Chapter 4
Now—Ellery
The last chord of the song harmonizes with the crowd’s echo, undulating through the Agora’s semicircular amphitheater.
Ellery tosses her head back, letting her curls fly in the breeze coming off the mountain behind them. It’s been a very, very long time since she has felt like this. Free and open and thrumming with possibility.
“Do you like that, LA?!” The crowd answers with a thunderous roar.
“It’s my amazing band. Let’s hear it for them!
” Ellery picks up the mic and turns to her friends.
“Let me introduce you first of all to Selene over here on drums.” Selene riffs through a rapid percussion of cymbals and snare as the audience cheers its massive approval.
“And Lorraine on keys!” An answering thunderous roar isn’t enough to drown out Lorraine’s talented fingers flying across the board.
Guilt floods through Ellery. Has she given her friends their due?
Or did she stand by and allow the agents and producers to push her to the front and them to back up?
That isn’t fair. It isn’t right. She never would have done that in the before times.
Who has she become? A puppet with big hair that isn’t her natural color and uncomfortable footwear?
If she turns her head, she can see him. Dante, his support less than three feet away. He knows who she used to be. Selene and Lorraine too, they know who she was. Someone who used to fight for herself. Someone who used to let the music come first.
Tears rise to her eyes, and for the first time in almost two years, she lets them come. Who cares? Streaked mascara makes her look badass, and she has missed feeling this way.
She turns back to the audience, her eyes sparkling. Through the teary haze, the crowd is a curtain of people, listening, waiting. “Selene and Lorraine have been with me for years. They’re the most talented women I know. Tonight they deserve to shine.”
She hears the intake of a drawn breath behind her and turns to catch the look her bandmates exchange.
“Yeah, you. You two don’t get to hide in the shadows.
It isn’t right.” She catches Dante’s gaze and holds it, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“None of you should. This is our last night on tour. Let’s make magic. ”
There’s a stunned silence in the crowd, but it lasts less than a second before the audience surges into cries of joy and delight.
Selene and Lorraine look at Ellery, and she knows this is it, this is the right thing to do.
“Six years ago, Selene and Lorraine and I met up at a club downtown. We used to be equals.” The tears make her voice watery and she doesn’t give a single shit. “We still are. We’re still the Vendetta. Right?”
“Hell, yes!” Her brown eyes sparkling with the spotlight, Selene raises her drum sticks above her head and strikes them together.
Lorraine shakes her head, the scarf around her hair bright in the stage lights, but she’s laughing then nodding. She’s always been the one who rolls with the punches, jams with the melody, flexes to fit.
Fuck that. Tonight Lorraine gets to shine.
The knowledge that her friends are with her in this knits steel along her spine. This is going to work.
“And we have a very special guest with us tonight.” Ellery now turns to Dante and finally allows herself to hold him in the regard she has wanted to for so, so long.
“This is Dante Baker. One of the most talented, supportive, creative, and amazing people in the world. And he’s here tonight.
For you.” She says it to the crowd but really says it to herself.
His smile is warm and full of understanding and comprehension.
They have time. For once, they have time.
She turns to the crowd, ignoring her agent Logan shooting daggers at her from the wings.
She should have told him to fuck off ages ago.
“You are some lucky, lucky people tonight, to hear them as they are meant to be. I’m going to stand back in a moment and let them shine because that’s all they do, on and off stage.
But first, I’d like to sing a song none of you have probably ever heard.
It’s the first one I ever wrote.” Her gaze flicks from the crowd to Dante.
She sees him stiffen, then relax. He knows.
“Dante and Selene and Lorraine are the only ones who know it.” She smiles out at the crowd, her tears receding.
“And now you get it. Here’s ‘An Ocean Away.’ Just for you. ”
She turns at the last moment and finds Dante, directing the words at him. “Always for you.”
* * *
Reddit Music Forum
September 29, 2022
…For those not lucky enough to be in attendance at the Agora, Elvie blew the non existent roof off the place. Was there an earthquake? No, it was the sounds of musical genius blowing through the hills…
September 29, 2022
…I mean, I was high, so at first I thought I was hallucinating but damn, that night was lit.
I felt the music in my hair, man. When Selene and Lorraine did that duet of “Shallow?” Or “Ocean Away?” I cried so hard during “Water Teeth” I thought we’d have a flash flood.
I wish my phone had been charged. I would have recorded it.
I googled the Vendetta the minute I got home, and fuck me, they slayed…
September 29, 2022
…don’t @ me, but I’ve never seen someone torpedo their career onstage before. Had to leave early. Who does Elvie think she is? Just because of what happened all those years ago, it’s like nobody remembers that she’s no one special from a flyover state. I mean, really.…