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“Man, that was the best audience we’ve had yet this tour,” Luke says, bouncing backward out of the wings and narrowly avoiding phasing through a technician.
Julie grins, following after him and trying, as always, not to look like a sixteen-year-old who still keeps imaginary friends.
“They had a nice energy,” Alex agrees, using one hand to hold his bangs off his forehead and the other to fan his face.
“It’s too bad we can’t stage-door it,” Reggie says with a sigh. “Those girls seemed like they’d have really cool homemade stuff for us to sign.”
“Yeah,” Alex says, “everyone totally believes that’s why you want to be able to take a pass by the stage door. For the homemade merch.”
Reggie pouts for all of one second before saying, “Okay, but it’s not not about the homemade merch, either.”
“Fair enough.”
Absentmindedly, Julie catches the fringe of her bracelets against her palm. The night before last, when they’d been playing in Fresno, a group of girls waited outside the venue for ninety minutes just to give her a braided cuff with an outline of a butterfly stitched on it.
“I just—” Luke attempts to skip, still not looking where he’s going, and blows right through the set of double doors that takes them into the long, echoey hallway that leads through the building to where the fancy performer bathrooms sit behind the main stage. He doesn’t even pause for Julie to push through the doors herself, so she only catches half his sentence. “—run a marathon right now!”
“You’re on your own for that,” Alex says, rolling his eyes toward Julie.
Luke shoves his shoulder, enthusiasm uncurbed. “Bro, when you did that bit of improv for the ‘Clockwork Dream’ outro, I nearly fell to my knees.”
Reggie snaps his finger. “Yes!”
“Oh yeah?” Alex asks. “You don’t think it was too much?”
Julie watches Alex try not to smile, and nudges him with her shoulder. Understanding that means she agrees with the others, he gives up and starts to beam.
“No, yeah, it was just the seasoning that part’s been needing,” Luke says, and then repeats the last part, belting it out this time. “Just the seasoning that part’s been need-en-ing!”
His voice reverberates in the hall, and Julie glances behind them, certain that this is the time Luke’s exuberance will defy the laws of their universe and be heard by everyone. But there’s no one else around.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says, keeping her voice low, just in case, “and that’s now going to be stuck in my head all night.”
Reggie hums it back to himself. “It is catchy.”
“And speaking of the fact that we were on fire…” Luke suddenly grabs Julie by the shoulders, forcing her to come to a halt. Their noses bop each other as he shakes her lightly. “Every time you belt your little heart out to ‘Finally Free,’ I see little cartoon stars explode around you. Gorgeous lightshow, liked and subscribed.”
She laughs, feeling like maybe she can feel the starburst he’s talking about right now, in the center of her chest. “You barely know what that means.”
He shrugs.
“Okay,” Reggie says. “My turn! Now say something about me!”
Luke thinks for a second. “You spit in my face way less than usual when we were sharing a mic.”
Reggie scoffs. “No fair! Theirs were way nicer!”
Luke traps Reggie’s head under his arm and starts moving forward again, noogie-ing him the whole time.
“Hey, Alex,” Julie says with affected casualness, following a little ways behind Luke and Reggie’s escalating wrestling match. “Do you ever feel like begging for attention cheapens it?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Alex says immediately.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to beg if you guys were just nice to me on your own,” Reggie says, his voice muffled in Luke’s armpit.
Groaning, Luke shoves Reggie away from him, and holds up his hands in surrender. “Come on, man, no teeth.”
Reggie bares his fangs and hisses.
Shaking her head, Julie pushes ahead of them so she can be the first to reach the room where she stashed her bag before the show.
“Anyway, let’s end this tour right,” Luke says as she tugs on an oversized t-shirt over her clothes and tries to squirm out of the buckled peplum top she’d been wearing onstage. “We throw everything we’ve got into tomorrow’s performance. No holding back.”
“I’m game,” Reggie says. “Let’s rock Santa Barbara’s socks off!”
“Well,” Alex says, “we should hold back a little.”
Luke frowns at him. “Why’d you say it like that?”
“Because tonight I totally saw you consider throwing yourself into that crowd.”
Julie’s head snaps up just as Luke ducks his.
“Yeah, well. It’s easy when we’re performing. To forget that we’re not alive.”
“I get it,” Alex says, tapping at Luke’s heart once, twice. “But, like, don’t do that. Please.”
“Man, I remember your stage dives, though,” Reggie says dreamily. “Legendary.”
