22. Zak
As the tour went on, the crowds got wilder.
In Cleveland, one fan dropped their Zippo lighter into another fan’s solo cup of vodka and caught it on fire. People screamed until it went out seconds later, then cheered profusely for the flaming cup. Zak made a mental note to ask about pyrotechnics for future shows.
In Detroit, a woman in the front row slingshot her G-string at Dallas, and whether by an incredible stroke of luck or sniper-like aim, it got hooked on his eyebrow barbell. He untangled it, tied it around his guitar strap, and tossed her a pick and an after-party wristband for her trouble.
A fight broke out in general admission in Minneapolis, and someone’s bloody tooth flew across the stage.
A man in Milwaukee waited for the pause in Alex’s drum solo to shout out, “Fuck me with your drumsticks, Alex,” at the top of his lungs. Which, apparently, was not the first time Alex had received that request, because he used his mic to advise against it: “Nah, dude. Anal splinters suck.”
And just when Zak finished joking about how that was the horniest thing she’d seen at one of their shows, tonight in Chicago, some guy in row twelve received a blowjob from an apparent stranger during the entirety of their fifth song.
But none of the in-concert craziness could match the partying that followed.
So far, the Redlight Lounge was the craziest yet, and Zak had only just walked through the door.
People kept reaching out and trying to touch them in the crowded, narrow hallway. They called out her name from every direction. Hands shoved pills in Zak’s face and tried to toss baggies down the neckline of her dress when she ignored them.
Zak shoved her fists in the pockets of her leather jacket, stared down at the grimy, sticky floor, and tried to tune out the noise. She inwardly thanked her lucky stars that Dallas’s head injury had motivated him to sit this one out.
Not all the parties were like this. Sometimes they hung out in a small group on the bus, and sometimes they drank and talked backstage with the rest of the staff. The off-site after-parties were often intimate affairs with only the crew and a few invitees, but occasionally, Chase and Izzy were expected to make an appearance at a massive blowout—like tonight’s.
Zak had gone with them mostly for moral support—Chase’s patience was wearing noticeably thin for public spectacles—but also because there was a music festival passing through over the weekend, and the seedy club was packed with some big-name guests she was dying to meet. Bands whose backstage passes she could never justify shelling out for as an attendee, and now she was sharing the limelight with them as an artist.
“No one told me this was a strip joint,” Chase admonished when they got inside.
“That’s ‘cause it’s not,” said Alex, sounding equally surprised.
Zak was no stranger to all the debauchery the rock scene had to offer.
She’d had a general curiosity about substances when she was younger, having grown up around them. For those two years when she should’ve still been under her mother’s roof, she celebrated no longer being Jaclyn’s property and pursuing her career in music by going overboard at gigs. She had tried nearly everything that didn’t have to be injected but enjoyed very little of it. For a control freak like herself, drugs were the ultimate path to debilitating anxiety and paranoia.
Still, all that experimenting during her formative years had taken place on a much smaller scale. Here, it was all sensation. Everywhere. All the time.
On long, patent leather couches, some guys got lap dances from girls who looked young enough to be their daughters. Other women draped delicate clawed hands over denim and leather jackets, shoveling coke for the stars with their pinky acrylics or sorting lines of that same white powder on tables.
Roaming lights illuminated oiled ass cheeks and smoke from marijuana and tobacco cigarettes. Intoxicated bodies grinding on the dance floor, staring up at the ceiling with misty eyes. Cocktails in shades of neon green, blue, and pink that didn’t exist in nature and definitely shouldn’t be edible.
An extremely large pair of silicone breasts that weren’t there a moment ago, but were now in Zak’s face.
And… what the fuck was that huge tattoo on one of them? Was that—
“Like it?” The owner of the breasts asked Chase, pulling her entire left tit out of her top to show them that yes, indeed, there was a black and gray portrait of him in his hockey jersey tattooed over her heart. “I’m a huge fan.”
“No fucking kidding,” Zak muttered to Izzy.
Izzy’s upper lip curled into a flabbergasted shape that had Zak clamping a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. She couldn’t even be mad about the sexual harassment because she couldn’t stop staring at the massive boob with her boyfriend’s face on it.
Alex examined the ink with his teeth bared in a cringe. He backed away slowly. “Yeah, I think that’s my cue to leave.”
“Uh.” Chase squinted unevenly. “I’m speechless. Truly.”
Zak couldn’t breathe. She turned away to let out some of the piling hysterics in a wheezy squeak.
Superfan produced a permanent marker from her very tiny purse and uncapped it with her teeth. “Would you mind? I’ve been waiting for years to get your signature right at the bottom there. You know, around the nipple.” She winked.
