Last Song (Chasing Cross Book Five) (A Brothers of Rock Novel) (rockstar contemporary romance) (9 page)

(10)

Rick had mostly forgotten
what the feeling was like to stand outside of a bar or a club knowing that he
had a show that night inside. His nerves were bouncing. His heart was pumping.
It was the excitement of being back on a small stage, enjoying music. There was
no big show right then. Nobody tuning his drums or sound checking everything to
death. No meet n’ greets with paying fans. No merchandise tables full of
stickers and t-shirts. It was just a regular crowd.

Quite a few people
recognized Rick and he took his share of pictures and signed dozens of
autographs. Amazingly, nobody asked a question about Chasing Cross and Rick
didn’t have to come up with some made up bullshit answer.

Rick and the rest of the
guys had their equipment on stage already, tucked away until it was their turn
to play. When the first band took the stage at seven, Rick sat at the bar and
had a beer. No backstage nonsense either. He could sit and relax and actually
enjoy the other bands. The rest of the guys,
his
band
, wandered around, drinking, but Rick waited. Every few minutes
he caught himself looking around. He knew what he was looking for. Better yet,
who
he was looking for.

After his first beer, his
hands hugged the bottle as his thumbs pulled at the label, slowly peeling it
off.

At seven-thirty the first
band ended. A small applause broke out and lasted all of five seconds. The band
jumped from the front of the stage and greeted friends who had come to see
them. That was really cool to see. He had his back to the bar, watching as the
guitarists, the bassist, and the drummer climbed back on stage to start taking
their equipment apart. That’s what music was about. Right there.

Rick smiled and the smile
only grew bigger when he saw Sarah and her friend.

Now if he were Rick, the
Chasing Cross drummer rockstar, he would have pushed from the bar and been
smooth and cool, but seeing Sarah made him really nervous. So nervous that he sat
and started to look around like he hadn’t seen her. She found him though and to
Rick’s surprise, it was Sarah’s friend who said something first.

“And you must be Rick.”

“And you must be the
someone
,” Rick said and
smiled.

“Wow, you weren’t lying,”
the woman said as she gave Sarah a quick elbow.

“Lying about what?” Rick
asked.

“You really are the
drummer for Chasing Cross.”

Rick’s mind said
was
the drummer
...
but he didn’t correct the woman.

“This is Susie,” Sarah
said, finally speaking.

“Susie, my pleasure,”
Rick said.

“Are you buying drinks?”
Susie asked.

“Of course,” Ricks said.

He turned and bought a
round of drinks. When Susie got her drink, she put a finger to her lips and
said, “You know, I better go check on my husband and the baby... I’ll be back...”

She waved her cell phone
but had a devilish look in her eyes. She wanted Rick and Sarah to be alone.

“How’s Molly?” Rick
asked.

He felt stupid and small.
He was a rockstar sitting next to a beautiful woman, and he asked about her
dog?

How’s Molly?

“She’s good,” Sarah said.

“I’m sorry,” Rick said.
“I should have asked you about yourself first.”

“I’m good too, thanks.”

“So what do you do for a
living?” Rick asked.

“I’m a vet,” Sarah said
and smiled. “Go figure, right?”

“A vet. That’s
interesting.”

“I own my own practice. I
don’t work as much as I used to, which is nice.”

Rick felt somewhat
intimidated by Sarah now. She wasn’t just pretty. She was smart and successful.
He looked at his bottle of beer and wondered if a woman like that would ever
dare to get mixed up with a rockstar.

“I haven’t been in here
in years,” Sarah said. “Not since... well... probably college.”

“Really?” Rick said.
“When was the last time you saw a concert?”

“Longer than I’d care to
admit,” Sarah said.

“Fair enough. I hope you
enjoy the show then.”

When Rick looked at
Sarah, he had the urge to just kiss her. He wanted to see what her thin lips
tasted like. Just once. Just to kiss a woman he actually could consider caring
about. It was foreign to him, and so tempting.

“Can I ask about Chasing
Cross?” Sarah asked.

“Normally I’d say no,”
Rick said. “But staring at you does something to me, Sarah.” She blushed and he
continued. “The simple answer is that I needed a break. You get to a point and
you just need to stop for a minute to breathe.”

