Page 1 of Knot Their Opening Act

CHAPTER1

Jez

The smallest tentat the UK’s biggest outdoor music festival is full, and every last person in it has come to see me. It sounds like a dream, and it is. But it’s also a nightmare, because the crowd is only feet away from where I stand.

I remind myself of where I was three years ago almost to the day. Gratitude doesn’t seem a big enough word to describe how I feel. As I look over to the side of the small stage and Viv shoots me a grin as bright as a thousand camera flashes, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

“Thanks again for coming to see me when the sun’s shining and the beer tent is next door,” I say into the mic, one hand on my guitar neck. Laughter ripples around the tent. Behind me, my drummer Andy and my fellow guitarist and backup vocalist Shay are making appreciative noises and gestures toward the crowd. Someone throws a bouquet of hand-picked flowers tied with a hair band onto the stage, and my heart wants to explode.

My mind, however, is trying to suffocate me.

I lick my lips and lean toward the mic again. “This is my last tune for the afternoon. Check me out on social media. This song is calledBroken in Three. See you in the audience for tonight’s headliners.”

Total lie. I will be on the side of a hill somewhere watching from as far away as I can get while still being able to hear it.

Hoots and hollers fill the tent then quiet down as I strum the opening chords for my biggest hit yet, which was a discarded song for my last album—my second album so far—but when I played it on a live radio show, they were bombarded with calls and we decided to release the recording. Honestly, I think it wasBroken in Threethat landed me this gig.

For the last thirty-six months I’ve been playing every coffee shop, club, café, and small festival I could get myself squeezed into. Or, I should say, Viv’s gotten me squeezed into. I’ve done dates with some up-and-coming bands, and been getting pretty decent radio play here in the UK. I look around as I sing the words that are already becoming an anthem among fellow broken-hearted twenty-somethings, and capture the moment in my mind’s eye.This might be the biggest crowd I ever get, or the last—the phrase I tell myself every time I’m on stage. I will never take this for granted.

As I bring the song to its end, the crowd lets loose with raucous applause and clamp down inside on the nausea that’s bubbled up all day. I take my guitar off, alarmed but then not really at how sweaty the strap is. I hand it to the waiting tech, who’s probably seen worse to be honest, and wave at the crowd, then tuck my hair behind an ear and beeline for Viv on the side of the stage.

She’s five months pregnant, withtripletsno less. And it’s only been nine months since she joined her pack, her scent matches and the loves of her life. I told her she didn’t need to stand (or sit) beside the stage the whole set and she keeps rejecting my nagging requests to go rest in the VIP tent. But she did disappear halfway through the set and was gone for an entire song. Toilet, I assume.

The crowd may be shouting my name as they leave the tent for their next event of choice, but they’re still leaving. And that’s the reality. My sets are always short. The crowd always has something better to do after. And I remind myself ofthateach time I’m on stage, too. Because I have no illusions that I’ll ever be the headliner that they’re waiting all day to see.

“I bet you anything half of the people recording that on their phones will upload it to social media and Tristan will be sitting at home scrolling through his feed and kicking himself in the nuts,” rambles Viv quickly. She leads me through the crowds, with a security volunteer walking on my other side, as we head to the VIP tent where I can just chill with a drink in relative peace and let the exhilaration slowly ebb out.

I’d rather it was my hotel room. But I don’t even have a hotel room. My flat is a half an hour away but I’m not headed home until after the party ends tonight. Once the buzz of playing wears off, as it always does, the anxiety is fast to completely take over.

Developing claustrophobia when your lifelong dream is a being a stage performer is the universe’s idea of the worst cosmic joke ever.

Viv gives me a towel and a questioning look, which I return with a shake of my head and a slow exhale. It’s an exchange choreographed over years of my performances. It means, “this sucks but I’ll live.”

It’s not been the hottest summer so far, even though the sun beams down, but there were two fans pointed at the stage at my request. I never want to be known as a demanding diva, so I rarely ask for a thing. But moving air is about as big a help as I’ve so far discovered in the twelve years since I was diagnosed with both claustrophobia and generalized anxiety disorder.

“That was so tight, so sweet, so smooth,” warbles Viv, who is practically skipping, with her long red mermaid waves cascading down her back. She’s dressed in the perfect festival outfit—Wellington boots despite it not being forecast to rain this weekend, a short sundress dress, and a shiny black jacket that’s half-hanging off her shoulders. She’s even got a freaking flower wreath in her hair that someone running a stall gave her as we walked up to the New Artists tent before my set.

“Sounds more like a sex review than a set review,” I say with a snicker. Heat rolls off my face and chest, and I hug her to me, one arm around her shoulder. “Thank you so much for this. We got here because of you, lady.”

Though I probably should’ve had you dress me.I’m terrible at picking gig wardrobes. For this, my most important show to date, I wore a tight midriff-bearing t-shirt and an ankle-length skirt, and my worn-out but comfy-as-hell combat boots. So far Viv hasn’t given unsolicited fashion tips, but I always feel inferior in the glamour department. Still, my music has never been about flashy fits. Just raw storytelling. And somehow, it’s been enough. Though cotton-candy blue hair has become my signature at this point.

“Well, I have a surprise up my sleeve,” she says as we approach the VIP tent.

Suddenly I’m aware of my bladder. “Ooh, can the surprise wait until after I’ve found a toilet?” I look around and my gaze falls to a grim row of portaloos. I point at them. “But not those ones.”

Viv winces and checks her watch. “The toilets we used earlier are well on the other side of the field. Can it wait? Or would you be able to manage in those?”

She knows better than anyone on this earth that I would rather trim my own toenails with my teeth than use a portaloo. Amazingly, I’m not worried about germs, and I carry hand sanitizer everywhere anyhow. It’s the confined space. Even the thought starts up a flash of perspiration to add to what’s already there.

I exhale shakily. “Can this surprise just wait for a while? We can come back later?”

She bites her lip and looks at me. “I’ll text the surprise we’ll be there in fifteen and see if that’s okay. I think he’ll understand.”

After we finish our business, thankfully sans a major queue, we return to VIP and my mind has considered and discarded every “he” surprise she could have for me. Honest to God, if she’s run into Tristan and asked us to kiss and make up, I will disown her.

But she would never. Viv is my soul twin, and she would be the first to tell him to fuck off into space if we ever saw him again.

She tugs me gently as a wall of people wanders right toward us, heads down over someone’s phone, not looking up to see they’re about to crash. The security volunteer walks around to shield me, but I’m not worried. As long as I’m not hemmed in a circle or in a small space without an easy exit, I’m usually okay. Except for the few, rare times when I’m not.

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