Luke laughs—the sound full and electrifying—and Julie leans in, automatically drawn closer. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it until Luke’s eyes land on her.
“Ready to go find your dad and Flynn?” he asks her, eyebrows ticking up curiously.
Feeling her stomach swoop, she drops to her knees, finally pulling her concert top free with one final tug and shoving it into her bag. “Will be in a minute.”
“Ray’s probably making sure your keyboard’s packed away with the utmost care right about now,” Reggie says.
“Hey, why don’t we go check to make sure,” Alex says, shooting Luke and then Julie a knowing look.
“I don’t see wh—oh. Right, yeah.” Reggie gives an exaggerated wink. “Let’s do that.”
“Okay,” Alex says, poofing away.
Reggie waggles his eyebrows for good measure before disappearing, too.
This time when Luke laughs, it’s nervous. Almost a giggle. She glances at him, and then has to look away again because his smile is just—it’s enough to make a girl forget that he’s not alive.
“You think we have time for a snack run before the bus leaves?” she asks, pulling her backpack on.
“Totally,” Luke says, leaning into the balls of his feet. “I think there’s a convenience store right up the road. We’re there and back in twenty minutes, tops.”
Julie nods, falling into step beside him as they exit the changing room and pulling the mic’d headphones she keeps around for evenings such as these out of the side pocket of her bag.
Luke bounces along semi-patiently as she shoves them into her ears and plugs them into her phone. And, because she’s not quite ready to look at him again yet, while she takes another moment to text Flynn.
Gone for snacks, got any requests?
Flynn messages back right away: jar of peanut butter and some flaming hot cheetos, pls n thx
You’re so weird, Julie texts back.
you wish you had half my flavor, Flynn says. And then, a second later, she texts three ghost emojis followed by a question mark.
Julie sends one back.
When Flynn sends an eye roll emoji, Julie tucks her phone away in her pocket and then pushes hard on the door that leads out into the alley next to the venue.
“So,” she says, fingering the microphone tab on her headphones and trying to keep her voice disinterested. “You’ve done it before, huh?”
Luke stutters in the act of pulling his hood up over his head. “What?”
Julie feels her cheeks get hot. “Stage diving,” she clarifies. “Not, um—”
Luke bites his lip, still managing an absurdly bright smile despite the fact that half his mouth is held in place by his teeth. “Curious to experiment, are you?”
She side-eyes him. “So we’re just gonna commit to this as a euphemism?”
“It’s a freaking rush,” he says, veering into her. A full-bodied nudge. “You should go for it.”
She raises her eyebrows at him but suspects that she looks so far from skeptical. He just has this way of drawing giddiness out of her, which is probably why she veers back at him, pressing fully against his side and almost forcing him to slip through a random pedestrian.
“Okay,” he says, his palm finding her hand and his fingers notching into place between hers, “helpful exercise.”
“Okay,” she says back, hopping a little as they keep making their way up the sidewalk.
He brushes his lips over the top of her head as he says, “Name every reason you can think of why you shouldn’t.”
Julie feels very shivery all of a sudden. “We are talking about stage diving still, right?”
Another Luke laugh—this one daffy-intimate. An inside joke. Then he tugs at her hand, jostling her. “C’mon, you think I don’t know what a stalling Julie looks like?”
“Stalling?” She scoffs. “Maybe I’m genuinely confused, y’know, since everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like flirting.”
“I mean, most things that come out of my mouth are flirting.”
“Hence my confusion.”
He whines. “Julie!”
It’s her turn to laugh. “I don’t know, okay? It just seems like one of those things that’s cooler in your head, where it can just belong to you. Adding other people sounds…tricky.”
He hums, going all quiet and thoughtful. “It’s a little intense, and if you’re gonna do it—which I absolutely think you should, by the way—you gotta be prepared for hands in strange places but.” He’s staring straight ahead, intent, and she watches his profile, his ever-shifting cheeks. “Okay, it’s like this: the music that you’re creating in that moment belongs as much to them as it does to you, and it’s just another way of sharing that. It’s the most tactile way to feel them feeling it.”
“The feeling part,” she says, nodding. “That’s what kinda throws me, when I think about doing it.”
“See, you’re going about it all wrong. There shouldn’t be so much thinking, you just gotta charge in.” He uses their entwined hands to punch the open palm of his other.
She shakes her head, unthreading their fingers so she can pull open the door to the convenience store. “You would say that.”
