Page 43 of Melt With You

The destruction of the truck hadn’t been simply the demolishing of wheels, but the dream of the competition.

End of the dream in general for Van.

Chapter Nineteen

‘Backstabbing baby makes my heart turn over every time we get in bed.

Backstabbing baby, who’d you rather be with?

Who are you fucking in your head?’

They were good.

That was the first thought she had. The music was solid and the guys up on the stage had a chemistry Dori could feel. They worked together in synchronicity, keeping in constant motion, delighting their audience with the stage antics Dori remembered from the days of 80s Hair Bands. But although the Back Door Delivery Boys were dressed in shiny spandex, with face paint in the style of Adam Ant, they were more than eye candy. Their talent wasn’t just a façade. They played well for real.

Why hadn’t Dori remembered this? Because she hadn’t wanted to. The demise of the group had been such a blow to Dameron. The whole thing had been ugly. Sabotage some said. The court dates. The questions of whether the fire was due to faulty wiring or something more sinister.

Some things were better left in the past. That’s what Chelsea always said.

But now, now this wasn’t the past. This was Dori’s present. And she watched in awe as Van rocked the stage, his connection with the fans reminding her of Queen’s Freddie Mercury. Sexy to women and sexy to men. All at the same time.

So he was bi. Was that really a problem for her? Was that thought the one that crept into her consciousness every so often, only to slip away when he kissed her, get pushed down once more when he fucked her?

Or was the problem that she had twenty years on him? She’d no idea that he was so young. He’d told her himself that he was twenty-four. And she’d told him that she was thirty-one. Well, she’d let him believe that when he’d ventured a guess. Who was the worse liar?

It didn’t really matter, did it? She loved being with him, lived for the excitement he brought her. Seeing him up on stage, striding in those tight Lycra pants, shirt open to reveal his bare chest, was enough to get her wet. And watching the girls in the crowd lusting after him – that was enough to make her jealous.

‘He’s so fucking hot,’ she heard one blonde teenybopper shout to her friend, and that pushed Dori to her limits. She headed out through the crowd to the bar, wanting another drink. That was an important difference to living in the 80s a second time around. Now, she could drink. She could smoke. She could exploit all the vices she wanted without having to sneak around.

With her Long Island Iced Tea in hand, she headed back to the theater, choosing to sit out the next few songs way up high in the balcony. Not aware at all that while she was watching Van, someone else was watching her.

Did Dori really like him?

He stared hard at the rocker for a moment. Rowan wasn’t interested in men, but still he could put himself into the shoes of a woman, and he understood there wasn’t a lot about Van that was unappealing. The boy was handsome, even under all that make-up. But he was only a boy. That was the word that struck. Van was a boy. Rowan was a man. Why on earth would Dori be wasting her time with a kid?

Because he didn’t seem like a kid on stage.

That was for sure. He had the type of confidence that all those pretty-boy Hair Bands had. White Snake and Poison and Mötley Crüe. The boys who wore make-up and skin-tight clothes in leopard patterns. He’d have never thought that Dori would go for something like that. But maybe people changed their desires. Maybe in the past twenty years, Dori had turned into someone else.

Yet her emails didn’t back that up. When they’d begun corresponding, she’d seemed like the same old Dori he remembered.

He turned to look at her, sitting up in the top row of the balcony, watching the stage from high above. She even looked like the same old Dori, now that she’d cut her hair so short and dyed it that vibrant blue again. What was going on with her? Midlife crisis?

No. She didn’t have anything to worry about. She was gorgeous, prettier to him than any of the skimpily-clad teens hugging the stage. But then he wasn’t a girl. He didn’t know how girls felt about getting older, didn’t know anything apart from what he heard about in advertisements, what he saw in magazines.

He should go up to her. He should tell her everything now, explain the situation, wake her with a kiss – the way every good fairy tale ended.

But just as he was getting up his nerve, she started down the aisle once more, heading toward the stage, and he saw that Van was beckoning her, that he was reaching down for her hand, that he was lifting her up.

‘Oh, fuck, that was awesome.’

She could still feel the adrenaline coursing through her. ‘It was just like in that video. You know the one with Bruce Springsteen?’ She hoped she had her dates right. She remembered that one coming out when she was a freshman, the one with Courtney Cox being pulled from the crowd – so it would have been four years before. What if she were talking about something that had happened in the future?

Luckily, Van nodded. ‘You really know your MTV,’ he said, approvingly.

‘I know something else, too.’

‘Yeah?’

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