STAR (A 44 Chapters Novel) Page 6

  I furrowed my brow and shrugged. Then, I waved my hand back and forth between the band and my ear. It’s too loud. Say it one more time. I took a sip of my drink to hide my stupid schoolgirl grin as I batted my eyelashes at Hans.

  But Hans didn’t mouth You’re welcome again. He looked at me and looked at me, and then he said, “You’re beautiful,” instead.

  Out loud.

  In his normal voice.

  I froze. Clear plastic cup to my lips. Sugary bubbles bursting on my tongue. Sugary bubbles stinging my eyes.

  Sugary bubbles tingling between my legs.

  I swallowed. I blinked. I blinked again.

  Hans swallowed. He blinked. His eyebrows pulled together.

  Shit. I made it weird.

  With flaming cheeks, I mumbled something that sounded like thank you. Then, I turned toward the stage and took a sip from my drink to mask my mortification.

  Tell him he’s beautiful too!

  No way! Guys don’t want to be called beautiful!

  Tell him he looks like Jared Leto from My So-Called Life!

  Nobody with a penis watched that show, dummy!

  Tell him—

  My internal freak-out was interrupted by a callused knuckle against the underside of my chin. Hans gently rotated my face up and to the left, forcing me to look at him. I tried to turn my anxious cringe into a smile as Hans searched my face with soulful eyes. The expression he wore was so sincere, it made my chest ache.

  He bent down to my ear, the fingers under my jaw splaying to cup the side of my neck, and said, above the roar of the bodies and speakers and the hormones swirling around us, “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I blinked back stunned tears as my blushing cheek brushed against his prickly one. I inhaled his scent, caressed his earlobe with my nose, then said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you. Will you say that again?”

  Hans laughed and pulled me into his side where I stood for the next hour, swooning and singing and sloshing my drinks in pure glee.

  When the last song had been played and the house lights came up, Hans and I stumbled out onto the fire escape, arm in arm, and made our way down to the street. The night air was hot and sweaty, just like us. We cut across Centennial Park, which I’d never seen at night, and Hans gave his last Newport to a homeless man asking to bum a smoke.

  By the time we found the BMW in the Georgia Dome parking lot, I had already begun to mourn what had quite possibly been the best day of my life. I drove back to Steven’s house with the sunroof open and the AC on full blast, going exactly the speed limit and not one mile per hour faster. I wasn’t going to let anything ruin my perfect day.

  At least, that’s what I thought until Hans’s phone started ringing.

  And ringing.

  And ringing.

  Every time it went off, he’d silence it immediately and shove it back into his pocket. After the third ring, Hans turned the car stereo on. A haunting, heavy bass line filled the car.

  “Do you like the Deftones?”

  He was trying to distract me. Well, unlike him, I had a one-track mind. I ate distractions for breakfast.

  “Do you need to get that?” I asked, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

  Hans opened his glove box and pulled out a new pack of Newports. Tapping the lid of the box on the heel of his palm a few times, he said, “No.”

  No. That was it. No explanation. No chuckle about Trip drunk-dialing him or annoyance about his mom being a worrywart. Hans, an emotional open book, was hiding something from me.

  “What if it’s an emergency?” I asked.

  “It’s not.” Hans peeled the plastic wrap off the box and let it flutter to the floorboard, joining the rest of the trash accumulated there.

  “But what if it is?”

  Hans stuck a cigarette between his teeth and shrugged. “Then they can call somebody else.”

  They. Gender-neutral. Hans didn’t want me to know that it was a girl.

  I hadn’t asked him about his girlfriend because, honestly, I wanted to pretend like she didn’t exist. But there she was anyway, riding shotgun in Hans’s pocket.

  I felt like the lowest of the fucking low. I’d been that girl, searching for my boyfriend. Waiting by the phone. Crying myself to sleep while he was off, drinking and partying and fucking someone else. I glanced down at Hans’s phone number on my arm and felt another stab of guilt. Had he pulled that move on her, too? Written his number on her skin? Made her feel special?

  I took Hans’s fresh pack of Newports from the center console without asking and lit one, savoring one last menthol before I cut him loose. I might have been needy. I might have been recently broken. But I was healing. I didn’t need to steal another girl’s boyfriend to make myself whole. I wasn’t Angel fucking Alvarez.