“I’m serious, though,” he says, dancing out in front of her. “You gotta just let the moment sweep you up. If you’re in your head about it, of course it’s gonna feel weird.”
She considers that, wandering after him down an aisle. “Okay,” she says after a moment.
“Really? Sweet!”
She laughs, and it’s more of an eye roll. “You just want me to do it because you can’t, don’t you?”
He clasps his hand over his heart. “I’m offended you would think that of me.”
She grins, and, on a whim, pulls a bag of citrus Starburst off the shelf. “You’re offended that it’s so true.”
“Okay, it’s not not true,” he concedes. “But more than that, I want you to do it ‘cause you’re a rockstar and ‘cause it’s fun and ‘cause you can and ‘cause you clearly want to and just need someone to talk you into it and ‘cause—”
She cuts him off. “Okay! Okay. I got it, you can stop with the list.”
Once again, he grabs her by the shoulders and peers deep into her eyes. “Do you get it, though?”
“Uh…?” Her brain almost always turns into scrambled eggs when he does this.
“It’s a trust fall with a hundred people,” he says, shuffling closer until his forehead is pressed against hers and the only thing in her field of vision are his smiling eyes. “And what you’re really trusting to catch you is your music, which you poured yourself into. You pour yourself into it hoping other people could feel the exact way your heart beats in your chest. Let them show you how hard you freaking nailed it.”
Julie blinks. And blinks. And blinks again before whispering, “There’s a lyric in there somewhere.”
He nudges her nose with his own before pulling away. “Experience it first. Then we’ll write the song.”
She takes a steadying breath. “Deal.”
###
“Hair up,” Luke says when he finds her backstage the next night. “Good thinking. You wanna protect those mighty, mighty curls of yours.”
“This,” Julie says, flicking her ponytail at him, “has nothing to do with stage diving because if it did that would imply thinking too much. Which is going about it all wrong.”
Luke beams.
“Wait,” Flynn says, looking up from her phone. “You’re gonna stage dive?”
“It’s a great idea, right?” Luke asks, even though he knows she can’t hear him.
“Possibly,” Julie says. “If it feels right in the moment.”
“Oh, it’ll feel right,” Luke says.
Julie shoves him.
“Okay.” Flynn tracks the movement with shrewd eyes. “The boys are here right now, aren’t they.”
“Just Luke.”
“Well, in that case.” She steps closer, looping her arm through Julie’s and crowding her personal space.
Julie narrows her eyes, silently asking is this really necessary?
Flynn quirks one perfect eyebrow, and Julie knows it for the girl, please it is.
Luke’s eyes jump from Flynn to Julie. “What am I missing?”
Julie just shakes her head.
“Did I do something to piss her off?”
“Probably,” Alex says, appearing suddenly at Luke’s shoulder and throwing an arm around him.
Luke shrugs it off. “You don’t even know what we were talking about.”
“Don’t need to. If you’re not sure whether you pissed someone off…with you, it’s best to assume that you did.”
Luke looks pleadingly at Julie.
Before she can find a way to indirectly communicate that it’s nothing personal, really, Flynn’s just doing her job as best friend and keeper of Julie’s sanity, Flynn cuts in.
“You guys should work out a signal for just before it’s gonna happen,” she says, all business. “I wanna capture the moment for all your adoring Twitter fans.”
“Before what’s gonna happen?” Alex asks.
“That’s a good idea, actually,” Luke says eagerly and, god, Julie’s getting her only-person-participating-in-ten-separate-conversations stomachache.
“It’s probably not going to happen,” she says to Flynn and Alex.
“Sure, Jan,” Flynn says.
“What isn’t?” Alex demands.
“Julie’s gonna stage dive,” Luke says, “and you should toss one of your sticks up in the air right before she does.”
“Julie’s going to stage dive?” Reggie asks, dropping out of the air on Julie’s left, bass hanging from his shoulder. He gives it a spirited pluck. “One-hundred!”
“Oh, my god,” Julie says, covering her face with her hands. “Everyone stop talking or else I’m gonna vomit.”
After just a second, she feels someone tugging at her wrist. She uncovers her face to find Flynn.
“You’re gonna smudge your makeup,” she says, trying to hold back a smile.
It’s not working, and Julie laughs. A release of tension.
“Tell her about the cue we worked out,” Luke says, poking Julie’s boots with the toe of his shoes.
