The Burn’s popularity cast a blinding light on his future. Their impassioned fan base grew virally. Their newly signed record deal loaded their pockets. Their upcoming album promised more recognition, more fans, and more money. And after this show, their nights of playing in bowling alleys, bars, and peanut fields were over.
Yet the bright light also pitched shadows. A celebrity lifestyle didn’t lend itself to someone who fell apart under large crowds and intentional touching. For that, there would never be a treatment as effective as the two months he’d spent reforming himself for Charlee.
That remedy had died in St. Louis two weeks earlier. He remained committed to being the man she would’ve wanted, but he couldn’t ignore the terrible loneliness in never being able to hold her. That ever-growing chasm inside him consumed him more and more every night.
He turned, facing the nylon backdrop behind the stage, and struck an Fm7 chord on his Les Paul electric. The amplification pealed into the dark wall of night, and the crowd rallied with such thunder and force he couldn’t hear himself think. Didn’t matter. For this last song, he only needed to feel.
When they calmed down, Laz switched on his mic. “You fucking rock, Lubbock, Texas.”
The screams waxed with ear-stabbing intensity.
“One more song.” Laz waited for the hush. “This is the first time we’ve played this one live. And since Jay locked himself in his room for ten hours writing it, I think he should sing it front and center. What you guys think?”
Shrills and roars echoed hollowly in Jay’s chest. He scrunched his neck farther into the shelter of his shoulders. He respected what Laz was trying to do. The relentless nudging was backed with nothing more than good intentions. But Jay’s reason for performing from the isolation of the dark corner was beyond a sane person’s understanding. Triggers and traumas and murdered dreams. He was a walking manual on mental disorders.
“Welp.” Laz laughed. “Jay must be getting a blowjob back there. Guess we’ll hear how he sings while he’s cumming.”
More screaming. “Jay. Jay. Jay.” His name rolled into a chanting staccato.
Jay blew out a ragged breath. Laz teased him about blowjobs, knowing he’d committed to abstinence from alcohol, smoke, drugs, and sex. Laz also knew he had been teetering precariously on that straight edge ever since he learned about Charlee.
The burn in his throat spread behind his eyes. She was gone, but she could never die. She was alive in him, guiding his thoughts and holding together what was left of his heart.
He strummed the beginning chords. He didn’t hear them. He felt them. In the stretch of his chest. In the heat of his blood pushing through his veins. In the burning around his eyes. He felt her.
He cleared his throat and turned on his mic. “This is called You Weren’t Just a Girl.”
The drugging tones of Laz’s guitar joined his own through a slow-building chord progression. Then the instruments fell silent for his vocal solo.
“When I walked into your eyes, I saw tomorrow.” He swallowed. “I saw you sleeping next to me. I saw you holding me.” He licked cracked lips. “I saw you loving me.”
He pushed heavy breaths through the mic. “You weren’t just a girl.” His heart ached, bending with the refrain. “You were a vision. And without that vision, I would perish.”
Laz eased back in with a crawling tempo, accompanied by Rio’s tap-tap-tap drum beat in 4/4 time. Wil’s pulsating bass guitar brought the measures together with a deeper modulation.
As Rio opened up the hats and played quicker, Jay moved the chords up the fret in a fast, even legato and raised his voice. “I know something about pain. I have enough to liberate. I don’t know how to let it go.” His vocals cracked. “I don’t know how to let you go.”
His throat was on fire. Not from the strain of his vocal chords, but from the mass of grief simmering to escape. He sang the refrain hushed and pained. “You weren’t just a girl.” He choked, and Rio threw a concerned expression over his shoulder.
“You were a vision. And without that vision, I would perish.”
The harmony of instruments began the complex climb of the song. Jay grasped at the next verse, couldn’t feel it. So he altered it. “In my vision you hear me. You hear me say. There’s no metal. No rivets. No man of steel.”
The guitar pick in his hand shook and screeched the chords. His heart pounded painfully. “Take me to your grave. You weren’t just a girl.”
Sudden vertigo quaked his knees. He sang an improvised verse. “It’s getting dark. So dark. I can’t see you.” His fingers locked up. “I’m losing you.”
The pick dropped to the stage. His guitar followed, and the music crashed to a deafening silence.
He walked away. Down the metal stairs. Across the field. Away from the lights. Away from the crowd.
He walked until the burr of cicadas drowned out the distant roar of people. Then he dropped to his knees and pressed his fist on his sternum as if it could hold in his sob. It couldn’t.