Authors: Callie Harper
“No!” the stylists
screamed in horrified unison. Walking out through the glossy,
open-aired lobby into the balmy evening air, I realized they were
right. No snow, no sleet, no rain, I was in L.A., baby.
A driver hopped out of
a limo as I emerged onto the street, welcoming me into the back of
the car. No fast food wrappers there. My heart in my throat, I
stepped in. I hadn’t seen Ash since Saturday night, the night he’d
sung Sinatra and introduced me to his grandmother and pressed me up
against a wall, talking dirty and making me love it.
“Welcome to L.A.,
Ana.” Lola, the PR queen, sat there in a red silk shirt and
skin-tight jeans. We had company. Ash sat next to the window looking
slightly uncomfortable and dressed all in black.
“Hey.” I settled in
the empty seat next to Lola. She tossed a magazine into my lap. Ash
and I were on the cover.
“I’m pissed about
the corner,” Lola complained.
“Nobody puts Baby in
the corner,” Ash murmured. As a
Dirty
Dancing
fan, I had to appreciate the reference.
“I mean, how many
times can we hear shocking news about Charlie Sheen?” Front and
center, the latest issue of
Us
Weekly
featured Charlie Sheen in black sunglasses looking
haggard and exhausted. Up in the right corner, Ash and I stood
beaming together at the Waldorf Astoria.
I turned to page 32,
feeling like I had to be making all of this up. “Just Like How Matt
Damon met Lucy!” read the headline, describing how Ash had met me
ducking into the library where I was working to avoid the paparazzi.
They had all kinds of quotes from me, too, about how amazing Ash was
and how it was love at first sight. I’d never said any of it. I was
right. It was all made up.
Hustled out of the car
at a restaurant, Ash put his hand around my waist as our picture was
taken again and again. I didn’t know if Lola had arranged this or
if the restaurant was star-studded enough it got regularly staked
out. Smiling, taking our time, we let them get us from all angles,
then headed in to our pole-position table right at the window. No
sooner had Ash smiled at me and started to ask a question when
someone interrupted, asking if it was OK to take a selfie with him.
Then, before I had a
chance to even glance at the menu, his agent Joel came over.
“Here’s the It
Girl!” He kissed me on both cheeks. “Get up and give me a twirl.”
I glanced quickly at
Ash. Was this man joking? He wanted me to spin around so he could
take a good look at me? Ash didn’t meet my eyes. He looked like
he’d just taken a sip of something he found distasteful. I stood
and turned around quickly, Joel taking in my figure as if appraising
a new toy he’d purchased.
Ash ordered for us as
Joel kept on talking, and then someone else joined us as soon as he
left. A boney, bitchy woman strutted by, her hips jutting out, her
eyes shooting daggers at me. She leaned down to Ash and talked
exclusively to him for a little while. I thought I saw a Kardashian
over by the bar and an actor whose name I couldn’t remember, but
I’d definitely watched him shoot a lot of zombies in
The
Walking Dead
. Every single person in the place was
over-the-top gorgeous, from the wait staff to the bartender to each
and every patron. Ash fit right in.
As soon as it had
begun, it was over, with Ash holding my hand and playing the part of
adoring boyfriend. But after I climbed into the limo, he pulled away
with a brief, “See you tomorrow.” Then he shut the door and the
driver took me back to my hotel, alone.
I told myself the good
news was that the next month should be really easy. I was like a
puppet. All I needed to do was let them style me, smile pretty, and
they’d take care of everything else. The next day as I walked
around, I kept telling myself how lucky I was. I took a taxi down to
Venice Beach, people-watching and poking around in smoothie bars and
t-shirt shops. I told myself that this was a great development! Now I
didn’t have to worry about things getting messy.
That night, the makeup
artist and stylist arrived again and painted me and teased me and
dressed me up in true ‘I’m with the band’ fashion. All in black
with long boots and a short dress, my hair was big and my lingerie
tiny. A limo took me straight to an unmarked, back door entrance. A
roadie led me down hallways underneath the Nokia Center, tapped twice
then let me in to see the band.
