Page 100 of Dirty Like Brody
“Seth!” I heard a girl up front scream, and a wave of female gasps and shrieks went up—like it was 1964 and the Beatles had justwalkedin.
My brother reached down a hand to help him up onstage. Ash handed his guitar off to Seth and bowed to him, like he was some kind of legend. Which maybe he was. Then Ash came offstage and the band tore into “Dirty Like Me.” The crowd went apeshit. My heart drummed along in a rapid-fire rhythm with the song, knowingeverybeat.
I felt kind of shell-shocked, and it was over fast. When the song ended, the band surrounded Seth for a bunch of back-slapping hugs. Elle threw herself into his arms and kissed him on the cheek—twice. Then the lights went down, and they all cameoffstage.
I got the hell out of the way. They were swarmed anyway, all of them; Seth included. By the time Dirty went back onstage to rip into an encore performance of one of their greatest hits, “Down With You,” Seth was gone. Vanished, as mysteriously as he’d materialized… just like he’d always been so good atdoing.
By the time Dirty hit the stage again for their final encore of the night, treating the crowd to their classic cover of The Doors’ “Love Me Two Times,” I was intears.
ChapterTwenty-One
Jessa
“So, what do you think?”Zane’s ice-blue eyes met mine as he mopped sweat off his face with the T-shirt he’d just peeled off, and clawed his now-limp mohawk back. “Wanna do that again sometime?” He tossed the shirt aside and grinned at me in a way-too-happy, carnivorous sort of way that I knew from experience was probably a badthing.
We were backstage, Dirty had just come offstage for the final time, and we were all gathered around in a tiny dressing room—just Zane, Jesse, Elle, Dylan and I, sweaty and spent, flung across the furniture—and they were all lookingatme.
Staring,actually.
“Um… sure? Maybe.” I didn’t actually know if Ieverwanted to do that again, but this didn’t seem like the time to put that out there. Clearly, they were all in their afterglow phase. Whyruinit?
“Yeah?” Dylan asked. “How’d it feel?” He’d also stripped off his drenched T-shirt and his kilt, and was now sitting next to me on the couch in nothing but his incredibly revealing white underwear, his booted feet thrown up on a broken end table and his arm slung behind me. The overwhelming—and alluring—aromas of sweaty men, whiskey, beer and pot assailed me. I met Elle’s eyes as I avoided the sight of Dylan’s prominent package, and she smirked knowingly. I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand how she got usedtothis.
“Terrifying,” I said, straight-faced.
Elle snickered and Zane laughed. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.” He shot my brother a look, which was when I noticed the serious expression on Jesse’s face. He sat quietly in a corner, his dark eyesonmine.
“What?” Idemanded.
“What would you say if we told you we want you to join the band?” Jesse asked me, and everyone got reallyquiet.
“Join…?” I repeated stupidly, the connections in my brain not quite working right. My head was still pounding from the adrenalin and the thunder of the crowd; from being completely blindsided by Seth’s appearance, and disappearance. “What do youmean…join?”
“Join Dirty,” Elle said. She cocked her head at me in that cute way she did, smiling. “As our new rhythmguitarist.”
“And lyricist, of course,” mybrothersaid.
“And we know you can sing,” Dylan added with a grin. “You know,decently.”
“A fuck of a lot better than Dylan,” Zane said, grinning lazily. “You’ve got a lot to offer,littlesis.”
“Good-looking, too,” Dylanadded.
“A fuck of a lot better-looking than Dylan,” Zaneagreed.
I just stared at them all, blinking, like maybe this was a hallucination. I’d breathed in too many moldering-old-beer-carpet fumes in this place and it was gettingtome.
Seriously?
Were theyserious?
Gathering from the looks on their faces—Jesse’s, Elle’s and Dylan’sdeadserious, and Zane’s with a maniac grin—theywere.
I also noticed that Ash had suspiciouslydisappeared.
“What about Ash?” Iasked.
“Ash already has a band,” Dylan said. “He’s not gonna quit as the Pusher’s lead singer to play rhythm guitarwithus.”
