“Sorry I bitched about the seats,” Marissa said, sipping the foam from her beer.
I shook my head. “Totally fine, they were expensive tickets.”
“It’s just, I wanted the full experience, you know? Front row, being sung to, eyes locking. The whole rock and roll fantasy.”
“Oh, I get it—more than you know.”
Again, she raised an eyebrow. “Do you, now? Please elaborate.”
I smiled wickedly. I wasn’t embarrassed of my days following this band, so why had I acted like I was?
I opened my mouth to share the story, but then the drum solo started winding into a guitar solo, and I turned back towards our seats.
It was calling to me, like a siren song. I glanced back at the bouncer who stood guarding the floor area, his nose buried in his phone. This was our one chance. I reached back to grab hold of Marissa’s hand and stepped down towards the stage, one foot in front of the other, fully expecting to be stopped at some point…but nothing. Not when we reached the back of the crowd, not when we approached the velvet rope of the floor seats, and not even when we reached the opening to the VIP section.
“Oh my God!” Marissa screamed so loudly my eardrum vibrated, and I squeezed her hand in response.
Much like riding a bike, the art of making my way to the front row came back to me. I stepped forward, paused, then sideways, then forward again. Slow but steady, Marissa in tow, with each step I felt like I was shedding some part of the person I’d become. We were making progress, and then the guitar stopped, and the lights went out. Around us the crowd seemed to relax, so I took the opportunity to rush forward, dragging Marissa behind me.
“Don’t let go of my hand!” I yelled over my shoulder, but there was no way to know if she heard. And then, as I knew it would, the beat dropped, the lights went up, and the crowd surged forward, carrying us with it until I felt my hipbones collide with the metal barrier.
We’d done it. Front row. Not that this small venue was much of a challenge. I’d done it before in a ten thousand person arena. You just needed to know how.
Beside me, Marissa raised her hands in the air and let out a scream, or at least I think she did. The sound was lost in the guitars that joined the drum and that was that. If the opener and the slide show had opened the door, this front row vantage point had done the rest. I was lost, to the music and the memories. For the next four songs I sang and pounded the barrier to the beat.
It was everything I needed it to be. I closed my eyes and swayed as the tempo slowed, wishing I had a cigarette lighter. Could you still buy those? All I owned were the long ones that I used to light my vanilla scented candles.
The irony was not lost on me.
Afterall, I wasn’t some free-spirited teenager. Not anymore, no matter how much my whole heart was longing to be tonight. But if I kept my eyes closed, I could let the nostalgia keep me a drift from my reality.
This was a particularly cheesy ballad, with promises of giving up the road for true love, if only it could be found by a man in a denim vest without a shirt and a woman in a ripped-up mini skirt.
“DAVIS! DAVIS! DAVIS!” came the screams from behind me, and I opened my eyes to see that he was crouched right in front of me, giving the song all he had, straight to me.
And yes, I was spit on. And yes, his sweat flew dangerously close as he stood and pounded his fists on his chest with the beat. My eyes widened as he stared directly into them. It was ridiculous how alive this made me feel. I was just a face in the crowd to him.
But, damn, I wanted to be the girl I’d been when he sung to me last.
The laws of the universe say that your entire life path can be altered by just one decision, even if it’s a small one. Life is a series of choices, really, when you boiled it down. The ones I’d made then made no sense to the person I was at this concert tonight. Maybe I was letting the nostalgia get the better of me, but the way I felt in this moment with Davis Scott singing straight to me, I wanted to go back, make all different ones, and see just where life would have sent me.
Or maybe I could make a different choice now. The idea of joining the tour, following the band, doing it all over again…it made me feel… what? I couldn’t put my finger on it. Alive? Myself? Whatever that unnamed feeling was, it made my heart pound in my chest.
I shook my head. It was an absolutely ridiculous thought. I was too old to entertain ideas of directions of the universe and different choices. But then Davis shook his head too, as though he was responding to me.
He winked, and I felt faint.
He was holding out his hand, and I was taking it. He was pulling me up on the stage. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Then, all of who I was seemed to slip away.
Davis Scott was dancing and so was I.
Together. He put a hand on my hip, and we rocked back and forth, inches apart. Another sly smile. Another wink, and then he put the mic back up to his mouth.
“You and me, we don’t know slow. There’s nowhere else to go, so stay. Tomorrow, tomorrow is another day.” He sang, head tilted forward, eyes closed.
As the rest of the band came in on the chorus, he stepped away from me and towards them and I had the presence of mind to pull out my camera and start snapping. Caught in the moment, I didn’t hesitate as they did their thing. And when Davis saw me, he turned the full force of his charm in my direction.
Suddenly I didn’t feel too old for anything.
(c) Julie Stone, Entangled Publishing, 2022. Shared with permission from the publisher.
HE’S WITH THE BAND by Julie Stone
After twenty-three years of marriage to an utter jackass and beige décor as far as the eye can see, Campbell Cavett is now divorced. Officially. But how did she lose herself for all these years? Somehow she went from being a bold, starry-eyed young groupie who followed Golden Tiger on tour to…snapping photos of snot-nosed kids for their Pinterest moms at the local Portrait Hut.
But she takes her Divorce Party one bottle of Pinot Grigio too far and wakes to discover she’s quit her boring-ass job, arranged to sell her house, and has tickets to the Golden Tiger reunion show. Which is exactly when fate and Campbell decide it’s time to pick up where she left off all those years ago.
Now Campbell’s on tour as the official photographer of her favorite band and living the life she’s always dreamed. But backstage access means that she’s about to discover a whole lot. Not just about herself, but about a blast from her past who looks way hotter than he has any right to twenty-plus years later. Plus there’s that mind-blowing secret Golden Tiger’s been hiding from everyone. They say time can heal anything. But is six weeks on the road enough to truly start fresh?
Romance Contemporary [Entangled: August, On Sale: January 17, 2022, e-Book, / eISBN: 9781649372857]
Buy HE’S WITH THE BAND: Kindle
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About Julie Stone
Julie Stone was born a child of the seventies complete with rainbow shirts, bell-bottoms, and a belief in unicorns. All that whim and whimsy ushered her into the wonderful world of being a teenager in the eighties, something she has a hard time letting go of most days. I mean, the styles, the music, the movies? It was a playground for the creative mind she was growing.
Alas, she had to leave all that behind and become an adult. Graduating with a degree in English from the University of Iowa (go Hawks!) where along with a degree she also earned herself a husband. She embarked on all of the regular, boring grown-up things that come with age. Until the magical world of motherhood brought along a new chapter of joy, terror, and sleepless nights… But also, nap time. Suddenly there was time to go back to her creative calling and write. Through raising two boys, several moves around the midwest, those stories, and that keyboard kept her company and kept her relatively sane. (Depending on who you ask.)
Currently settled in Iowa, she continues to pursue her love of the written word, her cat, and mothering the three boys in her life to the best of her abilities.
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