But this woman is waking up parts of me I never knew existed.
Suddenly, I’m stalking off the stage. People are staring but I don’t care. I can’t stop.
I stand over my woman, stare down into her eyes. Her cheeks are wet with tears.
She gasps when I grab her arms and pull her into a kiss. I snarl through the press of our lips, she gasps and wriggles against me, her hands nervously gripping at my shoulders. I kiss her deeper, unable to stop, and then her hand is on my chest.
I lean back, and someone grabs onto my arm.
“Aaron, the next song.”
“I know,” I whisper, staring down into her eyes.
Her mouth is hanging open, her lips red, bruised from my kiss, her eyes wide and stunned. She looks so vulnerable and ready to give herself to me, every single piece of her.
“Wait for me,” I snarl, and then I turn away.
I have to focus on the performance now, bringing the mic to my lips and launching into the next song. I try to summon the passion my fans love so much, going to the edge of the stage and roaring out as I hammer my chest.
But my eyes only scan the crowd, as though my woman is going to be looking up at me. I know she’s backstage. I know it’s impossible, but my mind mentally floods the arena with her face, with her stunned pale blue eyes.
She belongs to me. She’s mine forever.
I can still taste her on my lips, feel her body pressed against mine. I can still feel the way she slowly sank into the kiss, and how she wasn’t completely sure about grasping onto my shoulders.
Reeling away from the stage, I pace again, giving me an excuse to get closer to my woman. I scan the area, the curtains she was pressed against.
She’s gone.
I bolt to the other side of the stage, but she isn’t there either. As I launch into a fast section about how empty I feel, about how nothing will ever fill the void, it’s never felt truer.
I look across the arena. Maybe she really is out there now. Or maybe she’s gone forever. I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her again.
Nobody has ever made me feel a thing, no woman, no groupie, none of the pleasures that obsessed my other bandmates for years. But one look at her and I crumbled.
Suddenly singing about emptiness feels like a lie, because I felt what it was like to be whole, for a brief moment.
It was when I locked eyes with my woman.
“You good, bro?” Mikey asks.
Our days of partying after our shows are long behind us. All members of the band, except for me, have families. Corey and Jeremiah sit at the table in the corner, sipping soda and playing cards. Mikey sits next to me, as we stare at the TV, football highlights playing on silent.
“Yeah.” I sigh darkly.
“Last date of the tour,” Mikey says quietly. “I guess it can be tough.”
“What, all of you go back to your loving families while I go back to a big empty house?”
Mikey laughs gruffly. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
I smirk at my old friend, the lead guitarist who stepped in just before we made it to the big time. I don’t like thinking about what happened before that, because the past is the past, and there’s no reason to drag it up.
What matters now is the present.
Finding my woman.
“I kissed a girl backstage.”
The entire band sits up. Corey and Jeremiah look up from their playing cards. Corey’s long black hair spills down his back, but Jeremiah the drummer looks like an accountant, neat and orderly, without any tattoos.
“What?” Mikey says in disbelief.
“She was standing there, and I... I don’t know. Something just happened. Maybe it was the music. Maybe it was more than that. But I kissed her. I asked her to wait for me but…”
“I’m struggling to get my head around this,” Mikey says, shaking his head slowly. “You kissed someone backstage?”
“I know it’s hard to believe.”
“I’ve never seen you do anything like that, not in all these years, even when we were younger.”
“I know.” I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees. “But there it is.”
“She didn’t wait for you, then?” Corey says.
“Nope.”
“So what’re you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I went too far. But I felt it, felt her, us...”
I trail off before I get too emotional. This mystery woman has me feeling on edge in a way I never have before, all taut energy, ready to snap any second.
We don’t hang around backstage for long after our performance.
As I leave and drive into the city – we finished in the city I was born in, where I live – I think about the question.
What am I going to do?