The rebel girl in me will never die.
-Anonymous
Bellamy
I don’t even remember being brought to the tour bus. We were set to leave at five a.m. sharp for Philly. Even though it was only a couple hours away it was important that we arrived at every venue early to conduct a sound check and rehearse if we needed to. In almost every case it was necessary, especially when we didn’t know the stage layouts, or if the set up was new to us. Apparently, Butch carried me onto the bus and laid me down right before the bus took off. I don’t recall any of it. I can remember getting the best sleep of my life last night though.
Syd and Rocky were making jokes at me after I woke up on the bus feeling like a lunatic, I knew what I could remember from last night in the hotel room wasn’t a complete figment of my imagination. I can very clearly remember the way Butch’s arms were wrapped around my body, his breath against the back of my head. It’s funny, the whole reason that Slash and Butch are with me is to protect me – to make me feel safe, and last night, that’s exactly the feeling he gave me. The sense of security I felt being in that bed with him was astonishing. I hadn’t let myself fall into that deep of a sleep in ages, but with Butch, I feel like I don’t have to be on guard all the time. It’s a nice change.
It’s just an hour before the show, and I’ve made myself familiar with the stage as best that I could have, never seeing the venue. I haven’t ever played a show in Philly, so tonight’s show will give me a bit of insight on if I’ll have a bigger fanbase here. I pay attention to these things, every city where I’m being received well by the crowd I want to remember – because I want to come back and perform for them, especially because they had seen me while I was opening, basically, while I was no-one.
“Are you gonna fess up and tell me how your likin’ spending the night with two men?” Rocky asks, chuckling as he leans up against the wall next to me.
I turn my head to look at him, grinning “Just as much as I liked spending the night with four.” I add a wink on the end and he cocks his head back, laughing as if I told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Sometimes I think he forgets that I’m a witty gal.
“You haven’t talked too much about them, you know,” he adds, and all of a sudden I’m getting the protective brother vibe from him, and it’s exactly what he is. This guy looks like he could compete with the Hulk, but boy does he have the gentlest and sweetest heart. I glance around and see that both Slasher and Butch are within sight, but not hearing distance. They always seem to have their eyes on me, no matter what I’m doing or where I am.
“I guess I don’t really know what to say. They aren’t bad. Slash is really funny, sometimes he’s a dick – but he’s funny…and Butch is-” I pause, trying to think of how to explain what Butch is.
“Obviously, the one you’ve slept with,” Rocky mutters, rubbing his jaw, grinning like the bird who caught the canary. I punch him square in the arm, and he laughs. “I knew it.”
“He’s nice and is full of surprises.”
“Hmm. Like the many sexual fetishes he has?”
I smack Rocky’s arm, “No, like how nice he is. I actually like him.”
“Let me get this straight. You, the girl who declared she would never go for another ‘bad boy’ likes the muscle that your half-sister sent to watch over you?” Rocky holds his straight face for a few moments longer than I thought he would. He’s right. I swore after Zac that I’d never go for another ‘bad boy’ again, and here I am liking who is most likely the epitome of the term ‘bad boy’. Isn’t it funny how that worked out?
“I know. I sound like an idiot.”
“No, you don’t. You’re human, Bell. We all like people that we probably shouldn’t. I’ve seen the guy a bit and talked to him once, he seems alright, but there’s no denying that being with him is playing with fire; it’s dangerous.”
I think about what Rocky has just said for a long time. He isn’t wrong. There is no denying that Butch is dangerous, but there’s also no denying that my sister is either. What’s the difference? Oh, wait. There isn’t one. I don’t have to think about it long to know that I don’t care if danger is involved. To me, he’s worth the risk.
It’s right now, right here in this very moment where I realize that even though Butch and I have only known each other a short amount of time, the only thing I want to do is see where this leads. I’m not talking about settling down and marrying the guy. I just want to give us a chance, and a good one at that.
The only thing I have to do now is telling him, and that’s going to be the trickiest part of it all.
