The Sound of Us (12 page)

The people in line grumble and shift in discontent. I try not to make eye contact, because I’m sure they could kill me with one look, and I don’t blame them. I hate line-cutters, too.

“¡
Que pasa, amigo
!” the doorman greets in a thick Spanish accent. “Boaz’s in the green room if you’re looking for him.”

“Nah, he’s probably playing his Gameboy. Don’t want to mess up his gym matches.” He motions me to step up beside him, and I do. “She’s with me.”

“Legal?”

“Funny,” I deadpan.

“Ah no! Did not mean like
that
.” Luis the Doorman chuckles. “It is a pleasure,
señorita
. How did you get mixed up with this
pendejo
?”

Roman’s eyes widen. “Did you just call me a—?”

“He bought me condoms,” I interrupt, and lean in to whisper, “if ya know what I mean.”

“J-Just to ask her for ice cream!” Roman flubs, a blush blossoming on his cheeks. “I wasn’t—we weren’t—ah shit...”

The bouncer howls a belly-rippling laugh, and slams his hand on Roman’s back heartily. It knocks the breath out of him. “It’s okay,
pendejo
, I understand. She’s fierce.”

“Oh, don’t I know it,” Roman replies and outstretches his arm. His blush is sort of fading, but it might just be because he shifted into the shadows of the wall. “
Mademoiselle
, shall we leave him to his doorman duties?”

“We shall, good sir.” I pull my arm into his. Even if he is in love with another girl, this is safe enough, right?

The venue is a sea of dark moving shapes. The lights are low, neon lights beneath the beers and liquors behind the bar casting shadows on everything inside. Black lights color Bon Jovi’s illustrated head on my t-shirt and my Converse shoestrings neon purple. Roman’s orange hair looks radioactive. The stage takes up half the building, cascading down into an open cement floor. The rafters are rusted; the roof—or what I can see of it—is tin. At one point, the Lona might’ve been a small warehouse. It definitely still smells like one.

So this is where Roman Holiday played their first gig when they were still just Holly and Roman? I can’t see the tattoo of the bar’s name on Roman’s shoulder because it’s so dark, and his shirtsleeve covers most of it, but I know it’s there.
Isla Lona
in curling, loopy script, so faded it almost looks like
Is a Lone.

A chill curls up my spine.

The crowd, elbowing each other to get through the masses, are a bunch of hipsters with cornrows and black-framed glasses, baggy sweaters, and tight jeans, beside rock gurus and locals come to hear Boaz—or to quote the marquee outside, ‘THE BOAZINATOR.’ What a ham.

The crowd reminds me of the Lining a little, how little clusters of people hang around tables and shoot the shit at the bar, and it begins to make me feel guilty, and a bitter taste curls against my tongue. I’m out on the town with a rock star and my dad’s bar is sinking into
foreclosure
.

What’s wrong with me?

A few uncertain music-goers glance Roman’s way, conflicted, but no one says a word. Probably because it’s too strange to comprehend. A rock star
here
in Myrtle Beach. I’m sure plenty of celebs come to Myrtle, but they probably don’t come to places where they can catch herpes from the toilet seat covers. The fact that Roman
is
here in this darkly lit claustrophobic corner of the world is what makes him alluring and mysterious. He turns heads as he tries to move through the crowd, curious glances that turn into double takes.

It also doesn’t help that he can’t move through a crowd worth shit. When we make an inch of leeway, he backs up to get out of someone else’s way. With my arm slipped into his, I can feel him beginning to tense and twitch with nervousness. He migrates around people like they’re land mines ready to explode.

At this rate, we’ll never get a good spot.

“C’mon, slow poke.” I take the lead, hip-checking a hipster.

Roman follows behind me like a dead weight. You’d think he could navigate crowds more easily since he’s been making them for the past five years.

Finally, I break out of the throng of people to freedom and sit down in one of the stainless steel stools at the bar. I pat the seat beside me. “Unlike you,” I tell him as he sits down, “I’ve actually spent my life
in
the crowd. Ever heard of the hip-check? The elbow-rub?”

“I’ve heard of elbow
love
,” he replies, ordering a drink.

“’Time Warp’?”

“It’s just a jump to the left—hey look! There’s the
Boazinator
.” He nods his head toward the stages.