  I was, however, way drunker than I’d realized. The menthol had taken my buzz and cranked it up to eleven. By the time I pulled into Steven’s neighborhood, I could barely see straight. My head spun, and my stomach lurched. I clenched my teeth and fought back the bile until I pulled up onto the curb behind my Mustang. Then, I threw the Beemer in park, pushed open the door, and retched all over the sidewalk.

  I guess matching a dude who was almost a foot taller than me and twice my body weight drink for drink hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  One Week Later

  “Tell me you are not seriously parking here.” Juliet hit the door lock button as I killed the engine and cut off the lights.

  “What? It’s not that far of a walk. And it’s free.”

  Juliet glared at me. “Great. That just means there’s more money in your pocket for the muggers and rapists to take.”

  I swatted at her, missing on purpose. “Nobody’s gonna rape us!” I pointed straight ahead to a figure slumped against an apartment building, silhouetted by a nearby streetlight. “If you give Old Willy there a couple of cigarettes, he’ll watch your car for you and make sure you get down the street okay.”

  Juliet’s drawn-on eyebrows rose, and a giggle percolated from her chest. “Please tell me you’re fucking kidding.”

  “What? It’s a win-win.”

  Juliet’s laugh turned into a full cackle. “How are you still alive? Like, seriously.”

  I swatted at her again, connecting with her arm that time. “Whatever. Like your decisions are any better.”

  I had to bite my tongue to keep from adding the word Mom at the end of that sentence. Juliet fucking hated it whenever Goth Girl or I called her that.

  Juliet lifted the sleeve of the hoodie she was holding in her lap, pushed the top of a bottle of wine out of the opening, and unscrewed the cap. “Speaking of bad decisions.”

  “Ugh! Wine? That’s all you could find?” I wrinkled up my nose.

  “I’m sorry. Maybe, if your twenty-two-year-old boyfriend hadn’t gone back to jail, we’d be drinking Perrier right now!”

  I laughed. “It’s Dom Pérignon. Perrier is water, dumbass.”

  And I’m pretty sure your twenty-five-year-old baby daddy got locked up first.

  Juliet was a bitch, but she was my bitch. We’d been best friends for five years even though we were polar opposites. Juliet was snarky and introverted and tough while I was bubbly and extroverted and naive. She had dark skin; I had freckles. She had long black braids; I had a short blonde pixie cut. But we shared a love of eyeliner, cigarettes, booze, and boys. Juliet even more so than me, which was how she’d ended up with a one-year-old at the age of seventeen.

  Juliet took a swig from the sweatshirt-wrapped bottle and passed it to me. “I can’t believe I let you drag me to a heavy-metal concert. I must really fucking like you.”

  I drank a few swallows of sour, piss-colored wine and winced, passing the bottle back to Juliet. “Or you just really needed a break from Romeo.”

  Juliet laughed. “Yeah, that too. God, that little fucker is into everything now that he’s walking.” She chugged a quarter of the bottle after that
statement.

  “Oh shit, I almost forgot,” I said, turning around and grabbing a T-shirt out of the backseat. “Hans said I was supposed to wear this.”

  I unfolded the shirt and held it up between us. It was black with a white Phantom Limb logo on the front.

  “Uh, that thing is gonna look like a tent on you,” Juliet said, curling her lip in disgust. “Give it to me. I’ll fix it.” She snatched the shirt from me and dug around in her cavernous purse until she found a pair of baby fingernail scissors. “Yes!” As she went to work, hacking away at the hem of the T-shirt with the world’s tiniest pair of scissors, she asked, “Isn’t it, like, super uncool to wear the shirt of the band playing to their concert?”

  I laughed and took another sour gulp of wine. “Right? That’s what I thought too. But when Hans and I were saying goodbye last Sunday and he invited me to the show, he dug this shirt out of his trunk and said I had to wear it.” I shrugged and kept drinking, trying to calm the gang of violent, mutant, bodybuilding butterflies that took flight every time I thought of Hans. Of his pretty denim-colored eyes that looked like they were rimmed in kohl. Of his little dimples and his little half-smiles. Of his arms around my shoulders and his chin on the top of my head.