“What’s the complicated
answer?”

Rick laughed. He didn’t
have to answer that question, but since Sarah was asking it, he wanted to
answer it.

“The complicated
answer...” Rick looked at his beer bottle. That was part of it, right? “The
complicated answer is that we’ve been together for a long time, and people
change. Dreams come true. More dreams surface. We toured for years, Sarah. We
wrote so many albums and played the biggest shows. I don’t know how to explain
it. Sometimes you just wake up and... think about life, I guess. Everything was
designed. Planned. Scheduled. I mean, they would tell me when to eat, what to
say, what to play. Nothing felt organic anymore. I still love the band and
those guys. I mean, they’re my brothers. You know?”

Rick looked at Sarah and
felt the fresh whirl of pain in his body. A bar was not the best place to talk
about something like this.

“Sounds hard,” Sarah
said. “Have you talked to them?”

“Not since I left,” Rick
said. “I feel bad, but I don’t know what to say. They have a guy filling in on drums
right now and it seems to be working. They’re going to want an answer from me I
just don’t know what to say.”

“Why not say what you
just said to me?” Sarah asked. “That seemed real enough.”

“You seem real enough,”
Rick said.

Sarah smiled and shook
her head. “No, not me. I’m probably the most unreal person in here.”

“I doubt that,” Rick
said. “Most of these people are covering up problems or here to pretend they’re
something they’re not.”

“What I mean,” Sarah
said, “is that I have my life set up to be busy and planned. You’d probably
hate it.”

“I don’t know,” Rick
said. “It does have you in it... your life I mean.”

Sarah drank from her
beer, finishing it off. “Do you always sweet talk women like this?”

Rick leaned close to Sarah
and whispered, “No. I’m a rockstar, but with you, I can’t help it.”

Sarah looked at Rick.
They were closer than ever.

“You know, your music is
annoying and loud.”

“Wow,” Rick said. “That
wasn’t something I expected.”

“Sorry,” Sarah said. “I
just had to get that off my chest.”

“Can I get you another
beer?”

“No,” Sarah said. “I’m
driving. One is enough.”

One is never enough...

Rick wasn’t sure if he
was talking about drinking or kissing Sarah. Something told him that if he
kissed Sarah, just once, he’d be hooked.

“You know, I can’t turn
down my drums,” Rick said. “And most people would be honored to have the
drummer from Chasing Cross as their neighbor.”

“I told you, I’m not most
people.”

“I’m really glad you came
tonight,” Rick said. “I have to admit, I’m nervous.”

“You’re nervous?” Sarah
asked. “You play shows in arenas.”

“Yeah, but that’s
different. Like I said, it’s a big show. Everything is hooked up to mics and
it’s something I’ve done for years. I normally would get on stage and just get
into a zone. I’d play the set list, listen to the crowd, and that would be the
show. This is different here. This is small. Most of the people don’t care.
There’s a perception when you’re on stage with twenty thousand people screaming
for you. Here, I’d be lucky if there was twenty people screaming for me.”

“Well, when you say it
like that,” Sarah said.

Rick laughed. Sarah
leaned towards him. Her shoulder bumped into his chest. Her left arm shot
around and went around her shoulder. He pulled her tight to him before he knew
what he was doing. Sarah looked up at him and Rick couldn’t let the opportunity
pass by. He gently pressed his lips to hers. His heart raced faster than it
ever did playing for the biggest crowd he could remember.

**

Sarah stood next to Susie
as the band played. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Rick and she couldn’t stop
licking her lips, thinking about the way he kissed her. It had been a gentle
kiss yet it lingered. It kept Sarah on her toes, wondering if and when it would
happen again. What was she thinking? This guy is her neighbor, who happens to
be a hot rockstar. She couldn’t do this, right?

All signs pointed to no,
but the way her body felt watching Rick play the drums took all rationale and
tossed it out the door. She suddenly had the urge to be wild and free. It
didn’t help that Susie was on her third drink, something pink that stunk of rum
and sugar. She was feeling way too good and continued to try to get Sarah to
dance.

Sarah didn’t want to
dance.

She wanted to stare at
Rick.

