CHAPTER FOUR
It felt weird to sit at Neely’s kit, my own drumsticks in my hand; but the crowd in front of the stage was more than ready for Bent Bridges, and it felt good at the same time to look out over a screaming mass of people. Nate looked back at me with a grin, and I glanced at the set list to confirm that I knew the song he and Brant wanted to play first.
I counted in, and on the first beat, Brant and Nate were right there with me. It felt the same way that it had the last time I’d played live with Molly Riot: electric, as if we were bigger than the crowd, bigger than the entire fucking world. I pounded the drums in time with the beat, playing from memory, letting my muscles do the work, not even completely thinking about the song anymore--just hearing it in my head, listening for any shift in the other two guys’ playing. It was like magic. I felt myself grinning as we finished the first song, and I looked over at the side of the stage. Allie was still there, and Neely was watching as well.
The set became just short of a blur after that, with Brant or Nate occasionally talking to the audience between songs, but otherwise hammering through each number with me. At one point, they did bring Neely out to get the crowd’s sympathy for him, and got cheers for me as the substitute drummer. I felt like I could keep playing for hours, but of course for a festival--and since we weren’t headlining--our set was just over an hour long. I was right there with Nate and Brant, playing my heart out, and it seemed like I hadn’t felt this way--this good, this positive, this amazing--in months.
Off to the side, I could see Allie taking pictures; mostly just from the flash on her camera, but soon I lost count of how many she’d snapped by the time we went into the last song of the set together. I threw everything I had into the song, pounding the beat, going into the jam section with the other two guys, coming out of it to finish everything off as hard and explosively as possible. Nate let the feedback from his guitar signal the very end of the set, and then we were walking off the stage, all three of us together.
“Goddamn,” I said, shaking my head while I waited for the ringing in my ears to go down. Allie followed the rest of us back to the green room, and I threw my arm around her shoulders, not even caring that I was drenched in sweat. “Best seat in the house, eh?”
“I’d be shocked if I found out that she took even half as many pictures of Brant and Nate as she did of you,” Neely said, grinning.
“What can I say? I’m a photogenic motherfucker,” I said, shrugging.
“You actually really are,” Allie told me. Some color had risen into her cheeks, and I was so stoked, so full of adrenaline, that all I wanted was to lean in and kiss her. I held back, if only because it wasn’t my gig, and because I needed to at least pretend to hang out with the guys in Bent Bridges. To be honest, after Sophie I was feeling a bit gun-shy about making a move on a girl I hadn’t confirmed wanted me beforehand.
The five of us went into the green room, and I threw myself down onto the couch, pushing my sweaty hair out of my face, waiting for the air conditioning to do its job and cool me off. I was glad I had a change of clothes--they’d probably come in handy in a little bit. There weren’t any showers at the venue, which was a bummer, but assuming that the guys in Bent Bridges had booked a hotel I could always crash there; they’d let me use a shower.
In spite of taking pain pills for his arm, Neely was happy to nurse a beer, while the rest of us started pouring the shots. It felt like the best days I’d ever had with the guys in Molly Riot: uninhibited, a little drunk, a little wild but not in a way that would necessarily get us arrested, especially at a festival like the one we were at.
Allie left for a few minutes to take some pictures of the headliners, and then came back to the green room just in time to get another shot. I finally cooled off enough to start really chatting with her. “So, how’s freelancing?”
“It’s not bad,” Allie told me. “I get to make my own hours, obviously; and apart from clients, I get to work however I want.”
“How long have you been at it?” Allie shrugged.
“I’ve been going for about two years--I started out taking gigs that paid as high as I could reasonably demand, any of them, and then started paring down to what I really liked to do.” I nodded.
“I think all creative jobs are like that,” I said. “I mean, in Molly Riot we basically were in a position for a while there that if someone wanted us to play a show anywhere, we pretty much had to take it.”
“The scene down there is so tough,” Allie pointed out.
“No kidding,” I agreed. “It’s really hard to get shows together, and harder to get enough people to come to them to actually make decent money at it. Most of us had part-time jobs until the band really started taking off.”
“You? In a part-time job?” I laughed at Allie’s shock.
“I did lessons,” I explained. “I had like...eight students at one point. Good kids.” I accepted another shot from Nate, knocked it back and chased it with a gulp of beer. “Actually, fun fact: one of my students was a 70-year-old woman, at one point.”
“Really?” Allie’s eyes widened. “She wanted to learn how to play drums?” I nodded.
“She’d wanted to learn ever since she was five, and her parents and then her husband thought it wasn’t a good thing for girls or women or whatever, so she never did...until her husband passed away.” I grinned. “Great natural rhythm. Hell of a dancer, too.” Allie giggled.
“I take it you know that from experience?” I nodded, still grinning.
“She and her husband did ballroom dancing, and as sort of a ‘tip’ for my lessons, she taught me some steps.”
“Sounds like she had a little crush on you,” Allie suggested. I rolled my eyes.
“She was just a sweet, kickass lady.”
“Did she stop taking lessons, or did you have to give up teaching because of the band’s success?”
“The latter; once we started getting big, I just didn’t have the time. But she’s got backstage passes to any show she wants to come to. Agnes is awesome.”
“We’re moving the party back to the hotel,” Nate told me. I hadn’t even realized that the festival had ended--but I realized that Allie and I had been talking for so long that, sure enough, the noise from the stage area was all but gone.
“Where are you guys staying?” Allie started putting her things away in her bag, and I was doing the same.
“We’re at the Tahitian Inn,” Brant said. “They’ve agreed to let us use the bar and pool as long as we bring our own and don’t break anything.”
“That’s where I’m staying too,” Allie said. “Mind if I tag along?” Brant and Nate looked at each other, looked at Neely, and shrugged.
“You seem pretty cool,” Nate said. “Come hang with us.”
Since Allie wasn’t parked in the artists’ area--she wasn’t playing the show, after all--I walked her out to her car, which wasn’t that much farther away from the backstage complex. I hesitated as she looked for her keys in her bag; the guys in Bent Bridges had already headed out, and we were all but alone--apart from venue security--next to Allie’s old, beat up Honda. “Hey,” I said, licking my lips quickly.
“Hm?” Allie turned around and looked up, and I took advantage of the opening to lean in and give her a quick kiss on the lips. Allie started, but she didn’t try and push me away, or protest. After a moment, she leaned into the kiss, putting her hands on my shoulders, barely brushing her chest against mine. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her more firmly against me, loving the crush of her tits against my chest, the feeling of her lips, the heat of her body.
I broke away from her after a few moments and smiled. “I’ve been wanting to do that for hours, just so you know,” I told her. Allie’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, her lips just a little parted as she looked up at me in surprise.
“I’m glad you did it then,” she said, smiling a little. I let my hands drift down to her hips, but I stopped there. Even if she had the nicest ass I’d seen in months, I wasn’t about to get ahead of myself.
“Let’s pick this back up at the hotel, huh?” I kissed her forehead. “Not that I’m not more than ready to find a quiet spot backstage...but I’d rather make out with you somewhere a little cleaner.” Allie snickered and kissed a spot somewhere on my jaw.
“I’ll meet you there,” she said.