  “He’s fucking claiming you, BB. Like a caveman. He wants everybody to see you in his shirt and know that you’re his.”

  I snorted. “I’m not fucking his though. Beth is.” I rolled my eyes and hiccupped, already beginning to feel a buzz.

  “Fuck Beth. Where is she?” Juliet looked around at the crumbling bungalows and burned-out streetlights around us. “I don’t see that bitch. And Hans sure as fuck didn’t see her last weekend because he was with you the whole time. He even took care of you while you were wasted! That’s boyfriend shit, B.”

  I took another sour gulp and felt the embarrassment of that night wash over me. I was suddenly right back there in my mind, staring into my own puke on the sidewalk. Wanting to crawl under Hans’s BMW and die. I relived the sequence of events—at least the ones I could remember. Hans picking me up and carrying me against his chest, to Steven’s door. Steven letting us in and gesturing toward the hall bathroom in annoyance. Pigtails cutting up lines of coke on Steven’s glass-top coffee table. Where is Goth Girl? Did they get into a fight like Hans had said they would? Hans rubbing my bony back while I heaved into the toilet, handing me my phone so that I could call my worried parents and tell them I was crashing at Victoria’s house again. Hans bringing me a large cup full of water and a small cup full of mouthwash. Hans unlacing my boots and peeling off my tight pleather pants before tucking me into Maddie’s twin-size bed. Hans curling up behind me on the mattress, his front to my back, his slow, sleepy breath on my neck.

  Hans’s erection against my lower back in the morning.

  “Then why didn’t he make a move on me?” I pouted, about to tip the bottle up and finish it before Juliet snatched it from my pathetic, boy-crazy hand.

  Juliet shrugged and polished off the last of the wine. “Let’s go find out. If we don’t get murdered on the way, that is.”

  As I laughed at her joke, the wine making it seem extra funny, Juliet tossed my new T-shirt at my face. I pulled off my tank top and slipped my new shirt on over my head, careful not to fuck up the spiky-chic hairdo I’d spent an hour trying to make look effortless. Juliet was right; the shirt had been too big for me, but she’d hacked the bottom half of it off, right below the logo, and widened the neck so that it would hang off one shoulder. I rolled up the sleeves and nodded. It would have to do.

  Good Old Willy kept his word, and in exchange for two Camel Lights, Juliet and I made it safely to the box office of the Masquerade.

  To anyone but a local, the Masquerade would have appeared to be nothing more than a condemned old factory that had once specialized in manufacturing splinters and sadness. But, to alternative-rock lovers, it was heaven. Well, technically, it was Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, as the three sections inside the building had been affectionately nicknamed.

  Hell was home to the techno crowd, fetish parties, and eighties night. Purgatory was the bar on the second floor, and upstairs, on the third floor where all the live music happened, was Heaven. Fitting, considering that was where I’d get to see Hans again.

  Just as my feet hit the top stair, a bass line began to rattle the floor. I didn’t recognize the song, but something inside me recognized the source. Juliet and I walked out of the stairwell and into the dark, smoky, sweltering confines of Heaven. The crowd was larger than I’d expected for Locals Only night, filling up most of the warehouse-sized space.

  When my eyes swept over the crowd and up to the stage, there was a brief moment where the rest of the world fell away. Hans was all I could see. It wasn’t that he commanded attention. He wasn’t wearing a fishnet shirt or vinyl pants or leather-studded gloves or any of the other dramatic bullshit his bandmates had on. He wasn’t even looking at the crowd. But there was something about him that shone.

  Maybe it was all the contrast. Hans’s features were dark and hard, but his spirit was soft and light. One arm was completely tattooed in blacks and grays; the other was a blank canvas. His low-slung, baggy slacks were black, but the tight wifebeater clinging to his hard chest was white. Hell, even his Adidas were black and white.

  But his bass? His bass was red, red, red.

  Hans didn’t see me when I walked in, but Trip did. He pointed at us from behind the mic stand just before growling the opening lyrics to one of Phantom Limb’s original songs. The crowd turned their heads in our direction briefly, which prompted Hans to look up as well.

  And smile.

