Chapter 15
July, Now
“The first concert of a tour,” Misha says, a whiskey glaze in her eyes, “is like sex with a brand-new partner.”
Siah snorts, stretched out on the floor. “Explain.”
“There’s chemistry, obviously.” Misha steps away from my armchair and spins around the dressing room in childlike circles.
“Mutual interest. But you don’t know how good it will be.
You can’t know. Maybe the first night is epic followed by a lackluster performance the next.
Maybe it’s a slow build, and you find more of your footing every night thereafter. ”
“What she’s trying to say,” Penelope cuts in, grabbing Misha’s shoulders from behind, “is that tonight could be the best sex of our lives, or it could be the worst.”
“And in this case,” I clarify, “sex is a euphemism for … not sex?”
“Precisely,” Jake adds. “But also, a euphemism for sex.”
“Nobody’s having sex tonight,” Penelope snaps, glaring at him. “Show up to sound check on time tomorrow and then we’ll talk.”
Jake rolls his eyes. “Okay, Mom.”
“If you behave like a child, you get treated like one.”
“Can you guys flirt in private?” Marlowe calls from the bathroom—where he appears to be fixing a lock of hair in the mirror. “It’s nauseating.”
“Can you finish staring at yourself?” Jake calls back. “I have to piss and judging from the applause, we’re about to go on.”
Marlowe glares, coming back to the main room where his bandmates are loitering like anxious, revved-up engines. Jake immediately passes him, slamming the bathroom door.
“Why did you have to say that?” Penelope asks Marlowe.
He frowns. “What? About the flirting?”
“Yes,” she hiss-whispers. “You made things weird.”
Marlowe laughs. “I made things weird? Pen, don’t start.”
Misha shoots me a significant, tell-you-the-drama-later look. I sink deeper into my armchair, hoping to camouflage.
I’m honestly not sure what I’m still doing in here.
Misha and I caught up this afternoon, and then she and Penelope hounded me for details about my history with Liam while the three of us ate Thai food on their dressing room floor.
I offered our story freely, but it was only when they asked me how we’d reconnected after so long, complaining that Liam had been vague about it earlier, that I lied on the spot.
If Liam was vague with them, it means he wasn’t sure how much to share with the band about what we’re doing.
I told them I’d bumped into him at CMA Fest by coincidence. The fib sits uneasy in my gut, undigestible, but telling the truth might’ve gone over so much worse.
What would they—each a songwriter in their own right—think of me organizing a romantic scenario to reinspire me?
And even if they were okay with that part, what if they were unimpressed with the songs that resulted?
Or what if they determine my presence on this tour is nothing but a distraction for everyone?
The dressing room door bursts open, revealing the twins that make up the opening act, Etta Girls.
Their names are, in fact, Gretta (with teased hair and pink eyeliner) and Henrietta (with box braids and tattoos across her forearms).
The twins have deep-brown skin and low voices, which give them their signature bedroom sound.
“Fuck, that was better than sex,” Henrietta says, grabbing a water bottle off the table.
“See what I mean?” Misha gestures at them while she looks to me for my agreement that yes, I understand her band’s reverse sex euphemism that also apparently isn’t a euphemism.
“No,” I reply, staunchly.
“You will,” she threatens.
Liam’s head appears in the doorway. “Where’s Jake?”
“Pooping!” everyone shouts at once.
“No, I’m fucking not!” he shouts from the bathroom.
“Well, hurry up,” Liam says, indicating he does not care either way. “It’s time.”
The others do toe touches and shake out their hands while Jake emerges from the bathroom. He glares around, bolting for the door, and his bandmates quickly follow. Penelope jumps onto Josiah’s back. He only laughs, hitching her higher as he walks. Henrietta and Gretta stay behind, chugging water.
“C’mere,” Liam says. I stand and go to him. “How was your afternoon?” His hand stretches out as if to pull me against him, but he remembers himself, drops it. My heart withers like an underwatered bloom.
“Chaotic. Lots of people.”
“Get used to it, Bristol.”
“You forget I have four sisters,” I say.
“I forget nothing when it comes to you. But I do still think you’ll have to get used to this. A road family.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Everybody likes you,” Liam explains, his lips quirked. “The musicians, the crew. They’ve all told me so.”
My limbs loosen. “I like everyone back.”
“Nobody flirted with you, did they?”
“Did my road family flirt with me? No, gross.”
“For real,” he says, eyes narrowing. “I’d like to know.”
