Hot Summer Lust (16 page)

Elias is standing there in the triple spotlight. He looks like a god, with his halo and his tall, lean body. If I ever tried to dream up perfection, it wouldn’t look nearly as good as Elias Hayes looks right now.

He strums one chord. The crowd quiets by a degree and Elias starts to sing.

Oh my God.

It’s the song.

The
song. The one from the radio.
It’s
his
song.
The one I’ve been humming and using for inspiration and getting turned on by, all this time. From that
very first day.

It’s
Elias
.

This realization makes my eyes sting and I have no idea why.
Maybe because I’m in awe of his talent and his beauty. Or because I’m inspired by how much I love
that song and the way that he sings it.

By how much I love him.

And by how true it is: he’s singing that song to forty thousand people but it’s me he’s singing
for
.

You’re a wild, wild girl
and I know what you like. I know how to tease and I know how to please.

Elias sings for almost two hours and does two encores.
And then he does something I’m not quite prepared for.

“I have to apologize to y’all for being late tonight
,” he says to the crowd, “but I think you’ll forgive me when you understand the reason why. I’m gonna show you.” The
massive audience
cheers for their idol. At first I think I’m imagining it but then I hear it again, over the chords of the
first song I sang for him, on the bench by my window in the moonlight.

“Sadie, come on out here. I want you to sing a song with me.”

What? No.

I hear Vaughn’s outrage somewhere outside my scope. “What the fuck’s he doing?” he says to someone.

Elias calls me again.
“Come on out here, darlin’. Don’t be shy.”

Oh my God.
Is he serious?

“Don’t keep the crowd waiting, honey. We already did that once tonight.
Come out and sing a song with me.
”

He
is
serious.

I’m frozen.

But then I do it.
I take that first step and keep going.

I walk out to him.

There’s a hush and the vast, murmuring hum of the crowd. T
he lights dim except for two spotlights. One on me and one on him.
Someone whistles.

Elias makes room for me at the microphone, lowering it just a little so I can reach it easily.

“This is Sadie,” he says. “A friend of mine.”
To me, he says: “You ready?”

It’s strange: I
am
ready. I’m more ready than I’ve ever been. I feel weirdly like I’m
home
. Like this stage is exactly where I belong.
I nod and he starts playing and we sing that song together, like we’ve done it a thousand times before. Our voices dance around each other, entwining and merging in the buzzing night. It’s the most amazing thing.

When the last note fades, the crowd erupts
.

Elias waves to them and slings his other arm around me. “Goodnight,
Nashville. You know I love y’a
ll.” Then he kisses me, right there in front of all his adoring fans, and leads me off the stage to the thundering cheers.

As soon as we’re off, we’re enveloped again by his pushy entourage, Vaughn included. Vaughn doesn’t look as angry as I might’ve expected, though
. In fact he’s staring at me with a completely different expression that I don’t have time to analyze, since I’m now being led to Elias’s huge black
tour bus. I climb the stairs and inside it’s like a swanky and very expensively-furnished lounge. There’s gold and black furniture and tinted windows and funky little lamps glowing their gold light
. It’s already full of people and
someone hands me a glass of champagne.

Elias
gets led to the back of the bus by a group of people and Vaughn takes me aside. “Your name’s Sadie?” he says.
He has to shout because the party and the music are so loud.

“Yes,” I shout back.
“Sadie Faraday.”

Vaughn looks about thirty.
He’s still wearing those glasses.
I wonder what it would be like to look at the world in yellow all the time. Maybe like life is one long sunny day. “Sadie, I’m Vaughn. Have you done much singing before? Where have you performed?”

I’m about to answer him, when I look towards the back of the bus and see Elias.

He’s surrounded by girls.
Lots of girls. Beautiful, scantily-clad girls who obviously have one thing on their mind: getting as down and dirty with Elias Hayes as possible, right now. They don’t seem to mind that they’re not alone in this pursuit. They don’t seem bothered by the prospect of
all
getting down and dirty with him at the same time. In fact two of them seem almost as interested in each other as they do in Elias.

One of them’s touching his t-shirt. Another’s watching his mouth, like she’s thinking about kissing him. A slim redhead with a tattoo on her hip, above her very-low rise shorts, fingers a strand of his hair.

Elias, amazingly, seems to hardly notice.
He’s trying to talk to his bass player. He looks mildly annoyed, like he might shoo them away when he gets around to it, once he’s said whatever it is he’s got on his mind. His hands are playing a sort of air guitar as he talks to his bandmate, so I’m guessing they’re talking about a riff or something.

And then I see more clearly who he’s talking to.

I
t’s Trevor.

Daisy’s
Trevor.

It all clicks into place. He’s a bass player.
God, he’s
Elias’s
bass player.
I didn’t recognize him on the far side of the stage earlier, with the hat he was wearing and the sunglasses. His dark blond hair’s longer than it was the last time I saw him.

There’s a girl on Trevor’s lap
. And one sort of leaning over him. Her shirt is open and she’s feeding her bare breast to his mouth. He’s laughing and he does a shot of Jack Daniels before he
replies to Elias. Then, as a sort of afterthought, he licks the girl’s breast, and takes her nipple into his mouth. The other girl is kissing Trevor’s face and running her hands across his chest as she wriggles on his lap.
All this as he’s trying to carry on a conversation.

No wonder he’s too busy to call her.

It’s pretty obvious he’s gearing up for a big night … and one that very definitely doesn’t involve my sister. I wonder if he’ll knock up these girls as well. If he’s got a whole slew of pregnant women crying by their phones, waiting for him to call them.

And suddenly I wonder if Elias does, too.
This is his lifestyle.
Let me guess: your goddamn overactive dick.
He has thousands of women throwing themselves at him every night.

