“Ow, ow, ow! That hurts!” LD cries, jerking away from the medic. Her entire right eye is purpling, her rouge-red lips split. She’s bleeding from a gash on her forehead, framed by her now-drooping victory curls.
The medic tosses around the words “CT scan” and “concussion”—words neither of us like. She winces when he shines a light into her eyes, and he mutters something under his breath. When LD took the punch for me, a medical officer and two policemen came and escorted us out into a medical area for the drunks who fall and bust their nose or fangirls who faint during the show . . . and saviors who get punched in the face.
The douche bro is sitting in a corner chair, handcuffed, until the police take our statement and they lead him out.
“Seriously, I don’t have a concussion,” LD tells the medic. “I’m good. I’ve gotten beat-up worse. You should see me on bad days.”
“I still think you need to go to the hospital,” the medic replies. He’s a youngish guy, maybe mid-twenties. He’s wearing a “BLACKHEARTED” pin on his stethoscope. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Three.”
“Hmm.” He jots something else down, then listens to her heart. When she checks out, he still says, “I think you need to go to the ER.”
“Seriously, this is no sweat! If I start feeling worse, I promise I will. It’s just kinda cool I got punched in my first mosh fight.”
The doctor gives her a flat look before turning to me. “Look after her, yeah?” he says, and moves on to a girl who apparently fainted from either a lack of food or too much air coming out of her lungs.
Maybe both.
LD presses a bag of ice against her blackening eye and gives a hiss of pain. “Well, good thing I have VIP status at Sephora. It’ll take a miracle to cover this up.”
“You didn’t have to push me out of the way,” I reply. “I could’ve taken it.”
“Oh, please, let me be the hero for once.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean we are self-rescuing princess, aren’t we?”
“Except you saved me.”
She shrugged. “We’re princesses at least, then—
“Where is she?” A voice cuts through the small room.
The fainted girl on the gurney a few feet down snaps her eyes to the guy asking, and her face forms the perfect expression of astonishment. Then she begins to pale. The doctor hands her a paper bag exasperatedly and tells her to breathe into it. Then he motions toward LD and me. “Over there.”
LD and I exchange a look. She sees the person in question first, and her eyebrows shoot up into her wilted victory curls. “Oh, Iggy, don’t panic but . . .”
The sound of footsteps come closer. A whole army of them. Angry footsteps at that. A guy rounds the gurney to face me. His hair is shoulder length and jet black, but he’s wiggling his fingers into his scalp as if he’s trying to find something. With a click, he pulls a weft of black hair out and tosses it at one of his assistants, who is already holding quite a few of them. It looks like he buzzed half of his head some time ago but just never bothered to upkeep it, so he disguised it instead with clip-ins on one side. Which is funny. And vain.
For the Prince of Punk.
“I give you free tickets out of the goodness of my heart and you pick a fight during the first song?” he snaps, and then gives LD a once-over. “She looks fine to me,” he adds to the doctor, who gives an innocent shrug.
“Have you seen my face?” LD accuses and drops the ice pack. The punk rocker’s eyebrows jump up in surprise. “See, not as pretty now, am I?”
“If you’re that vain, then you’ll never be pretty enough,” he replies.
“Maybe I’m just vain enough to know I don’t need to be pretty; it’s just a perk.”
“Then what are you?”
“Besides pretty?”
“Besides not as pretty,” he corrects.
She looks up into his face, searching it, her lips curving into a smile she only ever gives to me—and now, to him. “I’m the girl who’s going to make sure you know that you were way flat coming into the second chorus.”
His eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.
She goes on, “And your guitarist came in half a note late. It wasn’t really the best opening, so I don’t think I missed much.”
I stare at her like she’s grown another head, darting my eyes between her and the shocked look on the Prince of Punk’s face. But then slowly it settles into a half smirk, and he outstretches his hand. “And what’s your name?”
“Lorelei,” she replies, and hearing her say her name for the first time since Erin left unfurls the knotted strings around my heart. “I’m Lorelei Darling.”
“Lorelei,” he echoes, and accepts her hand. “I was actually a quarter-step off and Paul meant to come in late.”
“So you mean to sound terrible?”
“So the audience doesn’t get the same thing from the recording,” he replies.
I watch them watch each other for as long as I can stomach it before feeling awkward, and turn to his assistant. “So, did Roman Holiday ever show up?” I ask her.
His assistant shakes her head. “Not once. We heard a rumor they were in North Carolina playing a show instead . . . at a bar—”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Jason Dallas interjects, releasing Lorelei’s hand. “They didn’t come to the show tonight. Their contract is void. And I am going to go celebrate it. Would you two care to join me?”
We give each other a surprised glance, but my best friend recovers with the grace of a cat. “You know I don’t swing your way.”
“And we’ve established I don’t swing yours, but I’ve been in the market for an instrument tech and you have calluses on your hands. Fiddle?”
“Violin,” she replies. “Well, we have a flight in the morning . . .”
“But it’s not morning.”
“And will you pay for us if we miss our flight?”
He shrugs, hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”
Hesitantly, my best friend looks from me to Jason Dallas and back to me. On one hand, I don’t want her to go. I want her to come home with me. I want her to stay. But then I see the miles and miles of possibility stretched between her handshake with Jason Dallas, and I want to see where her story takes her, too.
“I . . . think I’m going to bow out,” I reply, making the decision for her. “I can go home alone.”
“But Iggy,” she begins.
“I’ve got someone waiting at home,” I apologize, and I take her hand and squeeze it tightly. “Go get into some trouble,” I tell her.
She winks and slings the purse over her shoulder. Even with a nose splint, she’s fierce enough to slay dragons with just her eyeliner. “Obviously it’s my middle name. Are you sure you don’t want to come . . . ?”
“I’m positive,” I reply, and give her a tight hug. “Go have some fun. See what sort of possibilities are out there.”
“There’s a few of them,” Jason agrees. “I find more every night.”
Lorelei unravels from me, turns without a moment of hesitation, and wraps her arm into his like a new partner in crime. “So, Jason Dallas, where are we heading?”
I don’t hear his response as they leave me behind.