Page 2 of Wild Infatuation (Rebel Rockstars #3)

Chapter Two

Terrance

“YOU’RE REALLY CANCELING ALL your clients for this?” Penelope asks. She cocks an eyebrow at me, but I remain undeterred.

“Already did it,” I say.

She shakes her head, her pink-dyed bob brushing her cheeks.

I did the dye job for her myself. She could have done it on her own, but it was a slow day at the salon and we were bored, so I offered to freshen up the color for her.

It looks great. Her olive skin is warm enough to compliment the color and cool enough not to turn pink like someone paler might.

Of course, Penelope knows that as well as I do.

We’d be pretty bad at our jobs if we didn’t understand something so basic.

“You are missing out on a whole Friday of clients for that band of yours,” she says.

“I am,” I say, unrepentant.

“It’s not like you haven’t seen them before.”

“Yes, but those were shows. This is their first signing since they made it big.”

Penelope rolls her eyes at me, but I’m not backing down.

The second I learned that Baptism Emperor was doing a meet and greet with fans, I cleared my entire schedule and dug up my favorite piece of merch.

It’s a shirt from their first (and so far only) tour, the one they shared with The Ten Hours.

For most of the people at that show, The Ten Hours were probably the bigger draw, but I was there for one reason and one reason alone — Baptism Emperor.

I’ve been watching them from the very beginning, and I’ve yet to miss a show or event in Seattle.

I couldn’t make it to every single stop on their tour …

though I certainly tried. I ended up at five of the shows.

It almost wiped out my bank account, but I can’t say I regret it.

They seemed to play better every single time I saw them.

And now they’ve finally gotten their break.

Before the tour, the fan Discord server I started mostly consisted of me and the five other people scattered around Seattle who go to every show.

But ever since that tour the server has exploded.

I’ve had to bring on more mods to manage the huge surge in interest.

It’s been gratifying, and I’m certainly thrilled that more people are finally waking up to how incredible they are, but a part of me feels like I’m losing the connection I used to have with my favorite band.

They’re constantly swarmed by press, every second of their lives captured by cameras.

The days when I could stand in the back of a dive bar and lock eyes with the lead guitarist are behind me.

Shawn will never be on a stage that small again, and even if he was, he’d never notice me among the crowd.

That won’t stop me trying, though. This meet and greet is a great chance for me to get up close, and it’s well worth losing a day’s worth of clients.

“Whatever makes you happy,” Penelope says.

She pats my shoulder, but I know she means it. She’s not just my co-worker, but also my closest friend, and while she might not get why I’m so hyper-fixated on Baptism Emperor, she’s never tried to dull my enthusiasm.

“I’ll see you on Saturday,” I say.

I wave as I leave the salon. Despite missing out on Friday, I know I can make it up over the weekend. Those are always busy times for hair and makeup appointments.

The salon sits on the bustling road running through the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle.

I leave the main drag with its Indian restaurants and kitschy bars to find my car in the parking lot tucked behind the commercial buildings.

Another benefit of working at a salon is the strange hours.

Since I’m not traveling at the same times as everyone else in the city, I escape the tangle of the busy little neighborhood swiftly, weaving onto the highway to head north toward home.

I can’t afford a Seattle zip code, so my apartment sits about fifteen minutes north, a manageable commute at a way better price point.

My place isn’t big, but it’s all mine, which is pretty good for a cosmetologist. The moment I step inside, a pile of shoes tries to trip me.

I kick my way past them, adding my current pair to the heap.

My kitchen lies only a step away, through an opening that lacks a door, but I pass it and continue on to the living room, cramped by a couch, table and television.

I drop my bag on the couch, where it falls among game console controllers, magazines and a couple sweatshirts I haven’t bothered putting away.

I fill a glass in the kitchen and dump it into the plant sitting beside the television, then throw open the curtains covering the big window beside the living room.

The view of the parking lot a few stories below is nothing to write home about, but I enjoy the waning natural light bruising the skyline.

It won’t last long, but I appreciate summer’s late sunsets regardless.

While I have time, I hurry into the only other room in the apartment — my bedroom.

It’s not much bigger than the rest of the place.

My bed, heaps of laundry and a dresser take up most of the room.

There are more clothes spilling out of the closet, and makeup supplies clutter the counter in the bathroom.

Maybe I should spend my evening cleaning, but it’s not like anyone sees this place except me.

I go to work at the salon, then I come home alone.

That’s how it’s been for a long time, and there’s nothing on the horizon that gives me any hope about that changing.

