Page 12 of Of Heartbreak and Harmony
I breathe the words more than speak them. My voice is gone. The Hometown Heartless—or Heartless, as their fans call them—are one of my musical idols. Their sound is iconic, and they started out just like us: driving up and down the coast playing dive bars and house parties until a label rep discovered them. They’re a pipe dream brought to life. Proof you can make it without connections and boatloads of money backing you.
“Do you think we’ll get to meet them?” I’d die. I’d pee my pants first, and then I would die. But god, I’d die with a smile.
“Do you think I could bag Sav Loveless?” Ezra says, and I elbow him in the stomach with a laugh.
“She doesn’t go for drummers,” Rocky taunts, just dodging Ezra’s foot as he swings a leg out at him.
“I wouldn’t even attempt it,” Becket adds. “You’ll end up with the shit beat out of you like that roadie she screwed in Las Vegas a few months back.”
“You don’t actually believe that.” I side-eye Becket and he shrugs.
“Dude did an interview forThe Starand everything. Said Torren King caught them banging in Sav’s dressing room and snapped. Beat the fuck out of him until security had to pull him off.”
“And if that’s true, why isn’t there a lawsuit? Why wasn’t Torren King arrested?”
“Because he’s the bassist for the most famous band in the fucking world?” Ezra chimes in. “They probably paid that roadie off with album royalties and had it all swept under the rug.”
I shake my head and push past them, throwing words over my shoulder as they follow.
“The Staris a trashy gossip magazine, and you’re all idiots for believing anything you read in it.”
I tune out their arguing as I weave in and out of the crowd. The diversity is astounding. People of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds. Some people in shorts and T-shirts and others in these elaborate costumes. And there are famous people here. I just walked past an actress who won an Oscar for a blockbuster movie last summer, and she was dressed like a monarch butterfly.
This is literally the most exciting experience of my life, and I once played a piano solo for a packed house at Barnum Hall when I was nine.
“The main is right over there,” Pike says, pushing in front of me to take over the lead. I follow him, and soon we’re standing in front of a giant stage already equipped with large speakers and massive lights. There are already people camping on the lawn for tonight’s show.
The headliner is a really popular pop-punk band who blew up about a year ago. They went viral with the first video they ever posted on social media, and they got a record deal two weeks later. The real kicker is they’d only formed the band a month earlier. I can’t help but be jealous of bands like this one. We’ve been trudging around the country playing dive bars and small venues for two years and our socials have never gotten more than a few hundred hits. This group is good, though. I can admit that. Begrudgingly.
“Dude, is that Heartless’s tour bus?”
“No way they’d be here now. They don’t play until the last night,” I say, but I still crane my neck to scan the area. I can’t see shit because Ezra is six-foot-six, and I’m more than a foot shorter.
“Right there. Behind the stage to the left.”
I take a few more steps forward, pushing past the guys and standing on my tiptoes to look where Ezra is pointing, and sure enough, there’s abus parked behind the stage, and I can just see the edge of the The Hometown Heartless logo.
I speed walk closer until the massive bus is in full view. A giant image of the five bandmembers is plastered across the side of it with Sav Loveless front and center, but my eyes go directly to the dark-haired, green-eyed god standing at her right.
Torren King is gorgeous in a way that makes my throat feel parched, my tongue lolling about like a dehydrated sponge in my mouth.
I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. I can only stare.
I choose to ignore the way his hand is gripping Sav Loveless’s hip and instead focus on the rest of him. His stature is relaxed yet arrogant in a way that fits his surname perfectly. A surly, rebellious prince. Not quite a king, but soon enough. Slated for rock and roll royalty, no doubt.
Even in a posed photograph emblazoned on the side of a bus, his emerald irises burn right through me. He must be wearing some smudged liner because there’s no way his lashes are that dark and thick in real life, but it makes his eyes sparkle brighter. My green eyes are pretty, but his are magnificent.
My knees feel weak, and I have the urge to fall to the ground before him as if being silently commanded. Forced by some power beyond my control. His sculpted chest is bare, his low-slung black jeans teasing just a hint of his taut stomach and the deep groove outlining his pelvis. I wish Sav weren’t standing in front so I could see more than half of him.
I want to see all of him.
I don’t even realize my feet are moving until I’m less than twenty feet from the door to the bus. I only stop when my eyes land on two security guards—one at the front of the bus and one at the back.
Is the band here for the festival? Will they be sweat-slicked and dancing just like the rest of us? CouldIbe in the same crowd as Torren King?
I laugh at myself. Surely not. Their mere presence would cause pandemonium. Sav Loveless has had multiple stalkers in the last few years. The bus is likely roadies and security prepping for their show. I doubt the band is here at all, probably sequestered in some well-guarded penthouse in Phoenix, waiting for their call time.
I know this, but I still have to wipe my trembling, sweaty palms on my shorts.