The first thing I saw
were breasts. Big ones, naked, with a man’s head between them. My
step forward froze, like someone had pressed pause on a remote. The
man had reddish hair so it wasn’t Ash, but, still, I’d clearly
stepped into the wrong room.
“Hey.” A guy who
looked vaguely familiar gave me a heavy-lidded nod. He had a girl on
his lap, too, though she wore some clothes. Not much.
“Ana!” Ash stood
up. He’d been over in the corner strumming his guitar. Chillaxing.
With his bandmates and the boobs and the coke, I realized as the
red-headed man stood up with a loud sniff, gave his head a quick
shake and wiped his nostrils with the back of his hand. He’d been
snorting coke off of her naked breasts.
“I didn’t realize
they were bringing you down here.” Ash ran his hand through his
hair looking somewhat unsettled by my arrival.
“I can go.” I
rewound my steps, taking myself back toward the door. Angry little
eyes followed me, from two gorgeous women who’d been sitting on
either side of Ash. They willed me away with their evil groupie mojo.
“Hey! Is it the
librarian?” The red-haired coke-snorting guy strode toward me,
quick and full of purpose and enthusiasm. Now I recognized him, the
bass player for The Blacklist. “She’s hot!” he declared to Ash
as if I weren’t there.
“This is Ana,” Ash
confirmed. “Ana, I’d like you to meet Connor.” So formal. But
Connor wasn’t. He wrapped his arms around me, his hands going right
down my back to the top of my ass.
“You get tired of
this jackass, you let me know.” He pulled away, but only to get a
better look at my rack. “I’ve got some overdue library books. You
might need to punish me.”
Before I could tell him
to get lost, or see what Ash thought of all this, Lola burst in the
door. “There you are!” She clutched my bare arm, then wrapped her
fingers around Ash’s bicep. He wore a fitted black t-shirt and I
could see some of his trademark tattoos dipping and swirling down his
muscle. This would all be so much easier if he weren’t hotter than
hell.
“Photos!” she
declared, and a couple more people came in the door behind her. The
naked, coke-dispensing girl simply slipped her dress back over her
head, unfazed, nonchalant. This clearly wasn’t the first time
people with cameras had walked in on her naked.
We posed. I got
shuttled away with the rest of the groupies, up to the dark recesses
beside the stage. I half-wondered if I shouldn’t simply take a car
back to the hotel. My purpose had been served.
But then the show
began. And I could see it all from backstage, only a few yards away
from the action. Smoke, pyrotechnics, these guys didn’t shy away
from any of it. If anything, they embraced all the excesses of 80s
hard rock with gleeful abandon. Why the fuck not, when you were that
badass?
“Are you ready to
rock, Los Angeles?” Ash strutted onto the stage, owning it, and the
stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tongue out, fist up in the
air, he dialed the crowd up to instant frenzy at the sight of him,
his long, lean body all in black. A roadie handed him a guitar and
they were off, pounding directly into one of my favorites, an
adrenaline-pumping, hard-driving anthem.
“Do you want it?”
he snarled out the refrain, and the entire stadium answered him with
the chorus, “Hell, yeah!”
“Do you need it?”
He held out the microphone for the response, not even needing to sing
the “Hell, yeah!” himself.
I couldn’t help it. I
brought my hands up, cupping them as I hollered for more. A huge
smile breaking out over my face, adrenaline surged through my body.
It was Ash Black! The Blacklist! And I was backstage!
“Aren’t they
amazing?” One of the groupies next to me grabbed onto my arm.
“I love them!”
Swaying and singing along with every word, we became BFFs for the
whole set. I didn’t know how they did it, cranking up the energy
and adrenaline for the entire show, but each song seemed to take the
crowd higher. They didn’t have dancers or costume changes. They
didn’t have special guests or surprise performances, and they
certainly didn’t break ever for a slow ballad, Ash sitting on a
stool in the spotlight to get contemplative.
None of that. They were
AC/DC in the 70s, Bon Jovi in the 80s, Nirvana in the 90s, The
Strokes in the 00s. And they owned this decade, no one could compare
to them, the raw power and attitude and wild surge when they locked
into a beat or ripped through a chorus that every single person in
the arena knew by heart.
