Walking Heartbreak (3 page)

Twenty minutes until they get on stage.

The room is even crummier than the former one. Dark, with peeling paint, it doesn’t embody the beautiful arena meeting you upstairs. A small table tilts on three legs against a wall, and two chairs balance, one on top of the other, at the end of it.

On the opposite side… sits a man with a guitar.

“Play nice, Bo, okay?” Emil warns him. “These are my guests. Zee-sweets, and Nadia, her friend. We’re grabbing the Jameson,” he adds about the only bottle of hard liquor. Then he tugs Zoe with him back out. The last I hear is my friend’s soft chuckling before my access to her slams shut.

I don’t do strangers. Unless it’s work, I don’t talk with them, I don’t mingle, and I don’t interact. This isn’t work, and the stranger in front of me is intimidating. I feel his gaze slide over me, but the dark room makes it difficult to read his expression.

Bo’s focus sinks to the guitar in his lap. His fingers begin to move, caressing metal strings gently. Short and measured, the notes breed until they form a fractured melody. It’s passionate, rich. Slowly, it fills the room.

Black bangs fall in chunky tips over his forehead, obscuring his eyes. From the shadows, the angles of his face protrude in a firm chin and the peak of a bone above a sunken cheek.

He plays love and solitude. Longing and sadness of the kind I don’t want to feel anymore. He strums the complexity of life on his guitar. I lean back, my hands falling open in my lap as I absorb the tapestry his notes weave.

Strong fingers dominate the rhythm and level off the tempo. The volume fades with the slowing speed. His yearning wanes with it too, the shift in him jarring me. When the last raps on the strings reverberate out to the room, they’re objective, concert-quality professional but not pulsating with the ragged intensity he communicated before.

Bo shuts off his music abruptly and mid-beat. It’s bereaving. Instinctively, I know he has a finished song in his head, that he’s not playing the rest. I want him to continue; he needs to fill the silence, because I can’t be a regular, polite person right now.

I’m in a crummy room with three-legged tables, stacked chairs, booze, and premade deli trays. And there’s this man sitting here with me. He’s hiding, wanting to be left alone… and yet he played his heart out to me.

“Hi,” he interrupts softly. The darkness concealing him eases as he sits up, revealing delicate features and pale skin. His cheekbones emerge from beneath hair that still droops low along his face like an anime character’s.

I can’t form words. The fingertips on my left hand rise automatically, waving my acknowledgment.

“It’s strange,” he murmurs, not taking my hand, not repeating our names. He does a subtle, fast shake of his head, getting rid of the spike hanging over his eyes. When they come into view, I blink against mid-winter frost irises, the grey so deep it sparks an ache at the center of my chest.

“Music is everything.” His knuckles hit the wooden carcass of his guitar. A brief, hollow rhythm, sure beneath his fingertips, cuts the air. “Not notoriety, not being discovered by legends like Luminessence and invited on the road with them. Fans, fame—”

He hums out his amusement, a tune, the choked, musical version of
what-was-I-thinking
. “Nothing is truer than a guitar. You know why it’s hollow?” he asks me, his stare glinting in the gloom around us.

“No…”

“It needs room to house the musician’s soul.”

I swallow, and he laughs quietly. Fingers drum against the wood, move up and down, pulling muted calls of love back from the instrument.

“You hear it?” he whispers but doesn’t wait for a response. Curving in over the guitar neck, he adjusts a knob and gives me a taste of his voice. I don’t recall how Emil sings, but Bo’s voice is smooth, a silky, rich and husky sort of sound that makes me swallow again. Halfway into the second bar, he interrupts himself with a chortle, and—
God
, I think,
I hope he sings on stage too
.

“I hear
you
,” I respond, and a nugget of something forms close to my heart, because for me it’s rare to feel kinship. To understand.

Suddenly the minutes breeze by fast. The darkness creeps away as Bo becomes more and more visible. Him—
he
does. Eyes arced with a need to share, he doesn’t tell me his stories. He sings them, knocks them out in rhythms against the guitar’s body, folding in soft laughs. Songs I’ve never heard, tunes he invents while he speaks. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, and it makes me forget. I listen—just listen—and I nod. His presence sucks me in, his beauty musician-strong and fragile at once, androgynous, urban yet primeval—I’m overcome with an urge to film him.

Instinctively, I know he is what legends are made of. For the genius I sense in his music and for the charisma elevating him above regular people. Eternal personalities clip through my mind like in a kaleidoscope. Presidents, actors, rock stars. People who, simply by being in the room, claim your attention. Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, James Dean. I’m no expert, but Bo is Kurt-Cobain material.

I sense tragedy in Bo, and I hope it’s in the past. Not—not—in the now. I fumble with my camera app, trying to be subtle. It’s for me, not anyone else. I want to brand the imprint of this moment to a photo, make it last long after it has left me because I know about past moments. They don’t ever return.

“What are you doing?” he asks gently.

My heart skips. “Oh just looking up your songs.” My finger trembles. Shoots a single picture of him while my cheeks flush warm.

“I’ll give you my songs,” he says. Bo sets his guitar on the floor, rises slowly, and zips a backpack open on the table. It’s the first time I see him without a guitar. Sharp shoulders with no padding rock as he retrieves a stack of CDs. His eyes aren’t on me, so I study him freely.

He’s young, a few years older than me maybe, but the contour of a wrinkle already sits firm between his brows. He draws them together now while he searches for the right CD. Blows air out through his nose in a short, unconscious breath.

The door flies open. Bo looks up, expression alert and grey eyes expectant. “Now?”