***
Time flew by and the next thing I knew it was just a few moments before I was due onstage. My mics were secured, my outfit was flawless, and I feel like I’m on top of the world. There are two things that happen right before I’m about to go on. I’m either riddled with a confidence boost that other performers would kill for, or I’m the complete opposite and turn into such an emotional, nervous wreck. The only way I can calm myself enough to go onstage at that point is to take a couple shots of Fireball Whiskey, and boy does that help!
It’s a few days before Halloween, and the temperature is almost perfect. It’s a little cloudy with a slight gust of wind, stopping in at about sixty-five degrees. I couldn’t ask for better weather to perform in. I take a quick peek through the curtain and can see the stadium riddled with fans. These are the kind of shows that I absolutely adore, where I can feel their excited energy. It just makes me that more pumped to put on a show and sing for them.
Earlier in the day, I make the decision to change up my set a little bit. I have five songs that I sing every time I open for The Stones, they’re usually the same and pre-approved by both Evie and the band depending on the city we’re playing in. Tonight, I told Jase that I wanted to do a cover of “Do What U Want,” by Lady Gaga. We’ve sung a lot of duets together, but pop isn’t really his thing. I thought he’d fight me tooth and nail on it, but he didn’t; he gave in immediately and made me thrilled to be doing something different. Everything else was the same, I’d sing my normal four, and then we’d close out with the cover. It was set, and boy did it feel perfect.
My music was my cue, and I lit it up, running out on stage and hyping the crowd up as I did every night. I’d performed in Baltimore one time previously, but not at this venue. The last time I was here I had a great time, the people were so lovely and supportive, and I’m not shocked by how they’re treating me tonight – it’s almost exactly the same, if not better.
I sing my heart out, starting them off slow with a grueling break up melody that I wrote after Zac broke my heart. Then, to a song that I wrote about growth and moving on, with every song that I sing there is a meaning behind it. Behind every song that I cover and every song that I write, there is always some hidden message. Not everyone worked that way, but it’s how I do.
When Jase comes out onstage, he is unannounced, and the crowd goes wild, screaming and hollering. The Stones were crazy famous, but there was no denying that the fans had this special sort of bond with Jase, their front man.
Jase walks over to me and gives me a half hug, kissing the top of my temple, then runs out to the front of the stage, hyping up the crowd even further. I did a pretty good job myself, but this was something else entirely. It’s like he knows exactly what to say to make them go insane. One day I hope to be able to steal some words of wisdom from his book.
He tells them that we were doing something different, something that we had never ever done before, a song that he hadn’t even rehearsed and was sure that he was going to mess up. Hearing the women in the crowd disagree with him is hysterical, and good old Jase, he just smirks and accepts defeat. There was never any song that he could mess up, anyone who had heard him sing would know that.
The music for “Do What U Want” blasts through the speakers, and we both hit every lyric, it is fun, enthralling, and completely exhilarating. The more that I thought about it…the more that I realized I wanted to sing this song because of one person – Butch.
Let’s be honest, he can do whatever he wants to my body.
The fans ate up our performance, and just as Jase and I are waiting to hear the background to our next song, we hear over the speakers that there is a special guest coming to sing with me tonight. I look to Jase, and Jase looks back to me, confused as all h-e-double hockey sticks.
There were no plans for me to be singing with anyone else but him, and if there was…Evie would have surely told me about it.
Jase offers the crowd a smile, walks over to me and whispers in my ear “I’m going to find out what’s going on, okay? Keep them pumped up.”
I nod to him as he jogs off back stage.
He’s gone for maybe a couple of minutes as I’m talking to the crowd, telling them how thankful we are to be here tonight and adding that a few of them may see us in the bars downtown, ‘because we’ve heard how great they are.
It’s right as I’m really getting comfortable with talking to them that the music comes back on, the introduction to a song that I’ve only ever sung with one person, a song that I haven’t sung in a while.
Like a ghost is haunting me, I hear his voice. It sends chills down my spine, and anger courses through every vein in my small body. I have never felt rage so fierce and steady, and yet here it is, all bundled up for the person who somehow managed to get himself on this stage with me.
I calmly turn around, knowing who I’ll see when I look, and just like that, I’ve come face to face with none other than Zac Depp, my ex-boyfriend from the depths of Hell.