Page 43 of Another Postcard

Iwason cloud fucking infinity now that I could be with Brooklynn in the open. I loved the fuck out of her and I was going to take every caveman opportunity to make it very clear that she was mine. At the end of the Portland concert, we sang our song and it was more amazing and emotion-filled than it had ever been. When the last note was done, I grabbed her and kissed her hard before the lights even had a chance to go down and I was still drinking from her mouth when they went back up. I didn’t let her go until the audience was so loud it practically shook the stage.

They were clapping and screaming in approval (except the few fans who were crying hysterically like I had personally broken their hearts. But, I wasn’t paying them any attention) and my face broke into a smile so fucking big I felt like it was splitting my face. I dragged her into the circle of my arms. “She’s fucking awesome, right?” I shouted and they went wild. “I mean, how could I not fall in love with her?” I looked down at Brooklynn in my arms and despite her jaw being practically on the ground in shock, she was lit up like I’d never seen before.

“They’re all waiting, baby,” I teased. “They wanna know…” I trailed off as the audience started chanting, wanting her to tell me. She laughed and threw up her arms like she was giving in to a struggle.

“Yeah, I like the guy,” she shrugged. The audience laughed.

“You don’t deserve him, bitch!” someone shouted.

“Hey!” I bellowed. “Shut the fuck up for a second.” The audience immediately obeyed. Brooklynn tried to tell me to ignore it, but I was fired up.

“We—” I started to gesture to behind me, but my arm hit a solid body. I glanced to my sides and realized the rest of the band had flanked us, glaring at the audience. I started over. “We love what we do and you guys are a big part of that. We choose to live our lives in the spotlight so we can share what we love. Nothing is private anymore and we accept that. I’m not going to give you bullshit about respecting our privacy and letting us have a life. Because that’s what it is, complete fucking bullshit.” The audience started to clap and I held up my hand until they quickly silenced. “Our only choice is whether to accept that everything gets out there eventually, or to embrace it and instead, just fucking shout how much I love this woman. I chose to share it with you and by disrespecting her, you’re just shitting all fucking over that.” I let them have their reaction to my words for a few minutes before smiling again. “Now, where were we…oh yeah, Brooklynn was about to tell you how much she fucking worships me.” I gave her a shit-eating grin and she laughed.

She looked out at the fans. “Yeah, I admit it, I fucking love him!” They laughed and clapped then chanted for us to kiss, so I dropped her into a dip and laid a big fat one on her. When I brought us upright again, she slapped my ass. “Doesn’t hurt that he’s fucking fine. Right, ladies?” I will deny that I blushed until my dying day.

We were both grinning from ear to ear as we stared at each other. Someone yelled for me to propose and Brooklynn laughed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that reaction.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves people!” she griped good-naturedly. “I think we’ll just enjoy making music and being in love for now.” They applauded and she yelled, “Who’s ready for more fucking music?”

We all moved back into position and played a couple of encores, quickly forgetting our anger and enjoying the rest of the show.

We performed a great show in Seattle and then officially ditched the buses to fly to Vancouver. We had two extra days there as well, but we hung out as a group. We all went out the day after the concert and did a little sight-seeing. We were a little silly, a little crazy, and more carefree that we’d been since going on the road. Noah always conferred with us about where we might like to visit for a little longer, getting to enjoy some of the places we visited rather than always being in and out. Then he made sure the tour manager worked in our requests as best they could. None of us had ever been to Vancouver, so we figured, why the fuck not?

It turned out to be a beautiful city and we had a lot of fun with the fans we ran into, even breaking out into an impromptu concert at a hole-in-the-wall bar we’d stumbled across. Doing stuff like this without getting mobbed was harder in the states, so we had four security guys with us just in case. It left us free to get drunk off our asses and we had a fucking blast. It was mostly Sasha’s fault. Cooper had flown back to New York for a couple of weeks and she announced that since she had no babysitter, she was going to get pissed. Of course, that meant we all got sucked into shots. Even Noah let loose, well as much as Noah ever does.

Brooklynn and I stumbled into our room, high with energy and fucked the hell out of each other all fucking night long. It was amazing and I wanted to live in that blissful state. Unfortunately, the next morning, it was all shot to hell when the mail came.

I stared at a chimpanzee chain gang with the caption, “Working on a chimp chain. Join the gang!” That wasn’t what had me ready to lose my shit. No, it was the note on the back.

Levi,

Tell her I said to leave you alone or I’ll wrap a chain around her neck.

The card had come with three others, two of them mailed on the same day, though the time stamps were different. All of them mailed after the concert where Brooklynn and I announced that we were together. The show had been up on YouTube within an hour of our last encore and in the next hour, it had garnered over two million hits. We expected the hate mail, but we didn’t deal directly with it. We were prepared to stay off of Twitter and other social media sites for a while, until the hype died down and people stopped speculating, predicting, and slandering one or both of us.

The postcards had seemed harmless enough, but with the way they were escalating, the fact that this person was getting around the team of people we had shielding us from this kind of shit was starting to worry me. Noah had brought these to me and I forbid him from telling Brooklynn. None of this was her fault and I didn’t want her stressing over it.

I picked up an envelope, surprised that one of the cards had been sent in it. I understood why when a printed picture from the internet fell out with it. It was a picture of me kissing Brooklynn on stage in Portland. The card had three chimps, a guy and two girls based on their clothing, cheesing it up in front of the Royal Palace Amsterdam with, “Sending our love from Amsterdam,” across the top. One of the female chimps had been scribbled all over. On the back was typed:

Levi,

Three’s a crowd. There is only room for you and me. Tell her YOU’RE MINE.

The third was a couple of chimps in hardhats doing construction. “Working likechampschimps!”

Levi,

I don’t want to hurt her. But, I will.

The last one had chimps dressed in women’s underwear. On the top was, “Do you like my chimpanties?”

Levi,

Break up with that slut. She’s not good enough for you.

The worst one was waiting for me in Quebec. The chimp on the front was a goth, dressed in all black with heavy dark makeup, a spiked collar and cuffs and it was saying, “I make this look good.” The sender had drawn a knife in the chimp’s hand.

Levi,

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