Wild Open (25 page)

“Sure,” he said. “I should probably do some of that myself. Look. Leah. I want to talk to you again.”

“I’d like that,” she said, cautious, pleased.

That was the start of it. Soon they were texting all day every day, and sending each other pictures of their meals and funny things they saw out and about. They talked on the phone a few times a week. O’Connor went to visit one of his brothers in New York, and he documented the whole thing for Leah through a series of pictures, videos, and hilarious, rambling emails.

Andrew says hi
, he texted her one day, and then attached a picture of Andrew wearing the Playboy Bunny suit she had mailed him, peeking back over his shoulder with the cotton tail facing the camera. Leah laughed until she cried.

He sent her a picture of James eating a burger bigger than his face, his mouth stretched comically wide to take a bite; and a picture of himself playing the guitar, his laptop open beside him.
Working on the next album
.

They didn’t talk about seeing each other in person, or about their feelings, or what any of it meant. It was great. There was no pressure, and Leah felt like she was finally, genuinely getting to know him. Their time together on tour had been so brief and fevered that they had gotten to know each other’s bodies better than they had gotten to know, well, each other. But now they were going through the slow process of actually becoming friends.

Weeks passed. Leah worked, and bickered with Luka about whose turn it was to wash the dishes, and floated through life on a cloud, blissful beyond measure, falling in love.

In early October, O’Connor sent her an email: the Saving Graces were going to be in town for a few days to meet with their label, do a little recording, and play a small surprise show at a local nightclub; did she want to come to the show?

She did.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Leah slept poorly the night before the concert, and woke up feeling groggy and anxious. Her morning coffee made the feeling worse. Her heart beat too quickly, and her hands shook. She was going to see O’Connor again, for the first time in more than two months.

She wandered around the apartment, distracted and aimless, until Luka woke up and told her to get out of the house before she drove him crazy. She walked to the nearby farmers’ market and bought a few vegetables that she couldn’t identify, and some of the expensive goat-milk soap that was her favorite guilty pleasure. It was a beautiful day. Los Angeles was miserable in the summer, but during the rest of the year she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

O’Connor texted her: *Can’t wait to see you tonight.*

She felt like throwing up. Were they going to have sex? They were probably going to have sex.

She went home to shower, and spent a long time shaving her legs. Luka banged on the bathroom door and yelled, “We’re in a water crisis!”

“I’m getting laid tonight!” she yelled back.

He went away after that, because thinking about your sibling having sex was basically emotional Kryptonite.

She had work that afternoon, and she went gratefully, happy for the distraction. It was easy to bury herself in paperwork and phone calls and forget all about her impending reunion with O’Connor.

But work ended, and Baby kicked her out of the club because he said she’d been doing too much unpaid overtime lately. She didn’t want to go home, because the show that night was in the opposite direction; so she drove out to Santa Monica and paid way too much for parking, and walked around for a couple of hours until the show started. She ate a burrito the size of a newborn, and drank a couple of light beers, just enough to get the start of a buzz going. And then she spilled sour cream on her shirt, because that was just her luck, and went into the bathroom to try to clean it off, and spent a few minutes examining herself in the mirror. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, which maybe was a mistake. She had put on a dress that morning, and taken it off, and put it back on again, and then finally decided that wearing a dress would be a sure sign to O’Connor that she was trying to impress him, and she didn’t want to give him that sort of ammunition. But now, looking at her pale face, the damp spot on her shirt from the sour cream, she wished she had made more of an effort.

It was too late now. He would have to deal with her as she was.

The show was scheduled to start at 8. Leah showed up at a quarter to and waded her way through the crowd to the floor right in front of the stage, using her elbows judiciously and ignoring the dirty looks and angry mutters she left in her wake. None of these people knew. They were fans, and they loved the band, but she loved the lead guitarist, God damn him, and she wanted to be front and center, close enough that he would look down into the crowd and see her there looking up at him. The teenage girls at the very front wouldn’t surrender their positions—their chests were pressed right against the stage, and they looked like they were prepared to defend their spots to the death—but that was fine; Leah left them in peace. One row back was good enough for her.

She noticed a couple of the teenagers glancing back at her and whispering to each other. She ignored them, but one of them gathered up the courage to turn all the way around and say, “Are you Leah?”

Lord. She had forgotten that James had plastered her all over the band’s social media. She smiled tightly, not sure where this interaction was headed. “Yeah. I’m Leah.”

“Oh my *God,*” the girl said, and prodded an I-told-you-so elbow into her friend’s ribs. “Can I get your autograph?”

It was too surreal to be believed, so Leah just signed the girl’s notebook and told her to enjoy the show. Fortunately the girls seemed too awed to ask any awkward questions.

The lights dimmed, and the show began.

They came out on stage, Andrew and James and O’Connor all in a row, followed by a lean black guy who must have been the new bass player—a Craigslist find, O’Connor had told her, who showed up thinking he was auditioning for someone’s anonymous garage band, and had almost stroked out when he realized he was playing for the Saving Graces. Leah was glad that she had declined when James called her and asked if she wanted the spot. She was happy where she was, at least for now.

All of this passed through her head in an instant. Mostly she was watching O’Connor.

His hair was a little shorter, but otherwise he looked just the same. It hadn’t been *that* long. He slung his guitar around his neck, leaned toward his microphone, grinned, and said, “How’s everyone doing tonight?”

The sound of his voice sent chills through Leah’s body. The audience erupted in joyful screams, and Leah screamed along with them, raising her hands above her head and jumping up and down, taking her cue from the teenagers in front of her. She would go all out.

