Page 58 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)

Chapter Thirty-Three

T he air sizzled with anticipation as the opening notes of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” reverberated around the Arena Birmingham. The crowd screamed. The hairs on the back of my neck would have been standing on end, if I hadn’t made certain there weren’t any. I’d seen Cole’s gig half a dozen times now, but never from the wings of the stage. Nick whacked me on the leg and offered up his beer bottle for me to cheers. High above us, Cole was dressed only in his underpants, his legs straddling a cello. I felt jealous of it, to be honest.

“I can see right up your boyfriend’s arse,” Nick said, looking skyward.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I protested for the hundredth time. Since the moment we’d arrived, Nick had been relentlessly pumping me to explain why Cole and I had been so late getting the van up to Birmingham.

“He’s got glutes like two baseballs in a sock,” Nick mused, still looking up. “But you probably noticed that while you were banging him in a lay-by on the M5.”

“I keep telling you, nothing happ?—”

The full orchestration of the opening number filled the auditorium, making it impossible for Nick to hear my response. Suddenly, Cole was right beside us, untangling himself from the rope he’d used to fly down from the rafters. He was stunning, wearing nothing more than tiny black briefs, a microphone pack, and mascara.

“Jesus, he’s got the bat tucked in at the front, as well,” Nick said. I slapped his shoulder in warning. Cole’s eyes found mine. A team of three women bustled around him, fabric flying everywhere, but his eyes never left mine. Ten seconds later, Cole Kennedy was completely dressed and ready to get back out onstage to sing the verse. He had maybe eight seconds. Nine max. But he strode towards me with determination on his face, scooped me up in his arms, and kissed me like he wanted his Haribo back. Before I even knew what was happening, he was gone, but his voice was singing the next verse. A few moments later, he came up through a trapdoor in the centre of the stage with his guitar, his vocals drowned out by nearly sixteen thousand screaming fans. Nick glared at me, eyebrows raised—proving it’s possible to call out someone’s bullshit in at least three Scots dialects using only the top half of your face.

“Nothing happened, my aunt Fanny.”

“Shut up, will you? If the press gets a whiff of this?—”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Oh, I wish you’d said something sooner, I’ve already faxed Rupert Murdoch. You daft bawbag.”

An hour or so later, Nick went off in search of an accessible loo. I needed to go, too, but I knew Cole was coming up to “The Flame,” and call me sentimental, but now that I knew it was “our song,” I wanted to hear him sing it. In fact, it had become a bit of an earworm since Cole sang it to me in the field. I’d found myself humming it quietly as we drove up the motorway, and when Cole heard me, he’d looked over, smiled, put his hand on my leg, and joined me in singing it. Soon, he was singing the verses and I was joining him for the chorus. Then we started playing around. He’d sing the chorus and I’d harmonise, or I’d sing a verse and he’d riff off the melody with vocal interpretations. We must have spent half an hour mucking around with the musicality of the song—singing to each other, singing with each other, playing together, pushing each other, experimenting, learning, and falling deeper, and deeper, and deeper into whatever this was.

The music had stopped, waking me from my thoughts. Onstage, Cole was standing at the microphone. He looked like he was going to speak. I’d seen every single show of this tour, and Cole had never spoken before singing “The Flame.”

“Who here has ever been in love?” Cole asked the crowd.

Panic began to rise inside me.

“I love you, Cole!” a woman shouted. Thousands of Kenneddicts cheered.

“I love you too,” he said. More screams. He waited for them to die down. “Who here has lost someone they should have held on to?” he asked the crowd. Another cheer, more subdued than the last. That’s when I realised Cole was going to tell our story onstage. This would fire our fledgling flirtation out of a cannon and onto the front page of every newspaper across the country. I waved frantically, trying to get Cole’s attention. My heart rate climbed rapidly up through its gears. I couldn’t breathe. Tremors made it hard to stand upright. I willed Cole to hear my thoughts, willed him to look in my direction.

