In the Absence of You

A new adult fiction novel about a self-indulgent prick of a lead singer—

and a Gypsy girl with an agenda of her own.

Don’t we all have our reasons?

Let the anarchy commence.

by Sunniva Dee

AISHE

I
come from a family that burns with love.
You wouldn’t understand unless you were one of us. I’m not just talking my father and my mother—I’m talking every one of my ancestors. It’s in our genetic build to spend all of our energy on love.

Once we come of age, it strikes and blazes with a fire that eats you alive. This love is a plague that boils in my race and in my culture, and I wouldn’t know a different way unless I’d broken free and seen strangers love with milder flames.

Tonight, my eyes go from the merchandise on my table to the blond-headed burst of life hopping off the stage. His gaze shimmers with amusement, a cocky lip twitching as he slaps high-fives to guys and pinches girl-cheeks on his way over.

“Aishe! You got those super-tight, hot little tees with the broken heart thingy on the front? The ones the chicks dig?” he asks once he’s in front of me, Emil, the vocalist of Clown Irruption, one of the hottest alt-rock indie-bands out there. I’ve been their merch girl for a few months now. Each night, I zoom in on Emil with less and less difficulty.

“Yeah. Troll picked them up this morning,” I say referring to their tour manager.

“This is so cool—finally we see actual merch money,” Emil laughs out. Then he sets a hand to the table and squints at me. “You’ve done much better than your cousin. I mean, Shandor, man.” He shakes his head playfully. “He couldn’t draw dudes to the stand worth shit.”

My face loosens in a smile. I send a subtle glance at Shandor, who’s busy wrapping things up on stage, coiling cables and breaking down drums. To sell T-shirts wasn’t what he burned for. Shandor was born with the plague of our people too, but he hasn’t found his beloved yet. My people, we need something to obsess over, so if it’s not a man’s love for a woman or vice versa, it’s something else, and Shandor, he loves his music. Once the band promoted him from merch guy to monitors on stage, he recommended me to fill his spot, and
voilà
, here I am.

Shandor raises his head and stills on us, focus intent from under dark locks. He’s got a sixth sense for when guys chitchat with me. Like me, he left our traveling community years back, but the need to protect any girl of our people is so deep-rooted I doubt he ever questions it. Shandor would do everything in his power to stop any man, employer or not, from toying with his little cousin.

I straighten so that I’m tall for my height. Though I’m not overly curvy, I’m lean and strong. Supposedly, I’m also fiery, a bit fierce, a bit ferocious, traits that make me who I am, traits I don’t need here in the outside world as opposed to amongst those I was born to.

I intimidate most men with the stance I take right now, but I can’t intimidate Shandor. He glares, telling me without words what
not
to do, and next he pierces his stare into Emil’s back. Oblivious, Emil juts his index finger at the case of lukewarm beers behind me, wiggles it back and forth quickly, lips pursed in anticipation. “Hand over one of those babies, will ya?”

I pop one open for him like I’m a bartender. “Here, for the tsar of Clown Irruption,” I say.

He snorts around a swallow, the sound proud instead of mocking. “Hell yeah. Good show, huh? Did you see the crowd on Nadia’s song? Did you hear the screams when I threw my shirt? I should’ve thrown it earlier. And this is a fucking
small
club. How hilarious if we’d miked the crowd up.”

I nod. Tilt my hip a little as I lean on the table with the heels of my hands. He catches the movement, gaze flickering down my waist. I won’t lie. I love it when he looks at me like this. But his attention floats right back up again and fixes on the wall behind me.

He bobs his head toward the price tag on the black T-shirts, the favorite of Clown Irruption’s male fans. “Why do we keep it at fifteen? We sell out of them all the time, and Luminessence takes, like, twenty-two for theirs.”

I’m disappointed when he changes from interested to casual in seconds flat. For a moment, he looked at me the way he does his nightly rush of groupies. Then—
bam!—
it was over.

“Twenty even,” I correct.

