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Lisa’s eyes lit up from the inside, her round, moon-like face flushed pink as she gushed. “There’s a concert in the round, at the center of the mall. Some new band, I don’t know the name. But oh my God, the lead singer is to die for!”
“He looks a lot like Tyler Vincent!” Cathy called over her shoulder as her friend dragged her toward the front of the store.
Aimee met my eyes, hers wide with disbelief and recognition. Somehow I had known, the way Lisa fawned, that it had been Dale all along.
“It can’t be.” Aimee shook her head. “Isn’t he meeting us here later to give us the tickets?”
I nodded. I’d offered to give him a ride to the mall, but he said he would already be there with a few of his friends. Now I understood what he meant, but I couldn’t fathom why he wouldn’t tell me his band was performing at the mall. Wasn’t it a pretty big deal? Why wouldn’t he want me to come? Why wouldn’t he at least tell me and give me the opportunity?
“Come on,” Aimee insisted, snatching the Tyler Vincent album out of my hands and shoving it back into the slot before yanking me toward the front of the store. “I can hear him.”
I could hear him too. The music was faint, coming from the center of the mall just as they said, like a heartbeat. Aimee followed it and I followed her. The center of the mall was a popular meeting place. There were usually small climb-on toys set up for little kids to explore while parents sat and watched. A large elevator with a fountain in front carried shoppers between the mall’s two floors.
Today a stage had been set up, something I’d seen before on a few occasions when they did mini fashion shows or presentations. It had been a big deal several years ago when Tiffany and Rick Astley appeared at a mall performance, before either of them had any real hits. That catchy Rick Astley tune, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” had stuck in my head for months like an ear worm I couldn’t get rid of.
A stage had been set up and Dale was singing on it.
But he wasn’t just singing. He was performing.
I’d seen Tyler Vincent in concert six times since I was fourteen, with all the lights, and the floor-to-ceiling speakers, the costume and guitar changes, but I had never experienced anything quite like this. Dale’s voice called to me, like the wail of a mythic siren or a magical Pied Piper. His singing voice, which I’d heard only once over the phone, with just an acoustic accompaniment, was amplified a hundred, no a thousand times, with a microphone in his hand and a full band behind him.
“It’s him!” Aimee announced, triumphant.
Of course it was. I’d known it all along.
I wasn’t the only one drawn to his energy, like a dark fire, heat lightning at midnight when the air hung so heavy you could barely breathe. Not that I could anyway. My breath had left my body. Girls crowded the front of the stage, hands outstretched, all of them just as transfixed as I was. In one short week, I felt like I knew Dale, I knew where he came from, who he was, what he was about. But this… I hadn’t seen this before. I’d never seen this before.
He didn’t just exude energy, or even move it—with the force of his body prowling across the stage or the low growl of his voice—he commanded it. He was in complete control, not just of himself and of the band behind him, who played their best because of him—simply because his presence demanded it—but of the entire crowd. There were maybe fifty, a hundred people standing around the stage watching him perform, but I had a strong feeling it wouldn’t have mattered, a hundred, a hundred thousand or a million, Dale could have commanded them all.
The song was a Police cover, but the song didn’t really even matter. It was Dale, pacing the stage like a predator, that hungry, greedy look in his eyes, the one he gave me when we were alone, parked in my car, our breath so warm it fogged the windows, our bodies strung tighter than any guitar strings. That was the look he gave me before he got out and walked away, denying himself, denying me too. Holding himself back, afraid he would lose control.
But here, he let that part of him loose to roam the stage, back and forth, his voice calling for one in particular, and yet drawing them all. His gaze moved out into the crowd, like his body, back and forth, searching. It was the hungry longing that brought them all to the front of the stage, clamoring and screaming for him. I’d seen old footage of Elvis concerts, and the Beatles too, girls so overtaken with emotion they cried or sank to their knees, overwhelmed with the experience.
I’d watched girls faint at Tyler Vincent’s concerts over the years, had seen them jump up on stage only to be taken off by security. But even in that enormous stadium, Tyler Vincent hadn’t elicited in me, or anyone around me, the same feeling Dale did with one dark, heated look.