My obsession with a certain band probably doesn’t help…

The last time I brought a guy home, he took one look at the posters on my wall and doubt shone in his eyes. He stayed the night, but that was the last time I ever saw him. There have been a couple guys like that, plus my boyfriend in beauty school, but we broke up when we graduated two years ago.

Whatever. If people don’t like that I enjoy a band a little too much, then I don’t need them.

I grab my sketchbook and drawing supplies, leaving my worries and my relationship failures behind as I return to the living room.

I sit on the couch, opening my sketchpad to the drawing I was working on last night.

Shawn’s face stares up at me.

It’s as beautiful as I remember, from his stubbled jaw to the firm line of his lips, studded with two piercings, to the dark eyes boring into mine.

I carved out space for his eyebrow piercing, as well as the many piercings in his ears.

Even rendered in pencil, he’s striking. His dark hair swoops over one side of his face, exposing the undershave.

I sketch in a few more strands, letting wisps of hair tickle his forehead and cheeks, wondering if it’s as soft as it looks in my drawing.

I render each strand with as much care as I’d take in my salon.

If he’d let me, I’d go in and clip each individual hair of his undershave until it was absolutely perfect.

He must be doing the shave himself, even now that’s he’s famous.

It’s a little uneven near the back, and the place where the longer hair meets the shave is messy with with stray strands.

Not that that detracts at all from his appearance.

If anything, I’m more attracted to him thanks to these small, human touches.

It shows that even as his band has rocketed to stardom in the past year, they haven’t lost their humility.

They’re still the guys I watched play in every dive bar in Seattle.

More than once, I found myself fixated on Shawn during those shows.

I was there for the music, I really was, but at some point my eyes would always drift to the tall, dark, brooding lead guitarist as his fingers flashed along the neck of his guitar.

And that’s where my gaze would stay, pinned like a nail hammered into a wall.

I could have sworn that Shawn met my eyes at least once, his dark gaze piercing me like a hot knife sliding through butter, leaving my insides a melty mess, but I’ve started wondering if those looks exist only in my imagination.

With the band so big and famous now, those small moments feel like a dream or a fantasy, something I concocted out of longing.

Why would a rockstar ever notice someone like me?

My pencil hasn’t moved in several minutes.

I’ve been sitting here staring at my own drawing as the light fades, and now it’s too dark for me to continue.

I force myself to stop, leaving my sketchpad and supplies on the table as I tend to bodily needs.

Penelope jokes that I would starve to death by lying around listening to Baptism Emperor’s music if she wasn’t here to remind me to get up and eat.

That might be an exaggeration … but not as much of an exaggeration as it should be.

I scarf down the cold pizza in the refrigerator before forcing myself through a shower. The sun has dipped below the horizon, cloaking the world in darkness, but I find myself too restless to go to bed. Instead, I dig through my closet, searching for a particular shirt.

“Ah!” I say as I find it.

I smooth it out. It’s a little wrinkled, but I’ve never worn it, so at least it’s clean.

I lay it out on the bed, running my hands over the image of the five men who makeup Baptism Emperor.

Jacob, the lead singer, stands in the center, with Shawn to his right.

They made this shirt specifically for the tour, and I bought two so that I could wear one while keeping the other in pristine condition.

Now, this pristine shirt will have its moment to shine.

Tomorrow, I’ll present this to the guys and ask them to sign it, and then I’ll probably frame it to preserve those signatures for the rest of my life.

I run my finger along Shawn’s figure on the shirt.

He’s zoomed out compared to my drawing, but this is closer to the view I remember from those dive bars.

Tomorrow, I’ll get the closest I’ve ever gotten to him in my life, and the excitement leaves me buzzing even when I finally coax myself into bed.

There’s no way I’m going to manage to get any sleep tonight, not with the meet and greet looming mere hours away.

After a few minutes of tossing and turning, I sit up, snatching the shirt, not caring if I wrinkle it as I hug it against my chest. A thin bit of cotton is no substitute for a real person, but it’s not like I’m going to touch Shawn tomorrow, either.

It’s only a signing, and I’m not a stalker, just a …

very enthusiastic fan. Still, for a few brief moments I’ll be almost as close to him as this shirt is to me.

I’ll look into those dark eyes from inches away instead of from across a dark room. He’ll be right there, so very real.

In all the time I’ve watched these guys play, I’ve never so much as approached them after a show to buy them a drink, yet in mere hours, I’ll be close enough to count their eyelashes.

It’s beyond a dream come true, and I plan to make the most of it.

This is probably my only shot to see them this way.

Now that the world knows about them, they’re only going to keep getting more famous and more distant.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I do, I’m still hugging that shirt to my chest.