Page 35 of Just My Type of wrong guy

The Scientist – Coldplay

Fifty-three thousand people scream my name the second my right foot hits the stage. The lights dim, and only the spotlight over the piano stands out, and Alex looks as beautiful as every other night. I approach slowly, listening to the words she worked so hard to learn in order to sing the French version of ‘Maybe’.

However, for the first time in four months, Alex doesn’t smile when she sees me. My legs freeze before I sit next to her because smiling at me isn’t just natural – it’s part of our performance. Tonight, though, her sad eyes avoid mine at all costs, making me think that maybe she can’t perform right now.

Her fingers glide over the keys with the same ease the audience sings our song, but my mind is no longer here.

Victor.

For a few seconds, I picture everything I could do to that idiot if he eventried, orsaidanything, to the girl next to me. But Alex lifts her eyes and snaps me out of my trance, raising an eyebrow as if telling me to sit down because it’s almost time for me to join her on the song, and I do, to the cheers of the crowd.

I pull up my baggy pants at the thigh and feel Alexandra moving toward me. Her eyes meet mine, and the music leaves her lips like she’s bleeding every word while pressing the keys. I can only focus on trying to match the emotion Alex’s putting into the song, pouring more power into the verses before the chorus than I’ve ever seen from her.

As the song nears its end, I turn toward her. It's also part of the act that we lean over the microphone to share it. Our lips will almost touch, and she’ll pretend to smile at me again while I’ll force myself not to smile too wide.

But the only thing Alexandra moves this time is her gaze.

“Make us work,” we sing, our eyes locked on each other, but a few tears dance in her gaze.

The song ends, and she doesn’t get up like usual. I touch her face, gently caressing her cheek, and she smiles, for real this time, using the euphoria and the screams from the fans to pull away from my hand and rest her head on my shoulder. I wrap my right arm around her waist and pull her close in an awkward hug.

The fans repeat the chorus once more, joined by the supporting musicians, and Alexandra ’s warm breath makes my cold neck shiver. She snuggles up a little more to me, and I realize just how sad my stone-hearted friend is.

The silence from the instruments reminds us that, in less than a minute, Guilherme, Richard, and Thomas will be on stage. Alex pulls away and stands up without saying a word. But the pain, the uncertainty, and the confusion in her eyes, illuminated by the audience’s phone flashlights, speak far louder than anything her could say.

Victor will pay for that.

***

Some days, I wake up and think I’m one lucky son of a bitch for having a band with my friends. Other days, I realize I’m the luckiest guy in the world because my friends and I have an amazing band that’s successful.

But in neither case, can I grasp the idea that thousands of people leave their homes, over and over, to see us perform.

It’s already wild enough that we’re filling up a stadium with fifty thousand people. But filling that same stadium three nights in a row? That’s just beyond me. Maybe it’s the sheer number of people, or maybe it’s because I already hit all my big dreams in my early twenties, and I just have fun while everyone thinks I’m working.

But today, the whole situation with Alexandra has got me feeling… disconnected. Not that I’m not loving the show. The French crowd is amazing, and just like Brazil was the home of one of our bandmates, France is Thomas’s, our bassist home. Singing for all these people here is making our quiet guy happier than ever.

Still, I’d rather be in the hotel with Alex. I want to ask what Victor said to her, and God help me, if he did anything to her. I want to hug my friend and remind her that there’s just one month left for this to be over and for her to go back home. I also want to tell her that she can not only count on me, but for sure, she can count on the whole band.

But I can’t do that, so I try to stay as close as possible to her throughout the show, because even with her shoulders slumped and her eyes puffy, Alex hasn’t left the side of the stage once.

“There’s someone tonight, who’s going to kiss somebody… And it’s not me” Guilherme, our lead vocalist, whose girlfriend is on the other side of the Atlantic, declares, bringing me back to reality and making most of the audience laugh. “I wrote this song for my girl when I hadn’t seen her for two years. Tonight, I hope you can feel all the torment of wanting one more kiss from the person you love, knowing that the possibility of that kiss happening is almost nonexistent.”

“This is One Last Kiss,” Thomas screams into the microphone, and Richard kicks off the song on drums.

My voice flies over the stadium, and I can barely hear it when we hit the chorus because it’s almost time for me to pick, in the most consensual way, someone to kiss.

I run over to Alexandra so she can choose, like she’s done in every show, but Alex doesn’t point to anyone. She grabs the microphone from my hand, and the band slows the music down so no one gets lost when it’s time to return.

“Can I pick whoever I want?” she asks into the microphone, and I nod as the crowd goes wild. “Great, I’ll go first” Alexandra announces, but I don’t even have time to be surprised because she leans her cheek toward me, and I kiss her there, chaste and quick, confused with her reaction, my heart pounding in time with the drums. “Now, the lucky person of the night will be…” Alexandra throws her arm around my shoulders and walks with me to the front of the stage. “Him.” She points to a guy in the crowd, who’s probably there with his girlfriend, and I feel awkward. But the speed with which his strong arms reach the fence and the smile on his face when he takes off his glasses make it clear that the path is clear.

“Why him?” I ask into the microphone, trying to get her to say something fun, maybe even joke about the nerdy hot guy’s looks.

“Because the only girl who’s going to feel your lips in Paris is me,” she declares, touching her own cheek.

I take a deep breath, fighting the impulse to kiss her cheek again – maybe not just the cheek, maybe not just once. The Parisian crowd is in ecstasy, screaming like few audiences in the world can. But the band kicks up the music again, and I force myself to stop thinking about her guitar-shaped body when I turn and run off the stage.

I walk toward the fence, trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t want to know what it feels like to have my best friend’s lips on mine.

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