Sweet Evil(4)

“Are you having fun?” Jay asked.

“Yeah, definitely,” I said, still watching the drummer as he swiped the straight brown locks from his eyes and looked down at two girls screaming out to him from the other end of the stage. He gave them the cutest, nonchalant half smile I’d ever seen. My heart sputtered. The girls screamed and jumped up and down, megacleavage threatening to bounce right out of their low-cut shirts. The drummer’s red starburst widened a notch, and I felt an unpleasant snarling, ripping feeling in my gut—another new sensation. I wanted him to look away from them.

Jealousy? Good grief!

“It’s not right, man,” Jay said, following my stare. “Some guys have all the luck.”

“What?” I finally broke my trance to look at Jay.

“That guy, the drummer? Get this. He’s a killer musician, he gets tons of chicks, his dad’s loaded, and as if that wasn’t enough, he’s got a friggin’ English accent!”

I had to smile at Jay’s mix of envy and admiration.

“What’s his name?” I hollered as the third song started.

“Kaidan Rowe. Oh, and that’s another thing. A cool name! Bastard.”

“How do you spell it?” I asked. It sounded like Ky-den.

Jay spelled it for me. “It’s A-I, like Thai food,” he explained.

Kai, like Thai, only yummier. Gah! Who was this girl invading my brain?

The name Kaidan Rowe sounded familiar. I’d never seen him before, but I’d heard of him.

“How old are they?” I asked, nodding toward the band.

“Juniors,” Jay shouted close to my ear. Okay, I was impressed. They were only a year older than us, and they had major talent. According to Jay, these guys were the next big thing. They’d recorded a small-time record that was being shopped to labels in L.A., and they’d be touring regionally this summer. Jay was such a fanboy.

An aggravated scuffle broke out behind us. I turned and saw Gregory’s round face and mop of curly brown hair above a too-large Hawaiian shirt shoving through the crowd. He was Jay’s musical partner in crime. They had written a few songs together, and were pretty much addicted to music. The problem was that neither of them could sing. At all.

“’Bout time, G!” Jay and Gregory did that male grab-hands-and-bang-chests-together thing in the cramped space, then Gregory and I nodded at each other. I was surprised and a little grossed out to see a flutter of red across his aura as he looked down at my legs, but it passed quickly as he turned his attention back to Jay.

“Dude, you ain’t gonna believe this,” Gregory said in his thick Georgian drawl. “I was just talkin’ to Doug—you know, one of the bouncers—and he can get us backstage!”

My heart danced an involuntary jig all over my insides.

“No freakin’ way!” said Jay. “Where’re the CDs?”

Gregory held up two CDs of their compositions and lyrics. They were good songs, but I cringed at the thought of their being given to Lascivious. The band probably got that kind of thing from fans all the time. I didn’t like to think of Jay and Gregory’s hard work tossed aside as if they were some desperate posers. But the two of them were shrouded in such happy yellow auras that I could do nothing except be supportive.

As the current song ended, I watched Kaidan shush the cymbals with his fingers, then tuck the drumsticks under his arm and swish his damp hair from his eyes again. When he leaned down to pick up a water bottle, our eyes met. My breath stuck right where it was in my lungs, and the loud voices around me turned to static white noise. The drummer’s lustful starburst throbbed for one gorgeous moment, and then his forehead creased and his gaze tightened. His eyes searched all around me before coming back to my face. He broke eye contact and took a swig of his water, tossing it back to the floor in time for the next song.

The brief encounter left me unnerved.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I told Jay, turning to go without waiting for a response. I noticed that the crowd moved much easier when one was moving away from the stage.

The air in the girls’ bathroom was stagnant with smells of urine and vomit. Only one of the three stalls was unclogged, but that didn’t seem to stop girls from using them anyway. I decided I could hold it. I reapplied my lip gloss at the mirror and was about to leave when I overheard two girls who had crammed themselves into one of the tiny stalls.

“I want Kaidan Rowe.”

“I know, right? You should throw him your number. I want Michael, though. He can do to me what he does to that microphone.” They squeezed out of the stall, giggling, and I recognized their voluptuous chests as the ones that had been in front of the stage. Both of their auras were faded.