Chapter Twenty-Six
Remi was desperate to kiss Skye again after the one they’d shared in the back of the tour bus. His face was still sore from the beating, and his eye was turning a disgusting yellow shade, but he didn’t care.
He wanted her under his tongue, under his fingers, his lips against her skin. They’d walked into the hotel together, stopping outside his room as he fished out his key card, but Jillian swung open the door from inside.
“Finally!” She was the definition of glaring daggers at him. “Where have you been? I’ve been texting you.”
“Phone died,” he said, not knowing if it was a lie or not. He hadn’t checked it all day, so it was a safe bet it was dead. He’d forgotten that Jillian was staying in his hotel room.
He was wondering what excuse he could come up with to go to Skye’s room instead when Jillian said, “We need to film, like, a million things if you want your fans to show up tomorrow. So come on,” she said, yanking him into the room.
He turned back, but Skye just smirked and waved to him, mouthing “Good luck.” Even her horseshoe septum piercing seemed to be smirking at him in the low light of the hotel hallway.
Cheeky.
The next morning, Remi had to admit that Jillian had done a good job getting the word out. He’d seen quite a few Tilted Haze t-shirts in the crowd as he walked through the festival before their set.
It should have made him feel better that there were fans in the sea of people in front of their stage, but a restlessness stirred inside him as he peered out.
Remi couldn’t remember the last time he had stage fright.
The first show they ever played at a high school cabin party, maybe, or the first gig they ever had at Mike’s.
In the beginning, when Tilted Haze was unknown and they opened for bands where the fans had only been there to see the main act, Remi looked at the indifferent stares from the crowd as a fun challenge.
He’d pick someone in the crowd and sing just for them, get fired up just for them.
Force them to feel the music as much as he did.
But performing as a headliner for the last few months might have made him a little cocky.
He’d forgotten how hard it was to win a crowd over and shift their energy.
The people out there seemed to buzz with agitation, almost like contempt, but Remi couldn’t put a finger on why he felt that way.
He walked to his bandmates and saw the same apprehension he was feeling in their eyes. Skye and Jillian hovered near them.
Jillian turned her phone screen toward Remi. “People have come out just to see you.” It was a tagged social media photo of five people in Tilted Haze t-shirts smiling in front of a Metalfest sign.
Remi took a deep breath and nodded. There were Tilted Haze fans out there. That’s who he was playing for.
Standing across from Ollie, Remi grabbed Liam’s and West’s shoulders and pulled them into a huddle. “Alright, guys. What was the first song West forced us to learn to play because he’d spent forever practicing the solo?”
“‘Psychosocial’,” Liam yelled, grinning.
West smiled at the memory.
“Huh,” Skye said, nodding. “That song is really on brand for you guys.”
“That’s fucking right,” Remi said. “And what song did Liam play to save our asses when our drum machine fucked up at our first ever legit gig?”
“‘Bulls on Parade’,” West answered.
“And what did Ollie play for his audition?” Remi asked.
“‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’,” Liam said and clapped Ollie on the back.
“Both also on brand,” Skye said in the background.
“It was so fucking sick,” Liam said. “I still get hard thinking about how you killed that intro riff.”
Ollie laughed.
Remi continued, “Those people out there think Tilted Haze can’t rock because we’re mainstream, but Slipknot, Rage Against the Machine, and Metallica all got radio play.
Tilted Haze is fucking hardcore to the bone.
We bleed this shit, and we’re gonna blow their ears out and rock them so hard they won’t know what the fuck hit them. ”
“Fuck yeah!” Ollie said.
“Let’s go!” Liam said.
“Let’s fuck ’em up!” West said.
Liam started a low-pitched hooting noise, and they all joined in as the sound grew and grew until Remi clapped his hands to break the huddle. They ran onto the stage as the dry-ice machines billowed smoke from the sides.
At the last second, Remi turned to look back. Skye nodded at him, and her smile was all the confidence he needed.
The band held that energy for two songs, and then the first beer can was thrown onto the stage.
Remi shifted the setlist to play Tilted Haze’s hardest song next. Liam hit the drums with so much gusto that sweat poured onto the pigskins. Ollie headbanged so hard that Remi’s neck hurt in sympathy. West kicked and slammed and worked the stage in tandem with Remi. They gave it all they got.
