Page 11 of The Devil's Tattoo
There wereno lies in the wayshelaid
Broken, alone, no place tocallhome
Split apart, you splintered herbones
A lie youtold,why?
The walls have gone up.The walls havecloseddown
The walls that you havebuiltup
Built upinsideyou
There was morethan a break in thesmiles
I’d never known hertocry
A river, a lake, afloodplain
She was shaking, lostagain
You splinteredherbones
Splintered herbones
Slamming thewallsdown
The walls have gone up.The walls havecloseddown
The walls that you havebuiltup
Built upinsideyou
As the lastchords of the song echoed out into silence, I felt confidence brimming inside me. I looked up right into the eyes of Will Strickland, and I almost tripped over my guitar lead, my heart beginning to jackhammer wildly in my chest. He was shaking his head, a grin on his face, and clapping along with the rest of the crowdaroundhim.
He was…he justdazzledme.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I ripped out the lead from my guitar and made a hasty exit stage right, not quite understanding why it had riled me up. It had been ages since the Stabs gig, and with all the band stuff, my crush had fallen away to the point I’d almost forgotten about it, but seeing him standing there brought it back to the surface, and it burned even brighter thanbefore.
Dee appeared behind me and helped me start packing away our gear so Ipswich couldsetup.
“You were ah-maze-ing.” He grinned at me like a proud parent. “What arush,huh?”
“Yeah.” I sighed, realizing it was more the rush from just having shown everyone out there and myself that I could actually do this band thing than seeing Will Strickland in the crowd. “Yeah,itwas.”
“Wanna do itagain?”
“Sure.”
Dee smiled widely as if he knew this would be my answer all along. Smartass. He was like a puppet master, but I loved him too much to give him shitaboutit.
For the rest of the night, I hardly looked at anyone, still wary of the fact I’d outed myself on stage. They didn’t know that of course, but I did. If someone said, “Hello,” I would peek out from under my hair and say, “Hi.” Mostly, I didn’t recognize anyone, and I breathed a heavy sigh ofrelief.
Our set had gone over well. So well that people stopped us to say how much they liked it, and a few even asked if we hadanEP.
When I finally stood at the bar, I leaned against the top and heaved a sigh of relief. I needed a little alcohol to calm my jitters and wet my dry throat. I’d spoken more in the last hour than I had in my entire life. For someone who didn’t say a lot of words back to back, it wasexhausting.
The guy beside me moved off with a few glasses, and the next person moved into the gap. An arm wedged up against mine, and when I glanced up, I almost had a heartattack.
