"Eddie, be cool," Trent mutters.
"Right, sorry," Gavin says, and turns to the rest of Dirtshine, one hand on my back. "Guys, this is Marisol. Marisol, this is Darcy, Trent, and Eddie."
"Great show," I say, nerves fluttering again. I have no idea if they know our deal or not. "It was really-"
"And here's Dirtshine, fresh off their big comeback show! Let's go see what they think," a woman says, very loudly, stomping her way into the middle of our little circle.
She's wearing a formal dress, holding a microphone, talking into a camera, and nearly runs poor Eddie over before he moves.
"Hi there!" she says, smiling hugely. "I'm Peyton Donovich with MTV's Undercover Backstage All-Access Camera! How'd the show go tonight?"
The band looks at each other, and after a moment, Gavin answers.
"It's really great to be back out there," he says.
She keeps going, asking them questions that are all variations on isn't this wonderful and how cool is everything while I just stand there at Gavin's side, his hand still on my back, and try to stay off her radar. Really, that's what I'm here for: to look like a nice, normal girl who doesn't like drugs and who's a good influence on Gavin.
Just as Peyton's wrapping up, putting everyone on edge with her manic energy, she locks her crazy eyes on me.
Please no, I think, but I'm stuck and helpless.
"Now, you must be Gavin's mystery girlfriend!" she says.
I force myself to smile, even though I feel like the black hole of the camera lens is trying to swallow me.
"I didn't know I was a mystery," I say.
Peyton laughs way, way too hard.
"This is my girlfriend, Marisol," Gavin interjects. He's still got his hand on my back and he's stroking my spine gently with his thumb, almost absent-mindedly.
"Well, I'm glad you made it," Peyton says, half-turning to the camera. "Because welcome to the BACKSTAGE KISS CAM!"
She's going to kiss me?! I think in terror.
Then Gavin pretends to laugh, and I realize: she means me and Gavin.
Valerie's text flashes in my head: LIP-ON-LIP.
Gavin looks down at me, smiling, and I try to smile back.
LIP-ON-LIP, LIP-ON-LIP, my brain screams at me.
And then our faces mash together.
There's not another way to put it. I thought he was going to my left so I move my head that way but I half-miss his mouth, so really, our lips are only partly touching. I turn my head and try to save it, scrunching my face towards his, but now somehow my teeth are on his lip, his nose is squashed against his face funny, and the camera's getting all of this.
For a long moment, Gavin doesn't move. I don't move. Then we both back away, and he turns to smile at the camera.
"Beautiful!" shouts Peyton, and she keeps shouting but I can't pay any attention.
That was terrible. Absolutely the worst kiss I've ever experienced, hands down. Worst than my first kiss, worse than the guy who had braces, worse than the guy who shoved his tongue into my mouth and just let it flop there.
I'm reeling. Thunderstruck. I've thought about kissing Gavin at least a thousand times, fantasized about it, but... the reality was awful. Bad.
Maybe I've been wrong this whole time, I think. Maybe there's really nothing between us, and we're just going to kiss like awkward adolescents and that's all.
Plus, now it's going to be on TV, so that's extra great.
"Earth to Marisol?" Gavin's voice says, breaking through my mental whirlpool.
"Hi," I answer, blinking.
"Hi," he says. "Come on, we've got to get changed and then go to this party."
"Right," I say, and follow the band.
The dressing room for the band is a lounge area, with couches and snacks, and a couple of smaller changing rooms branching off. The band heads off to change, and I wander over to the snack table, my mind totally elsewhere.
It was an awkward kiss in front of a camera, I tell myself. You weren't prepared. It happens. It doesn't mean anything.
But it was bad, and if two people are compatible shouldn't kissing be good? How hard is it to kiss well? It's not as though either of us had never done it before.
Maybe you should stick to planning things like this, I think. Talk about it beforehand, script it out.
Planning a kiss on the lips so it's good enough isn't the most enticing thought I'd had. Shouldn't that kind of thing be, you know, spontaneous? Spur of the moment?
You're overthinking this, Gomez, I tell myself. Quit it. Have some candy and then go party.
