Chapter 5 Luc
FIVE
LUC
He says my name again, his voice sounding like it’s coming through a tunnel before it sharpens. I blink at the familiar smoky rasp of his voice.
“Luc.”
It’s breathless, but certain. Like he’s been saying it for years. I just couldn’t hear him.
He stops before he’s within arm’s reach but looks poised to move closer.
All the times I’ve imagined an impossible moment like this, and I don’t know what to do.
I feel weighted to the spot, my feet glued to the pavement and tingling with the absurd instinct to run.
Towards him? Away from him? I don’t know.
My brain feels fuzzy, overloaded with thoughts yet not quite able to process them.
I’ve forgotten how to move. All I can do is stare at the man standing before me.
It’s no wonder I didn’t recognize him right away.
He’s changed a lot. The guy I remember from that night was barely an adult, compared to the man he is now.
His physique is still wiry, but more filled out than he was six years ago.
His shaggy hair, which was dark back then, is longer and dyed a smoky silver color that makes his black-rimmed eyes look wild.
His face is more angular and serious rather than carefree and playful.
He’s almost unrecognizable from the young, flirty guy I remember from the beach, skin and bright eyes reflecting the light of the fire.
Except his mouth. His mouth is the same. The slight curve of a knowing smile. Those lips.
Something knocks loose and rattles around in my chest as I try to breathe normally.
“Hi,” he says, then laughs like he can’t believe that’s what came out of his mouth first. “Holy shit. It’s really you.”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, I– Uh…” I reach for something solid, anything that doesn’t make me look like the bumbling idiot I’ve become. “I–It’s Jesse, right?”
His eyes flicker. Is it possible that he feels the same way I do about hearing my name come out of his mouth? Is he still processing that we’re standing right in front of each other? Did he ever wonder if it was all a dream?
“Jesse,” he confirms, like he’s introducing himself for the first time.
Not sure what else to do, I reach out my hand to shake his, then pull it back because I realize how sweaty my palms are. I awkwardly rake my hand through my hair. “I’m Luc.”
“Luc,” he repeats, and I get that same feeling again–that he’s said my name before. His raspy voice curls around it, elongating the end like a hiss. The sound sends a shiver down my spine.
Somewhere behind Jesse, a door bangs open, popping the bubble around us.
I’m suddenly aware of the noise of the crowd leaving the stadium, thousands of people pouring into the night.
A man wearing a snug black shirt and black cargo pants steps outside and leans against the wall, thumbing through his phone.
He doesn’t look at us twice, and neither do the couple of security guards that are walking by to monitor the entrance to the loading dock, where our bus is waiting.
“Bodyguard,” Jesse says, gesturing towards the man in black. “He won’t bother us.”
This is too surreal.
He’s sweaty and still catching his breath.
After the show he just put on, and then running after me, I’m not surprised.
“I ran,” he says, laughing a little breathlessly, swiping his hair back from his forehead.
“When I saw you leave, I–I thought I’d miss you and I didn’t know how else to see you again. ”
My mind trips over his words. Did he expect to see me here? Wait, does that mean?
“I can’t believe it’s really you,” he says, voice cracking a little like he’s just as astonished as I am, except he somehow knew that I might be in the crowd? “I saw you on TV. I thought I might be hallucinating, but there you were, after all these years.”
“You remembered?” It comes out softer than I mean it to, which might as well be a confession of my own.
“I never forgot.”
My eyes snap up to his, and I really look at him. The careful part of me wants to look over my shoulder for cameras, or teammates, or paparazzi that probably follow his every move, but the rest of me is twenty-one again, sunbaked and stunned by beautiful green eyes and self-assured charm.
The ache of the memory could melt me into a puddle if I let it. My fingers dig into my palms to steady the feeling inflating in my chest, growing larger than what my rib cage can hold in.
My silence seems to worry him.
He takes a small step closer. Close enough that I can smell something sweet and spicy on his breath. It kind of reminds me of Christmas sweets.
“Luc.” The way he says my name this time is quieter, softer. More serious. “Can we–” He glances back to the door where his bodyguard is pointedly not looking at us, then up at the ledge of the building, where a security camera is mounted. He winces. “Do you want to come back to my dressing room?”