“I…” Chase turned to Zak, his eyes blown wide as he held the Sharpie in the air like he’d never used one before and needed a written instruction manual. The poor guy really was speechless. On the bright side, she was glad to learn that this wasn’t a common occurrence for him.
Zak shrugged as if to say, Sorry, you’re on your own with this one.
“What’s wrong, stud?” Superfan said with a sultry pout. “Not a boob guy?”
“Not really,” said Chase.
That tipped Zak over the edge. The laugh ripped out of her body so hard that she doubled over.
“Guess that makes sense,” Blimp-Tits said, eyeing Izzy’s chest in a not-entirely-friendly way. “You don’t mind, do ya, girlfriend?”
“Don’t think you care if I do, do ya, girlfriend?” Izzy chirped back with a too-wide grin.
“Shots?” Zak asked Izzy as Chase nonverbally begged for help in her periphery.
“Please.”
They waited at the bar for what felt like too long for a titty autograph, but what did Zak know? She had never signed one herself before.
By the time Chase returned, looking positively haunted by that encounter, she and Izzy had already polished off their first round and were sucking on citrus as they scoped out the celebrity-packed room. Gossiping about who was cheating on their wives, who had gotten into legal trouble recently, and who looked way different in person than they did in pictures.
“Took you a while.” Zak’s smirk widened around the lime wedge.
“I offered to sign a napkin for her instead,” he said with an involuntary shudder. “Then she showed me the Dominik Ha?ek portrait on the other one.”
Zak gagged. “Is that another hockey player?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe you worked at a sports bar.”
“Tell me about it.” She passed him the shot she’d ordered for him. “You don’t have the best luck at these things, do you?”
“Save me next time. Please,” he said around the rim of the shot glass before tossing it back.
“No can do. You’re a rock star now, Payton. I thought you were learning how to stick up for yourself and set boundaries and all that good shit? Sounds like you took a step in the right direction. Course, a bigger step would be to learn the word ‘no.’”
“I think I went into shock.”
“You didn’t like the tattoo?” Izzy chimed in. “I thought it was pretty well done. I could tell it was you immediately. Almost life-size, too.”
Chase flagged the bartender and ordered another round.
“It’s a shame. I was planning on getting that very same tat next.” Zak placed a hand over one of the gaps of uninked skin on her arm. “I think it would fit right here perfectly.”
“So mean,” he reprimanded in the same low tone that made her melt when he sang with it on stage.
How had she never noticed the range of his voice before hearing it in song? The way it could scale notes and take shapes all on its own. It was in the way he talked, the way he laughed. Every word he said had life and richness of its own, and these, like many of the ones he said to her, made her heart beat a little faster.
“You like it,” she said.
“I love it.” He shot her a secretive smile. “But I’ll still have to get you back for that one, Parker.”
Zak was certain that Chase had forgotten all about their earlier exchange by the time they walked outside to catch their taxi. After all, he had practically drunk enough to forget his world-famous last name.
And she drank enough that she had somehow made the leap from wondering why his freckles were blurry, to poking them with her finger and saying, “Honestly, it pisses me off.”
He waited for the rest of that statement, but how was she supposed to finish it? Her brain was marinated in Milagro Silver, and her tongue was so numb she could pierce through it without feeling a thing. What an idea. Maybe she should get a tongue piercing.
“Should I get a tongue piercing?”
“Do ya want one?”
She gave it a second thought. “Not really.”
“Then prob’ly not. What pisses you off?” Chase prompted, his s’s slurred. Or maybe her hearing was muddy.
Oh, right. That. “You do.”
“What did I do?”
“No,” she groaned, “not you-you.”
“Ah, yes.” He nodded his understanding, a smile playing on his lips. “It all makes sense now.”
A yellow minivan rolled to a stop by the curb, and Zak looked around for her friends before remembering that Izzy and Alex had taken the last taxi back while she’d been wrapped up in a never-ending conversation with one of the other guitarists. After tonight, she perfectly understood the adage: “Never meet your heroes.”
“You ready?” Chase slid open the door.
The driver confirmed the hotel address in broken English and then cranked the volume dial to max on his Ricky Martin CD. Crackly audio vibrated through the speaker against Zak’s hip as soon as she slid into the backseat. A welcome reprieve from the hours of throbbing techno she had just suffered through, and the second hint that this man didn’t know who they were and didn’t care if they were dating, who they were dating, and whether it was real.
The van kicked into gear before Chase sat down, forcing him back, the side of his body pressed against hers. He felt around in the darkness for a seatbelt, and in the short time that eclipsed before he gave up searching, she questioned what she was really intoxicated on.
