Page 47 of Dedicated
“Nervous as shit.” Evan laughed, and just the sound of it after so much thick silence flooded me with relief. “Isn’t that stupid? How many hundreds of shows have we done?”
“Yeah, but none since we agreed to this dumb charade.”
Evan rolled his shoulder through a wince and nodded. “It’ll be fine, though. They won’t care.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “Shit, there are whole fandoms devoted to AU pairings. If we were fiction, we’d have been one long ago.”
“Like Spock and Captain Kirk.”
“You’re giving me that stupid smirk because you’re thinking of me as Spock, aren’t you?”
“Yep. And those ears.” I snapped my teeth at him, and his laughter hit me like spring air.
Dan walked off the stage and into our impromptu backstage area, giving us the thumbs-up. “You’re good to go. Any funny business and I’ll chuck ’em.”
* * *
The show wasoff from the get-go. The sound was great, and the audience was enthusiastic, but Evan and I were out of sync.
We ran through some of our older hits first. The first two songs went fine, but when he started “Chanteuse,” I lagged behind a half beat and had to leap to pick up, which threw off the opening verse. We stopped and laughed through it, Evan cracking a joke about vacation making us lazy to smooth things over. Then it happened three more times, and this time it was his fault. He was too mired in his head. I could tell because he wasn’t doing his usual thousand-yard stare over the heads of the audience, but was focused hard on his guitar, instead, as if it had wronged him. We barreled through without stopping again or calling attention to our fumbles, but Evan kept glancing over at me, so then I started to become all too aware of my timing and psyching myself out.
We played the next batch of songs, cutting in some of the new stuff we’d been working on. The crowd seemed to like it—heads were nodding, they were dancing, there was plenty of applause. I watched faces the way I watched the slot machines in Vegas, scrutinizing expressions with my stomach in a knot, waiting for that perfect combo that meant a jackpot. Just before we took our first break, I did my ask-the-audience bit and, no surprise, the dude I’d pointed out asked for “Blue.” Fucking “Blue.” I had zero interest in playing that damn song right then.
I shook my head and chuckled. “Aww come on, man. It’s been done to death. Pick something different.” The whole room got eerily quiet, and Evan’s mouth dropped open like I’d committed the ultimate faux pas.
The guy I’d singled out darted a nervous gaze between the two of us, clearly uncertain of how to reply. Evan strummed the opening chords of “Blue,” leaning into the mic. “He’s fucking with you. We’ll—”
“We’ve got something new,” I blurted without turning my head to the side so I wouldn’t see the daggers Evan was undoubtedly shooting at me for veering off course. I felt it anyway.
“So you pick. ‘Blue’? Or something virgin no one else has heard, yet? Not even… Evan.”
The audience exploded at the prospect, cheering and pumping their fists, and it was only then that I dared a glance at Evan in time to see a brief flash of horror he masked quickly with a smirk. Evan hated surprises, but I was willing to bet he’d hate giving that fact away to the audience even more.
“How fresh are we talking here? Fresher than yesterday?” he asked, trying to suss it out.
“Fresh as last night.”
Evan let out a low whistle, and there was scatter of laughter through the audience. Behind his loose smile, I could sense his anxiety. “Keeping me on my toes, huh?”
“I like to watch you dance.” Someone catcalled as I winked at Evan, then turned back to the crowd, strumming the opening notes. I’d had the basic melody stuck in my head for days, but it was only in the small hours of the night before that the lyrics had come:
I am smoke and fire
And you’re the coming rain
The thunderhead in the distance
That will wash me clean again.
The chord pattern was simple enough that Evan would be able to pick it up after a single verse, and he did, weaving in a basic harmony when I hit the second.
The audience loved it, and I had to admit it was a decent song, especially once Evan got involved. I could tell the moment he fully settled into it and got comfortable. It was hard to explain, but it was as if I could hear it click into place for him by the way his fingers started running wild over his guitar strings, pulling out notes that wrapped around my score and squeezed it until the sound spun out into beautiful chaos. On the final chorus, Evan’s voice came in high over my rich baritone, and the last few bars haunted the air like ghost notes hovering over the crowd.
A prolonged silence followed, and for a second I thought I’d misjudged the reaction, then they went apeshit. The volume of applause in such a small place was crushing. I basked in it for as long as I could and then disappeared backstage with Evan for a break before it stopped, sweaty and high with the residual adrenaline of absolutely nailing it. In an hour I’d have the musician version of a hangover, but I didn’t care. It felt so damn good in the moment.
Evan was another story.
“What the fuck was that?” He tore his guitar off and dragged me out of earshot of Dan and the few other people backstage.
“Improv?” I ducked my head into the hole of my T-shirt to mop at the sweat on my brow, “They loved it. God, you killed it, and when you twisted your voice up there at the end? Ugh, it was brilliant. I’ll never get how you do that shit.”