Page 4 of After Midnight

A wave of laughter rumbles through the crowd, and he glances back at me. That’s my cue.

I twirl my sticks again, and my lips pull up into a smile. Then I lift my arms, striking the sticks together to count us in.

Four. Three. Two. One.

My first kick hits like a gunshot, sending adrenaline straight into my chest and bursting through my veins.

The sound rolls out over the desert, and the crowd surges, their hands lifting into the air, like we’re some old-world gods they still worship, complete with sweat and dirt and screams.

Guess we are called Loaded God Complex.

My smile gets a bit bigger.

Our opening song is “Last Night.” Lucas and Dex launch into the first riff, their guitars screaming against the night. Michael’s bass meets my drums, the two of us providing the spine of the song, the foundation everything else stands on.

All it takes is a few measures, and I can already feel myself drifting away, getting lost to the music. My heart becomes the drum, and there’s no longer any separation between the music and me. I couldn’t extract it from my soul even if I tried.

The lights strobe across the crowd in bursts of blue and white, illuminating screaming faces, homemade signs, and raised phones. But to me, it’s a blur. It’s the music I’m here for. Not the crowds, not the fame, not the money—though it sure doesn’t hurt either.

My arms get warm as I drive the tempo harder, sweat already dripping from my chin and onto the snare. In most of the pictures and videos from our shows, I’m a sopping-wet sweaty mess, and tonight’s going to be even worse than usual.

So, during our third song, I strip out of my tank, use it to wipe my face, and then fling it into the crowd. Hands snatch at it, and one woman shrieks in victory as she grabs it out of the air. I laugh and strike the snare to the sound of screams.

By the end of our show, Michael’s the only one with his shirt still on. He’s like our dad that way: always the grounded one, never caught up in the whirlwind of things. Though I wish he’d let loose sometimes. He’s a fun motherfucker when he lets himself go.

We close with “Ghost,” our single from last year. Nora’s not here to play it with us, which sucks balls, because she’s rad on an electric violin. The crowd sings the song along with Dex, their voices drifting out into the night, always sounding a beat behind: “I let her slip away, too scared to face the truth. Now I’m haunted by her absence in this lonely fuckin’ youth.”

I hit the cymbal with a final crash, and fireworks explode from behind the stage, sending bursts of red and gold arcing through the night sky.

For a single second, it feels like this entire city belongs to us. And I wish I could live inside that single second forever.

“Thank you, Vegas,” Dex says into the mic. “Good night!”

I stand from my drum kit, and my eyes go to a man in the front row, holding a kid on his hip. She has bulky rainbow headphones on, and her eyes are wide, glittering in the stage lights, like she’s already got this life in her veins.

Grinning and sweating like mad, I jog across the stage, then reach out across the security space between the stage and the crowd to offer the man my sticks. He looks shocked, like I’m playing a joke on him. But he finally wraps his free hand around them, and I bump his fist with mine. His kid smiles.

Then, shirtless and riding a high only the stage can give me, I slip through the curtains and into the darkness backstage.

The crowd is still rumbling, but it fades as I follow the guys into the production tent back behind the main stage. Industrial fans blast cool air around the space, and I immediately prop myself in front of one, sighing as the sweat on my skin finally dries.

“Dude,” Lucas says. “You reek.”

I just lift my arms higher, letting the fan cool my pits.

One of the assistants hands me a towel and a bottle of electrolyte water, and I give her a smile that makes her cheeks red. Then I mop my face dry, twist the cap off the bottle, and down the whole thing in a few swigs—the way I used to drink beer when I was younger and just a little bit stupider than I am now.

A vibration in my pocket catches my attention at the same time Michael says, “That was a hell of a show.”

Lucas and Dex turn their attention toward him as I fish my cell from my pocket and glance at the screen.

Dad.

The high I was riding drains out of me so fast that it makes me dizzy, sobering me up about as fast as a funeral.

He knows I have a show tonight. Or maybe he forgot. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Maybe he’s calling to ask how it went. But more likely, I’m an idiot for even thinking that’s a possibility—eternal optimist and all that shit.