“Come on.” Aimee shoved her way through the crowd like a linebacker, clutching her shopping bag to her chest, expecting me to follow. I couldn’t do much else as the crowd parted before us at Aimee’s insistence, filling in behind me as we moved through, as if flesh were water, the crowd all one entity.
I don’t know how she managed to get us to the front, but she was determined, and there were no security guards here pushing people back into their seats or checking tickets, like they did at the big stadiums during Tyler Vincent concerts. We were front and center and the man on stage had my full, undivided attention.
From this vantage point, I could see every scuff on his combat boots, his jeans tight enough to conform to the contours of his body. He was pure energy, striding away from us now on stage, holding the microphone up as his body arched, holding one long, glorious note, and giving me and everyone else a flash of that studded belt and the ridged expanse of his abdomen. When he turned back toward us, I saw his t-shirt. It read, “Black Diamond.”
“He saw you.” Aimee grabbed my arm, squealing and shaking me violently, but she wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
Our eyes met and locked as the song came to a halt, followed by a screaming conclusion from the crowd, girls around us pressing me into the stage, forcing all the air out of my lungs, but I’d forgotten about doing anything so basic as breathing. Dale Diamond had found me, and that hungry, wanting look I had seen him scanning the crowd with was suddenly focused entirely on me. The shift in energy was so sudden and obvious, everyone watching craned their necks to see what—or who—he was looking at.
He recovered quickly, reaching out to touch a few outstretched hands, melting the front row of girls like one long stick of butter as he moved closer toward me. He couldn’t have planned it, he didn’t know we would be there, but when he reached the spot on the stage in front of me and Aimee, he paused, his eyes never leaving mine. He hadn’t stopped looking at me since he found me in the crowd. He had a look on his face caught somewhere between surprise and anger. I wondered if he was angry at me for being here, when he hadn’t told me about it.
He squatted down in front of me, elbows on his knees, dark hair falling over one eye as he cocked his head and looked at me. Behind him, the band looked nonplussed. The bassist had wandered over to the drummer, and they put their heads together, probably wondering what in the hell was going on. Their lead singer had been distracted. Apparently this was something new for them. Girls—and they were all girls of various ages, shapes, and sizes—clamored to get even closer, forcing the edge of the stage to dig painfully into my ribs.
Dale held his hand out and every girl around me grabbed for it. Some of them even managed to get a hold, but he shook them off, annoyed, trying again. This time, I was there to meet him, and he gripped my forearm in his fist, giving a tremendous pull. At first I thought my arm might tear from its socket, but then I seemed to be floating as my sneakers scrabbled up the stage wall, and I realized the hands around me were pushing me up to meet him.
He grabbed me under the arms like he was lifting a toddler, pulling me up on stage in front of everyone. If I had been thinking rationally, I would have been mortified, but I wasn’t thinking at all. I looked at him like a stranger, someone I’d never seen before, and he looked at me like I’d been lost to him for a thousand years and finally found. The moment lasted a lifetime, the crowd still sustaining their energy, the cheers growing as Dale slipped his arms around my waist and drew me to him.
My arms went around his neck as if we had done this a million times before as he pressed his forehead to mine, eyes closing, the deep swell of his breath pulled up from his lungs exhaling sweetly over my face. I was trembling, not on the outside but on the inside, his hands at the small of my back bringing our bellies in together, all of us met and matched in that moment except our mouths.
I wanted to kiss him right there in front of everyone. I didn’t care who was watching. And they all wanted what I wanted, every girl in front of that stage wishing she was the one up there with him, in his arms, one chosen out of many.
He opened his eyes and pulled back to look at me, so hungry and wanting. I wanted him too. I wanted him to know it, to feel it. I stretched up on my tiptoes, twining my arms further around his neck, pulling him toward me, but Dale ducked his head, bending to bury his face in the crook of my neck, grabbing me around my hips and lifting me, spinning me around on the stage to the delight of the roaring crowd.