She shakes her head, but says, “If it happens, Alex’ll do something cool with his drumsticks.”
“Excuse me,” Alex says. “Pressure much?”
“That is…” Flynn pauses for a second. “So unhelpful.”
Alex snickers. “Quick, tell her it was Luke’s idea.”
Luke frowns. “Alex.”
“Alright!” Julie says loudly. “Band circle time. Cool?”
Flynn nods, albeit reluctantly, and starts backing toward the door that leads into the house. “Cool. Shine on, you funky little diva.”
“Thanks,” Reggie answers. “I will.”
Julie chokes.
“I’ll give it to you,” Alex says, nodding at him. “That was a good one.”
Reggie stands a little taller. “Thank you.”
“Has Flynn ever liked me?” Luke asks the group as they make their way toward the green room for privacy. “Cause I thought she did, but now I’m thinking maybe I misread something.”
“Does Flynn like any of us?” Alex asks. “We’re basically a slightly more dynamic music video as far as she’s concerned.”
Reggie stops walking, absorbing that. “Whoa.”
Julie quickens her pace, trying to hold her tongue until no one’s around to see her talking to air.
“Okay, but that just makes her not liking us more confusing,” Luke says.
“She doesn’t not like you,” Julie says finally as the green room door falls closed behind her.
“I’m sensing a but,” Alex says.
Luke nods emphatically. “Yeah, what’s the but?”
Reggie giggles.
Julie rolls her eyes, and then says, “It’s just hard for her to understand our relationship. The connection we have. She doesn’t really do abstract.”
Luke’s brow furrows. “So, she doesn’t like us?”
Julie groans, and Alex punches Luke in the arm.
“Maybe let’s drop it, okay?” he says.
“Flynn loves the band,” Julie says. “And she’s just as grateful for you guys as I am, but beyond that…”
Luke finishes for her. “We’re too abstract.”
“It’s really not personal.”
Luke nods, accepting this, but she can tell by the set of his mouth that he hasn’t quite shaken off his disappointment.
She feels her heart twisting itself up at that look, at the fact that Flynn’s approval is important to him, and has to swallow down the ache in her throat before extending her hand.
He takes it without hesitation, brightening slightly.
With a smile twitching to life on her face, she holds out her other hand to Reggie, who grabs it at the same time he tugs Alex close. And then Alex slips his hand into Luke’s and the circle’s complete.
“Well, boys,” Julie starts, and the guys all snort with laughter at her Luke impression. “I know this isn’t how we envisioned our first tour…”
“What?” Alex says. “No, it’s been totally fun and absolutely not awkward to cruise up and down the state of California in a van your dad rented and only kind of knows how to drive.”
Reggie tugs on Alex’s hand, and the movement sends a ripple through the circle. “How dare you say that sarcastically.”
“Excuse me,” Julie says, jutting out her chin at them. “I was kinda in the middle of something.”
“Right,” Reggie says.
Alex licks his lips. “Sorry.”
She smiles. “I know this isn’t how we envisioned our first tour, but I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. It’s been an honor to share the stage with you night after night. No one rocks harder than you guys.”
Luke squeezes her hand. “Here’s to our first tour. May we have a hundred more.”
“Let’s aim for a more reasonable number,” Alex says. “Something in the ballpark of thirty, perhaps.”
Julie squeezes back. “Here’s to one of a hundred!”
“Okay,” Alex says, but he’s laughing.
“Now let’s go out there and send this tour off with style,” Reggie says.
“Exactly.” Luke nods. “And you know how we can do that?”
All three of them turn to look at her in creepy sync.
She shakes her head, releasing their hands. “If it happens, it happens, okay? Stop trying to force me to stage dive.”
Alex scoffs with mock offense. “We didn’t say a word.”
“But I’m glad we’re all on the same page,” Luke says. “About how you crowd surfing is really the only way to close out this tour.”
Her nostrils flare. “Uh-huh.”
There’s a knock at the door. “Miss Molina?” one of the stagehands says. “You ready to go?”
“Coming,” Julie says back, taking a step toward the door.
“I believe in you,” Reggie says, patting her on the back. “No one in the audience is gonna be left with any socks when we’re done with them.”
She blinks back at him.
“Because we’re gonna rock them off,” he elaborates. “Remember?”
“Oh, sure,” Alex says, and then he briefly rests his chin on the top of Julie’s head. “See you out there, short stuff.”
“I’ll be the one blowing you away, string bean.”
