Page 1 of Whirlwind

1

Beck

Strandedin no man’s land.

My fingers hovered over the strings of my guitar. They didn’t know what to do. The beat of Jude’s bass rose from somewhere next to me, inviting me in. My pulse thudded, my body stiffened even more, and an iron hand clamped around my neck, my lungs, over my wrists.

“Play. Play,”I screamed at myself.

The audience was already singing along to our latest hit. Our I-got-the-girl-of-my-dreams song. The fucking irony.

The crowd stamped their feet and clapped, the pounding revere in the cavernous arena a relentless roar. Even after over a year of being on the road on this tour, at each performance this very moment would set my pulse on fire—my loud chords joining Jude and Zach’s beats. The opening of Freefall’s show.

But now? Last time, last show? Couldn’t breathe, could barely move. I staggered as if my guitar weighed a thousand pounds. Cool sweat prickled over my face.

Maybe downing all that vodka before I stepped onstage wasn’t such a great idea. I always drank before a gig, but I’d really hit that bottle tonight.

I needed it.

Whatever.Screw it. Screw her.

Zack pounded out his four time beat behind me. Jude picked the beat up with his bass, driving harder than usual at this point. I swallowed hard. I wasn’t going to let anything or anybody fuck with a performance and get in between me and my guitar.

No way.

I jammed down on my strings and my guitar blazed through the arena. The vibration of sound sent an electric shock through me, and I sucked it in. The crowd roared and applauded. “Beck! Beck!” Yells and screams filled the air.

Myles’s aggressive baritone rocketed and we took off. The blue and red lights flicked and flickered over us as the crowd sang along with Myles. My gaze lifted to Myles’s lips, and I followed the words he sang. I knew these lyrics, I’d written them, I’d sung back up for him on this song hundreds of times on this tour of the USA and Europe.

It was beyond me now.

Get it the fuck together. Keep it together. Breathe.

I pivoted toward my mic stand and caught up with Myles, singing my piece about the girl of my dreams kissing me.

Girl of my dreams.Was she ever? Really? Such an idiot.

I stumbled back, my grip tightening on my guitar. My head was as heavy as a boulder, my knees shook. My guitar strap cut into my shoulder, weighing down my back. I faltered, my head falling forward, my hand, clammy, wet around the neck of my guitar.

The crowd roared and took over, chanting the verses for us. Thousands of voices reverberated through me, singing verses I’d written. Myles leapt over the stage, seducing his mic in that sexy way he was known for, and the crowd tore into a frenzy. A rush of heat twisted in my head, and I clamped my jaw tight, trying to stem the acidic surge of my insides from being pulled out of my body and spewed on the stage, on my pedals, in the coil of cables and speakers.

“We love you, Beck!” voices screamed in unison from down below.“Fuck Mae!”

Good news travels fast. Nothing like Instagram.

That image kept flaring back in my vision, no matter how hard I fought it. Mae tongue-kissing and groping somebody else. Not just somebody else. A mutual friend.

And that post of hers. Her words seared through me all over again:

“Living every day full of FLAVAH. ;) Doing what I wanna do every moment. No labels, no boundaries, just me. Feels so good, tastes even betterrrrrrr!”?? #LivingWildLivingFree #LoveLife #InLoveWithMe #GirlsJustWannaHaveFun #GirlsNeedToHaveFun #FullOfFlava #DoYou #YouBeYou

Earlier, as we’d downed a premium bottle of vodka and about to leave the dressing room, everyone around me was suddenly glued to their phones, their faces drawn, glancing up at me then looking away. I always shut down my phone an hour before showtime to focus, breathe, do my vocal warmups, relax.

Once we made it through the long, serpentine hallway of the arena to the stage entrance, a stagehand who stood next to me, a young woman, looked up from her phone and bit her lip the second her eyes landed on me. Had someone died? I grabbed her phone and there it was, Mae’s post. I took it in as if I were trying to swallow jagged stones. My gut twisted, I shoved the phone back into the girl’s hands.

“I’m so sorry,” she’d whispered.

There’d been no time to make sense of it, compute it. I’d choked back the nausea as we’d all climbed the steps. The darkness stifling, Zack, Myles, and Jude hopping up and down, laughing, high fiving each other. They were psyched to perform our final show.

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