2. Ford
Ford
Ford leaned into the microphone and began to sing, his in-ear monitors allowing him to hear the rest of the band over the noise of the audience.
Midnight Thunder, or MT to the real fans, were winding down their tenth world tour by playing a few final gigs in Australia, their home country. They’d decided to play not only the large cities but also some smaller towns that the big bands usually bypassed.
Tonight, they were in a town in Woop Woop, called Kookaburra something-or-other. Ford couldn’t remember, as one place soon blended with the next and most stadiums looked about the same. All he knew was that there was one more night after this, and the tour was done.
Glancing over, he saw Ryan prancing around the stage with his guitar. One minute, he was where he was supposed to be; the next, he was downstage, thrusting his pelvis suggestively to the crowd.
Ford rolled his eyes. Ryan was such a douche. They'd brought him in to replace Sie after she vanished, and in those initial years, Ford thought he was a great guy. The life and soul of the party. Always knowing where the best club was, the best alcohol, and the best drugs.
They’d lived their lives in a hedonistic blur, Ford burying the fact that his heart had been ripped in two when Sie left.
Even all these years later, Ford still scanned the audience of every show, hoping to catch a glimpse of straight black hair and striking violet eyes.
Over the years, he’d hired private investigators to search for her, but it was like Sie Harrington never existed.
Another unnecessary guitar riff screamed from Ryan, and Ford ground his teeth. After too many stints in rehab, Ford was clean from drugs, and wished Ryan would grow up and move on from the live-fast, die-young mentality he inhabited.
Ford still cringed at the fractured memories of all the things he’d done while high.
Trashing hotel rooms. Acting like he was better than anyone around him.
Taking a different groupie back to the hotel in each city, then sending them on their way the next day with a hundred bucks for a taxi and a promise to call them—a promise he never kept.
They were now thirty-eight years old, and Ryan still tried to act like he was twenty-five. Ford was glad he wasn’t twenty-five anymore. He didn’t want to be that guy again, as that guy was a total idiot.
He used to wear tight leather pants to every show, and when he got too hot, he would rip off his shirt and delight in the screams that would come from the crowd when he played the rest of the show bare-chested.
Until one day, he was dusting his legs with talcum powder to get those stupid trousers on, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to move properly for the rest of the night, and he examined himself in the mirror.
A grown man with his leg hair covered in white talcum powder so he could wear his stupidly tight leather pants.
That was the moment he took those dumb trousers that were his signature outfit and threw them in the bin, instead putting his jeans back on.
He paired the faded blue denim with a black singlet, then yanked the leather pants out of the bin, grabbed a pocket knife and hacked into them.
He wrapped the strips of leather that he sliced off around his forearms.
The girls screamed louder that night, telling him to take his shirt off, but he smiled the flirtatious smile he'd perfected as the frontman of a world-famous band and left them wanting more but loving him at the same time.
In Kookaburra, whatever it was called, Football stadium, Ford stared out at the faces in front of him and did his usual search for Sie.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw a girl with long, dark hair that vaguely resembled Sie.
Then he remembered he was looking for a woman, not a girl, and the image he held in his head of her was sixteen years old.
Staring into the audience, he sang song after song, giving them the show of their lives. All he had to do was get through one more night tomorrow in Kookaburra, whatever-it-was, and then his contractual obligations were done, and he could finally have a break.
He'd told Donnie, their manager, that he wouldn’t be touring again for several years. The rest of the band could do what they wanted, but he needed a break.
As the set drew to a close, he mopped some sweat off his brow and frowned when Ryan gestured to security, then pointed to a girl in the crowd. Staring at the girl harder, he realised she was very young.
Shit, he didn’t want anything to do with that.
He glanced off to the side of the stage, where Donnie was watching them. He raised his eyebrows, nodded his head towards Ryan and subtly gestured to the girl, knowing their manager would quickly see the problem. Which he obviously did as he nodded his head in return, a frown pinching at his brows.
He knew that Donnie was over Ryan as well, but their manager was always a professional and never made a comment about the guitarist’s antics, merely steered quietly from the back to ensure the worst of his impulses were stopped.
The last notes of their final song faded around the stadium, and Ford spoke into the microphone.
“Thanks so much for being here tonight. You’ve been a fantastic audience.” He went on to call his bandmates forward, making sure they each got individual applause, even if he did want to roll his eyes at Ryan’s swaggering.
The four of them strolled off the stage, waving as they went. While they waited in the wings, they heard the noise of the crowd increase in volume, their voices joining as one to yell ‘Encore!’.