A blue mohawk bobs over the top of the crowd, carrying a keyboard. He situates it in the center of the stage, huge-ass stereos behind him, and brushes an invisible piece of lint from his black and red kilt. He’s wearing unlaced combat boots and a black t-shirt that reads in a really ridiculous
Terminator
-esque script reads, ‘THE BOAZINATOR.’ “Is that seriously his solo handle?”

“Hey, don’t judge the Boazinator.”

“No judgments here. Why aren’t you playing with him?”

He shrugs noncommittally. “He doesn’t need me crowding the stage,” he says, but there’s something unspoken in those words. Does he think that he can’t anymore? Or could it be he’s just afraid? The bartender slides him a beer, and he thanks him, taking a sip. It smells like apple cider. “And if I did, the press would be here in droves. Boaz can accomplish low-key. I can’t.”

“Even under another name?” I ask.

“And what other name would I choose?”

Shrugging, I scoot away from the couple on the other side of me who look like they might just suffocate in each other’s mouths. “Something exotic. Erico Martinez.”

“Do I
look
like an Erico Martinez?” He motions towards his white-tan skin. I never noticed before, but there is a scattering of freckles on his arms.

“You definitively don’t look like” —I pause before I mouth— “
Roman Montgomery.
” To emphasize, I give a pointed look at the tiger and phoenix tattoo on his bicep.

He rubs it with a shrug. “Because I got a sleeve?”

“And dyed your hair. And abandoned your badass leather.”

“You thought that sweaty leather was
badass
?” He nods appraisingly, thinking. “You know, I can bring that back...”

I shake my head. “Don’t.” And then, quieter, I add, “I like you now.”

“As the ex-rock star of the defunct rock—”

“—
Pop
—”

“—Band you hated?”

“No. As you.”

For a long moment, he doesn’t say a word. He just stares, like he didn’t hear me properly the first time, his emerald eyes reflecting the purples and blues of the bar lights. Doesn’t he believe me?

I want to tell him that, okay, maybe his hair is too orange and sometimes he has a wishy-washy temperament, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. He doesn’t have to try to be extraordinary for me, because a part of me thinks he already is.

I keep my mouth closed, however, because how could I live up to the girl in his song?

Mohawk rushes offstage and the lights flicker to tell the crowd t-minus five minutes until the show. The bar is so crowded now they’ve pushed us together. Our elbows graze each other when we move and send electric shivers up my skin.

He rubs the condensation off the beer glass with his thumb. “I’m not the same guy I was a year ago, Junebug.”

I think about myself, and the cut on my hand, and wonder how anyone
could
be the same after all is said and done.

“I know.”

The lights flicker and a pre-made beat pulses through the speakers onstage. Roman leans back against the bar and orders another beer. I sit straighter, trying to see over the movement of the crowd. Maybe bar seats were a bad idea—I can barely see anything, much less pay attention to the music with so much lipsuck going on from the couple beside me. By the third song, I’m sure they’ll be doing the last tango in Paris.

Onstage, Boaz comes back out, situating his red and black kilt. Does he only wear kilts? And free-ball it underneath like a true Irishman? Oh God, I hope not.

He throws up a shocker and says into the microphone, “How’s it hangin’, bro-hahos?”

The crowd cheers.

“Badass, bras. Badass! Let’s start with some super chillaxin’ shit. Get our grooves on, right?” His fingers glide across the notes in a messy run as he slides into a chest-pounding set.

I elbow Roman in the side and shout over the music, “’Rock ‘N Roll All Nite’—KISS.”

“I always wondered what KISS stood for,” he shouts back. The music is so loud; we’re inches apart and can barely hear each other. Shouting over a piano is a first for me. “Do you know?”

“KEEP IT SIMPLE SWEETHEART,” I guess, and he throws his head back in a laugh.

“KILLING IDIOTS SO SOFTLY,” he adds.

“KISSING IS SILLY STUPID.”

“Fantastic!”

I quickly look away, trying not to think about how fantastic it would be.

Boaz migrates into other covers. Maroon 5, The Beatles, Skrillex. There are really no holds barred, nothing but piano and some generic drum kits. It sounds flawless, though. The renditions are new and exhilarating, as if he took the old soul of those songs and put them into new bodies. They’re catchy and heartfelt. Even his pop version of “Piano Man” isn’t too shabby.

