“I’m here to own you, bitches!” Cole purred, his voice a dark promise. He growled again, Jordan picking up the beat on his drums. Garrett slid his fingers along the strings, making them scream.
“And you’re going to let me. . .because you fucking want it! You’ll fucking love it!” The girls started going crazy and I was getting jostled from behind as a wave of arms and hair and perfume pressed forward, trying to get closer to the man who had us enthralled.
“Can I have you?” he screamed into the crowd and in one voice we all screamed back.
“YES!”
Then the music erupted and I forgot how much the man standing above me infuriated and confused me. I simply became like everyone else. I worshipped him. I desired him.
I wanted him to own me.
Cole curled his hands around the microphone and leaned out toward the writhing mass. Garrett’s head was down, his blonde hair covering his face. His arms taut as he played like he had just made a deal with the devil. Mitch’s face was now tilted toward the ceiling, his eyes closed as if lost. And Jordan was a machine, pounding the drums in an exhausting rhythm.
But we were all waiting for the magic. For Cole to start singing. And when he did I knew, without a doubt, it was something special. I understood why the record label was pushing him forward. Why they were trying to market him above the other guys. Mitch, Garrett, and Jordan were amazing. They were talented and without them, the band wouldn’t exist.
But Cole was something else entirely. He was sex. He was destruction. He was raw and desperate.
My god, he was fantastic!
Festering and bleeding I’m dying in vain
Spoiled and lost, my soul black and stained
You despise, you destroy, you maim, you control,
I hate you for the life you claimed and you stole.
Filth and defile
Loathe and revile
You dig inside and
Kiss my rotten smile.
I murder your memory,
slash it away
I rip your face from my mind,
Whatever it takes.
The blurred lines of the past,
Eat away at the truth,
Chase me, claim me,
Tighten the noose.
Filth and defile,
Hate without guile,
You pull out my insides,
And break my broken smile.
I want your death,
I want your pain,
I want to be bound
I want your chains.
Filth and defile,
I drown in denial,
You rip me apart
You kill me with a smile.
Kill me with a smile. . .
Cole ended on a long, tortured wail that made my insides shiver. This was one of Garrett’s more morbid songs. Thank god he was with Riley now. His new stuff was a lot less scary.
Being at a Generation Rejects show was an experience unlike any other. And despite the tension that seemed to echo from the stage, it was electric. It was frantic. It could be consuming.
And I wanted to enjoy it. And I would have if not for the sea of screaming, and sometimes shirtless women just waiting to become the object of my annoyance and desire’s new plaything.
I stared up at the man making love to the crowd from the stage and wished I could stop craving him. Stop wanting him with every fiber of my being. But it was like asking me to stop watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta. There were some things out of my control.
Then Cole looked down at me, his eyes meeting mine and he winked. His smile lighting up his face in self-satisfied glory. When he looked at me like that, it was as though he were seeing only me. And that I was the girl he wanted out of anyone he could be with.
I was enough.
I hated him for these glimmers of tenderness that made keeping emotional distance downright impossible. It was hard to hate the man when you loved the heart.
Shit, what was I thinking?
I winked back; shaking my hips a bit in the way I knew drove Cole wild and he widened his eyes and pointed at me, singling me out.
It felt good. It made me feel special.
The girl beside me started to squeal loudly in my ear. As if Cole’s sex-drenched smile, as if his attention, were for her.
Sad, delusional girl.