And in the middle of
all of it, the rock, the magnet, was Ash Black. Strutting, snarling,
messing around with his band mates, yelling out to the people in the
back, dedicating the next one to all the ladies in the house not
wearing panties, he put on a crazy show. I’d seen some bands, some
solo artists perform, but nothing like this. Nothing even came close
to his gorgeous, sexy, fuck-me voice, suave then rough, a whisper
then a rock yell worthy of the greats. No wonder he’d been on the
cover of
Rolling Stone
and
Spin
and
People
and you name it. No wonder he had paparazzi chasing him everywhere he
went. He was the fucking bomb.
After about an hour and
a half, the band finally took a break, coming backstage to drink
water and high-five and towel off. Ash sat down nearby and took off
his shirt. It instantly disappeared into some woman’s hands. She
clearly had the backstage pass of a crew member, but I had to wonder
if that shirt would ever make it back into his wardrobe. Somehow, I
doubted it. I kind of wanted to steal it, myself.
“Having a good time?”
Ash rested on the edge of a chair, his long legs outstretched. He
looked straight at me with those killer eyes, his full lips curved
into a smile aimed right at me, but I still had to look around to
make sure. Was he really talking to me, Anika Ivanov from Wallingford
Falls, NY, population 5,500? But he continued, “You enjoying
yourself?”
“Yeah, it’s a great
show.” I took a tentative step forward, feeling much more shy
around him after the visceral reminder. He was famous for a reason.
It wasn’t just that he was gorgeous and rich, and that alone seemed
to be enough for tons of celebrities these days. Pop them in a
reality show and you’d never see the end of them.
But Ash Black was more.
He was crazy talented with musical ability, a uniquely amazing voice
and the kind of presence you couldn’t teach, you either had it or
you didn’t. And Ash Black had it, on and off the stage. I suddenly
felt more than a little star struck.
“Anything you want to
hear me do next?” he asked.
“Every song is so
good.” I wasn’t even sucking up to him. I meant it. I tucked a
strand of hair behind my ear. A stiff strand. They’d put a lot of
spray up in my ‘do’. “But, there is a song I’d love to hear.
I’ve always loved ‘Tonight.’”
“Yeah?” He looked
at me, seeming pleased. It was from their first album and it had
never been released as a single, never got much radio play but it was
a go-to for me walking at night. It captured the restless action,
that sense of promise you felt before going out. You never knew what
would happen next.
“But you probably
already have it worked out, what you’re going to perform for your
encore.”
“Perform for my
encore?” He arched an eyebrow. “Do you think they’ll shout
‘bravo’?”
I blushed. “Sorry,
I’ve only performed classical music. So, you know, bravo, encore,
that’s what I know.”
“I’d love to hear
you play some time.” Why did it suddenly feel like we were the only
ones there backstage? He looked deep into my eyes, his finger toying
with his water bottle. Shirtless, a few thin leather bands wound
around his neck, one with a small cross resting right at the start of
his hard, defined pectoral muscles. We stood close enough that I
could reach right out and trace them, run my fingers along his ridges
and planes.
“All right, let’s
do this!” a man called out from behind me.
Ash dropped his head
down, as if he didn’t like the timing of the announcement. Then he
nodded and drew himself up to his full, imposing height. He stood
much taller than me and I took a step back, forcing myself away from
his magnetism. Everyone felt that way around him, I reminded myself.
It wasn’t that there was anything between us. I felt a crazy pull
toward him because everyone did, me and millions of other fans around
the world.
But I had to admit, it
still felt like something more than that when he got back out on the
stage and dedicated the next song to me. I knew it was part of the
plan, that he was merely executing as dictated by his PR firm and his
agent. He was fueling the fire, giving the bloggers and vloggers and
columnists and commentators a good quote.
But I still felt a
tingle down my spine as Ash looked backstage at me, smiled, and then
told the thousands of people screaming for him, “This next song is
for my girl, Ana.”
Ash
Heading backstage after
my final encore as Ana had called it, the first thing I did was look
for her. I wanted to see her face. She showed everything in it, none
of the usual mask I was used to, the perma-grin and bullshit ‘great,
man, great show’ I was used to hearing over and over. I knew I’d
kicked ass, rocking the song she’d wanted to hear. But had she
liked it?