Remi tried to imbue the crowd with the motherfucking badass rock spirit he’d felt come alive in his soul the moment he heard rock music. But he didn’t have a soul anymore, so maybe that was why he couldn’t connect to the people staring up at the stage.
Remi centered his gaze on one of the guys in the crowd with a face full of metal and a mohawk. He sang to him, headbanged for him.
Mohawk guy finally started nodding his head a bit as the song went on.
Remi went harder; he kicked the rasp of his scream up a level, and there was a yell from the crowd. He didn’t know if it was positive or not, but he chose to think it was encouragement.
As the song ended, Remi’s heartbeat quickened. The rest of Tilted Haze’s setlist was a lot softer.
If their hardest song didn’t get them moving, nothing they played would.
He called to the band to do their second hardest song, and Remi improvised by screaming the parts he usually sang.
His vocal cords were going to be shot tomorrow, but he wasn’t going to half-ass this.
The metalheads in the crowd grew more fidgety.
There was more shouting, but he didn’t know what they were saying.
Remi caught sight of a group of girls in the front, a few skinny guys with heavy eyeliner standing around them, almost like they were protecting the girls from the rest of the crowd.
He almost thought he recognized one of them from the picture Jillian showed him.
They’d been singing every word to the songs. Tilted Haze was here for them.
They got to the part of their set where they usually switched into the love song ballad, but that wasn’t going to fly. Remi ran back to Liam at the drums. West and Ollie followed his lead.
“We have to do Psychosocial,” Remi said.
“What?” West said. “We haven’t practiced that in years.”
“We have to,” Remi said. “A cover will bring them around to our side. We’ll skip the ballad and then finish out the rest of the set.”
“Ollie?” West asked.
Ollie nodded. “I got it.”
“Fuck ’em up, Rem,” Liam said.
Remi sprinted back out to the front of the stage and hopped onto one of the amps.
The sound and light guys were just going to have to improvise this one.
West and Ollie shredded the opening, and Liam pounded out the beat as Remi nodded and jumped in rhythm. Recognizing the song, the crowd started bouncing in time with him and the music.
Remi dug deep as he unleashed his growl into the microphone. The crowd cheered along as he sang the opening verse.
A pit opened up in the middle when Remi sang the chorus. The metalheads were flinging themselves into one another. Remi cringed as the girls in the front got slammed into. The security guards weren’t doing anything to help them.
The girls moved from the center of the stage to the side, away from the worst of it. Remi made a mental note to try to find them after the set. Give them free t-shirts or something. Jillian could message them, and they could do a meet-and-greet.
Remi was thinking all of this while screaming the bridge of the song. Someone climbed onto the barricade and dived into the crowd. He watched the person go down and take a lot of people with him. The girls included.
“Hey! Fuckers! Knock off the stage diving,” he yelled instead of singing the next line of the song. His bandmates kept playing.
The crowd booed, and from the glares leveled at him, he knew they weren’t booing the stage divers. The pit grew more violent. The security guards were standing by and doing nothing.
He sang another few lines of the chorus and then broke off again. “I fucking mean it. Can’t you motherfuckers enjoy some goddamn music without needing to hurt everyone around you?”
The booing intensified. A second beer can was thrown on stage, and then more garbage was hurled at him. Remi tried dodging it at first but gave up and started picking it up and throwing it back.
“You’re fucking animals! Fucking pigs! Show some respect to your fellow concertgoers,” Remi yelled. He was just antagonizing them now though. Indignant rage pulsed through him.
Remi had been to metal concerts. He’d been in mosh pits.
He’d gotten busted lips and bruises from throwing himself around, but there was always a code of honor.
You picked up someone who got knocked down.
You got hurt, but the purpose wasn’t to hurt someone.
It was to enter into the collective consciousness of the music, goddamnit.
And when he saw one of the girls getting manhandled and tossed to the ground, he snapped.
He dropped his microphone and jumped off the stage. The screech of feedback through the mic emanated a bloodcurdling cry. Everyone held their ears, and for a split second, there was peace, and just as quickly, it turned into pandemonium. Yelling, screaming, and chaos took over.
Remi jumped over the barricade. West had shed his guitar and left it on stage to join him in the mayhem.
Remi grabbed a girl from the ground and lifted her over the barricade to West, who settled her on the other side and pointed to the edge of the stage so she could get out of the cacophony.