Ford picked up his water, took a long swig, and wiped his face on a towel. Catching the eyes of the other guys, he nodded. They were ready to play.
As he jogged back onto the stage, the roar of the audience became deafening. He waited for the others to take their places and grabbed the microphone stand.
“So, you may have noticed we missed a song,” he said playfully to the audience.
A roar greeted him.
“Did you really think we would leave without playing Summer Days?” He grinned as the roar grew louder.
Glancing over his shoulder at Scotty, he nodded, and the drummer tapped his drumsticks together, counting them in, to a song that he loved and hated at the same time. It was their first hit, the song that set them going on this incredible journey.
As Ford sang, he closed his eyes and thought of Sie, with whom he wrote Summer Days when they were only seventeen.
He remembered the excitement in her eyes as she hummed the tune for him, then softly sang the words that they moulded together into the song he performed today.
He loved her voice; she could have been a singer, but she preferred to be behind the guitar, leaving the vocals to him.
No one knew that every time he sang Summer Days, it was a love song to the one that got away.
The one that ran away.
While the last notes rang out around the stadium, he bowed his head and let the thunderous applause wash over him before he banished all thoughts of Sie from his brain and lifted his gaze to take in the adoration of tens of thousands of people.
When they walked backstage and headed to their dressing room, Ford braced himself for what was about to happen.
There would be a room full of groupies and hangers-on, all wanting to party with the band.
And at some point, Ryan would disappear and come back far more energised, brushing at his nose to make sure there was no white powder left on it.
Opening the door, he groaned. It was exactly as he predicted. A room of noise, shouting, loud music, women, and people he didn’t know.
Ford sighed in relief to see that the underage-looking girl from the audience wasn’t there, although a lot of the girls, who he assumed Ryan selected, looked like they were barely in their twenties.
Luckily, Donnie would watch their backs and would have demanded ID from every person in the room to ensure no one underage could sneak in. But it still made Ford uncomfortable that a man he played with was chasing after girls, not women.
Accepting a beer, Ford propped himself against a wall, watching the revelry.
Antics that he would have gladly taken part in once upon a time.
He couldn’t lie. He had been the life and soul of these after-parties for many years.
Then suddenly, he wasn’t. It all seemed a little pathetic as they grew older, and the groupies didn’t.
Ryan threw his arm around Ford’s shoulder, sniffing in that telltale way that meant he’d already had a little bump of something. “That was a great show, mate. I can’t believe we’ve only got one left.”
Ryan was tall at six feet and always wore platforms in his boots, so he stood eye to eye with Ford, who was six-foot-two.
Ford knew about the platforms as he saw the other man in bare feet often enough to know he was two inches shorter, so the singer took it upon himself to investigate his bandmate’s shoes.
“Yeah. It was a great audience.” Ford nodded in agreement and took a sip from his beer.
“I spotted a real little hottie in the crowd at the end.” Ryan’s eyes were a fraction too wide, and darted around as he searched for the young girl he’d picked out from the audience. The one he probably wanted to take back to his private tour bus tonight.
In the old days, they used to share one tour bus. Well, Ford amended to himself; in the really old days, Mr Harrington drove them in his van. Telling them that if the police pulled them over, they all needed to keep quiet and duck under some sheets, as there were no seatbelts in the back.
The memory made Ford chuckle, as Darren insisted his wife and daughter sit up front with him, safely strapped in, but the welfare of three scruffy lads who dreamed of making it big was a lower priority.
“Hmmm,” Ford said non-committally, taking another sip of his beer.
“Who’ve you got your eye on tonight?” Ryan’s eyes darted around again until they landed on a girl with long, dark hair. He nudged Ford. “She looks like your type.”
Ford smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. The boys knew his type, but none of them were the girl that got away, and the thought of a groupie wasn’t appealing to him anymore.
“Hmmm,” he said again.
“I’ll bring her over.” Ryan lifted his arm to signal for the dark-haired girl, but Ford grabbed hold of it, stopping him.
Ford managed to smile and said, “Thanks, mate. I’m exhausted. I think I’ll have an early night.”
Ryan looked like he might object, but eventually nodded. They were all now used to Ford’s early nights on this tour, where he would have a beer with them and then wander off to his bus.
“Night, mate.” Ryan clapped him on the back. “If you want me to send someone to your bus, just text,” he said with a leer and a wink that made Ford’s stomach churn.
Yeah, he was done with this. But he didn’t say that. All he said was, “Night.”
As he left the room, he caught the eyes of the other band members, Scotty and Joel, lifting his hand in salute to them before he walked out the door.