The question blindsides me. My stomach tightens. “Look, Jesse–”
He lifts both hands, palms out, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean… Not like that. I swear. I just thought we could sit down and talk. Privately. Five minutes where it’s just us.”
Just us.
It feels a little forward, but the honesty in his voice strips away any suspicion. I don’t think he’s trying to drag me into a room to put the moves on me. He just wants some privacy, which I can appreciate.
I nod once. “Okay.”
“Yeah?” He says, looking hopeful.
Before I can overthink anything, he reaches for my wrist and pulls me behind him.
The bodyguard opens the door for us, giving me a quick once-over before following us in.
Another guy in a similar outfit leads us down a hallway and through a backstage area cluttered with large cases and equipment.
Staffers and roadies run around, but no one pays us much attention.
“Thanks Cory,” Jesse says to another bodyguard, who opens a door for us.
The dressing room is larger than I expected. There’s a sitting area with a small sectional and recliner and a kitchenette. The room opens into another section that has racks of clothes along one wall and mirrored desks along another.
“The rest of the band is probably still with your team,” Jesse says, reaching into a refrigerator and pulling out a few bottles of water. He holds one up, offering it to me.
“Yes please,” I say, reaching for it. “Thank you.”
“Still so polite,” he says, a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
My face warms, and I look for something to distract him from my embarrassment. “Shouldn’t you be out there, too?”
He shrugs and drops onto the couch, hair damp, shirt still hanging open. It seems like he’d be too wired to sit still, but his shoulders sag with relief. He pats the space beside him, inviting me to sit.
“Maybe. But the whole point of inviting them was to get to talk to you.”
I take a seat on the arm of the opposite side of the couch, facing him. “Seriously?”
“After six years, I’d almost thought I’d made you up,” he says softly.
“I went a little nuts when I saw you on TV. Thought I might be hallucinating or something, so I looked up your team schedule and saw that you were playing nearby. I thought my manager was going to burst a blood vessel when I asked him to invite a whole football team to a sold-out show.”
“No one could figure out why we were here, but you made a lot of guys really happy.”
“And you?”
I blink back at him, not sure what to say. I decide to go with honesty. “I don’t really know how to feel.”
“That’s fair,” he says. “It’s been a long time, and I kind of…”
“Ghosted?” I fill in for him. “Absconded like a thief in the night?” I raise my eyebrows, hoping he can see the amusement there and not just my disappointment. I don’t think I’m ready to admit just how much that night affected me.
“Look, I…” He takes a breath. “I should have left a note. I wanted to,” he adds quickly, words tumbling out now.
“I woke up every day for weeks replaying what I should have done, and I thought–” He cuts himself off, scrubs a hand over his mouth, then shakes his head like he’s annoyed with himself for rambling.
“I don’t want it to sound like I’m making excuses, because I’m not.
I left myself with nothing but regrets.”
“What happened, then?” I can’t help but ask.
“We’d played a show earlier that night near the Boardwalk. The next morning, I woke up to dozens of texts. A producer had been at the show and wanted to bring us to New York to discuss a recording contract. Everything went really fast after that.”
“My life was pretty busy, too,” I say, choosing not to mention the days I’d stayed behind, hoping he’d come back.
“I was drafted the next week.” I remember the hotel room in the city, how loud it was.
I remember lying awake with the air conditioner blasting because sometimes I could pretend that I could hear the ocean.
“We were in New York at the same time and didn’t even know it,” he says, sounding amused but a little pained.
My chest lurches at the thought, and I almost admit that I’d gone looking for him, that I’d made Shawna call everyone she knew to ask who the green-eyed stranger with the guitar was. That I sat out on the beach for hours and willed him to walk back to the very spot we’d first noticed each other.
“You look different,” he remarks. “Bigger.” His gaze drops and snaps back up like he didn’t mean to say that out loud. His lips stretch into a crooked smile.
Heat flashes up my neck. I want to tell him he seems bigger too.
Larger than life, even more than he seemed back then.
He’s sharper around the edges now. Cockier.
Dangerous, even. And gorgeous in a way that makes me feel like the world is spinning too fast. Instead, I say, “You have more piercings,” and focus my eyes on the piercings in his nose and eyebrow.