Fangirl (22 page)

“Hey, it's Vegas,” Josie said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Josie, we ain't in Bakersfield no more!” D said as she fell back onto the giant bed.

Josie's phone buzzed in her pocket.

P—sorrry. Just got ur texts. Im alive. You get the tix?

C u at meet and greet.

J—YES YES YES! Getting ready now with my friend.

P—cool. Your friend knows to be secret right?

J—YES.

P—K. off to sound check. Cant wait to see you. Finally.

P—nervous?

J—a little bit 2 b honest

P—me too. But in a good way. Excited. FYI I have a surprise 4 u at the show

J—what is it????

P—if I tell ya it wont be a surprise

For Peter
, the first of his two Vegas shows would be his twenty-fourth of the tour. The sound check, truth be told, had become more of a ritual to be done for the pleasure of radio contest winners who sat in the near-empty arena to hear bits of a few songs than an actual rehearsal of the venue's sound systems. But Peter dutifully did it a couple of hours before every show—just like he had been loyally fulfilling all of his professional obligations since he was a kid.

But suddenly he realized he didn't resent the commitments. He had a new outlook on his life. He decided he would no longer fight with his father. He would no longer complain about the restrictions placed on him by the Retro Records honchos. He wouldn't worry about Sandy Jones and what she was thinking about his decision to break up with her midtour. Nope. Peter had other plans. He was headed in a new direction.

Maybe the breakthrough came in his last meditation session when he realized he was ready to love. Maybe it is true, as he once read, that if you just start loving your life, then life will love you back. Starting tonight. And no one—not his dad, not his fans, not his agents, not his bandmates, not even Big Jim—knew what he would be doing, except for him.

After sound check, Big Jim escorted Peter back to his dressing room behind the stage. As Peter entered the locker room turned into a temporary dressing area, Sandy was walking out.

“Oh, hey, Peter! I was just looking for you.”

“Well, here I am!” Peter said, throwing his arms in the air. “In my dressing room? Didn't you hear me at sound check?”

Sandy, still in her preshow sweatpants and hoodie, looked anxiously around the arena hallway. Her eyes darted from one end to the other. “Uh, I didn't actually. It's been such a crazy day.”

“You sure you aren't looking for someone else?” Peter asked.

“Of course not, silly,” she said. “I just wanted to wish you good luck tonight.”

“Sandy, you never wish me luck. Seriously, what's up? You sure you are okay?”

Sandy grabbed Peter by the sleeve of his button-down shirt and pulled him aside, out of earshot of Big Jim. “Peter, I've had it with the attitude. Can't I come say hi to you without you acting weird about it? Truth is, I want to talk to you about our duet. The label wants us to do a promotional tour next month before it drops. It could be like, you know, awkward. So I think we should talk about how we are gonna go about it all.”

“Look, Sandy,” Peter said flatly. “It's a bad time right now. We can talk about this later. I gotta get dressed and over to the meet-and-greet. Let's talk later.”

Sandy's face softened. “Sure. Okay. No worries. You're
right. We should talk when it's not so crazy.” She hugged him and walked down to the G Girls dressing room as Peter and Big Jim locked eyes and shared an unspoken moment that said something along the lines of “Wow, that girl is wack!”

Along with the onstage sound check, another preconcert ritual was the meet-and-greet. Around thirty lucky fans—from contest winners, to friends and family members, to fan club devotees—had the chance to shake hands and take a photo with Peter before every show.

Because he only had from 7:00 to 7:15 p.m. to do all this, the whole event had the look and feel of a cattle call, with fans lined up outside a room in the basement of the arena and shuffling in one group at a time, with Big Jim hustling everyone along as quickly as possible.

If it were up to Peter he would spend a few minutes with everyone and get to know each one of them. It was the only part of concert days where he got to spend any quality one-on-one time with fans and he felt some sort of karmic responsibility to let fans get close to him, to give back some of the love that he felt for them—even if at times it could be exhausting to do so. It's an ethic that he credited his father with instilling in him. For all of his father's slick money-making chicanery, Peter had to give the man credit for always minding what Bobby called “the fan experience.”

This meet-and-greet, though, would be different than any of the others.

“Remember, people! Turn off your phones,” Abby instructed
the fans in queue. “And only one photo. Peter will meet everyone, but we have to make each one very quick. The number you were given out front is your place in line. So everyone please get in order and we will start the meet-and-greet.” The fans jostled for position.

Fifteen minutes later, Peter first heard her, the heels of her knee-high black boots clicking on the cement floor as she entered the room. Her tight-fitting black skirt came to just halfway down her thigh, and her metallic-silver tank stuck to her chest. A padded bra added a shape she didn't have the first time Peter met her.

Peter's eyes scanned her from foot to face, stopping on the dark eyes made even darker with eye shadow.

“Well, look at you!” Peter hugged her, even more tightly than the first time. “I barely recognized you!”

“I hope in a good way,” Josie replied with a nervous smile.

“You kidding me?” Peter beamed. “In a great way!” He looked her up and down—again. “You just look . . . different.”

“I don't usually dress like this. But, you know, it's Vegas and all so . . .” Josie self-consciously began tugging downward on her skirt. “Probably the eyes. My friend D says that smoky eyes add like five years to a face.”

“No worries. You look amazing.”

