GIVING Aconcert when your boyfriend was backstage with an all-access pass was a new experience for Jeff. Off the stage everything felt precarious; he was walking on eggshells making sure he didn’t let on about Joe maybe leaving or about the impending intervention with Max. But on the stage, he felt like they owned it again. He felt like he had in the beginning, when they were young and full of energy and hope and joy.
Tonight, with Howl beside him and Carter waiting in the wings, Jeff could take on anything.
The full roar of the crowd at PNE—just over five thousand—only proved him right.
Some nights you just knew. The transitions clicked, the banter came smoothly, the energy just kept building. Tonight was one of those nights when nothing could touch them. From the moment Trix’s vocals joined his on “Blood in the Water,” Jeff had goose bumps. They blistered through a few earlier anthems, and when Joe took over lead vocals for a protest song, the whole venue rang as the audience shouted the lyrics at the tops of their lungs.
When the song wrapped, Joe glanced over at Jeff and shrugged helplessly, grinning. Jeff knew that look; he’d given it to Joe and Max enough times. Joe had put so much into the song that he needed a break or he wouldn’t be able to sing tomorrow.
“Thanks for that, Joe,” he said into the mic once the cheering had calmed enough for anyone to hear him.
The cheers picked up again.
Joe bowed.
“Always love following an act like that.”
That earned him some whistles and laughter, and he glanced over his shoulder at Max and raised his eyebrows. “I think we might have to deviate a minute here. Joe needs a breather.”
Trix picked up the thread. “What do you suggest?”
Jeff thought of rearranging the set list a little—they could just move up the songs that featured more of Max’s vocals, or they could omit Joe’s from the songs they’d settled on—but he’d turned around completely to see Trix, which meant he could see Carter in his director’s chair backstage, wearing the headset that would keep the speakers from deafening him… and Jeff didn’t become a rock star by not seizing every opportunity that came his way.
The last time he’d played a song he’d written just for Carter, he hadn’t even known Carter was watching. This time he could really pull out all the stops.
“Maybe we should slow it down a bit,” Jeff suggested. He let his fingers pick out a few of the opening notes from “Heavenly Bodies”—but he did it at three-quarter speed. “Hey, Trix, you think you can…?”
He couldn’t see her eyes because of the lighting and the angle, but he could hear her eye roll in her voice. “Sweetie, please. I think I can follow that. Although if we’re editorializing….” She beat out the usual rhythm for the song, and then she swapped the tom for the snare and put a heavier emphasis on the bass, which she hitjusta bit late.
“Oh my God,” Max said, half laughing into the microphone. The new beat evoked nothing so much as straining bedsprings and a headboard hitting the wall.
“I love you guys,” Jeff said sincerely. “Trix, count us in?”
She gave a throaty chuckle into the mic and followed in a breathy, low voice, “Two, three, four—”
Suffice it to say they didn’t even consider doing the radio edit. By the time Jeff wrapped up the guitar outro—which sounded more like a person wailing in ecstasy than ever before—the noise from the fans was mostly wolf whistles.
He wiped his wrist across his forehead, using the sweat-wicking band he had there to avoid getting drips in his eyes. But before he could even look back and check to see his effect on Carter, Trix laughed. “Hey, Jeffy, I think you’re needed backstage.”
What?
When he turned around, two of their tech crew were red-faced with mirth and Carter—Carter was standing, flushed, beckoning with one finger.
Well, that cat wasn’t going back in the bag. He might as well take advantage. “’Scuse me just—one second,” Jeff said, and a huge cheer went up as he unplugged and strode back just outside the range of the stage cameras.
Probably some of the fans could still see from this angle, if they were sitting to the right of the stage, but fuck it. Jeff had just enough time to sling the guitar onto his back before Carter slid both hands into his hair and yanked him into a kiss.
Between the energy from the stage and the energy pouring in through Carter’s lips, the buzz of his stubble and the heat of his body, Jeff expected to burn up like a book of matches. He opened his mouth and Carter swept his tongue in for a brief, hard, dizzying moment.
Just as suddenly, he pulled back, his expression sheepish. “Hope you don’t mind the interruption?”
Jeff swayed on his feet, held upright mostly by Carter’s hands in his hair. “Umm.” Interruption?
Finally the howling of the crowd filtered through his brain.
Oh. Right. “Nooo,” he said slowly as his brain kicked back into gear. “I mean, I probably shouldn’t make it a habit, but this is your first all-access concert. I understand being simply overcome with lust—”
Carter stopped him with a finger against his lips. “Don’t ruin it.”