Troll stands in the doorway, the silhouette of him against the fluorescent hallway light doesn’t reveal his face. “Yep, grab your shit. We’re on in five. Emil’s ready. And—hey.” He bobs his head at me.

“Hey,” I reply.

“Your girl—Emil says they’ll watch from the stage?” he says to Bo.

“Ah right,” Bo improvises.

“’Kay, it’ll be to the left, next to monitors. No seats though. You good with that?” he asks me.

I nod quickly. A small rush of excitement hits me, like I’m the one going on stage. The tour manager ducks his head into the hallway to shout out orders and questions. I don’t hear the answers.

“Here.” Bo slips me two CDs. Our eyes lock as our fingers meet, but then Troll returns, all attention on Bo.

“Ready, man?”

Bo holds a guitar up high. It’s not the wooden acoustic guitar he’s been playing. This one is black and electric. “Sure, boss.”

In the hallway, Emil, Zoe, and two other guys wait for us. Zoe is under Emil’s arm, their mouths colliding between smiles and giggles. I guess once they started kissing in the dressing room, they never stopped. Zoe breaks free to call out, “Nadia, there you are.”

“Go. Go,” Troll orders, and together we walk down one long, white concrete hallway, then another. Bo checks for me over his shoulder. When I’m slow around a corner, he stops and waits for me. Shifts his guitar over to his left hand so he can grab mine with the other.

I let him.

I’m not a rocker girl,
but this alt-rock—indie-rock—whatever they call it, is different. I don’t remember much of the last time Zoe and I went to see Clown Irruption. It was at a small club on Sunset. That’s about all I recall because it coincided with a bad period of my life.

Now that Emil is up front, Zoe clings to me instead. With an arm draped over my shoulder, she screams, “Check out his ass. Isn’t he just so yummy?”

My eyes go to Bo. The way he cradles his guitar, strumming the first notes of a new song out into the audience. It’s sensual, a deep belief in what he’s doing second nature to every shift he does.

“Not him, silly. Emil! Emil’s butt,” Zoe says.

As if feeling my eyes on him, Bo turns his head enough to locate me. A small smile crooks his lip on one side.

“You know, this is one good-looking band,” Zoe interrupts my stare fest. “Every one of them is, like, drop-dead delish. I mean, are all Swedish guys this sexy? None of their asses have a thing on Emil’s though, and guess what? It’s as thick and firm as it looks, girl. Hell yeah, and I know because I’ve grabbed that ass. Imma gonna grab it again too,” she brags, aware that the last thing I want is for her to launch into specifics.

“Bo, why don’t
you
run with this one,” Emil rumbles out, making some girls at the front of the crowd launch into discordant squeals.

Bo snorts into his microphone and peers at his bandmate. “You always pull this shit on me, Emil. One of these days it’ll work and you’ll be out of a job,” he murmurs. A smattering of laughter trickles through the audience.

“I looooove youuuuu, Bo!” a single female voice shrieks. “Siiiiiiing it! Siiiiing
Never Ever
!”

“Oh that sad-as-shit song?” Emil asks. Beside me Zoe giggles. Come to think of it, she’s been giggling a lot since we got to the arena.

“Nah, he’ll never sing that one. Will you, sugar-pop?” Securing the mic stand with one hand, Emil rushes Bo’s space, stomping like he’s trying to squish a roach. Bo withdraws his foot last second, looking unperturbed by the mini-attack. These two have played games before, probably since before they became band buddies.

Bo laughs softly. “Hey, you’re good at singing my pain. Go ahead, wallow. I mean, enjoy.”

This is a mini-vacation from my life.
I have a sunshine-bright kernel growing in my chest, right at the solar plexus, a feeling I haven’t experienced in eighteen months. Back then, the color of my existence switched from glistening gold to black. At present, my days are grey, but tonight, this kernel of something else gives me hope, and—it makes me feel guilty.

Jude.

I trail behind Zoe and the band off stage, down the stairs to the dressing rooms. She tries to remain behind with me at first, but Emil scoops her into the air, whooping with an endorphin burst I recognize because I used to experience it too.

“Eww, you’re all nasty!” Zoe squeaks.

“If sweat is nasty to you, how do you feel about sex?”

Soul mates. No. Seriously.

“Jesus,” their tour manager mutters to himself. “All right, guys. After-show pizzas coming in ten. Refill of beers and wine on the way.”

“Troll, can you get us a bottle of champagne?” Emil asks sweetly. He sets puppy-eyes on the tour manager, which makes me guess he doesn’t always get his way with him.

Troll stops and turns fully. “Emil. Did you mark
champagne
anywhere, I mean
anywhere at all
on the hospitality writer for this gig?”

“No.” Emil tries to hold back an embarrassed snicker. “But in my defense, I didn’t know I’d have a sexy-ass girl visiting either.”

“Don’t you always,” Troll mumbles too low for Zoe to hear. “Sure, not a problem.” I get the distinct feeling it
is
a problem when he continues louder, “This’ll come out of your per diem, all right?”

Emil doesn’t take the hint though. “Awesome! Sure, put it on my tab. Champagne, babe,” he croons against Zoe’s ear.

“Yum!”

“Just don’t pull anything stupid on me.” Troll lumbers past the lead group and blocks the entrance to the biggest dressing room. “Meet-n-greet. Right here in the hallway since we’ve got no additional space without bothering Luminessence. Got it?”

The guys chat among themselves.

“I said, ‘Got it.’”

There’s a murmur of weak agreement around us, which makes me smile. High school boys being bossed around by the gym teacher is my first thought. They pay him to boss them around?

The drummer spews out beer, laughing at something the guitar-fixer-person says.