“Since when do you care about tees, man?” That’s Elias, the bass player. Tall and wiry, he’s milky white with eyes so light it’s eerie. Elias has that undead beautiful thing going for him, which turns half of the audience into banshees when he does a solo. “Oh never mind. Since Aishe started working for us,” he answers his own question, slaps his friend’s back, and whizzes me a grin. “You got more of those warm beers?”

I hand him one, but I don’t open it. That special service is for my favorite blond spurt of joy who’s still half naked and sweaty from his exertions on stage.

“Backstage meet-n-greet in ten. You ready?” Troll bellows, nodding a few guards over so the band can chat and have their beers without being run down by my customers.

Troll’s got a voice on him. Sometimes the band actually listens to him too. “Although forget the backstage part. This meet-n-greet will be yonder.” He juts his chin at an opening in the wall behind me.

“What, too many people to fit backstage?” Bo asks. He’s the bandleader and plays lead guitar. With his mysterious sex appeal and almost androgynous beauty, besides Emil, he’s a huge part of what attracts the female audience. Despite their publicist’s direct orders, Bo is outspoken about how very much in a relationship he is.

My attention floats to his side, and I automatically smile. Nadia smiles back, accepting her man’s grip around her hand. With her long, dark hair and darker eyes, she could be one of my people, I often think, and there’s a depth to the love between those two that’s familiar. It’s how my parents are with each other. How Shandor’s parents are, our grandparents, and all of the others who beat the plague of my clan.

Troll blows his cheeks out and releases a burst of air. “The floor’s rotting backstage. They’re afraid of being sued if people start stomping around and breaking legs and what-have-you. So yeah, it’ll be yonder. It’s bigger though, so we’re good.” He stretches a chunky finger toward the Cokes sitting on top of a box of our least-bought T-shirts, some XX whites with gold writing. I’m not sure who chose them, but the same box has been with us the entire tour.

I hand Troll a soda. “Anything else, guys? Whiskey on the rocks? Sex on the Beach?”

“Sure, babe, bring on the sex on the beach,” Emil halfway purrs. “And hey, if there’s no beach in this town—is there, Troll? Where are we again?—I’ll make us one.”

Nadia rolls her eyes over Emil, the poster child for sexy, flirty, extroverted lead singer, but I bite my lip, enjoying his haphazard games. It’s Shandor’s fault that Emil rarely flirts with me.

As the guys drift by, Troy strolling into the room last, my mind returns to where it often does—to my plan for beating my genetically induced love tribulation.

I’m twenty-three, and my people get lovesick at a much earlier stage in life. The girls especially are knocked down quickly; I’ve been there when girls of fifteen and sixteen have committed suicide over unreciprocated love. The men take longer, but by Shandor’s age, twenty-six, they’re either married to the love of their lives or they’ve gone mad.

Besnik is our oldest-living plagued one. He’s eighty-two, and no one understands how he has survived. His love for Jofranka, the ardent wife of another for fifty-eight years before she passed away, is so strong it beats death. Besnik never had eyes for another woman, and as beautiful and tragic as that sounds, it’s been damn inconvenient for the quality of his life.

I left our community at seventeen and traveled the world alone for a few months before Shandor caught up with me. Since then, most of the time, we travel together—his preference. When he’s not overly controlling, I like it too. I do love my cousin.

I’ve been in most countries in Europe, most states in the United States, and I’ve dipped into South America and Asia as well. It’s why I’m still sane.

I’m fleeing, which has worked out great. As long as I don’t run into my soul mate, I’ll be fine. If I do though, I know for a fact that it’s checkmate.

I’m not a virgin, but I don’t sleep with men who can take over your mind or your heart and cause you to think and worry. What I do is safe and nice, and I only do it on my last night in a town so I won’t get tempted into repeat entertainment.

But after nights like this, when I’ve watched Emil rock his body to the music and unleash his stage persona, I feel myself respond. My reaction is small, but I know what it could be: a bad omen for my heart and my welfare. It could be the start of my fall as a sane human being. What would I do if I plunged into the abyss of the Romani love plague, if I went mad out here without my community? Several of us are locked up in mental institutions across the world, surviving off of pills and water.

