Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Sadie
Welcome To The Jungle
Guns n’ Roses
The bunk is eight inches taller than a coffin and only slightly better lit. I’ve slept in worse. I once slept on a concrete floor in Berlin with my backpack for a pillow and a drummer snoring like a chainsaw two feet from my face. Compared to that, a rolling shoebox with clean sheets is a luxury.
Still, my knee pokes the curtain when the bus hits a seam in the road, and the whole tiny cave thrums around me.
I blink into the thin glow leaking through the fabric.
Someone’s up front, low sounds, fingers on strings.
It’s too early for ego and just late enough for ghosts.
Of course he broods at sunrise. Probably broods in his sleep, too.
I queue the day in my head before I move. Swap batteries, clear two SD cards, back up last night’s pull, label the folders like a good girl, then ruin the label with content I have no business catching.
“Two months.” My editor texted last night. “We need the soul, not the press-kit smile.” I sent back a thumbs-up and a skull emoji. She sent a black heart. We pretend this is normal.
I slide out of the bunk sideways, feet to the runner, shoulder to the wall so I don’t flash the whole bus.
My shirt is yesterday’s, my cutoffs are permanent, and my hair is living its best chaotic life on top of my head.
Boots first. Always boots first. My camera waits exactly where I left it, on the lip of the table, cap on, strap coiled, like a well-trained dog.
The guitar stops when I slide open the curtain to the main cabin. I pretend not to notice. I pretend so hard I deserve an award.
Hayden is a lump under a blanket on the bench.
Mikey is a hoodie with eyebrows. And Dean, Dean is a long line of “don’t even” back in his corner in the booth, green eyes the color of trouble and rage.
He’s got his guitar angled across his lap and his jaw set like he’s trying not to grind it to powder.
On the table, there’s a single paper cup, steam curling out of it. Hot, black coffee. Just how I like it. No note.
“Communal?” I ask the room, because I am a professional and professionals don’t assign meaning to beverages.
No one answers. Dean doesn’t look at me.
Hayden snores. Mikey pops one eye and smirks like he knows a secret.
I take the coffee. I drink the coffee. It tastes like asphalt, but it’s hot. Whatever. I need it.
My phone buzzes against my pocket. I slide it out.
Editor: Day two check-in. Getting anything?
Me: Moody guitarist. Caffeine shortage resolved.
Editor: We love a narrative.
I tuck the phone away and crack my knuckles.
Quick wipe on the lens because fingerprints are the devil.
The bus takes a long curve and the dawn drags the world into view; pine, fog, a skinny silver river cutting through it like a vein.
Seattle by morning. Stage by night. Two months to either make the story or get eaten by it.
I swing my camera up to catch the empty aisle in a wide shot. Blanket, boots, guitar case, coffee cup, a strip of sunlight like a promise. Click. File it under establishing mood and men who think silence hides them.
“You sleep?” Dean asks the window. Not me, the window. This guy doesn’t give an inch.
“Sure.” I scoff. “Like a baby on a rollercoaster.”
He huffs something that could be a laugh, which could also be a fault line shifting. “You’re used to this.”
“I am this,” I clarify. He nods once, like that explains a thing. It does.
We roll into the venue too fast for anyone with a regular day job.
Crew drops the stairs. Cold air knifes in and wakes up the rest of my skull.
I’m off the bus before words can start a fight.
Light first; find where it falls. Then people; see who they are when they think no one’s looking. The truth is rarely centered.
I shoot cables coiling into snake piles, gaffer tape crossing like stitches, a tech kneeling with a Sharpie between his teeth, a fan already camped on the sidewalk in a Devil’s Halo hoodie three sizes too big, hands shoved into the pocket like she’s holding her own heart together.
Mikey gets ambushed by two girls who cannot be older than nineteen, and he turns it into a joke so fast I almost miss the softness. He does a goofy bow, signs their vinyl, makes the moment theirs. Click. That one’s going in.
I find Dean without trying to find him. He’s gravity in denim.
He lifts a flight case with one hand like it weighs nothing, no one noticing he’s careful not to let it slam.
He squats to talk to a kid with ear protection on that’s as big as his head.
He does it like no one can see him, like kindness is contraband. Click. Click.
He glances up mid-smile and catches me. For a breath, the whole room stills. Then the wall comes down and his mouth flattens. He stands and turns his back. The photos live. We pretend I didn’t take them.