“Some people think this is a song about unrequited love,” he said. “But this is a song about hope.”

Finally, Cole looked over at me. He smiled that trademark smirk, winked, and played the opening notes of our song. Relief washed through my body like that first, glorious colonic irrigation after Christmas. Nick rolled up silently beside me and hit me on the leg, nearly making me jump out of my skin.

“You OK, pal? You look like you’ve passed a kidney stone.”

At the end of the show, after the “Genevieve” encore and five curtain calls, Cole ran off the stage and scooped me up into his arms. He spun me around, his lips finding mine.

“What are you boys doing now?” he said, putting me down. “Do you want to come back to the house for a bite?” His eyes looked hopeful.

“Are you including me in this invitation?” Nick asked.

“Of course,” Cole replied.

Nick shook his head. “That’s very nice of you, but Friday night is date night, and I’m FaceTiming my husband in half an hour. Tonight, he’s recreating the scene in True Lies where Jamie Lee Curtis strips for Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s spent all week learning the choreography. I cannot let him down.”

Cole spluttered.

“I’m sorry, he says things like this sometimes,” I said.

“I’ll leave you two to your baseball game.” Nick winked and unhooked the brakes on his wheels. “Don’t forget we’ve got a production meeting at ten, Tobes.” He spun around and rolled away.

“Two for dinner, then?” Cole asked, putting an arm around my shoulder. “I have to go do the meet-and-greet, but Mitch will stop by your hotel and pick you up in an hour?—”

“No,” I said, surprising myself almost as much as Cole. “Not tonight. It’s been a big day. I need to sleep.”

Cole frowned. “Have I done something wrong?”

No, but he nearly had—and I hadn’t liked it. Not one bit.

“Tell me,” he said.

“Fine. I thought you were about to tell sixteen thousand strangers our business, and it scared the hell out of me.”

Cole looked worried. “Did it happen again?”

I nodded.

Out of nowhere, Cole yelled, “Clear the stage!”

Somewhere, someone repeated his order, and people scurried away like mice. Within seconds, the backstage area was quiet except for the distant sounds of the last Kenneddicts shuffling out of the auditorium.

“Toby, I am so sorry,” Cole said. “I didn’t think. I should have. I feel terrible. Now I’ve caused a second panic attack. Please, forgive me.”

“Two?” I scoffed. “You’ve caused hundreds, mate.”

Something seemed to click in Cole’s brain, finally. I could see it in his face.

“I promise I’ll do better,” he said, reaching for my hands. “The last one you had scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what to do. Tell me what you need from me. I’ll do anything.”

“You can start by not telling sixteen thousand strangers about us.”

Cole nodded. “I hear you. I got carried away, and I’m genuinely sorry. It’s just… I’m so happy, I want to shout about it from the rooftops. I want to run up to strangers in the street and tell them I’ve won the golden ticket. I want to pay Russian hackers to spam people’s social media accounts with the news that Cole Kennedy has convinced the most amazing guy in the world to at least give him a shot.” Cole’s hands held my shoulders, his eyes pleading. “I get that you’re not ready. I can wait.”

“Cole, I’m not gonna lie, I’m never going to be ready for that.”

“ Never ?”

Cole looked crushed.

“This thing, between us, it has to remain a secret.”

Cole let his hands drop. “For how long?”

“I told you, the minute there’s any link between you and me, my life becomes hell. Not only mine, my family’s too. I can’t go through all that again. And my family shouldn’t have to.”

Cole leaned back against the amplifier tower and let his head roll back, looking skywards. He buried his hands in his pockets and let loose a long, sad sigh. I wasn’t sure whether to leave, to speak, or to hold him. It must have been a full minute before he spoke.

“You know, I wouldn’t tell anyone about Jasper,” he said, finally. “For the whole eighteen months we were together. I wouldn’t let him tell anyone about us.”

