Brando 2 (4 page)

He
leans in close, his lips against my ear.

“Then
it’s
my job to make you happy.”

I
shove him back as suddenly and as reluctantly as I shove the hotness
I’m
feeling back down deep inside of me.

“I’ll
never be happy with you, Brando. Never.”

I
spin on my heel and storm off toward the back of the bus. Because
right now, that’s
as far away as I can get.

Brando

Haley’s
first show is in San Francisco. Thousands of people, completely sold
out, and the news that she was supporting Lexi only made it out a
couple of weeks before. It’ll
be a baptism of fire, not least because until now Haley’s
only played for an audience at open mics, one showcase, and a TV
spot. It won’t
help that she’s
spent the last month cooped up in a studio with Josh. Still, she made
it through this far with my help, and I’ll
be damned if I’m
not gonna help her nail these gigs –
even
if she doesn’t
want me to.

I
turn up at the soundcheck early to wait for her, only to find that
she’s
even earlier. I watch her guide her band as they blast through a
song, and goof around with the ending, turning the song into a silly
parody of one of Lexi’s
songs. I start smiling, but something about the way she shares the
laughter with her guitarist makes me drop the smile pretty quick.

When
they’re
done laughing and checking with the engineer in the stands that
everything’s
okay, I walk straight to Haley –
but
my eyes are fixed on the guitarist. He gives me a weak wave, before
pretending to have somewhere he needs to be and leaving. Haley turns
around to see what scared him.

“Oh,”
she
says, as if I’m
a major disappointment.

“You
guys sounded good.”

“Easy
to sound good in an empty theatre,”
she
says sardonically. I try to keep my hands to myself as she bends over
to put her guitar in its case.

When
she stands back up and looks at me I lose myself for a second. She’s
got a new kind of sexiness I’m
seeing for the first time. If the girl I met at the open mic was sexy
because she was so innocent, naïve,
and keen to see the world, this new Haley is sexy for a whole new set
of reasons. No more of the round, whites-of-the-eyes looks that she
used to get; now they’re
hard, like two pools of suppressed fire. The lips that once curled
outward as if tasting something for the first time are now tight and
ripe. Even the way she carries herself now is different. No more
hanging her head, hiding behind her hair, standing sideways: now she
stands with her shoulders back, her chin high, and it’s
impossible not to notice the swell of her breasts, the roundness of
her hips.

Once
upon a time everything about her said ‘take
me, I’m
yours,’
and
now it says ‘you’re
mine, and I’ll
take what I want.’
I
think back to the time we fucked in the studio, my head between her
trembling thighs, her fragile body shaking under my hands, and
realize I’d
give anything to taste her again, this new Haley.

Before
I can stop myself, I say something stupid. As usual. “I’m
sorry about how this turned out.”

She
folds her arms, shifts her weight onto one leg, and I have to look
away to stop my cock from reacting to the way the line of her ass
syncs so perfectly with the outline of her lifted tits. “Are
you?”

“Look
Haley, I know—”

I’m
interrupted by the sudden onrush of Lexi’s
people to the stage. More than a dozen colorfully-dressed men and
women with flamboyant haircuts emerging from the sides and taking up
spots with the precision of a military operation.

“Do
dancers need to soundcheck too?”
Haley
says, noticing them as well.

I
take her by the arm and lead her off to the side, a sense of joy
spiking in me when I see she doesn’t
resist –
little
victories. We stand by one of the quieter corners in the backstage
area and Haley promptly assumes her ‘I’ll
listen but I’ll
also judge’
position
again.

“I
know you don’t
believe anything I say anymore,”
I
continue, sounding like I’m
not pleading, but looking every bit the beggar, “but
you’re
the best musician I’ve
ever worked with.”

I
stand aside slightly to let a couple more dancers run to the stage,
and when I look back at Haley she’s
still glaring at me –
only
there’s
a little more softness in her eyes than there was a second ago. She
doesn’t
say anything, she’s
expecting more. Fine.

I’d
beg all night for her.