  “Fuck, B. That’s him?” Juliet shouted over the music.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, entranced.

  “The bass player?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That Jared Leto-looking motherfucker with the tattoos?”

  I swallowed and nodded, never breaking eye contact.

  “Girl, I don’t care if he’s fucking married. You have got to hit that.”

  Juliet took me by the arm and dragged my leaden feet through the crowd, shamelessly shoehorning us into a gap right at the front of the stage. I was so fucking uncomfortable. Why was I so fucking uncomfortable? I’d spent the entire weekend with this guy. I’d slept in the same bed with him. Twice. He’d seen me barf. Like, thirty times. But for some reason, I felt shy. I wanted to run to the bar and take enough shots to tranquilize the batshit-crazy butterflies in my stomach, but the black Xs on the backs of my hands made that an impossibility.

  So I did what I always did when I felt awkward. I smoked. And I smoked. And I smoked.

  Every time Hans’s eyes landed on me, I smiled like a dumbass. Every time his eyes weren’t on me, I pouted. It wasn’t until their fourth or fifth song that I even realized that people were singing along. Phantom Limb had fans. Actual fans.

  After the sixth or seventh song, Trip paused to have a little banter with the audience. For a scrawny little thing with an unfortunate haircut, I had to admit, Trip exuded some kind of weird sex appeal up there. He was charismatic, oddly confident, and could command the crowd’s attention with a flick of his wrist.

  After asking how everyone was feeling, Trip announced that it was his favorite part of the show. “Would all the sexy ladies wearing Phantom Limb shirts in the house please come on up?”

  I glanced at Hans in confusion, but he just gave me a one-dimpled smile and beckoned me onstage with a flick of his fingers.

  Me?

  I looked down and realized that I was wearing a Phantom Limb T-shirt. I had totally forgotten.

  Sneaky motherfucker.

  Juliet gave me a shove toward the side of the stage, and I ascended the stairs on autopilot along with about ten other girls.

  Holding Hans’s amused stare, I mouthed, What the fuck? as Trip instructed us to line up in front of the drum set.

  Sorry, Hans mouthed back, cupping a hand to his ear, I can’t hear you.

  I f
lipped him off as I took my spot in line just behind him, pursing my lips to hide the girlish grin threatening to blow my cool.

  “Now, now, BB. That will have to wait until after the show,” Trip admonished me, eliciting a laugh from the crowd. “Okay, folks, you know the drill. The Phantom Girl with the best high kick gets to kiss any member of the band she wants.”

  The fuck?!

  I swear I think I saw Hans blush as the band picked their instruments back up and began playing a hard-rock version of the classic French cancan song. Right on cue, the girls on either side of me threw their arms over my shoulders and lifted their knees high into the air.

  Right knee, right kick. Left knee, left kick.

  I picked up the rhythm and was about to kick my big-ass combat boot into the air when I remembered that I was wearing a skirt—a little black-and-red plaid skirt with safety pins holding it closed. I never wore girlie shit like that, but I’d wanted to look pretty for Hans. If I did the fucking cancan, everybody in the audience was going to see my panties. If I didn’t do the cancan, I would disappoint Hans, who’d asked me to wear that shirt specifically so that I would do the fucking cancan dance onstage.

  “What’s a matter, BB? You freeballin’ tonight?” Trip goaded me. “Come on, show us that pussy.” Then he turned to the crowd and started chanting, “Show…us…the pussy! Show…us…the pussy!”

  I was going to show them my pussy anyway until Trip decided to make a thing out of it. Now I couldn’t give him the satisfaction. Emboldened by all the attention, fueled by my hatred of being told what to do, propelled by my desire to look badass in front of Hans, and encouraged by Juliet, who was glaring at Trip like she wanted to strangle him with his mic cord, I turned around, lifted my skirt, and showed everybody my bare ass instead.

  Okay, so it wasn’t completely bare. I’d worn my favorite leopard-print thong that night. You know, just in case Hans decided to ravage me backstage or something. A girl has to be prepared.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Hans, and the look of awe on his face made me feel like a motherfucking champion. He stood there, slack-jawed, mechanically playing the cancan song on his bass, while the crowd screamed and whistled and cheered in front of him.