CHAPTER 1
Cory
My past just caught up to me, because for one careless second I forgot to run.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How the heck did I forget we were here?
It was the masking tape that reminded me. The masking tape that put me in an instant foul mood. I stomp backstage and hand off my guitar to a member of the crew and drain a water bottle in two long swallows, then pull the sweaty black tee over my head and run a towel across my chest. I need a shirt, and fast. Intermission lasts ten minutes, and I need to sit and calm down while I can. The last thing the crowd needs is for me to act pissed off for reasons they can’t control.
Springfield, Missouri.
I give the room a great big eye roll and collapse into a leather chair. Leaning my head back, I alternately replay the first half of the show and try hard not to. I need a minute to clear my muddled head, a minute to come back down to earth and rid myself of the tension and dread that have enveloped me for the last half-hour. Blinking up at the ceiling, I wait for the feeling to pass. Wait a little more.
It doesn’t happen.
The moment I spotted that tape on the floor I nearly came undone, right there onstage and in front of everyone. Before each concert, a crew member tapes a strip to the floor behind a speaker. On it, our location is written in bold black marker so that I can shout the correct name of the town to the audience. “We love you, Seattle! You’re my favorite, San Antonio!” Blurting out the wrong city never goes over well. When you live out of a suitcase, when you wake up in a different place every day, it can sometimes be difficult to keep them all straight.
Tonight I forgot. Or blocked it out, whichever. I wasn’t prepared for the pain that rammed my gut when I read the name.
Springfield is my hometown.
I hate everything about it.
For reasons that belong only to me, I haven’t been back in a decade.
Thank God we’re leaving tonight. From now on if we need to perform in Missouri, I’ll agree to St. Louis and nothing else. No discussion. Springfield won’t make the list again.
“One minute, Cory,” my manager says. I barely register his yellow tie and pink dress shirt, though both look terrible together. I just hold up a finger in a hang on and close my eyes. Sal has been with me since the beginning. He’s eccentric in dress and slightly odd in personality, but he knows me better than almost anyone. The me I am today, at least. He doesn’t know anything about the Cory who ran from this city almost ten years ago.
And he never needs to.
“Put this on and get back onstage,” Sal says. A clean black t-shirt lands on my face like I knew it would. I sit up with a groan. The shirt is over my head in two seconds and I’m walking up the stairs in four. Time to shake it off. Time to smile. Time to start the second half of this show and make it better than the first. Time to check off my to-do list like a robot if that’s what it takes to get through the rest of the night.
Get onstage.
Grab your guitar.
Pull the strap over your shoulder.
Bring it around your waist.
Strum a couple chords.
Forget where you are.
Look at the audience.
Breathe.
And that’s when I see her.
I lock eyes with the girl in the front row, both inspired and stunned at the sight of her.
Her smile could ignite this whole arena.
The most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.
But I hate the color of her shirt.
Odd thoughts to have at a very strange time, but nothing is normal about my life. Everything is weird and the memories are worse. I feel myself being pulled by them—Springfield, Springfield, remember, remember—then shake my head to force myself back to the present before anything takes root.
Concert.
Crowd.
Sing.
Forget.
The girl is still looking at me, so I wink at her. Every night the routine is the same: I choose a girl from the crowd—preferably one with a boyfriend because making some guy jealous for a few minutes is part of the fun—and concentrate on finding some sort of connection before the concert is over. In my world, connection is as rare as one-on-one conversation about something not work related, so I try to make the best of it. This girl in the unfortunate yellow shirt with the short red hair is gorgeous and gazing up at me with excited eyes as she sings along with me. It’s the kind of scenario that almost always works in my favor, especially in the half hour after the show. Women with smiles that wide are normally as eager as they are star-struck.
But tonight, something isn’t clicking right inside my head. Maybe it’s her age; she looks young. Innocent. Maybe it’s her shirt; yellow gives me a bad vibe for good reason. Maybe it’s a sense of unease that I can’t explain, like she’s familiar somehow even though I know we’ve never met before. Maybe it’s just our location and my desire to be done with this place. Whatever it is, my mind isn’t on sex. It’s on her smile. That look is the reason I wanted to be a musician in the first place. I grin at her and look out into the crowd, aware of the squeals of delight coming from her area. It’s hard not to laugh when I get that reaction.
I swing the electric guitar around to my back and look across the sea of more than twenty thousand screaming people. A mass of shadowed figures are backlit by track lighting, but like the redhead, a few manage to stand out and burn their way into my memory.
Off to my left, there’s a heavily teased, dreads-wearing blonde with two studs threaded through her eyebrow and nose—she scares me a little. Right in front of her is a little boy of maybe four years old who cries, arms outstretched to his tube-top wearing, impatient-looking mother—he concerns me a little. There’s a bombshell brunette in a down-to-there black halter who keeps leaning forward to make sure I get a good look at her cleavage—she distracts me a little. I smile to myself as I take in the heavily tattooed guy standing at her side. He glares up at me a lot.
Too bad I have a thing for messing with angry boyfriends.
I lean toward the chick, lace my calloused fingers through her smooth ones, and pull her toward me a bit. She screams—limbs shaking, tears streaming down her face—and I glance at the boyfriend. If looks could kill, I’d be lying in a box buried six feet under. I move a little closer.
It’s a mistake. In that one second, a dozen hands grab for my forearm, my calf, my butt. I’m being pulled forward into the crowd. My heart stops for a beat…maybe two. It doesn’t start again until Big Jim’s shadow falls across me. Thank God he’s here, because I don’t know what to do. It’s my bodyguard’s job to have my back at every public appearance. At the sight of him, the grip the crowd has on my body loosens, and I manage to scoot back. I exhale and look behind me in time to see Big Jim receding into the shadows. His glare is lethal and trained on me; I mess up, he cleans up. It’s the way we’ve always worked. I’ll get an expletive-laced lecture for it later. Something tells me he’s growing weary of being the caretaker.
With my heart rate slowing, I saunter toward the microphone and settle the guitar at my waist, then strum a random chord.
“I want to thank you guys for coming out tonight.” My voice reverberates around the arena. “To sweat with us, to dance, to make some noise in this heat!” I’m standing in hell and doing battle with the devil. My shirt is growing damp under the lights; my hair is stuck to the back of my neck, I’m in desperate need of a drink. I reach for a water bottle and take a sip, wipe my forehead with my forearm.
“It’s been a fun night in Springfield!” The crowd goes wild with the mention of their hometown. The line is a cheap ploy for applause, but it always works.
It works against me. I feel sick.
“Just remember,” I say, waiting a second for my unease to settle. “After you leave this place, be safe. Go and live beautiful lives. Have fun, don’t take life too seriously, and be awesome. We love you, Missouri!”
On cue, Mark begins to play the opening riff of our final song. Everyone is on their feet, and once again I ease back into my routine, checking off my list. Strum three chords, grip the microphone with all five fingers, and don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. In the same way whiskey and women work to distract other guys, the crowd always manages to distract me.
Of course I’m not completely unfeeling. Offstage, whiskey and women work on me too.
“We’ve got one more song for you tonight. So here’s your last chance to get a little crazy!” Everyone jumps up and down. Even the little boy on the front row looks happy, and that more than anything makes this night worth it.
Riley leads us into Crazy Little Things, our latest single. Just yesterday, the song hit number five on Billboard. Judging by the crowd’s response tonight, it should be number one by next week.
It’s hard to be happy about it when all I see is that yellow shirt staring me in the face. Yellow is the color of my youth, and not all of us want to drink from the fountain of it.
No matter how high I climb in the charts, my past will always be there trying to pull me back down.