The first song ended, and when I opened my eyes, something intangible yet vitally important shifted within me. A switch had been flicked on, unleashing joy and energy through my entire being. I was exactly where I belonged.
We shredded through the next six songs with only minor breaks in between. Abel said little after the initial introduction, preferring to douse the audience with the new material without editorialization, and they seemed to love it. A small pit had started during our second song, and it kept forming despite the security’s best efforts to break it up. Whenever I got a chance to look down at Molly, her expression radiated with pride.
“This one is really special,” Abel said before our next song. “It’s the first song I wrote after our friend and bandmate Charlie passed away. I couldn’t have written it without Adeline, who was the co-writer. This one is for you, Charlie.”
He nodded at me to begin, and tears pricked at the back of my eyes as I played the intro to our song. It wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Charlie, a man I never met but who had managed to have an outsized influence on my life nevertheless.
The track got an exuberant reception, and we kept playing until every single song we’d worked on over the past month had been heard.
Playing onstage always drove me to a place of ecstasy, but this was the first time I’d done so surrounded by people who clearly felt the same way, and their emotions amplified my own.
As we stood there at the end of our set, dripping with sweat and exhilaration, I felt like I’d left my body and was hovering above in space. This feeling, it had come to me the last time I was here, but this time, it was different. I wasn’t alone in this space between reality and whatever lay beyond. There were four other people here with me.
My eyes burned with tears even as I grinned at the audience.
Abel came up to wrap an arm around my shoulders.
“Thank you! Thank you so much,” he shouted.
I waved at the audience and let him walk me offstage, his body a fiery furnace pressed against my side. Stagehands blurred and walked past us, their congratulations fading into the air. Someone took my guitar off my hands.
Suddenly, I was pressed into a small alcove at the back of the venue. It may have been a storage closet, but I was too dazed to tell.
Abel slid his hands down my waist, grinding his hips with mine. I tore at his pants, my onstage ecstasy turning into a purely physical need to feel him between my legs. That need eliminated all thought. His kiss was a feverish dream, consuming and unreal.
When I freed him, he was as hard as a rock, craving me as much as I craved him. He lifted my legs to wrap them around his waist, hiking up the skirt of my dress and pulling my panties aside with one hand. His eyes met mine for a moment before he entered me, filing me completely. I gasped and clawed at his shoulders, my hand slipping on his sweat.
He began to thrust, transforming all the tension that had ebbed and flowed between us over the past five weeks into something infinitely more potent. We understood each other, I realized. The way we made art together, the way we performed… It was one and the same. We put everything on the line, discarded the shields that kept us safe, and risked it all in the name of creating something bigger than ourselves.
The lines between us blurred, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw myself in him. Not the Adeline of six weeks ago, but therealme. The one who did the things she wanted, who chased after her dreams, and who fought for things that mattered to her. The Adeline I’d locked inside a basement for the past four years, and who was ready to come out.
His lips silenced my groans as his fingers dug into the flesh of my ass, holding me in place. He felt unbelievable—perfect inside of me. I knew I wouldn’t last long, especially not when he increased the pace of his thrusts, driving toward his own release.
“Fuck, Adeline,” he grunted.
My world shattered, and I broke our kiss to bite the space between his neck and his shoulder, knowing I was bound to leave a mark. He came moments later, shuddering inside of me. I lifted my head to look at his face and saw his expression slacken. In his eyes, only a thin ring of green remained.
Pulling out, he fixed my underwear back in place before leaning his forehead against mine.
His mouth opened a few times as if to say something, but no words came out.
I understood him completely.
There were no words for this.
* * *
When minutes later we stumbled into the dressing room, the rest of the band was already there.
They were drinking beers, their wet shirts puddled on the ground, and I shuddered at the thought of what some of their fans would do to be in my place.
Their heads turned toward Abel and I, and Silas gave us a slow once over before putting his bottle down and walking over to pull both of us into a hug. Moments later, the other guys piled on, and we held each other for a long minute like a bunch of saps.
I was crying again when the huddle broke up, my emotions still running on high. Silas came up and brushed my hair out of my face. “You were brilliant.”
“So were you,” I croaked. “All of you.”
The guitarist led me to sit down on the couch as I tried to collect myself, his big palms warm on my skin. He nestled me under his arm and gave my temple a kiss.