There’s a rhythm to build days: soundcheck, note bickering, the song nobody thinks belongs and then belongs, a run-through of the track they swear they’ll skip and then don’t.
I work around it, in it, through it. The camera gets heavy, but my mind doesn’t care. By the time the venue doors open, I smell like backstage air, cheap soap, and adrenaline. The crowd hits like a weather event. Phones up. Lights down.
From the wings, you can see everything and nothing.
Luc, who none of us have seen today, finally walks in like a man on a wire.
He gets wired, and then he’s on stage. The noise goes feral.
I find him through the lens and track the space just behind his eyes.
It’s the part I know that’s bracing for either impact or rescue.
And then suddenly, she’s there. Not onstage, but in the crowd. A blur of hair and a smile full of hope holding a sign above her head that says what none of us are allowed to say for him.
Luc, I love you.
It moves through the room the way lightning does.
First you see it, then you feel it. Luc reads it slow, like the letters might rearrange themselves if he looks too fast. The stadium tips.
The floor he’s on becomes something else.
I press the shutter and miss the second after on purpose because some things are not mine to take.
I shift while sucking in a breath, my heart suddenly feeling too big for my chest. At the same time, I catch Dean at the edge of my peripheral.
He’s watching Luc. He’s watching Lily. There’s a ghost in his eyes I haven’t named yet.
He swallows it whole and steps back into the dark.
My fingers itch. Some stories you can’t shoot.
You can only be a silent witness. But there is a story there. I’m more than sure of it.
The set after that is a live wire. Luc sings like a man who saw his future and wants to get there. Dean plays like his hands are having an argument with his rules. Mikey bangs the drums like they need to be punished for some unknown crime. My camera drinks it all in like water.
After the show, I go backstage. Everything smells like sweat and triumph and the disinfectant they use on counters to make us pretend they’re clean. People move around me in bubbles of laughter, in exhaustion, others with purpose, but all ignore me.
I hook my camera to my strap and scroll through the last dozen shots. A haze of smoke, a halo of backlight, hands in the air like a congregation, the moment before a grin.
A bottle sets down beside my thigh. I look up. Dean is already past me, strides long, hair damp, shirt clinging in all the wrong, helpful places. He doesn’t look back.
“Thanks,” I say out loud. The beer is the only one listening though, and suddenly I’m the kind of girl who talks to liquids.
I shrug as I open it and take a long drink.
It’s cold and it’s earned. I watch as he halts five paces out, pivots, and then returns like the floor told him to.
I lower my beer, eyes moving up to catch his.
He nods at my camera. “You get it?”
“Depends what it is.”
He scratches his jaw slow. “Everything.” I know he’s asking about the moment Luc and Lily reunited.
“Some of it.” I nod. “The rest isn’t mine.”
He studies me like he’s trying to decide if this is a trick. It’s not. I know where to draw a line and when not to cross it. “You didn’t shoot the sign.”
“I shot his face,” I explain. “It said the same thing.”
The corner of his mouth considers softening. It doesn’t. He taps the top of my bottle with his. “You were rooting for them.”
“I’m not a cold-hearted bitch,” I deadpan. “And I’m not stone.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he taunts, which probably means more than it should, so I bite back. “Don’t get attached,” I warn him. It’s a joke that isn’t. His eyebrow tics like he didn’t expect me to know how to cut. “To me,” I clarify, because I don’t mind being specific. “Or the camera.”
He looks like he has three answers and none of them are safe. He goes with, “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a shit what you do, with or without your camera.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Romeo.” The nickname lands and I watch it bruise. He deserves it and he doesn’t. He tips his chin at the beer like that makes us square and disappears down the hall.
I sit there with the brown glass sweating into my palm as I let my pulse calm. The room is a tide. People rush in, people rush out, voices crest and fall. Someone yells for more towels. Someone laughs too loud and then apologizes into their own hand.
I could follow the noise to the party. Instead, I find a quiet stairwell and sit on the middle step with my knees up, camera in my lap, the door propped open with my boot.
It’s the kind of nowhere space you only learn if you live in buildings like this.
It smells like dust and old tape and a memory I haven’t decided to keep yet.
I scroll through the night of captured moments.
A fan crying into her friend’s shoulder on the barricade.