Peter took her hand and walked her to a spot in the room in front of a Peter Maxx photo backdrop, placed his arm affectionately around her, and smiled for the snapshot.

“Wait, one sec,” he said after the flash. He pulled out his
phone and, extending his arm out as far as he could, he took a picture of them with his phone. “That one's for me,” he whispered. “I don't have a pic of you for my phone.”

He then professionally shook her hand, pressing into her palm a plastic card and said, “Room 5320. Meet you there after the show for our writing sesh. Shhh.”

Josie smiled. “Enjoy the show,” he said, leaning in and kissing her on her right cheek. “And, remember, there's a surprise.”

Trying to explain
what it feels like to have Peter Maxx kiss you gently on your cheek after handing you his hotel room key and a flirtatious note is like trying to explain what it feels like to be shot into space while strapped to a rocket. The head-to-toe tingling. The sense of weightlessness as you ascend up beyond the Earth's gravitational pull. The force, the thrust, the intense feeling of being catapulted into a limitless space brimming with unknown, exciting possibilities. That feeling, one that you will never forget after experiencing it, embeds every cell of your body as you make your way onto the arena floor and take your front-row seat next to your new confidante, a girl who is older and wiser and something of a savior.

And the sensation continues as you sit through the opening set of the G Girls and you watch one of the girls, the blonde, Peter's ex, dancing and singing and you keep thinking how she's so beautiful and you realize that her flawless face shares something in common with yours, that it has been kissed by that gorgeous Rocket Boy.

The feeling continues throughout the night as you stand and sing along to every song he sings because you've memorized all the lyrics and because you always felt they spoke to you—and now, as he gazes down at you and smiles several times each song, you realize that they really are. You realize that you're in deep, that no matter how nervous you might be about this new relationship, that there is some nature of inevitability and fate
that is beyond your control. You've never felt like this before, the lightness of being that has you feeling like your feet are levitating just above the floor. You would call it an out-of-body experience, but the experience is entirely within your body, deep into its core, and you realize that, no matter what happens from this moment forward, life will never be the same.

He ends the first set with one of your faves, “No Regrets,” and after several minutes of chanting from the fans, he comes back out for the encore. He sits down on a stool with nothing but his acoustic guitar, looks down at you, and while gently strumming the guitar, starts talking to the packed arena: “I have a little surprise.”

Your stomach tenses when you realize he is talking to you.

“Everyone needs a muse. Out on the road, I've been doing some reading. And I've learned that every artist, poet, great thinker throughout history has had a muse. And for me it is you, the fans. But this next song is about a special muse I met recently, and she's here tonight. This is a new song I've written. It's called ‘So Down with You.'”

The stage lights go down and, under a single spotlight, he sits strumming the prettiest sounding chords you've ever heard in your life and you can't take your eyes off his lips as he sings a song delivered like poetry of a melodious kind you've never heard before. . . .

Down below my jet window I see

Beating hearts of humanity

A pickup rolls down a dirt road

And I wonder who's inside

A boy like me? Where's he going?

No way of knowing

But I wish that was me and I was . . .

So down with you

Taking the road that leads me to you

So down with you

Flying so high but wishing I could be

Down in love with you

From my plane's sight, I wonder if he's lonely, if he's all right

Does he have a good life?

Maybe a wife?

Has he known a loved one's death?

Does he treasure his every breath?

His truck rolls away in the opposite direction

I wonder if he's known true love connection

Like the kind I feel when I am . . .

So down with you.

I hope he's had my kind of luck

A man like me who's so, so, so

So down with you . . .

'Cuz baby I'm so down with you. . . .

Josie Brant's
heart had melted, and the puddle ran its way back to the Palazzo's tower, to the very top floor, to the Prestige Siena Suite—Room 5320—where she sat alone on the most comfortable couch she had ever sat in waiting for Peter to return.

It had been a long day. She hadn't had a good night's sleep in over a week. Every bone in her body ached with exhaustion. Eleven became eleven thirty and then it became almost midnight, and as much as she didn't want to, she lay her head on the coziest pillow she'd ever placed her head on and drifted off to sleep. And when she came to some time later she was looking in the dark eyes of Peter.

“So, did my singing put you to sleep?” he asked her gently.

“Hardly.” She rubbed her eyes and let out a cough, self-conscious of her breath. She put her hand up to cover her mouth and made a gross face.

Peter laughed and assured her, “No morning breath. It's only midnight.”

“Did you like the song?”

“Of course, I did.”

Peter handed her a glass of water. “Here, drink up. Vegas tends to dry people out.”

Josie sipped from the glass, squishing the water around her mouth before swallowing it in a gulp.

“Are you sure it's cool for me to be in here with you?” she asked. “I don't want you to get in trouble.”

This was Josie's out. Anxious about what might happen if she did stay in that room all alone with him, a part of her (a very small, scaredy-cat part) was hoping he'd say, “Yeah, it's probably not a good idea. You should go back to Bakersfield.” But he didn't.

“It's all good. Everyone's asleep.” Peter stood up and sat on the chair next to the couch. “Everyone, obviously, except for us.”

Josie realized this was the first time she was ever alone with Peter. It felt surreal yet entirely normal at the same time. There was an energy of familiarity between the two that put her at ease, that made it seem like they'd known each other forever. An energy that made her feel like she could ask him anything. And, unlike her dad, she would trust she'd get an honest answer.