He moves around front of her and points in her face. “Yeah, ya will!”
And then Luke’s arm is slung around her shoulders. “Whatever you decide tonight,” he says, looking down at her with a fierce expression that fills her stomach with excited butterflies. “You’re gonna shine, shine, shine.”
She pinches him lightly on the soft flesh of his waist. “Only getting brighter with you by my side.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Don’t go inflating my ego now.”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, stepping out from under his arm with an eye roll. “That’s not our thing at all.”
He laughs, and it’s the best pre-show good luck she’s ever gotten.
###
When they transition from their jet-fueled performance of “Turned Up” to “Edge of Great,” there’s a palpable shift in the audience. A sort of crackling, like someone bottled the moment just before lightning strikes and released it on the room.
And when the guys crash into the song with their usual gusto, suddenly everyone’s singing back at them—a little louder, a little more confident than Julie’s used to. Like they’ve all listened to this song until it’s become part of their DNA.
Julie catches Luke’s eye and he’s shimmying, his shoulders wiggling in time to the music as he gives her that look like he’s gonna burst into a run at any second, so she knows he feels it, too.
She barely has time to think this is happening to herself when Luke’s eyes widen and he licks his lips and she knows that he knows.
She turns back toward the crowd and closes her eyes as the boys come in with vocals, letting the music wash over her. Pouring herself back into it in return.
She’s not sure how she knows exactly when Luke manages to clue Reggie in, but she feels him spurring her on. Feels all three of them throwing themselves behind her with all the energy they have.
By the time she spins around to face Alex, he’s giving her a wink. She pushes her smile into her voice as she echoes great back at him. And as she’s singing the final line of the chorus, he flips one drumstick through his fingers before snapping his wrist, pointing it at her.
She lets the momentum of it knock into her, tipping her back into the crowd and then—
—and then she’s floating on a hundred voices shout, shouting and she’s just another one of them and it’s electrifying, every touch a shock charging the song so that, even if she can’t throw her voice into the words fully from this position, it doesn’t matter. They’ve given the number a pulse, and it’s racing, racing, racing away.
The crowd gets her back to the stage in time for the last rendition of the chorus, and Luke is there at her mic stand waiting, his guitar summoning her back home—making the return the sweetest part of all.
She scrunches her nose at him in greeting, and the look he gives her in return gives birth to a star right in the center of her chest.
###
Flynn is bouncing up and down backstage at the end of the show. “Oh, my god, oh, my god, that looked freaking amazing! Was it fun? I bet it was fun.”
Julie starts bouncing with her, and they move in circles around each other. “They were singing so loud!”
“I know!” Flynn says despite Julie’s reply being nonsense outside her own head, and Julie freaking loves her for that.
“I freaking love you,” she says.
“You’re a freaking rockstar!” Flynn says back
The guys pop into the wings then, and Luke immediately barrels into Julie, arms locking tight around her waist as he spins her around and around. “Did I tell you or did I tell you?”
She tucks her face against the top of his shoulder and lets the world go whirling around her. “You told me.”
“Hey!” Reggie says after a second, “You’re hogging all the Julie.”
No sooner than Luke sets her down does Reggie cling to her side in a koala-bear hug. She feels Alex slam into her from behind, too, his arms hanging down around her neck.
Julie tries to laugh, but it’s more like a crazed attempt at breathing through the overwhelming love.
Even Flynn is caught up in it, her eyes dancing like she can see the guys as clearly as Julie can when, in reality, all she probably sees is Julie holding herself in a really awkward position.
“Y’all are too much,” she tells them.
“You love it,” Flynn says confidently.
At the same time, Reggie’s saying, “But you love us?”
“How could I not?”
None of them have a good answer for her.
###
“Hey.” Luke finds her in the hollowed out auditorium forty minutes later, tucked into a corner and watching the bartender clean. “Whatcha doing?”
“Living in the moment a little longer,” Julie says.
He hums, giving her another moment to herself before he says, “I’ve got this idea.”
She grins at him, and then pulls her notebook out of her backpack and flips to a blank page. “Ready when you are.”
He laughs, and it’s music.
###
When they play “Familiar Heart” a couple weeks later at Eats & Beats, Julie feels herself falling back in time, that pre-lightening feeling surrounding her.
Her heart is split between a thousand different places—that stage in Santa Barbara, here, the studio, her mother’s memory, the palm of Luke’s hand, this song—and she’s never felt more complete.