“Eric Thorn?”
“Yeah. She’s funny. Her username is @EricThornSucks. She pretends like she hates his guts, and she makes fun of me for obsessing about him, but she’s obviously a huge fan too. She follows everything he does almost as closely as I do.”
Tessa cracked a grin. Her friend constantly surprised her with just how much she knew about Eric. Taylor always caught the song references whenever Tessa quoted lyrics. It was no exaggeration when her friend promised to sing along with every song tonight.
“It’s deeper than just fangirling together,” Tessa continued, musing out loud. “We kind of analyze Eric together. I keep telling her my theories about him—about how he’s secretly unhappy. She’s the first person I’ve met in the whole fandom who doesn’t think I’m hallucinating.”
Dr. Regan cocked her head to the side, studying her client’s face. “OK, Tessa. I hear you saying that you talk a lot about Taylor’s personal life, and you talk about Eric Thorn’s personal life. But do you ever talk with Taylor about your own personal life?”
“Yeah. We talk about that too. All the time.”
“Do you feel comfortable sharing things with Taylor that you wouldn’t share with me?”
Tessa’s eyebrows rose slightly at the question. Maybe Dr. Regan wasn’t quite so clueless after all. “Probably,” she said. “There’s less pressure, I guess. It’s not so formal. And it’s just texting. Sometimes that’s easier than talking face-to-face.”
Dr. Regan paused a beat. Tessa watched her curiously as the therapist gathered her thoughts. When Dr. Regan spoke at last, her voice had fallen a notch lower. “Tessa, do you think you might feel comfortable enough to tell Taylor what happened in New Orleans?”
Tessa froze—a deer, but not in the headlights. More like a deer staring down the barrel of a gun. Every muscle of her body went rigid as the question rang in the air.
New Orleans.
She slammed her eyes shut and squeezed them tight, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass.
“Did you hear me?” Dr. Regan prompted softly.
“No,” Tessa whispered. “No. I’m not ready. I’m not there yet.”
10
TURN AROUND
“Make some noise, Seattle!”
Eric spoke into the mic and listened to the echo booming through the packed stadium. His words were rewarded by a deafening roar, and he plastered a grin on his face, wide enough that even the girls in the cheap seats might stand a chance of seeing it.
Not much of a chance though. Tonight’s sellout crowd topped 50,000 fans. It still blew his mind that anyone would throw away a hundred bucks on concert tickets, just to sit up there in the stratosphere and gaze at his image on a Jumbotron scoreboard.
“What’s going on up there?” He extended a lazy arm in the direction of the highest row. “You guys still awake?”
Eric could sense the buzz of anticipation running through the crowd. He stepped casually off the main stage, and the fans rewarded him with another round of screaming as he strutted down the fifty-foot-long runway that lay before him. They all knew where he was heading: out to the round second stage, planted dead center in the middle of the stadium floor. “Aloe Vera” was up next, and he would sing it on his own out there, with no band members or backup dancers gyrating around him. Just Eric Thorn alone with a microphone, surrounded on all sides by the mass of squirming fans who pushed and shoved for position.
Those were the pit girls encircling the stage—the most fanatical worshippers of all, who’d lined up outside in the misty, gray Seattle rain since the wee hours of the morning. Anything to get a coveted spot along the railing, where they could hold out their hands in supplication and pray that he might reach down and graze their fingertips.
Most of them would leave here disappointed. He tried to keep all physical contact to a minimum these days, as much as the girls loved it. He’d gotten spooked at a show last year in Melbourne, after some Aussie managed to grab him by the wrist and yank him off his feet. Only the quick reflexes of a nearby stadium security guard had kept him from being engulfed by the waiting mob. Eric shuddered just thinking what they might have done to him. He’d seen the way they treated his discarded sweat towels, ripping and clawing like vultures over a carcass.
Safer not to touch the fans or even look at them too closely. For the most part, Eric tried to ignore their existence altogether when he played a venue this size. The key, he found, was to keep moving. Let them all blur together into one amorphous mass—one living, breathing organism with 50,000 gaping mouths, 100,000 upraised arms, and a seemingly infinite number of smartphone camera flashes, twinkling all around him.
Tonight though, he couldn’t deny the temptation to sneak a glimpse at their eager faces. He felt oddly curious, and he knew the reason why. There was one face in particular that he kept trying to envision lately.
He hadn’t seen her picture yet. Tessa didn’t seem like the type to tweet selfies, and he didn’t dare ask for one. But that didn’t stop his imagination from running rampant. The fact was, he knew what she must look like, more or less. He only had to look out into the crowd. He had 50,000 female faces surrounding him. No doubt Tessa would blend right in.
Eric fingered the hem of his T-shirt, preparing to lift it over his head. He turned in a slow circle and ran his eyes across the faces of the girls in the front row—all completely interchangeable, aside from a few variations in hair color and skin tone. His gaze locked with a pair of pretty, brown eyes, peeking back at him from behind her upraised phone. He took a step closer to get a better look, all the while pulling his shirt up over his head in a single fluid motion. He watched as her phone dropped and the brown eyes widened. Then her face contorted into a mask of senseless hysteria as she opened her mouth to scream.
Eric looked away. Better not to make eye contact. Leave Tessa’s face where it belonged—safely tucked away, somewhere on the fringes of his imagination. With one final jerk, he quickly tossed his shirt in the opposite direction.
Pandemonium.
Eric did his best to ignore the brewing scuffle where the shirt had landed. The opening chords of the song pounded through the stadium, drowning out the crowd. He held the mic in both hands and let his eyes drift closed as he sang the lyrics that he could’ve repeated in his sleep.
Come on and soothe this sunburn.
Baby, take away my pain…
He slipped in his earpiece to hear the music, but his ears weren’t greeted by the sound of his own singing. Some other voice, half-concealed by static, buzzed instead. Security? What were they squawking about? How was he supposed to stay on key?
Eric turned his head in annoyance, ready to flick the earpiece back out again, but something in the cross talk caught his attention.
“Code Delta. I repeat. Code Delta.”