Were her cheeks flushed from the heat of the liquor? Or from the warmth of his palm curving over her thigh, his fingertips weaving through the holes of her fishnet stockings.
Was her heart racing because she was hammered? Or because, when the glow of passing streetlights filtered through the heavily tinted windows and illuminated his eyes in the darkness, she saw the unspoken promise in them.
Was it the tequila making her dizzy? Or was it the way he swept her hair over her shoulder, leaned in close, and said, “Glad you wore a dress tonight.”
She swallowed. Hard. Where was the chaser for that?
“That is what pisses me off.” Her breath hitched as his lips met the corner of her jaw. The bridge of his nose brushed her earlobe. “How much power you have over me.”
“Yeah? Doesn’t feel like power.” Between her knees, his touch followed the hem of her dress as it rode to her hips. “I feel weak for you, angel.”
But nothing felt weak about the way he tore through the seam of those stockings, starting from the top and ripping stitches of thread one by one.
Zak realized how she’d been wrong to believe that pleasure couldn’t be a punishment. The punishment was in the absence of his mouth on hers, the dryness on the surface of her tongue. The hollowness of her chest, where his hands should be holding, cupping, squeezing. In the restrictive fit of his jeans that alluded to how badly he wanted her back, but didn’t enable her to touch and find out.
She didn’t realize that she’d been sitting rod-straight until Chase reclined back, bringing her with him and draping one arm over her shoulders. At least one of them was considerate of the fact they weren’t alone, because she had forgotten. Hell, she had forgotten where she was. She had forgotten about everything except for him.
He grabbed her knee and spread her legs apart. “It’s a miracle I can make it through a show with you walking around out there in your high heels. Bending over,” he whispered, his touch making a slow ascent.
“There’s a part during your guitar solo in ‘Kerosene’ where you lean over, you tip the guitar toward the stage, and I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the crowd.” His breath quickened. His hand around her shoulder tightened. “You don’t know how hot it is to see you so inyour groove. I watch your hands move and I wonder how the fuck anyone can play the guitar like that…” She didn’t see him smile, but she felt it, in the muscles of his jaw. “And then I wonder when I can get those hands all over me. When I can get mine all over you.”
Like they were now. Pushing the narrow strip of her thong to the side and parting her with the lightest of touches. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her mouth to stay shut, too, but a noise still hummed through her closed lips. Thankfully, no louder than the chorus of “Corazonado.”
“Much as I love that—” He pressed a kiss to her temple as he slipped one finger inside. “Quiet, honey.”
She gripped the edge of the seat in one hand, his thigh in the other, as he started that slow steady stroke with the heel of his palm on her clit. Her fingers dug into his leg so desperately that she knew she’d be able to see an imprint in her calluses from the seam of his jeans.
“Mm. Are you going to be this wet for me when we get back to the room?”
All it took for her to get this wet was to think about the way he touched her. To feel it, to have it, was enough to make her beg on her knees for more of him.
“Depends.” The word came out as if it were seven individual letters rather than the sum of its parts. “What are you going to do about it if I am?”
“Have a taste.” A second finger joined the first, still unhurried. Still their secret, as she swallowed back the impulse to moan at how good he felt. “I think I’ll fuck you in the dress.” His thumb traced the shoulder cut-outs of said dress. His other hand paused to lightly snap the stockings. “Think we’ll keep these on, too.”
She caught the shadow cast by his dimple, briefly, as he nuzzled closer again. “Think I’ll bend you over the foot of the bed and take my time with you, since you’re always so impatient for my cock.”
“I’m impatient?” Her lips quirked upward. “You couldn’t wait until we got out of the fucking taxi.”
“Oh, you wanna wait?” The pressure building in the pit of her stomach dissipated. Where his hand had been, only emptiness, as he retracted his touch and pulled her into a chaste kiss. Leaving a damp print of her own arousal on her cheek. “Let’s wait, then.”
In ten minutes, the man in the driver’s seat had gone from being their ride home, to their unwanted and oblivious chaperone, to the eyewitness preventing Zak from wrapping her hands around Chase’s throat and strangling him. Or more likely—taking what she wanted.
“Excuse me?” she shouted over the music. “How much longer?”
“Twenty minutes, ma’am.”
Twenty minutes? How big was this fucking city?
She crossed her legs. Squeezed her thighs together for some relief, but that was a bandage over a severed artery, and Chase was not making matters any better with the self-satisfied look he wore. Which, even at her expense, was tragically sexy.
“See?” he said. “Impatient. The good news is, I hear you can come just thinking about it. Maybe give that a try.”
Zak’s mouth fell open. “That’s the last time I tell Izzy anything.”
