Page 7 of One Day Like This (Excess All Areas 1)

When he walked off the stage fifteen minutes later, Luke threw his sweaty arm around Matt’s shoulders. “Want to tell me what that freak-out was about back there?”

Matt shook his head. No way could he tell Luke it was about his sister. “Not in the slightest. It’s done.”

“Want me to find you someone to put whatever it was right out of your mind?”

“Are you my pimp now?”

Luke shook his head. “Nope. You just look like a guy with too much energy and nowhere to put it.”

“Sex isn’t the answer to everything.”

Luke pointed to a handful of attractive women hanging around the rear of the stage. “Maybe, but it’s a pretty great escape.”

Matt watched as Alex chugged a bottle of water so fast it spilled over his lips. The lithe-framed guy with movie star looks that Alex had been chatting to before the gig stepped into Alex’s space and pressed his tongue to Alex’s neck to catch the drips. Alex didn’t stop drinking but fisted his hand in the guy’s hair to hold him firmly in place.

“I swear to God he holds the record for the shortest time between walking off stage to fucking,” Matt muttered.

Ben laughed. “He’s a magnet for attractive people. Mum said he was the same when he was little. Gender agnostic, he’d smile and later flirt with anyone as long as they were hot.”

He watched as two women approached Jase. All the usual moves. A toss of hair, a palm to the chest, a lick of lips. Fuck, had Iz done that with Jase? Had Jase looked at Iz the way he looked at the two women? Hungry and willing.

Perhaps Matt should hook up tonight. Perhaps it would help him remember there were a hundred million women out there who could be the one for him. He shook his head. An easy lay wouldn’t find her. Casual sex always provided a release of tension, but more and more he realized it had the intimacy of walking naked through Primark.

Still, his eyes were drawn to a blonde, though she didn’t have quite the cool blonde waves of Izabel. The woman’s figure was curvier, all hips and arse, compared to Izabel’s slighter frame. And when she turned and smiled at Matt, he could tell her eyes were dark, not the faded green of Iz’s. But she rocked her denim jacket, held closed by one button across a perky pair of tits, with nothing underneath. Maybe, he could snort a line of coke off her stomach and escape himself for a little while.

Fuck it.

He couldn’t do this tonight. The roadies for the main act had offered to get their equipment off stage, but by the way it was being piled up by the steps, they weren’t taking the same kind of care he’d take with the instruments. And it was clear their offer of help didn’t include packing it back into their van.

“Go,” he said to Luke. “I’ll load up the van with Ben. But no more than an hour.”

“The mood I’m in, it’ll only take thirty minutes.”

Matt shook his head. “Didn’t you say in the van you’d already had that bird from Tesco this afternoon?”

“I’m a man with a big appetite. What can I say? Although, if you want to talk about you nearly breaking your toes onstage tonight, I’m all ears.”

“Fifty-nine minutes,” Matt said gruffly.

“Fine.”

Luke bounced away, leaving him chilled in his sweat-covered T-shirt.

Ben slapped Matt’s shoulder. “I’ll give you a hand.”

“Fuck’s sake,” he rumbled. “It’s not enough that I found the gig, did all the contracts? How do I end up packing the van while they get laid?”

“Look at it this way, the van ride home will be a lot more mellow than the journey here.”

“True story.”

Once the equipment was in the van, Matt took out his notebook. Words had power. It was pure magic the way they took his feelings and emotions out into the world. Loss, hurt, fear, love. Each could be described with words made from a collection of twenty-six letters.

Sure, he worked out because he was vain and liked to look good onstage. But the art of distilling everything he was feeling into two hundred and fifty words was cathartic.

She’s the one that can never be.

She’s the single best thing that ever happened to me.

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