15Come With Me Now || Kongos
JP
I flagthe head technician down, waving my free hand and pointing at my microphone. My other hand is busy chiming out the chorus of the song we’re rehearsing on my keyboard. I’m supposed to be singing backup vocals right now, but the mic’s getting drowned out.
This is why we have sound checks.
The technician flashes me a thumbs up, and when I go to sing, my voice booms out so loud everyone stops what they’re doing to throw their hands over their ears. A screechy whine of feedback follows, and the rehearsal grinds to a halt.
“Shit!” Ace swears, screwing his face up in pain. “Are they trying to bust out everyone’s hearing?”
“Sorry!” the technician calls. “We’re gonna fix that. Take five, guys.”
Our manager scored us a last minute gig filling in for an act that dropped out of a Christmas benefit concert. Apparently the end of November is early enough for a Christmas benefit. We’ll be closing the show tonight after two other bands perform. The gig sold out within a few hours of us being added to the line-up, and there are already people hawking tickets outside the theatre. It’s been almost three months since we’ve performed, and I think we all forgot how crazy things can get when Sherbrooke Station is involved.
We’re kind of a big deal.
Nico, our usual stage manager, wanders over wearing a headset and passes us all water bottles. It might be almost winter outside, but it always feels like standing in a motherfucking desert under the stage lights.
“Sorry, guys,” he apologizes. “This crew is made of clowns. You’d think the Théâtre would have their shit together, but no.”
“Just make sure we don’t deafen anyone, and we’ll be fine,” Matt jokes.
Nico just grumbles something into his headset and storms off. I open the water bottle and tilt my head back to pour a stream down my sweaty face.
“Save the shower show for when your girlfriend gets here,” Ace tells me.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I reply, letting my bun down so I can shake the water out of my hair.
“Well you seem pretty fucking into her,” Matt pipes up. “I’ve basically had the apartment to myself these past few weeks. It’s been heaven. No unexpected harmonica solos or power tools going off at three in the morning. Pure bliss.”
“Yeah, because he’s too busy giving Molly hispower toolevery night,” Ace adds.
That’s not a bad name for it.
He’s wrong, though. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Molly, and we’ve both been enjoying the hell out of ‘working up’ to things, but we still haven’t actually had sex. I’m more than happy to go at whatever pace she needs, and sometimes I even wish we were moving slower. Being with her is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Sometimes it feels like she’s a song I was trying to find for so long that I forgot about it until I heard it again, like she was there in the back of my head all along and I didn’t even know it.
It scares me shitless.
“I told you guys, we’re taking it slow. We don’t have a label on it yet.”
“Like you’d actually label anything,” Ace continues. “I was joking when I called her your girlfriend. I still can’t even believe you’ve been chasing after her this long. It’s like you’re her puppy or something.”
He holds his hands up in front of him like paws and makes a dopey looking face while he pants, his tongue lolling.
I slosh some of my water on him. “Va t’en, débile!”
“No water fights on the stage, children!” Nico’s voice shouts from somewhere near the curtains.
“She is coming tonight though, right?” Matt asks.
“Oh, she’ll be coming all right...”
This time I skip the water and slug Ace in the stomach instead.
“Ow,” he says pointedly, even though I didn’t hit him that hard.
“Yeah, she’ll be here. She’s got some friend visiting from Kingston, and I got them both backstage passes.” I already know Kay and Stéphanie will be at the show too, so I turn to Cole. “Roxy gonna make it tonight?”
