Rockstar

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4

Trace wanders over as Da Bomb finishes up their set. The crowd is wild, charged with an energy that seeps into Adam, making his fingers tingle and his heart race. He lives for this moment, this rush. It all comes down to this.

Steff steps out on stage amid the catcalls and whistles. It’s her short skirt, Adam tells himself, not Frankie’s act. The crowd doesn’t know what’s about to hit them. As Frankie brushes by him backstage, he bumps into Adam and laughs. “I’d hate to have to follow that,” he says, cocky.

Adam wants to ram his fist right between those wide, staring eyes. He can’t stand this ass. “You follow me outside,” Adam snarls. “I’ll give you something to hate.”

Trace pushes between them, a disarming smile sliding into place. Always the diffuser, Trace. “Hey, Frankie. Nice act.” He shoves Adam back into Mike, who catches Adam’s arms before the front man for Viral Blue can lash out and cause a scene backstage that will result in their getting bounced from the club before they even get to perform. They know him too well.

“Let me go.” Adam struggles out of Mike’s grip and shrugs to settle his shirt into place. “Come on, Frankie. You and me outside. I’ll show you who’s the best. You want a piece of me?”

Frankie laughs at that. “A piece of your fag ass?”

Adam lunges, trying to reach him around Trace, but Frankie backs away and the rest of his douche band keeps him in check. “You’re a loser, Adam. You and your queer friends sit around jerking each other off all day and you call that a band?”

“Hey!” Trace cries. When Adam tries to push by him again, he’s shoved back, hard. Trace may play it cool on the surface but he isn’t one to let a comment like that ride. “I’m being nice here, Frankie. I’m keeping him from kicking your sorry ass. Show a little respect.”

Suddenly Steff’s in the middle of the skirmish, tiny and biting like a mosquito as she elbows between them. With a hand on Trace’s chest, her red-tipped nails shiny like blood, she hisses, “You guys are on. Break it up, will you? No fighting in the Lot, you know the rules. I’ll kick all your asses if you start something here.”

Adam glares at Frankie a moment longer, bitter and mad. “f**k you,” he spits, because he can’t think of anything better to say. Then he snags his guitar where it rests against the wall and slips the strap on over his head, draping it over his shoulder so it lays just right across his chest. With a tug on his jeans to pull them down a little, letting them ride a bit on his waist the way he likes, he turns for the stage. He won’t let this jerk ruin his chance at a contract if there really are reps out in that crowd. “Listen close, Frankie. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about how to play while I’m out there.”

There’s a scuffle behind Adam that he ignores—Frankie making for him, he knows, and the diminutive Steff holding the jackass back. She’s dead set on that no fight rule of hers. It’s one of the things that keeps the Lot running so smooth.

At the edge of the stage Adam stops to collect himself and feels a familiar rat-tat tapped across his back—Trace rapping his drumsticks together, beating out a rhythm only he can hear. “I was being nice,” Trace mutters.

From Adam’s left, Mike murmurs, “I know.” He strums a hand across the strings of his bass, eliciting a sorrowful sound as he tunes the instrument one last time. “You have to take a number, though. Adam kicks his ass first.”

“Damn straight,” Adam tells them, but he’s only half-listening to their banter. His mind is already focusing on their performance ahead.

For a long moment he gathers himself together, harnessing his energy, reining in his soul. As he stares into the bright lights out on the stage, blinding him, and sees past the glare into the dark faces of the crowd beyond, he assures himself he can do this. As Mike said, he’s done it a million times before. So what if this is the Lot?

This is where I’m meant to be.

In a few quick steps, he crosses the stage to stop in front of the microphone. He barely hears the other guys fall into place behind him over the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. There is one instant when the world seems to freeze around him—one terrifying second when he feels like he’s falling and no one is there to catch him, no one at all…

Then the doubt falls away, the confidence returns, and toward the faceless crowd he flashes a quick smile which he knows can melt the hardest of hearts. Into the mic he laughs—a breathless, affected sound he’s perfected. When he ducks his head just right, it makes him look boyish and a little self-conscious. It’s a good act that settles the crowd and makes the girls swoon. Hell, some of the guys, too, if he’s lucky. “Hey there, everyone,” he says, his breathy voice reaching out over the packed dance floor. “I’m Adam Blue.”

Someone at the bar cries out, “Hey, Adam!”

He’d pay someone to do that if he thought about it, because it makes the crowd laugh and lightens the mood, but he never has to. No matter where they’re at, someone always shouts back.

“Hey,” he says again, with a little wave this time, as if speaking directly to the anonymous person at the bar. He fiddles with his guitar as he speaks, turning the tuning keys tighter, looser, tighter, looser, like a nervous habit. He isn’t nervous, though. He isn’t.

Before he stepped out onstage, he had planned to just start rocking but now that he has the crowd’s attention, he thinks he might have something he wants to say. With that laugh of his, he asks, “Don’t you just hate going out to a local show and hearing nothing but reheated leftovers from the 80’s? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Madonna was cool in her day,” he hurries to add, before he offends anyone, “but you know, she’s old enough to be my grandmother now. How sad is that?”

The crowd laughs along with him. Someone at the bar whoops in agreement, and Adam gives another wave in that direction. Leaning closer to the mic, he teases, “The last time I was like a virgin, I was what, fifteen?”

Now he rouses the crowd—the women go wild, and the men hoot in approval. Trace, always quick to pick up on Adam’s cue, taps his drums and caps the joke with a rim shot. Adam glances back over his shoulder, grinning, but Mike’s confused shrug sobers him up.

“All right, people,” he says, turning back to the crowd. “Seriously. We’re here to bring it, so I thought we’d play a little something I wrote—”

Mike covers his own microphone with his hand. “‘Stairway,’” he whispers. Adam glances at him and frowns at his friend’s huge eyes. “We’re doing ‘Stairway,’ remember?”

Adam tells the crowd, “You know what? My band wants to do ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ While it’s a good song—”

The crowd roars its approval. Adam nods, yes, it’s a great song, as much as he’s sick of playing it, and he lets everyone have a moment to sing out their favorite lines before he talks over them. “Yes, awesome song, and we do a killer version, I promise you. But this is our first night at the Lot. Probably our only night, if I’m being honest, and I want to do something our own. Something I wrote. Something mine.”

Behind him, Trace curses low and Mike growls through clenched teeth. “No.”

Adam ignores them both. It’s his band. “So here’s a Viral Blue original called ‘Piece of Me,’ because I know you want it.” The crowd laughs and he smiles as he purrs into the mic, “Don’t you?”

“Adam!” Mike looks back at Trace, who shrugs.

Come on, Adam thinks, meeting Mike’s hot stare. You want ‘Stairway?’ Fine. You do it. But I’m singing my own song. Adam dares them to do something different as his fingers pick out the opening strands of their own tune.

They don’t. The first three notes are solo, acoustic; then the drums kick in with their steady rhythm, Trace taking up the back beat. Then the bass comes in, hard and louder than it should have been but at least Mike is going with him on this. Adam takes a step nearer to the mike, closing his eyes so he won’t have to pretend he doesn’t see Mike trying to catch his eye. He loses himself in the song, his song. If they’re going to be famous, he wants it to be for his own music, not anyone else’s.