Before The Lights

“Five minutes!”

Our manager, Matt, poked his head through the crack in the dressing room door. His volume unreasonably loud in the small space.

“We can tell the fucking time, Matt. Is it necessary to yell like that?” Jesse shrugged on a worn dark denim jacket.

I folded the paper in my hand along its existing creases and slid it back into my wallet. Then, tilted my head back to rest against the back of the sofa, soaking in the last few minutes of silence, and going through the setlist in my head for the millionth time.

“Are you going to sit there looking miserable all night,” Colin said, “or are you actually planning on singing?”

I looked up. He was sprawled across the sofa with his bass between his knees, eating crisps we’d been specifically told not to eat in the dressing room.

“I was thinking of just going out there and having a lie down.”

“Good. Save your voice for the interviews.”

Jesse snorted. He was crouched on the floor now, an open guitar case in front of him, restringing something that looked perfectly fine.

At the back of the room, Evan was doing push-ups. He glanced at his watch.

“Thirty seconds. We’d better go.”

The noise outside came through the walls then. A low, distant roar. Thousands of people. My stomach tightened. Not nerves. Anticipation.

This was the best part.

Colin slapped both hands against my shoulders as we walked out of the dressing room.“Try not to die tonight.”

“No promises.”

“Try not to kill anyone either.” He glanced at me as he rolled up his sleeves.

“Funny.”

In my defense, that guy should’ve moved out of the way when he saw my guitar flying towards him. Now, I was strictly instructed not to jump into the crowd anymore—with an instrument anyway, all because of that idiots slow reflexes.

Evan handed me a bottle of water as we reached the side of the stage. Jesse held out his fist. I knocked mine against it.

I shoved the wallet deeper into my pocket. It would probably weigh me down, but I didn’t care. I’d never performed without the paper inside it close to my body. Not once in eight years. Like a strange compulsion I couldn’t shake.

Not that I even wanted to.

It worked for me. I didn’t care to question that.

The lights were too bright to see much beyond the first few rows, but I could feel the movement of everyone behind them. Thousands of bodies moving as one.

We opened with our first single, then transitioned into the new album. We learnt that the crowd loved that. Starting with something old and nostalgic. So that’s what we always did.

Halfway through the fourth song, I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. Next thing I knew, someone’s flung themselves on me, arms locking around my neck. The force of it nearly sent my guitar into the floor. I caught it instinctively, but didn’t let the verse falter. I continued, as I was, only a surprised chuckle slipping past my lips.

Jesse was laughing harder. And I immediately knew what he was thinking.

A few years back, when we were playing in small venues where the dressing rooms smelled worse than the toilets, someone had climbed onto the stage halfway through a song, crawled straight across the floor towards Jesse, clawed at his jeans, tugging so hard that they’d come straight down. He had finished the song in his boxers while she was escorted out by security.

Evan had fallen off his stool laughing.

The girl that had somehow crossed over the barrier was still attached to me, when the song ended and security pried her off.

I didn’t think much of it. People did strange things when they thought they loved you. Or when they loved the version of you they’d invented.

After the show, my ears were still ringing. I didn’t mind the feeling though. It was oddly comforting. But now that it was over, I just wanted to leave.

“I can’t feel my face,” Colin croaked as he vomited violently into a bin.

He was on the floor of our dressing room, one hand gripping the edge of the bin like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

“You should’ve thought of that before you played for two hours with nothing in your system but whiskey,” Evan said sarcastically.

He had his head rolled back, resting against the dark brown couch pushed against the dressing-room wall, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.

“We haven’t slept since Tuesday.” Jesse pointed out. “It’s Thursday. And I hate to break it to you, but we aren’t seventeen anymore.”

“I had that bag of crisps,” Colin muttered weakly.

Jesse leaned over, stretching across Evan to hand Colin a bottle of water. “Here.”

Colin took it with a quiet, “Thanks,” then took a tentative sip.

The girl on Jesse’s lap lifted her head from his shoulder.

“Jesus, he’s still throwing up?” she slurred. “Poor guy.”

Then she pressed her lips to Jesse’s.

“For fuck’s sake,” Evan muttered. “Here they go again.”

“How about you do that at the hotel?”

I stood.

This room was too stuffy, too small and far too fucking bright. And I was suddenly itching to leave.

“Let’s go, boys.” Jesse eased the girl off his lap, as Evan bent to help Colin up.

The car ride was blessedly short.

We were greeted by a group of people huddled outside the hotel. They swarmed towards us immediately, following us inside despite James, our security, repeatedly telling them to back up.

Someone grabbed at my sleeve.

I glanced back at him, then stepped into the crowd and took the pen from his hand.

“Christ, Joey, lad.” James groaned, exasperated. We were told not to stop for anyone. Not to put ourselves in harms way when we had a show tomorrow, but the guy had a kid with him. The boy couldn’t have been more than six.

He was clutching a battered Static poster to his chest. Least I could do for someone who cared enough to come all the way out here and wait in the cold was to sign a fucking poster.

It reminded me of the time I’d met Chris Cornel after Audioslave played Manchester in 05. It was a shitty year for me overall, but the fact that he’d signed my CD kind of made it all worth it.

The kid grinned. “Thank you.”

I nodded and followed the others into the lift.

The crowd thinned. A few people remained. A redhead stepped towards me just as the doors began to close.

When I woke up the next morning, she was in my bed.

Maybe I should ask her name.

I sat up, my hands immediately rubbing my temples.

I had one hell of a hangover.

“You really live up to your reputation, you know that?” the girl beside me mumbled sleepily, shooting me a glance.

“Thanks.”

She slid out of bed and slipped into the shirt hanging off the headboard.

“I’m gonna head out. I put my number in your phone last night, you probably forgot about that, but anyway.…give me a call sometime.”

We both knew I wasn’t going to. I was a one-time kind of guy, and the look in her eye told me she knew that.

I wouldn’t know what name to look for anyway.

I stared back blankly.

“Heather,” she said, reading my thoughts. “I put it in as Heather Red Head.”

She winked. I breathed out a small laugh.

“Cheers.”

Heather left a few minutes later. I rubbed my eyes, then fell back against the pillows.

I loved hotel rooms. Always had. There was something comforting about not having to remember where anything was. Like there was no expectations or something. Everything was temporary. The room. The city. The people.

Tomorrow we’d be somewhere else.

But I wouldn’t say no to waking up somewhere that felt even remotely familiar.

“Are you decent?” Colin walked in, his arm slung dramatically over his eyes.

We always had each other’s room keys. It was just something we’d done ever since we started having enough money to get a room each.

“Yeah. She’s gone.”

“Get dressed, then. We’ve got to go.”

My stomach sank at the reminder.

We hadn’t been home in ages.

There had been the occasional night between shows, Some Christmases, an important birthday when we could manage it. But the four of us had spent so long moving that home had become somewhere we talked about rather than somewhere we went.

I got out of bed.

A wave of relief and something else curled in my gut.

Because I was tired. Because I was hungover. Because going back to the place where everything had started was bound to feel strange.

It had nothing to do with the fact that there was a girl in that town I hadn’t seen since I was nineteen.

A girl whose number I had once known by heart.

A girl I had promised I’d come back for.