Not fucking likely.
This was where she proved him wrong. This was where she spent twenty minutes thinking about anything other than the visual he had painted for her so vividly.
Music. Music always kept her busy.
She thought back to the New Year’s song, thanks to the situational parallel between getting fucked in her station wagon and getting fingered in a taxi. There had been a guitar riff floating around in her head forever, but she hadn’t taken the time to sort out the lyrics on any of her new ideas when they’d been so busy polishing older songs for the album.
Desire is a drug you take
Inhale and swallow until you break
Desire is a winner’s game
It’s the sound of you screaming my name
She snatched her worn purse off the floor mat and grabbed her notebook and pen to preserve the idea. Only vaguely aware of Chase’s adoring expression, and only because she glimpsed over at him when a mental pause interrupted her flow of ideas.
Something earnest flickered over his heated gaze.
“What?”
She looked back at the words she’d written and scribbled some dots and slashes that resembled music notes in the same way the Chinese alphabet resembled the Latin one. But proper musical notation was for long-dead European men with wooden teeth and powdered wigs. Not for self-taught guitarists writing nonsense about sex in the back of a cab.
“I love watching you work,” he said simply.
“That’s sweet, but I’m going to need you to stop there.” She tucked the back of the pen between her teeth and re-read what she wrote before finishing her statement to him. “In case the next thing that comes out of your mouth isn’t.”
He peeked around her arm, the corners of his eyes creasing as he tried to make out her handwriting in the dark. “You sure you don’t want more of those not-sweet words for inspiration?”
Zak handed over the pen and notebook. “Okay, hotshot. Write me a verse.”
He stared at those simple tools of the trade as if she were asking him to cast a spell with a magic wand. “Now?”
“Yeah. Right now. It goes like this.” She wished she had her guitar to demonstrate, but settled for humming and tapping her leg instead. “And the vocals would go…” She looked down at the page and talked-sang the words. “Only better, when you sing them.”
“You’re not as bad as you think you are.”
Love did turn people into liars. “Whatever. Either way, you are as good as I think you are.”
Chase turned to a blank page. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Do you remember when I took you to the library over the summer and had you work from the poetry books?”
“Of course. I remember everything from last summer.”
She let her head fall to his shoulder, where he could probably feel the blush on her cheeks burning a hole through his shirt.
“It’s similar in some ways. You’re focusing on putting images to feelings. With songs, the words have to flow with the melody. They have to make sense with the rhythm. And you can manipulate them to fit, but there’s a certain pattern and a certain structure already in place.”
She flipped to an earlier page and pointed out an example of her own. “You have your verses, your pre-chorus, your chorus, and your bridge. And there are variations. Sometimes you have more or less verses. Sometimes there’s no pre-chorus. And when you know what you’re doing, you can switch these around to create those songs that are a little peculiar and stand out from the rest.
“But this one is more basic.” She turned back to his blank page and folded over the cover. “So it’s a good starting place. Follow the pattern. One of the verses starts with ‘luck,’ and the next starts with ‘desire.’ You need your anchor word, first. Something that follows the theme.” She smiled at him. “Sex.”
“Lust?” He tossed out.
She shook her head. “Too on-the-nose. Too similar to ‘desire.’”
“Love?”
“Not the right tone.”
“Passion?”
“Doesn’t flow,” she shot down once more.
He referenced her earlier verses again. “But what if we manipulate the next part to fit the melody, like you mentioned?”
On the paper, in Chase’s clean handwriting, appeared his first original line, Passion is your hand in mine.
Zak watched as he wrote, hearing the words come to life and visualizing the ones that should come next. She took the pen back from him when he stopped, stumped, and added, It strips and bares, it takes its time.
Back the notebook went. “What’s the next line?”
Chase closed his eyes in thought. She could practically see his brain turning through all their moments together as he tried to define passion. His lips pressed together as he penned two more lines and reviewed them before handing them over.
“These don’t sound right. I don’t know how you do this.”
She looked down at the newest additions and crossed out a few words, adding substitutions of her own.
Passion never asks the question why questions why
It burns and bleeds to ash, it sucks bleeds you dry
“It’s a good start,” she said. “And a good idea.”
Sure, it would probably go through more revisions as the rest of the song took form, but she would keep that notebook page protected unlike any other.
She normally beat her journals up. The more food and water stains, the more ink smears, the less she felt inclined to make every idea sound perfect on the first pass. But this one, she would keep in mint condition.
A memory of tonight and of their first tour. Better than any staged photograph or video recording.
She couldn’t wait to have a stack full of sheets like this one. His perfect font intertwined with her messy one. Her love of music and her love for him no longer dissonant, but in harmony.