“Yes,
I made a bet. And yes, it was to get Lexi back. But do you think I’d
be here if that was all it was? I mean, I won the bet, I got Lexi
back, I got you a hit record, I should be happy, right?”
I
point at my face. “Do
I sound like a happy man right now? Or do I sound more like a whining
idiot who’s
desperate to fix the dumbest mistake he ever made?”

Haley
breaks a little, and looks away to try and hide her smile, but I
catch it. This must be what coming back from the dead feels like.

“I
wish I didn’t
feel like this, Haley. I wish I could just brush you off. God knows
I’ve
had enough practice forgetting about girls. I spent a month listening
to your songs, getting Josh to sneak me the demos of you at the
studio, playing them over and over again. Torturing myself with how
amazing you are. Trying to convince myself that it was just about
music, nothing else. But the night you told me about Rex being your
father, about how you never even got to speak to him –
I
knew that even though we come from different worlds, deep down, we’ve
got a connection. Something more than music.”

Haley
looks down, hiding behind her hair, almost as if she’s
once again the shy open-mic’er
who was too nervous to play her own songs. When she looks up again,
though, she’s
back to the new, tough Haley.

“Maybe,
Brando. But you still lied to me. You started this whole thing off
with a lie. How am I supposed to know where the lies stopped and the
truth began? Did you lie when you told me I had something special and
should sign with you right away? Did you lie about how you grew up
tough and only a love of music got you through? Are you lying right
now?”

“Haley,
I—”

She
raises a hand to stop me from speaking, and I’m
so enraptured by the movement of her lips, the lines of her face, by
being this close to her again, that it feels like slamming into a
train.

“You
know what your problem is, Brando?”
she
says, her voice gentle but lethal. “You’re
too good. Too perfect. Too
smooth.
I can never tell when you’re
actually
feeling
something.
Actually hurting, and yearning, and sad, like a regular person.”
She
takes a step away from me, about to leave, before turning back. “But
this is a start.”

I
watch her walk down the long hall of the backstage area, my chest
heaving, every bone in my body feeling like it’s
just been thrown around in a washing machine. She pushes through the
exit doors, and I feel a hole in my chest.

“I
wonder if you ever watched me walk away like that.”

I
spin around and see her leaning casually against the wall.

“Lexi.”

“You
were probably just watching her ass though, right?”
she
laughs.

I’m
not amused. “How
long have you been standing there?”

“Why?
Did I miss the best part?”
she
says, pushing herself away from the wall and stepping out onto the
stage, where there are roughly twenty people now waiting for her to
soundcheck.

I
push a hand through my hair, emotions running and striking inside of
me like a storm. I start striding in the opposite direction, head
down, fists clenched. I can barely tell whether I’m
angry at Lexi’s
snooping, at having disappointed Haley so deeply, or whether I’m
just so fucking hot for her that it’s
making me aggressive. Either way, it’s
a bad time to bump into her guitarist.

Which
is exactly what happens.

He
nods a greeting at me, quickening his pace to glide right by, but I
put a hand on his chest to stop him, and he almost flails onto my
palm like he just walked into a lamppost.

“Oh,
hey!” he
says, with frightened enthusiasm.

“Brian?
Is it?”

“Yeah!
You’re
Brando, right?”

“Tell
me: Do you like Haley?”

“Uh…of
course! She’s
awesome. Best singer I’ve
played fo—”

“I
mean,” I
snarl, slower this time, “do
you
like
Haley?”

I
takes a second for understanding to appear in his glazed eyes.

“Oh!
No! No, man, come on! No.”

Suddenly
I realize how ridiculous this is, how crazy I’m
being. The last thing I need right now is to turn into a paranoid
maniac who gets into jealous fights with my client’s
back-up musicians. I drop my palm and shake my head like a dog
shaking off a bad scent.

“Sorry,”
I
mumble, as if I just woke up. “Forget
about it.”

Haley

I
can’t
think. Somebody has pressed fast-forward on everything around me, and
my mind just can’t
catch up.

