Page 2 of Reverb

Framed in the window was a pair of male hips clad in black jeans and adorned with a belt with a silver buckle. Above the belt, the soft cotton of a dark green tee draped over a perfectly flat stomach.

My heart squeezed up into my throat in panic. I recognized those hips, that stomach. I’d watched them onstage for every show of this tour. It was Stone Zeeland, the Road Kings’ guitarist.

What the hell is Stone Zeeland doing knocking on my window?

As if to compound the question, Stone leaned down and peered in at me. He had to lean pretty far down, because he was a big guy. Tall, built, and muscled. One of those men that never seems small, in any way, in any circumstances. It wasn’t just his shoulders or the granite of his thighs. It was his presence, his rock star attitude, his scowl. His talent. His status as a guitar god.

His scowl was in full force now, his dark eyebrows drawn down, his mouth frowning through his short, dark beard. He looked intimidating, which was—as far as I could tell—his usual mode. Frankly, if I didn’t know who he was, I’d wonder if I was about to be mugged or carjacked by a member of a biker gang. Instead, I waved at him to go away.

Stone blinked once, and instead of obeying, he grabbed the door handle. Too late, I realized the car wasn’t locked, and before I could reach for the lock button, he’d swung the passenger door open, dropped in next to me, and slammed it shut.

For a second, I was too shocked to react. In all the weeks of this tour, I had exchanged less than ten words with Stone. His loathing of me came off him like a smell. I had never been alone with him, and never this physically close. He loomed enormous in the small space. I wasn’t even certain he knew my name.

He glared at me in silence for so long I eventually said, “Yes? Can I help you?”

His voice was gravelly, as if with disuse. “You’re sitting in your car in the parking lot,” he said. He pointed out the windshield. “The hotel is right there.”

My hackles went up. “So? There’s no rule against it.”

There was another long beat of silence. I hadn’t even known the Road Kings had arrived in town, because I wasn’t on their bus. I didn’t know the precise moments they arrived anywhere. I was constantly chasing the band, hoping to catch them at a good time.

“You’re also freaking out,” Stone said.

Was it that obvious? Obvious enough to be seen from a distance through a car window? I wasn’t crying. So how did he know?

The humiliation of my situation came back to me again, and it made me mad, so I said, “I am not freaking out.”

Stone glared at me. There was silence for another minute.

And another. And another.

This guy was very good at silence, but he wasn’t going to win. I glared back at him, getting angrier by the second.

Finally he said, “Go freak out in your hotel room.”

“Why?” I snapped.

“Because the fact that you’re sitting here is bothering me.”

“Bothering you?” I couldn’t quite believe that I had to deal with this shit on top of everything else. Forgetting that I was talking to one of the musicians I would normally give my left arm to interview, I half shouted, “Stone, that is too bad.”

Do you know how many women were in my music journalism course at the beginning of the first semester? Four, including me. Do you know how many actually finished the course? Take a guess.

Yes, one. Me.

It doesn’t matter what year it is, the music business is a boys’ club through and through. The big record producers are men, the executives are men, the promoters are men, the people making all the money are men. The musicians, still, are also mostly men, and the groupie scene might have changed form since the Almost Famous era, but it’s alive and well. It’s a business in which Mick Jagger still gets to do whatever the hell he wants in his seventies, while Taylor Swift’s dating life is scrutinized endlessly and a bunch of guys on Twitter think she’s past her prime at thirty. Take a look at Lizzo’s replies sometime. If you feel the need for a dose of good old toxic masculinity, the music business is the place to be.

I learned, early on, to fake it. I was twenty-eight, and I knew I was still green, but I could put on an attitude, make like nothing bothered me. Since entering this business, I’d been hit on, looked down on, and outright ignored, but I could play tough.

Stone Zeeland didn’t scare me. Or if he did, I wouldn’t let him know it.

“What’s the problem?” he barked at me now, as if I’d come bothering him instead of the other way around.

I adjusted my glasses. “There’s no problem,” I lied.

“Then go to your hotel room. It’s getting dark.”

“I will.”

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