After a few songs, he’s dripping of sweat and swigging out of a water bottle I’m sure is more ethanol than H2O, and rumbles into the mike, “Let’s do the slug for a while, yeah bro-hahos?”

The crowd “oohs” as the bass beat drops away, and it is just him and his piano, fingers skimming over the keys like well-known friends.

I’ve heard the song a million times on the radio, and played it on Dad’s ancient record player so often, the indention of the needle wore the song away. I close my eyes and sway. How many times have I sung this song into an empty longneck bottle? How many times have I howled it in the car with Dad?

“’Wild Horses’,” I lean in to whisper, and he leans in, too. “Rolling Stones. It’s beautiful.”

His lips press against my ear. “So are you.”

I incline my head just enough to study his expression. Around us, the verses rise above the swaying crowd and into the rafters, so alive the words crawl across my skin.
Do you mean that?
I want to ask, but I can’t ask. My voice is gone.

He takes my hand and coaxes me off the bar stool into the swaying crowd. Blue lights swirl down across us. This doesn’t feel like my life anymore. It feels like a 90s movie. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to girls like me.

I close my eyes.
Enjoy it.

As he hums the melody softly into my ear, I can feel the notes seep deep into my skin and bones, and birth an ache in my soul I never knew existed. What is this, if not impossible? What is any of this? Here in this moment, with him. Here, where for the briefest of moments we are no one more than Junie and Roman, fearless and terrible and perfect.

And then he is kissing me under the spiral hues of purples and blues that catch every crook and crevice of our bodies. His lips are soft and gentle, not quite passionate, but not apathetic either. If anything, he tastes bittersweet, lonely and tragic.
Is A Lone
, I remember.

And then he presses his cheek to mine, and we dance.

I want to hold onto this, memorize the milliseconds and molecules that make up this moment. I want to hold onto the way his hair glints in the purple, the way wrinkles spread from his eyes when he smiles, crooked and delicious. I want to hold onto the roughness of his hands, the heat that whorls between our palms, the lift of his pinky, the subtle shift of his arms when he begins to spin me around and around. I want to hold onto it all, wrap it all in my arms, and lock it deep within me so I feel nothing but beautiful and glorious and golden for the rest of my life.

If love is supposed to feel like anything at all, it feels like dancing cheek-to-cheek with Roman Montgomery.

“See,” he says, “you are not a bad dancer.”

“I probably would be without you.”

“Nah, you’d be perfect with any guy you want.”

I pull away a little. Pinions of lights scatter across his hair and face, like stardust falling from a comet. “Not with you, huh?”

A pained look crosses his face. “No, Junebug...not with me.”

“Not even if I offer ice cream?” I try, but my heart is already sinking, sinking, because like every other girl who loves him, I am not enough.

His forehead wrinkles in frustration. “I’m leaving in a few days. I’m probably never coming back.”

“But your dad? Holly’s family? Next year there will probably be another memorial and—”

“It’s more complicated than that.” He shakes his head and begins to take his hands away from the lower part of my back, but I refuse to let go. “Junebug...”

Suddenly, a white-hot flash shatters the darkness like lightning. Roman’s hands drop away from the small of my back. I’m blinded for a moment, trying to blink the spots away.

Another flash ignites the room, the rafters.

Then another.

A camera
, I realize. I blink, my eyes watering before they adjust again. Like my dream, only worse because this is real. My throat constricts as I spin to try and find the source. He couldn’t have followed us, could he?

“
Shit
,” Roman curses, glaring across the bar.

I follow his line of sight. My stomach heaves. Taller than the rest of the crowd is the man with inky black hair, a fedora tipped back from the hefty camera held up to his face. The paparazzo from last night. The man from my dream.

And I led him straight to Roman.

The man’s finger twitches over the shutter release, and another blinding flash erupts in the dark like a flash bang.

The bouncers push their way across the crowds of people who aren’t sure what’s happening. Boaz is singing Aerosmith now, and a girl beside me is so close to doing the vertical tango with her boyfriend it should be illegal. The bouncers won’t get there in time. If a year trailing an errant rock star hasn’t stopped him, a couple of bouncers sure as hell won’t.