Chapter 35 Jesse
THIRTY-FIVE
JESSE
We’re counting down until showtime as the teams exit the field and a crew of men and women dressed head-to-toe in black rush to put the stage together.
I’ve spent the first half of the game hiding. I don’t want to know the score. Don’t want to see Luc’s number on the field or feel the echo of his cleats on the ground under me. Just the thought that I’m walking the same turf he’s walked makes my chest ache.
I sent him a text this morning. A simple, “good luck today,” that he didn’t answer.
I got left on read, and I realized that my plan worked.
I gave him the time and space to step back, and he made the right decision.
Loving me isn’t worth his privacy. It isn’t worth his family’s safety and peace of mind.
I keep telling myself that I did the right thing. That letting go is the kindest thing I can do. That his protection, and the protection of his family, is worth more than my selfish, obsessive love. If I repeat it enough times, maybe I’ll stop feeling like I’m bleeding out.
Our dressing room is a cave of cables and manic energy.
The guys are bouncing on their toes, ready to play one of the biggest, but shortest, shows of our lives.
It might also be my last show for a while.
I need to take some time to disappear, and forcing myself to absorb the world around me while the abrasive walls close in is only going to send me down a dark path.
Naz breaks away from the tech crew and crouches in front of me. “Hey.” His eyes search mine. “You ready?”
“Yeah. But I think I need to leave right after this. It’s too much.”
Being here, in the same place as Luc, hurts too much.
I’m worried I’m too weak, that I’ll run to him and drop to my knees in front of everyone and beg him to love me enough to make all the chaos and trouble worth it.
I let him go but I’m breaking inside, and I can’t deal with the aftermath of my own decision.
The band pulls in for our usual pre-show huddle.
Normally someone cracks a dumb prayer–Bless us, rock gods, let our eyeliner stay intact, please make sure Jesse’s dick stays inside the confines of his danger pants–but tonight nobody jokes.
They just press in close, arms over shoulders, heads touching mine.
“We’re behind you all the way,” Naz says, quiet but firm.
Something in my throat breaks, but I nod and let them hold me together for just a moment.
Then it’s time.
I walk to my mark where rigging techs wait to strap me into a harness.
Cool straps cinch across my chest and hips.
I’m about to dangle over a hundred thousand people and a global broadcast, and I feel…
empty. Hollow but determined to prove I’m above the rumors and speculation and what the public thinks of me.
If the world is going to watch, it won’t see me crumble.
They already stole my love, they won’t get my dignity too.
The stadium lights drop.
Deafening cheers rise up, tidal and alive.
The guys hit the stage first, a thunder of guitars and flashing lights.
Naz pounding out the heartbeat on his kit.
From above, I watch the field fill with dancers who blossom into color–red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple–until they’re a rippling rainbow flag.
A drum line marches in, echoing the beat Naz leads. And then it’s my cue.
I breathe once and start to sing a stripped-down version of You Can’t Make Me.
Our messy anti-establishment anthem that will probably get us in a little trouble from the network, but we’ve cleaned up all our songs with the radio-friendly versions.
My voice threads through the dark, raw and alone.
Below me, the crowd searches, necks craning, trying to find where my voice is coming from.
Until a camera finds me high on a platform, and the audience roars.
I turn, open my arms wide, and let myself fall backwards into the middle of the rainbow, the choreography meant to look like ripples from a stone dropped in water.
Gasps echo as the lights cut out completely.
In the dark I sprint under the stage, tear off the harness, and pop up at the main riser just as a blinding wash of color explodes across the field.
The show is on.
We burn through the set, sweat and sound and heat.
The dancers whirl, the drumline driving a steady pulse, the flag ripples and reforms into pulsing geometric shapes.
I lose myself in the set that’s full of subtle but meaningful imagery and depictions of a country growing stronger in diversity and love.
Then it’s time for the closer.
The crowd knows from the first guitar lick what the song is going to be.
It’s the fan favorite. Our first hit. The song that made us famous.
The song I wrote, once upon a time, about a boy on a beach I never thought I’d see again.
The song that very same boy heard and felt close to before he ever knew it was for him. My marrow is in this song.
I step to the mic and try to sing, but my voice shakes. Cracks. I stop for a second, eyes closing against the swell of noise and light. I am raw, hollowed out, missing everything that matters.
I glance back at the guys. Naz meets my gaze and mouths, You can do this.
The intro rolls again. The crowd hums the melody, thousands of voices guiding me back until I can find my own.
I start to sing, soft at first, then stronger.
I walk the long catwalk we built for this moment, the one that earlier belonged to a parade of drag queens in gowns and glitter, now a runway of light and raw emotion.
Halfway down, a single white spotlight locks on me. My voice carries over the stadium, ragged but sure.
Someone yells something from the front rows. I don’t catch the words, but then there’s a sudden ripple through the audience. A gasp, then a roar that’s different from the usual reaction this stripped-down version of Remember My Name typically gets.
The hair on the back of my neck lifts.