I feel like a such a fool, standing there watching them touch him and fawn all over him as he takes a long drink straight from the whiskey bottle. For ever thinking he was mine.

I realize it then: he’s far too hot a commodity to belong to me, a poor country hick with the same hokey dream as all the girls on this bus and all the girls in that vast, cheering crowd.
Who am I kidding? I don’t have a claim on Elias Hayes any more than they do. He’s probably told all the girls about his honesty and his big cock right before he fucks them in the back seat of his Shelby.

Before I know what I’m even doing I’ve left Vaughn in mid-question and I’m walking up to them.

Elias
sees me and he sits up. He
makes an attempt to brush a few hands off his shoulders
and his hair but they’re not easily dissuaded, these girls. They’
re
ravenous
. What a goddamn gentleman, though, really. To notice me standing there and make some lame-ass attempt to fight off his fans for my sake.

I’m so desperate for some air I think I might pass out.
So I take a deep breath. And I start with Trevor, who’s making no attempt to brush off
his
girls. He doesn’t
have any problem at all with his status as a playboy heartbreaker. “You don’t deserve her, you bastard,” I say. I don’t sound as calm as I was going for.

“Hey, Sadie,” Trevor says, all laconic smile and green eyes
.
“I talked to Daisy before the show. She’s knows I have a gig tonight. You sang real good, by the way. I never knew you could sing like that.”

That’s because you know nothing about me. Or my sister. “She knows you have a gig, yeah. What she doesn’t know
is
that your gig involves getting laid by six women that aren’t her.”
This isn’t really like me at all but I’m suddenly feeling at least as dramatic as my sisters. What I’m
thinking is that Trevor is a stunning-looking
man. He
has wavy blond hair, mischievous
green eyes and a tall, lanky body.
I’m thinking about what a beautiful baby he and my sister will have made.

Daisy was breathless that first night she came home after meeting him. It was love
at first sight.
She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life, she said. More than safety or caution or doing the sensible thing. And when he’d told her he loved her she believed him.

I know what
she’s
doing tonight. Waiting. Ho
ping.

I look at one of the girls, the one who’s
sitting on his lap. “
I hope you have a nice big box of condoms so you don’t all get knocked up by him like my sister did.
And be careful about believing whatever he tells you.”

Elias stands up
.
His groupies make sounds of protest.
“Sadie. What are you talking about?”

I look at Elias. His near-violet eyes and dark hair just have this divine way of catching light. I notice again the halo-effect being cast by the lamp
behind him and it makes me hate him even more. For being so perfect yet so damn imperfect.
“What am I
talking
about? I’
m talking about lying to someone when you shouldn’t be lying!
Instead of just telling it like it is. Before you get in too deep and can’t get out again.
”

And there it is: I have to get out.

Before I get in deeper than I can handle. So deep I can’t get away from him because I love him and want him and don’t want to share him.

The thing is, I’m
already
too deep.
I’m so in love with Elias Hayes I think I might shatter when I walk away.

I don’t want to humiliate myself by crying in front of all these people. So I turn and start pushing my way through all the throngs of people. I hear him call my name but I reach the stairs of the bus and stumble down them.
I start walking across the parking lot. I don’t know where I’m going or how I’m going to get home but right now I don’
t fucking care.

“Sadie!”

I start running. I love him and I hate him too, for making me feel
so much
. For giving me
more than everything I ever knew I wanted then taking it away.

“Sadie!”

He catches up to me and grabs me, twirling me around but I stumble and he catches me. I struggle against his hold but it’s unbreakable. “
Damn you
!
Let me go, Elias! I’m leaving!”

“Sadie, stop fighting me!
Where are you going? What’s wrong?”

“What’s
wrong
?” I hate the sound of what comes out. “’
You don’t have to share me, sweetheart’
, I mimic. ‘
I’m yours.
’ True, it’s been a whole
three hours
since you said that to me. Maybe it slipped your mind when your groupies started groping you. But I guess you’re so used to all that
you hardly noticed.” I sound like a desperate wretch, the very last thing I ever thought I’d be.
I
was the one who was supposed to be
immune
to all this, the one who was going to control my own destiny and not have it decided for me by something so cliché as love.

Lust, I can handle, I’ve decided. Love is dangerous. Love’ll break your goddamn heart.

“Those girls don’t mean anything to me.”

I scowl at him.
“You let them touch you. Your shirt and your hair.”

He sees the tears in my eyes and he looks shocked. He’s so stunning it brings a wave of fresh tears, which makes
me even madder. “Sadie.
I didn’t. I was talking to Trevor and they were just there.
It’s not a big deal. They follow me around. I didn’t even notice them. I only noticed you.”

“I have to go home, Elias.”

“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, but don’t go because of them.”

“How can you
say
that?
Of
course
I’m going because of them. I meant what I said: I don’t want to share you!”

Elias wipes my tears with his fingers.
He looks stricken, like my reaction has shaken him up in a way that’s new to him
.
“I’m sorry.
You’re right. I’m just … I’m so used to it, I didn’t think. Sadie,
I haven’t had a girlfriend since all this started. I’ve been riding this crazy-train and I’m not used to being exclusive.”

“Maybe you
can’t
be exclusive, Elias
. Maybe it’s not
really something you can give.
I guess I can understand that. I mean, all those women are clearly reall
y into you and they’re gorgeous and I don’t blame you for wanting –”

“
No
. I don’t want them. I want
you
.”

I’m staring at him and he looks all hurt and sort of vulnerable. It’s a look that clashes with his superstar, hard-bodied, heart-throb vibe. It’s all wrong there, and makes me want to give him a hug.