Ideas for stories

He wasn’t afraid to be on stage. If he looked directly into the lights he didn’t need to think at all, his actions becoming automatic as something overtook him and the crowd went wild in response.

He tried to focus his gaze in a pattern from the lights above the far end of the venue to a foot above the faces in the crowd and there was always something hanging from the ceiling that he could focus on. For the most part anxiety didn’t matter once he was on stage and the energy of everybody rose towards him, it fed him somehow, it let him dance to extremes and maneuver in ways he wouldn’t have done otherwise. He didn’t have a problem with crowds; he’d dealt with them for most of his life.

Something about seeing the details in the faces of people below the stage made him overthink and stop functioning for some reason, as though one on one time wasn’t something he was capable of. Thousands had stood adoring him, yelling his name, singing lyrics at him, waving their arms with him when he wasn’t playing guitar. Every so often one of them would rise above and speak to him on another level, demanding his attention.

That’s when he saw her, standing far enough from the crowd around her that singled her out as somebody who’d gone to his concert alone. Her hair was sweaty and her eye makeup smudged, his band was headlining meaning she’d been in front of the stage for hours leading up to the moment their eyes locked. He became aware that he was staring at her but it was okay because she was staring back, blank faces, searching each others appearances for something. Then she raised her cell phone and the spell was broken, why do they always have to ruin the moment? Freed from her gaze, he walked to the other end of the stage to try and forget about it, just another girl, just another city…no big deal.

Feeling particularly daring a few songs later, he found himself standing at the side of the stage he’d spotted her at. He couldn’t see her and stood for a while playing guitar and waving his arms until it happened again. He saw her jumping around and hollering, singing along and he waited for the cell phone to kill the moment again but this time it didn’t happen. He watched her movements through a number of songs, waiting for her to look at him but turning away abruptly when she did. He wanted to leave her wondering if he’d noticed her at all.

Toward the end of the set she’d stopped recording his every move and he’d started to mess with her even more. He’d turn to the side and look at her over his shoulder, messing up his hair and winking at her then laughing when her face turned tomato red. At one point he crouched down with his guitar between his legs and licked from the 13th fret to the 6th while maintaining eye contact with her. Her jaw dropped and eyes widened as she looked to either side, questioning again if he was really looking at her to which he responded by running to the other side of the stage and leaving her for several minutes.

At the end of the night he was barraged by the typical crowd of enthusiastic fans, everybody speaking at once and jumbling their adoration into too many words to process as he rushed toward the waiting bus. Something caught his attention again, a different kind of energy.

She stood a few feet away from everybody else but it was undoubtedly her, he observed as he stepped unnoticed toward the venue’s side entrance. He lingered a moment too long near the edge of the tour bus and she spotted him, her face lighting up again a second before a different girl screamed his name and threw herself at him in an engulfing hug.

Notes

Meow =^.^=