“You weren’t out,” I said.

Cole rolled his head sideways, his eyes meeting mine. “I mean, no one . The band knew, obviously, and all the crew. But no one else. He never met my family. I never met his. He always complained about how shit that made him feel, but I never listened. I didn’t care.”

“Why not?”

“Jasper said I was ashamed of him.”

“I’m not ashamed of you,” I said.

“He was right. I was ashamed of him.”

Cole wasn’t listening. He didn’t need my response. He needed to say what was on his mind. I sensed he’d been carrying this around for a long time.

“He was a shit boyfriend,” Cole said. “He had a lot of jealousy issues. He was incredibly controlling, and not letting him meet my family became the one little bit of control I felt I had over him. We were both taking a lot of drugs, which doesn’t help rational decision-making. It was a completely toxic relationship.”

I put my arm around Cole’s waist to coax him into a hug. His arms wound around my shoulders, enveloping me in his warmth, the smell of sweat and cinnamon.

“One night a photographer snapped us together on a beach in Florida, and we got into a huge fight because I got Totally Records to pay for exclusive rights to the photos to stop them being published. I wasn’t publicly out yet, but Jasper knew how much I wanted to be out. It was the perfect opportunity to do it. Once the photos were out, what could Felicity do? But I didn’t want people to know about Jasper. I couldn’t go on TV and say ‘Yes, I’m gay, and this is the man I love,’ which is Crisis Comms 101. Because I didn’t love him. Jasper was furious. We were both high. He started smashing up the hotel room, saying he was sick of being my dirty little secret. He slammed a champagne bottle through a glass coffee table. Then he tripped over a cord and fell straight into it. He ended up in the emergency department. I refused to go with him.”

I recognised this as the famous incident that led to a ￡20,000 hotel bill and, eventually, to Robbie Johnswagger’s intervention.

“He was so angry about that, he told the team I’d thrown him through the table and threatened to go to the press.”

“He never!”

“Thankfully, Jasper’s cuts and all the evidence supported my version of events, not his. Totally Records paid him a heap of hush money, made him sign an NDA, and at the end of the US tour he went off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. And I was finally allowed to check into rehab.”

“Cole, I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”

“Rock and roll, baby,” he said, and kissed me on the forehead. “My point is, I feel like I’ve earned this karmic energy. If you’re not ready for the world to know about us yet, Tobes, that’s OK. But if this… thing… between us becomes a capital- T Thing —and I genuinely hope it does—then I don’t want it to be a secret. I want the whole world to know.”

Cole’s eyes searched mine. He brushed his fingers through my hair and cradled my head in his hand.

“I don’t think I can give you that,” I said.

Cole’s thumb stroked slowly back and forth behind my ear, making my whole body tingle.

“I’ve waited a long time for you, Toby,” Cole said. “Precisely because I know you’re worth waiting for. It’s going to be torture, but I respect your wish.”

There was an explosion of relief in my gut, and the heat rose through my body in a mushroom cloud, destroying everything in its path.

“Thank you,” I said.

Cole pressed a hand against the small of my back, pulling me into him. The baseball bat dug into my stomach as he kissed me, and I leaned into him to make sure he knew I still wanted this.

“But I reserve the right to make it my full-time job to convince you otherwise,” he said as we pulled apart.

Ugh.

I was too tired to argue the point.

“I have to go to the meet-and-greet,” he said. “Sure I can’t persuade you to hang out later?”

“Not tonight,” I said. “Tomorrow, maybe.”

Cole shook his head. “I’m going to Melbourne to see my therapist.”

“Australia?”

“Derbyshire.” Cole laughed. “It’s like fifty miles up the road. I can’t be this close to Summer and not see her. Besides, I have a lot to talk to her about.”

“Fair enough,” I said, knowing he meant me—and literally this conversation. If it helped him get it, that was fine by me. “I’ll see you at showtime tomorrow night, then?”

“It’s a date.”