against him, if we’d both burst into flames.
“One more song!” The crowd’s chant gets louder, pulsing under the soles of my feet. “One more song!” My scalp prickles, sending electric waves down my spine. “One more song!” My guitar pick calls to me even though the pads of my fingers are numb. “One more song! One more song! One more song!”
“You ready?” Adam asks me, and I nod as I finish my water. I wipe my arm across my mouth and toss the bottle in a bin, and then my guitar is strapped heavily around my neck and I’m walking back onstage in a line. Joel, Mike, me, Shawn, Adam.
The Last Ones to Know.
Chapter Eight
THE GUYS AND I play one final crowd favorite before we exit the stage, followed by a deafening roar of screams and applause. I almost feel bad for the post-concert hangover we’re leaving those kids with, knowing that each one of them is going to be going through withdrawal for days.
But for now, there’s only mayhem as we march right into the thick of the crowd. Shawn tells me to keep close, but in the chaos, I get thrown into a cyclone of fans and pictures and autographs—more fans and pictures and autographs than I’ve ever dealt with in my life. Sometimes, the pictures are of me and the band. Sometimes, they’re of me and a few girls. Sometimes, they’re of just me and a guy. And most of the time, those guys offer to buy me a drink or take me home.
“After merch,” Shawn manages to shout to me over the noise while Mike and I are taking a picture with a fan, “we’ll go to the bus.” Our group has been broken up by the crowd, with Shawn and Adam being swallowed by the teeth of it.
I shake my head and shout back at him. “No way! I was promised like thirty freaking drinks at the bar!”
Some random guy hollers his approval, and I laugh. The best way to get fans to love you is to love them back, and I already do. Come to see them, and they’ll come to see you.
“Joel!” Adam shouts with Rowan pinned to his side. “Kit says we’re going to the bar afterward!”
Joel looks up from a girl who’s uselessly trying to give him her number, giving a thumbs-up. It takes two and a half more seconds, but he weaves away from her like some kind of seasoned ninja, and then he’s at my side, his blond Mohawk adding another few inches to his already solid six-foot-two.
“You doing okay?”
I beam up at him. “I’m doing awesome.”
“She’s a pro,” Mike says from my other side, and I beam up at him too.
Joel’s arm wraps tight around my shoulder to escort me through the crowd, and Mike helps part the sea to get me to the merchandise booth.
It’s near the bar and absolutely swarmed, with girls buying Dee-designed T-shirts and asking where and when they can buy my dress. There are chicks with blonde hair and pink hair and brown hair and blue hair, but when I finally see Shawn again, the girl hanging off of him is one with auburn hair that made it through the show in much better shape than mine. I’m covered in at least five layers of dried-on sweat, with my runny mascara probably making me look like I belong in Twisted Sister instead of The Last Ones to Know, and she’s standing over there looking like she just had her lip gloss applied by Kim Kardashian’s makeup artist.