I think Shandor is right in one thing: only a Romani man can match the fire in a Gypsy woman’s heart. It’s why he protects me so fiercely from male attention.

I sell a last broken-heart T-shirt to a girl who’s too big for our largest size. She wants it even after I hold it up and show her it won’t fit. Then I look at what she’s wearing and realize “tight as sausage skin” is her style. I give it to her for twelve instead of fifteen because I’ve already packed my change.

Stagehands break the table down for me, so I trail into the meet-n-greet area. I hold a lukewarm beer of my own and nurse it as I watch the guys interact with backstage-pass winners.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Just let in the last group over there by the hot dog stand,” Troll says to security.

“Weird how they sell hot dogs,” Elias says.

“That didn’t weird you out before the gig,” Emil quips. “Five hot dogs, dude, in two buns. You have any idea how bizarre that is to watch you eat? It’s like you’re
swallowing.
Not to mention all the mayo, you know what I mean?”

I’m half-listening as they banter, my beer can clicking in my hand as I squeeze it.

I used to think I had two options to beat my people’s plague: find gasoline for my love fire in a Romani man, or wander from place to place until I die, fleeing from a soul mate I’ve never met. Such a life may sound bad to many, but my restless blood craves traveling anyway. It’s not much of a sacrifice.

“Jesus, you’re gross. And I totally ate them separately.”

“If by ‘separate’ you mean half of one bun with three hot dogs in it, and half of the other with only two hot dogs, then yes.”

“Guys! Guys, guys.” Troll is exasperated, which isn’t new. “Focus. You’ve got fans to please.” He has no qualms saying this right in front of said fans. Bo sets a laser-grey stare into Emil, who opens his hands wide in a
What-did-I-do?
and seamlessly launches into a groupie-melting smile to the closest girls.

I’ve mulled over a third possibility lately for beating my family’s plague. What if I found someone I was attracted to that wasn’t my soul mate, someone whose highest love only simmered at a medium to low flame? As long as we had common interests and the road in our veins, could we not have a good, simple life with an unpretentious affection that didn’t kill with its intensity?

Emil throws his head back laughing, white teeth gleaming with the hint of a sharp edge to the canines. It’s how I’ve come to see him: easygoing, fun, with just the smallest suggestion of an edge. Emil is never upset, never mad. He doesn’t get stressed out like some of the others. No, he’s a hot, confident, cocky rock star with a penchant for carnal needs. Which with my genes I’d have no problem matching.

Emil travels for a living, and even though he doesn’t act on it, there’s definite chemistry between us. If I developed a mild strain of the love fire for Emil, if I extracted him from the groupies and he reciprocated with his snow people’s better, healthier version of love, we could be a good match.

Children
, my thoughts rush on.
Eventually, we could have children.
They’d have golden skin and brass-colored hair, the way the most beautiful children do amongst my people. It’s shameful when they’re born this beautiful, but we don’t speak about it; the mother has lain with someone fair-haired, someone not from our community, and it’s not the baby’s fault.

I think my uterus skips. It’s how I realize it’s been a while since I’ve slept with a man. It’s the hotness onstage influencing me every night then watching Emil, sometimes Troy and Elias too, advance on a girl or allow a girl to flirt with them until they whisk them off somewhere. I’m not jealous—they are my friends and my employers. But it makes me miss giving in to desire.

As I think it, Shandor sidles up beside me. He watches the guys interact with the fans, and chuckles when a tall, redheaded girl bounces in front of Emil and kisses him straight on the mouth. Emil widens his eyes in affected surprise, then grabs her neck to pull her closer and deepen the kiss.

“So…” Shandor finally begins the third degree. “What did Emil say over at the merch table? He looked awfully chummy.”

“Oh stop. He just asked about T-shirt prices and wanted to change them.”

“Yeah, well, it looked like more to me. He’s cool, Shee, as a musician and a buddy, but you’re pretty, and you know how he is with women. Don’t. Trust. Him. And don’t forget your roots. Outsiders never get us, and if anything happens to you, the two of us drop everything and scram.”