“Quit hogging the mic, O’Connor,” Andrew said, and everyone laughed. Andrew smiled at them, the gathered, adoring crowd, and said, “We’re so glad you’re here. You guys may have heard that I’ve, uh, I’ve had sort of a rough time lately. This is my first time back on stage since I was in the hospital, so I hope you’ll be patient with me if I miss a few notes.”

“We love you, Andrew!” a girl shrieked from the back of the room.

Andrew threw his head back and laughed. He *did* look better, Leah decided. Lighter. “I’m glad to hear it. This is also our first show with our new bass player, Nathan. I hope you’ll give him a warm welcome.”

“We love you, Nathan,” a man bellowed, to much general hilarity.

“All right, all right,” O’Connor said. “Let’s play some fucking music.”

James, grinning behind his drum set, counted them off, and they launched into the first chords of “Settle Your Debts.”

Leah closed her eyes as the familiar music washed over her. Her fingers moved, playing invisible guitar strings. Andrew’s voice lifted, strong and clear, and O’Connor’s deeper voice filled in the low notes. The new bassist was good, both technically proficient and imaginative, spinning off new riffs as the song wound toward the chorus. Leah could feel the bass through her feet, and the powerful thumping of James’s drums.

Live music was euphoria, really. It was a form of worship, and the club was her church, the rafters above filled with mystical darkness, echoing with sound. And everyone around her felt it, too. She could sense it in the way their bodies shifted against her, the ecstatic surge toward the stage, all of them crying out, their hands lifted.

She kept her gaze on O’Connor, and she could tell when he spotted her: his eyes widened, and his face creased in a huge smile. She blew him a kiss. She was bold. She was meant for him. She couldn’t wait.

They played a short set: ten songs, and then the encore: “Wild Open.” Leah knew every word by heart, and she sang along:
Hand in hand, I know you’ll come with me. Wild open, baby, set me free.
O’Connor was watching her, playing to her, his left hand gliding along the neck of his guitar. Her nervousness had evaporated. She
knew
him. There was nothing to be worried about.

The show ended. Leah waited for the crush of fans to thin out a little, and then she made her way to the stage door. A huge, menacing security guy folded his arms and glowered at her. “You can’t come back here, miss.”

He was
incredibly
intimidating, but Leah held her ground. “I’m here to see O’Connor. He told me to tell you that I turn back into a pumpkin at midnight.”

The man sighed and opened the door for her. “O’Connor and his stupid passwords. Okay, go on back. It’s two doors down on the right.”

“Thanks,” Leah said, and slipped inside.

Even without his directions, she would have known where to go. She had played in this club several times with Rung, when they were still a local band with oversized dreams. She went a short way down the hallway and rapped on the door that said DRESSING ROOM in big block letters.

Her heart was pounding again. She was excited, and happy.

O’Connor opened the door so quickly that she knew he had been waiting for her. His face broke into a huge, heartfelt smile. He took one of Leah’s hands in his and squeezed. Then he leaned backward into the room and called, “Okay, see you guys tomorrow!”

Leah heard James say, “What? Where are you going?”

O’Connor didn’t bother answering. He slammed the door behind him, slung an arm around Leah’s shoulders, and said, “What do you say we blow this popsicle stand?”

Leah said, “Let’s.”

* * *

They went out the back. Leah was concerned that they would run into some fans waiting around the back entrance for an autograph or a hug, but the lot was surrounded by a high fence, and there was nothing out there but a truck and a few dumpsters.

O’Connor had rented one of the sleek convertibles he was so obsessed with. He led Leah toward it, still holding her hand, and opened the passenger door for her and helped her inside.

“When did you develop manners?” she asked.

“I’ve been practicing,” he said. “James got me a book.”

She laughed. He was probably joking, but she could also see James doing that, so maybe not.

O’Connor slid in behind the steering wheel, but he didn’t turn the key in the ignition. He sat there smiling at Leah, and reached out to touch her cheek. “I’m glad you came.”

Her heart fluttered. “It was a great show.”

“I don’t know why you wanted to be in the pit,” he said. “You could have watched from backstage.”

“It’s better on the floor,” she said. “I like the energy of the crowd. You know how it is.”

“I do,” he said. He leaned across the gear shift between them, his hand sliding into her hair, and kissed her.

The desire she’d been trying to ignore roared to sudden, urgent life. She leaned into his kiss, wanting more, wanting to feel his bare skin against hers. It had been too long. He kissed her deeply, claiming her mouth, but then released her much too quickly, and sat back in his seat.

“Fuck,” he said. He slid one hand between his legs and blatantly adjusted himself in his jeans.

Leah flushed hot. She could see the shape of him through the worn denim, and the memory of him moving inside her was vivid enough to make her sweat. “O’Connor,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, and peeled out of the parking lot.

The hotel wasn’t far. O’Connor rested one hand on Leah’s leg as he drove, and every time he had to take it away to turn a corner or shift gears, he replaced it a little bit higher. Even through her jeans his palm felt hot and huge. Leah ached with wanting. By the time he pulled into the lot behind the hotel and parked, she was ready to drag him into the back seat and hope nobody peeked through the window.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re thinking. The answer is no.”

“You’re no fun,” she said. “Getting arrested for public sex would probably just add to your rock star appeal.”

“This car is too small,” he said. “I want better access.”

Okay. That was a valid argument.

They went into the hotel. He held her hand through the parking lot, and the lobby, and into the elevator, and that point of contact built a raging fire in Leah’s belly. O’Connor wouldn’t meet her eyes as they rode the elevator to the top floor, and she understood why: eye contact was too dangerous right now. They would both ignite.