The
green room’s
big and comfortable, but it only makes me feel smaller and more out
of place. Paula’s
on the couch, tapping out rhythms on her knees as if she’s
already out there, in front of the thousands of fans screaming so
loudly we can still hear them through the thick walls of the
backstage area. Aaron’s
beside her, his eyes closed, hands folded, meditating. Brian’s
leaning against the wall, re-tuning his guitar for the twentieth
time. They look more or less poised, professional. Ready to go.

Me,
I’m
pacing around the room like a rat looking for the exit of the maze.

The
runner knocks on the door, opens it, and leans in.

“It’s
time,” she
says.

Everyone
gets up –
except
for me. I take a step back.

“Time?
But you just said we had ten more minutes?”

The
runner looks at me with a mixture of confusion and sympathy.

“That
was over ten minutes ago.”

“Come
on,” Brian
says, putting an arm around my shoulders. “It’s
going to be fine.”

I
let him walk me out of the green room, along the hallway that leads
to the side of the stage, until suddenly he leaves my side and runs
ahead. For a second it almost seems like he’s
abandoning me. But then I look up, and see Brando standing in front
of me.

He
might be a liar. He might have hurt me. I might hate him.

But
right now, there’s
nobody else I’d
rather see.

I
look into his cocksure eyes, waiting for him to say something,
pleading with him to use that deep, reassuring voice and that
commanding presence he has on me. Right now, I need something solid
to hold on to, to ground me, and it doesn’t
get more solid than Brando.

He
steps toward me and cups my cheeks in his strong hands.

“Everything
you’re
feeling will disappear the second you hit the first chord,”
he
says, somehow making it sound like the most truthful thing in the
world.

“What
if I choke? I can’t
even remember the first song. I’m
nervous just hearing those people out there, what about when I see
them? I can’t
do it,” I
say, raising my hand. “Look,
I’m
shaking. I can’t
play guitar. Tell them I can’t
do it—”

“Haley,”
Brando
says, leaning in so close I can taste his breath, “you’ve
dreamed of this moment since you were a kid. Lived it over and over
again in your head. I know you have. The big venue, the screaming
fans, the flashing lights, you’ve
dreamed it all, right?”

I
nod, my skin brushing against his rough palms.

“Do
you choke or forget the words in the dream?”

“No.”

“This
is just like that. Just like your dream. A little bit louder. A
little bit realer. But just the same.”

He
strokes my hair away from my face and I hear the screaming rise a
full twenty decibels as my band makes it on stage. Brando pulls away
and steps aside.

I
cast one last look at the firm belief in his eyes, gathering the last
bit of strength I can from them, and then walk down the hallway and
step out onto the stage.

It’s
just like he says, like a dream. I walk out and feel like a hurricane
hits me. A sea of faces and arms shouting and wailing. A wall of
sound that almost blows me back.

I
hit the first chord, and before I know it I’m
almost done with the last song of the night. If I felt like I was on
fast-forward earlier, it’s
as if someone pressed the skip button through the concert. But even
so, judging by the audience applause, it seems that all those years
of relentless practice have finally paid off. I didn’t
totally bomb.

“That
was awesome, Haley!”
yells
someone from the group of strangers that mob us as we exit the stage,
carrying us in a crowded mass back toward the green room.

“Was
it?” I
say, barely able to hear myself speak over the excited laughter and
whoops of the crowd.

“Holy
shit!”
Brian
says, putting a hand on my back. “I
never heard you do that before!”

“Do
what?” I
say, looking for him as I get pushed and pulled into the green room.
“What
was I doing?”

“The
ad-libs! Talking to the crowd!”
Paula
says, emerging at my side and holding out a beer toward me. “They
loved
you!”

“Fuck,”
I
say, bringing a hand to my head to stop the spinning. “I
didn’t
even know I was doing it.”

Somebody
slams two glass bottles together to get people’s
attention. We all look in the direction of the sound and see Mike the
guitar tech standing on a table.