In between songs, Rick
reached down and drank from a cup. After the fourth song she could see the way
Rick’s face began to change. It definitely wasn’t water in the cup, but it was
a concert. It probably went with the routine of the show. No big deal.

Most of the bar enjoyed
the show. Everyone seemed to love the idea of such a big rockstar playing a
small place. When the band played a Chasing Cross song, the crowd cheered as
loud as a small crowd could have done. Sarah knew the song and bobbed her head,
wishing she had the confidence and coordination to actually dance. She casually
checked her watch and saw it was almost eleven.

When was the last time
she was out until eleven? Thankfully she didn’t have work tomorrow, but she
didn’t have to think of Molly. The poor dog was at home, waiting.

After the Chasing Cross
song, Rick stood up and put his arms in the air. The crowd applauded and the
band went right into the next set of songs. They played three songs that Sarah
didn’t know but enjoyed. Those were the last three songs of the night for the
band. When it ended and Rick came from the stage, a crowd formed around him.
The celebrity of Rick had come to life.

“We should head out,”
Sarah said to Susie. “It’s late.”

“No, no,” Susie said.
“Not now. Let’s have fun still. Go talk to Rick. He likes you.”

“He’s busy,” Sarah said.

Rick pushed his way
towards the bar and got another drink. Sarah watched him drink, drink, drink,
until the cup was empty. He put it down and pointed.

“Need another,” he said
and laughed.

The rest of the band
joined him and they all hugged.

“That was great,” Rick
said. “So great.”

Sarah could hear his
voice slurring.

Rick was drunk.

She wanted more than ever
to slip away and get out of there, but when Rick saw her, he pointed and called
her name. She felt two inches tall and when everyone looked at her she suddenly
felt like a groupie.

Susie gave Sarah a nudge
forward against her will, Sarah went to join Rick.

He was touchy, acting as
though Sarah was either his property or that he thought because of his drinking
and drumming, he’d get to spend the night with her. With his arm around her,
Rick talked to a small crowd around him. He took his arm away for a few minutes
to sign autographs and take a couple pictures.

Rick order another drink,
offered the same for Sarah.

She waved the drink off.
She needed to drive Susie home and then herself.

“What did you think?”
Rick asked with his lips next to Sarah’s ear.

“Very good,” Sarah said.
“I liked it.”

“Better than Chasing
Cross?”

“I can’t...”

“I’m messing around.”

Rick faced Sarah and his
hands weren’t shy. He touched her shoulders and then he touched her arms. When
his fingers touched her wrists, Sarah felt herself shudder. However, staring
into Rick’s eyes she knew this wasn’t the Rick from before. The nice guy who
was opening up. This was the Rick that stayed up until one or two in the
morning, drinking and making noise in the garage.

Sarah wanted nothing to
do with this Rick.

His fingers ran along her
hands and when he tried to interlock his fingers into hers, Sarah pulled away.

“What’s wrong?” Rick
asked.

“Rick, this isn’t the...”

“But before was?”

Sarah felt her face burn.
The kiss before was Rick being Rick. That Rick was a man worth kissing, but
even then Sarah wasn’t sure what had gotten into her. She never did that
before. She never just kissed someone or let someone kiss her. It had just been
one of those moments. Hearing Rick talking about life and decisions and how to
make those decisions, it made sense to Sarah. That’s how she felt most of her
life... but now she stared at a drunk Rick, a man who used drinking to cover up
those raw emotions that had attracted her earlier.

“Listen, I have to get
going,” Sarah said.

“No you don’t,” Rick
said.

His right hand shot out
and touched Sarah’s lower back. He tried to pull her but Sarah wiggled away.

“I have to check on
Susie. Right now.”

“Don’t go,” Rick said.

His eyes flickered with
that pain and honesty from before, but it was gone as fast as it came. He got
angry.

“Rick...”

“Yeah, I get it,” Rick said.
“I’m just a burned out rockstar. Too good for a vet, huh?”

“I never...”

Rick pulled his hand away
from Sarah and backed up.

Sarah hated herself in
that moment because she wanted Rick to touch her again. She’d take the drunk
touching, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t become that woman. Not with her
neighbor. Not with a man that she was just getting to know.