“Just the guy with the snake tattoo on his neck.”
Liam stiffens. “Rinaldo?”
I smirk and say, “I’m kidding. I didn’t even meet a guy named Rinaldo. Or a guy with a snake tattoo.”
He doesn’t relax an inch. “It’s a python. Goes around his neck and then down toward his…”
“That’s terrifying.”
Liam rumbles out a laugh, then cracks the door open again and motions for me to join him in the concourse.
The atmosphere out here has completely changed. I hadn’t registered how long I’d been in that dressing room with Penelope and Misha—or, apparently, how thoroughly soundproofed it is—but as the noise from the pavilion reaches my ears, a switch flips.
Penelope isn’t a tiny woman housing stir-fry, crisscross applesauce, on the dressing room floor any longer. She’s Penelope Parker, a celebrity. A performer thousands of people came to see tonight.
The air smells like popcorn and beer. Dimming, pinkish sunlight beams through the concourse. It’s calm backstage, but the applause surges as Liam and I follow in the band’s footsteps.
“Put these in.” He hands me two earplugs.
It’s a mess of electrical equipment back here, yet somehow, we navigate to the perfect spot.
I can’t see the audience and they can’t see us.
My entire view is four people—Misha, Jake, Marlowe, Josiah.
They settle into their instruments, fighting smiles as a large screen behind them projects a highlight montage of Penelope on her first tour.
I have to crane my neck to see it from this angle, tipping onto my toes.
I stumble, and Liam’s hand goes around my front, drawing my back against his chest.
It’s dark here, in our private shadow, between a speaker as tall as Liam and a ladder that stretches high above us. Onstage, the video ends and the screen parts, then accordions away, revealing Penelope behind it.
The crowd erupts when the first song begins. Noise blasts from the speaker, but it’s all muted on the other side of my earplugs.
With one of my senses deprived, the feel of Liam’s body close to mine heightens.
Air lodges in my throat. I lose focus on the scene in front of me, more compelled by his smell, sweet and lemony, and his touch—specifically, the way his chin catches in the crook of my neck, his stubble rubbing on my soft skin so gently I’m not convinced it isn’t an intentional arousal.
His arm looped around my waist settles against my soft middle.
Instinctually, I lean back on my heels into his steadiness.
The music changes. Penelope’s signature vocal fry mixes like a cocktail with syrupy notes and a thumping drumbeat.
Liam’s lips move softly over my shoulder as his head dips. Too gentle to be considered a kiss. Too firm to be anything other than his most restrained attempt. Even with the fabric of my shirt between us, I can feel the heat of his breath through it.
His nose and lips trace back and forth, back and forth in the same spot, like it’s some kind of inexorable, self-soothing ritual.
We can’t say anything. We can’t hear anything.
All we can do is feel. But when my body starts to feel like vapor, slowly going limper in his arms, Liam must belatedly realize what territory he’s entering.
He lifts his head. Softens the grip on my waist, then releases me, taking a measured step away with a telling whoosh of air.
This must be what a fawn feels like when forced to stand on its own legs.
Liam can touch me all he wants. I’ll never mind any instance of it. But I need an outline of how and where and when I get to touch him.
We stand near each other, our bodies radiating, until the halfway point in the set list, when Liam vanishes to check on some things and comes back with water.
I gulp it down, enraptured by the band’s performance.
The crowd is eating it up. Penelope’s frenetic dancing, her cheeky interactions with the others, the high notes she always hits.
Toward the end of the show, every band member gets a solo, and that might be my favorite part—watching everyone showcase what they’re good at.
Misha on the keys, Marlowe on the drums, Siah on his bass, Jake on his guitar.
They’re stars, every one of them, and it’s palpable how much they love this.
It makes me wonder, as it always has, if there’s something wrong with me for wanting nothing to do with it.
I’ve existed like this long enough to know it’s not a phase I’m growing out of, or a pill I need to learn to swallow.
When we were kids and Maisy’s mom made her do all those pageant shows, I’d get hives imagining being in her shoes, and as a high schooler I wasn’t fond of our biannual orchestra concerts despite my near invisibility from the third row.
I also never volunteered myself for open mic nights during college even though it was a huge part of our social life, preferring to play for my classmates only on school grounds.
My happiness with songwriting has always come from the process, puzzling it out until something new is made and then handed off to another person who will say Thank you for doing your part, Paige, I’ll take it from here.