The snack table is mostly junk food - chips and packaged cookies and candy. There's a whole bowl of M&Ms, along with fun-sized candy, Twizzlers, and two bowls of gummi bears, a small one and a big one. I don't know why. Rock and roll stuff, I guess.
I grab a small handful from each bowl, just to compare. Gummi candies are my weakness, especially when I'm stressed.
"You know the story about Van Halen and brown M&Ms, right?" Darcy's voice says behind me.
I turn, mouth full of gummi candy, and swallow quickly.
"I don't think so," I say.
"They got a reputation as prima donnas because, in their concert rider, they specified that they needed a big bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with all the brown M&Ms removed," she says, grabbing a handful of candy.
"Did they just hate brown?" I ask.
She shakes her head, chewing.
"Years later, David Lee Roth explained it," she says. "When they went into their dressing room, if there were no brown M&Ms, they knew the venue had actually read their whole concert rider, and the important stuff - like lights and sound and everything - were probably set up right. But if there were brown M&Ms, everything needed to be double-checked."
I pop another few gummi bears into my mouth. They taste a little strange, but I figure they must be gourmet gummi bears or something.
"That's actually pretty smart," I say.
"And now every venue has M&Ms, just because," she says, popping more into her mouth. "So, what kind of law are you studying?"
The party house is gorgeous. It's up in the hills above Los Angeles, and the terraced back yard has a view of nearly the whole city, from the skyscrapers downtown all the way to the spinning lit circle of the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier.
There's a camera set up with a backdrop near the front door, since the party's thrown by a music magazine, but it's mercifully fast, and there's no insane, toothy reporter demanding that we kiss for show. Inside is crowded but not jam-packed, and in few minutes, I'm drinking a glass of champagne while Gavin has club soda with lime as we talk to another musician he knows.
"I think it's an awful remaster," the other guy - Billy? - is saying. "The originals are just so gritty sounding and real, you know? You can't remaster demos. It's like showing videotape in high definition, you just see the scratches better."
"That's the thing, though," Gavin says. "I rather like hearing all of that stuff, the pops and the scratches. Makes me feel as if I'm in the basement with Dylan, not listening to him in the car."
Billy laughs.
"I like feeling as though I'm listening to them in the car," he says. "Reminds me of being nineteen and having snagged a bootleg tape that I could drive around all night and listen to."
A waiter with a tray passes by, taking my champagne glass and offering me another. I glance sideways at Gavin and his club soda, his other hand protectively on my back.
Despite myself, I think about the awful kiss again, my teeth mashed against Gavin's lip.
And I take another glass of champagne.
"I admit to getting precious few bootlegs myself," Gavin says. "There were quite a lot of very loud shows in very dirty bars, though, where you really could hear each and every flaw in the wiring."
I'm still listening, but I haven't got all that much to contribute. Besides, the two of them somehow seem really far away, and it's making it hard to pay attention to them, almost like I'm looking at them through a telescope and a microscope at the same time. Like they're really close but also far away, and it's weird.
Billy laughs. Gavin laughs. I look from one to the other.
Laugh, I think. You should probably laugh right now because you're being a little weird and you don't want them to know you're weird, act normal, are you acting normal now? Come on.
I laugh. Reflexively, I take another sip of champagne, then look down into my glass at the bubbles rising slowly to the top. It's really cool.
"Well, everyone's only listening through headphones now is the problem," Billy's saying, but now he feels extra far away and something about him seems off, like I'm looking through a kaleidoscope I can't actually see.
Crap, I'm drunk. Am I drunk? Is this what drunk feels like?
I touch Gavin's arm, and he looks down at me.
"I'll be right back," I hear myself say, as though I'm visiting the ladies' room.
"Sure," he says.
I smile. I nod. These are actions I am supposed to do, and then I walk away thinking right foot, left foot, right foot.
I don't head for the bathroom. Instead I head outside, because I think I might need fresh air. I've only had one drink - the second glass is still full - but maybe I'm locking my knees or something as I stand, which I know you're not supposed to do because the blood flow from your feet to your brain is very important, even though it's really weird that the same blood is in your feet and your brain because they're really different, you know? Feet and brains?