A pick mid-air. Hayden’s mouth around a note, eyes closed.
Mikey’s hand outstretched, drumstick pointing toward the crowd.
Dean’s profile out of focus, the shape of him exactly wrong because I didn’t ask the camera to love him yet.
There’s one shot though where he’s sharp by accident. It was from between songs, head down, hand at the back of his neck. No performance there. No armor. Just a man for the duration of one exhale. I hold the frame under my thumb until the screen goes black.
This is where photographers become thieves. This is where they become saints. I delete it. Not because I’m kind. But because I’m not stupid. This is a marathon, not a mugging.
My phone buzzes again and I blow out a breath knowing who it’s from.
Editor: How’s Seattle?
Me: Loud. Human. Good.
Editor: Try and have some fun.
Me: This is work.
I tuck the phone away and stretch until my back chirps. The beer is empty and fully appreciated. I stand, and decide to take the long way back because the long way shows you what the short way hides.
I push through the backstage exit and step into the cool damp night.
The air tastes like relief and leftover electricity.
My boots hit pavement as I cross toward the bus row, rolling my shoulders out.
Clatter rattles behind me; cases slamming, metal locking, crew shouting shorthand only they understand.
By the time I reach the bus, the temperature has changed. Not in actual degrees, but in energy. It’s thick, loud, and sweaty. It’s fermented ego and spilled tequila and somebody’s perfume heavy enough to chew.
I climb the steps, round the corner and, yep, welcome to the jungle. Music thumps from the lounge area, the bass vibrating through the floor. Laughter spills like broken glass. A woman squeals. Someone shouts for more shots.
Mikey has a bottle of Patron tipped to his mouth with one hand and a girl in his lap with the other, his grin wicked and sharp enough to slice.
Another girl straddles the armrest beside him, fingers in his hair like she’s auditioning for a music video.
He looks like he was born in chaos and blessed by bad decisions.
Hayden is on the opposite couch, beer in hand, expression politely exhausted. It’s clear he’s the only adult in a room full of permanent adolescence. He gives me a look that silently apologizes for the species.
And Dean…
Dean is where the world tilts, and I hate that I’m reacting at all.
He’s in the corner seat, head tipped back, throat exposed, eyes half-lidded.
A brunette is tucked into his side, hand splayed across his chest like she owns the acreage there.
His arm hangs loose behind her shoulders, casual, like he’s done this a thousand times and feels nothing each time.
He probably doesn’t. And this is the reminder I need. This is who he is. I don’t break for men like him.
She whispers something in his ear. He smiles. It’s lazy, detached, practiced. It’s not intimacy. It’s anesthesia. She’s nothing to him and the poor thing doesn’t even have a clue.
I’m fine. I am absolutely, one-thousand percent, completely fine.
Mikey spots me first. Of course he does. His grin goes feral. “Well look who came to play,” he drawls. “Camera girl, you wanna join the party?”
“No thanks,” I reply smoothly. “I try not to photograph CDC violations unless they pay hazard rates.”
Hayden chokes on his drink as he tries to muffle the laughter escaping from him.
Dean’s eyes fully open, then narrow to angry slits as he stares over at me. He sees me. Really sees me. A flicker of something. Annoyance? Awareness? Something that definitely has edges.
The girl beside him runs her fingers up his chest again like I’m not even here. Good. Doesn’t bother me at all. I turn, grab my laptop from the front bench. My movements are deliberate, steady, bored.
“You leaving already?” Mikey calls. “C’mon, camera girl. Loosen up.”
I don’t take the bait. I don’t look at Dean either. That would give something away, and I am not giving this room one goddamn thing. “Some of us work.” I tuck the laptop under my arm. “Enjoy the replays of your greatest hits.”
“Ouch,” Mikey bellows, grabbing at his chest.
I pause at the door long enough to throw over my shoulder, “And hydrate. You animals look like you’re one shot from organ donation brochures.”
That gets a full laugh from Hayden. Mikey raises the bottle in salute. Dean doesn’t move. But I feel his glare like a hand between my shoulder blades.
I step off the bus into the night air again, spine straight, pulse traitorous. I don’t look back. I don’t have to. I can feel him watching me leave, and the sickest part is, and I hate myself for wondering this, but I don’t know if it’s because he wants me to go, or if he was hoping I wouldn’t.