Page 20 of Noah
I bent down and started working on the next script, trying to guess at all the questions a record exec might ask. This would have been easier with Molly to help me out. But I was getting a whole lot better at doing this sort of thing on my own.
I barely even thought about her as I got to work and started letting the ideas flow.
12
MOLLY
Imoved through the crowd with my camera held up to my face, watching the world through the viewfinder.
This was my happy place, here behind the camera. Looking at the world through a lens that gave me both a more restricted view and a better vantage point. I snapped the pictures as they happened, my finger quick on the camera’s button and my heart racing. This venue was amazing. Large enough to hold a good-sized audience but small enough to still feel intimate. Just like this city. Somehow big and small at the same time. The stage was just high enough that the audience could see the band, and I could see from his face that Rivers was getting a kick out of being so close to the fans. He was singing his heart out, his fingers dancing along the strings of his guitar like magic.
I snapped one picture of him, then another, moving to catch him in profile as he closed his eyes and turned his face up to the ceiling. God, he was beautiful. I didn’t think of the boys that way often–they were my brothers, after all–but looking at him through the lens changed all of that. Sharp cheekbones and all that scruff, plus the shorter haircut he was wearing now that hewas with Lila... Gone was the brooding, angsty rock star no one understood. He looked like a man who’d found his path.
Honestly, he looked like a man in love, and when he glanced at Lila, who was on stage with them as part of their new lineup, I could see how much he cared for her. I shot another picture with him in the foreground and her in the background, the focus on her rather than him, and then turned the camera to Anna.
She was seated at her keyboard, laughing and singing as she played, and right behind her...
Matt. Of course. Staring down at the brunette like he couldn’t figure out whether he’d been blessed with an angel or cursed to love a girl he couldn’t quite reach. I didn’t know what was going on there–they hadn’t taken the time to tell anyone–but the heat between them was intense enough to burn everyone around. God, I hoped she’d be good to him. He was the most kindhearted of all the boys but had never found a girl he wanted to take seriously.
I was a little bit afraid of what would happen if she didn’t love him back. He was already too invested.
When she looked up and grinned at him, though, I grinned myself. She might not be admitting it to anyone, but you didn’t look at a guy like that if you didn’t want him.
My view slid over to Hudson and his guitar. This guy... I shook my head. Baby-faced and gorgeous and talented, but also so introverted that I knew almost nothing about him. Hudson was part of our group when we were at the orphanage, and I’d known him just as long as I knew the other guys. That didn’t mean I knew what was in his head. Good guy, for sure, but beyond that? I didn’t know what he wanted out of life or thought about the band itself. I had no idea where he came from–none of us did–or what he’d gone through before he found himself at the orphanage. I moved through the crowd, my eyes on my friend, and waited for the picture to come into focus. When the spotlightpassed across him, I started snapping. There it was. The light highlighted the depth of his eyes and the slightly rounded cheeks. When he caught sight of me and gave me a slight smirk, I shot again and again.
The magazine was going to go crazy for those pictures. Hudson was, without a doubt, the most beloved by the fans, courtesy of that face and all the mystery surrounding him. Rivers was broody and Noah was trouble. Matt was the obvious cinnamon roll. Hudson was the man no one knew anything about, who never talked to the press and didn’t write any music of his own.
At least not he ever let us see.
The fans adored the gorgeous boy in the shadows.
I shot a couple more pictures of him, just for good measure, and finally brought the camera down. I had to admit, I’d wondered whether I’d get any good pictures out of this assignment, but I was starting to think the magazine had been right to send me. I was having the time of my life and every picture I took felt like it might be a cover shot. I knew how the band worked and was able to predict where they’d be and what they’d do, which also made the whole thing easier.
God, I should have been doing this years ago. I’d shot the guys out on the road but always in their down moments. For some reason, it had never occurred to me to take my camera into the venues to shoot the shows. Now I was regretting that.
I brought the camera up to my eye again and started shooting the audience, focusing on their faces–rapt with attention–and their hands as they held up phones and lighters during the slow songs. These people were eating Rivers and Lila up like they were candy, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the girls were going to be a permanent fixture in the band. The sound changed with them up there, and Rivers was singing better than he ever had. The audience was also buying into it, no doubt havingread everything they could find about the romance between the broken rock star and his sunshine girl, and you couldn’t beat that sort of publicity.
People loved a redemption story, even when it meant their favorite bad boy had been taken off the market.
And speaking of bad boys.
I turned the camera away from the crowd and focused on the back of the stage, and the guy I’d been avoiding like the plague since I got here.
Noah Michael.
His arms and hands were blurred with how fast he was drumming, a cigarette in his mouth and a cloud of smoke around him, despite the fact that this was a no-smoking facility. I shook my head, not even surprised that he was breaking the rules, and started shooting a series, moving to the left and right to catch him from every angle possible. The smoke billowed around him, pink and orange lights glowing through it as they flashed, and I nearly gasped at how perfect it was. These pictures were going to be insane. Just like him. Beautiful and almost too vivid to be the truth. Smoke and mirrors, indeed, just like Noah himself. You never knew what you were getting with that one. Too many personalities in one person, and none of them easy or cooperative.
Only I knew better.
I knew exactly who and what he was. I always had, because he’d never bothered to hide himself from me. But I wondered at that, because as well as I knew him, I’d never felt like he knewhimselfparticularly well. He had all the potential in the world, both as a musician and as a businessman, but he never committed to any of it. Committing would have meant he had to bow to the reality of following some rules or letting a situation actually matter to him, and he always drew the line at that. He wouldn’t let himself care about anything or anyone that much.
It made it too hard to keep other people at arm’s length.
I’d stopped shooting pictures, now, and had let the camera drop to leave me staring openly at him. The lights flashed around us, the music crescendoing, and he was drumming even faster, now, his face a mask of focus and concentration. And God, he was beautiful. Lean, well-muscled arms, broad shoulders, and a face that would have stopped traffic. Hands that I knew all too well, lips built for kissing.
Not that I would know.
The song stopped before I was ready, leaving a heavy silence in its place, and in that moment between the song finishing and the fans screaming, Noah looked up and caught me staring at him.
