She refused to beg for more.
The worst thing a girl can do to herself, her mother had said, weeping as Sofia felt choked by the thick scent of perfume, is fall in love.
Sofia shook off the ugly memory and buried her hand in her love’s hair.
John was frowning down at the festival program in his hand. “Moriah’s Trick is playing,” he said.
Aish jerked to look at John, making Sofia inadvertently yank. “Sorry,” she said, untangling her fingers.
But Aish hadn’t seemed to notice. “How the fuck did they get on the bill?” He propped his weight on his elbows, lifting off Sofia’s lap to glower at John.
“They signed with Steadman,” John said, still studying the program. “I’ve always said he’d be a great manager.” He paused. “Should we go talk to them?”
“We should,” Aish said. Then he shot Sofia a look.
What was that expression?
He pushed up to sitting and swung his legs around to face her. “We know this band from LA,” he said, entwining her fingers with his. “We’re gonna talk to them for fifteen minutes and then we’ll be right back.”
Sofia smiled at him, confused. “I can’t go?”
Aish gripped her fingers. “The lead singer...she’s into me. Nothing’s happened and nothing’s gonna happen.” The big hot hand he ran down her leg wasn’t fair. “But I can’t go back there with my gorgeous girlfriend and expect the singer to say nice things about me to her manager.”
She could see his point. And appreciated his honesty.
And it was only fifteen minutes. She nodded her head. “Vale,” she said, pulling her long hair over her shoulder and crossing her legs.
When Aish leaned forward to kiss her, deep and hard with a hand squeezing her shoulder, it settled the butterflies in her stomach. John stood and held out a hand to pull his friend to his feet.
“Don’t worry,” John said, patting Aish on his chest. “I’ll make sure he gets back to you without letting her take too many bites.”
And all the butterflies started fluttering again. But she didn’t let Aish see them as she waved him off, leaned back on the blanket, and kept her eyes on him until his dark head was swallowed by the crowd.
Two hours later, sweaty, headache-y, and frantic, Sofia shoved through a drunken clump of twenty-somethings, the skunky smell of pot clinging to everything, to finally grab at the correct blond man’s shoulder—she could smell John’s heavy cologne meters away.
“John,” she said, her fingers digging in so he couldn’t get away. “Where have you been? Where’s Aish? What happened?”
John’s eyes went wide. “He’s not with you?”
Sofia shook her head, feeling naked with desperation. She wanted to put her hands over her face and hide. John cursed and grabbed his phone out of his pocket.
“I’ve already tried that,” she said.
When John got the same results as Sofia—straight to voicemail—he grabbed her arm and said, “C’mon. We’ll find him.”
John’s urgency made her panic get worse.
“He said he was heading back to you, so I hung with some of the other bands,” John said as they wove hurriedly through the crowd. “Wanted to give you some alone time.”
“Did you talk to the lead singer?” she asked.
John was quiet a beat too long before he said, “Yes.”
“¿Y qué pasó?”
“What?”
“What happened?” She didn’t shriek. But she could have over the noise of the alien crowd, the roar of the unknown music, her own unfamiliar worry and lack of control.
“He...” This close to the stage, the crowd was denser, and John had to shove with his height and shoulders and tug her behind him. She felt like a thinly stuffed doll dragged behind an uncaring child.
Finally, they broke into a gap of space and air at the side of the stage.
John had to shout in her ear. “She introduced us to their manager, and we talked.” His cologne added to Sofia’s nausea. “Then Aish said he was going to say goodbye to her before he got back to you.”
At the expression on her face, John urged, “Don’t freak out.” He turned and spoke to a beefy security guard standing near an entrance to the backstage.
Sofia’s stomach dropped when he shook his head.
“He’s wandering around somewhere,” John promised. “We’ll find him.” She followed on his heels, skirting the edge of the crowd until they could breathe and hear again.
“You’re special to Aish,” John said, scanning the crowd as they walked. “He wouldn’t do anything stupid.”
Oh God. As fifteen minutes had ticked into thirty and then an hour and an hour and a half, Sofia had worried about him being safe. Her imagination had gone wild with thoughts about him being attacked by a drunk festivalgoer or overly officious backstage security. She believed only something catastrophic would make him abandon her, without a word, in the middle of a crowd of strangers. She hadn’t considered...anything stupid. It’d seemed outside the scope of possibility. Until John implied it was the one thing she should be worrying about.
“Was the lead singer still into Aish?” she asked, making sure to look away, far, far away as if Aish could be found on the horizon.
John gave a begrudging laugh. “Every girl is into Aish.” Then he seemed to remember who he was talking to. “But it doesn’t matter who is into Aish; he’s into you. And as long as he doesn’t drink too much, he’s cool.”
“Was he drinking backstage?” she asked before she could stop herself.
John gave her a side eye as they continued walking. Finally, he said, “Not that much.”
It was one characteristic of Aish that she was not a fan of and that, fortunately,
