Exit Stage Six: A Contemporary New Adult Romance Novella (9 page)

I was overwhelmed with emotion for a moment, tears springing
to my eyes.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he asked in a soothing tone,
sitting up abruptly.

“Nothing.” I said, voice tremulous at best, I dashed at the
tears collecting in my lashes.

“Nothing?” he asked frowning.

“Nothing,” I affirmed, “I’m just happy…”

…and I was.

“
I said, ‘you were lovely in the dark but you’re stunning
in the light’ she said, ‘baby please just make it right’… I took her hand and
said goodbye to the life I’d held onto so long inside…
” Dorian was on
stage, sultry lips pressed to the microphone. I raised the camera to my eye,
focused the lens and snapped the picture. Carl grunted beside me.

“What?” I asked.

“Glad you talked him into this.” He said.

“I didn’t talk him into anything. It was his words all along
Carl, even when it was Drake it was always Dorian’s words… Drake just knew how
to put them to the music.” Of course the more time I spent with Dorian I
realized that had mostly been him too. He was too much of a perfectionist, too
bossy for it to be anything else.

Elysium had risen from the ashes of Drake’s suicide after a
long period of healing, some pretty explosive arguments between Dorian, Hal and
Carl and an extensive search for a new bassist.

There was no replacing Drake as a singer. Dorian had to be
the one to step up to the mic.

I had called my mother before he and I had gone to sleep
that night. She had worried, and had continued to worry until Dorian and I had
gone to her the next day. I never set foot in my apartment again. Dorian had
paid a moving company to carefully pack everything and bring it to his house.
The media had no intention of letting things go anytime soon and I was just
plain safer at the mansion.

I shuddered thinking about the few death threats I’d
received from overzealous fans. The trouble with spotlights is that it’s bright
on the inside to the point you can’t always see what’s lurking in the shadows
beyond it. Dorian and I had an extensive talk about truth and lies, even ones
by omission and I had laid down the law.

Full disclosure. Either I knew everything or I was out. He
had agreed and we’d moved forward, cautious of one another.

We loved each other with passion and fought with one another
on an equally passionate basis. Thankfully the fights we’d had were minor in
comparison with the rest of our relationship. Inconsequential in the long run.

I was the bands official photographer. It kept me and Dorian
close while they were on the road and that is what we’d mostly fought about. My
salary. I’d wanted one when Dorian didn’t see the need. He wanted to provide
everything for me but that was not who my father and mother had raised me to
be.

I smiled as cellphone screens appeared in the crowd like
mushrooms after a rain. Dorian sang on, shooting a sidelong glance into the
shadows to where I stood, green eyes sparking with love and darker baser things
that had me unconsciously pressing my thighs together. I snapped a few more
photos.

Our second fight had come when I had looked at my bank
account after accepting the position as Elysium’s photographer. I had been
grossly overpaid. Dorian didn’t want to back down but eventually I had worn him
down to a realistic figure that a photographer of my experience warranted. In
short, I didn’t want anything handed to me. I wanted to earn it.

Carl sighed and shifted his stance beside me.

“Carl.”

“Yeah L.B.?” I smiled, everyone was calling me L.B. now, just
another testament to the force of Dorian’s personality.

“Stop worrying about whatever you’re worrying about and
enjoy the show.” I said dryly. He chuckled.

“You do realize we have something like thirty-eight more
stops on this concert series right?” he asked.

“I know.” Forty-four in all… I smirked.

“You’re incredible sometimes.” He scratched the back of his
neck and wandered away. I smiled to myself. I wasn’t bored yet… I looked at
Dorian crooning to his adoring fans and smiled.

I don’t think I ever would be.

THE END

On April 8
^th
, 1994 I was sitting in my seventh
grade English class when a girl across from me with ratty blonde hair in a
stained black hoodie with holes in the sleeves for her thumbs started crying. I
had no idea what was wrong but I wanted to fix it, so I asked.

Turned out she was a huge fan of the grunge band Nirvana and
it had just been announced that the body of its lead singer, Kurt Cobain, had
been found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Seattle
home. I was old enough to understand death and its effect on people, old enough
to remember to this day, the outpouring of love and pain from the bands fans. I
remember watching Kurt’s wife Courtney Love read his suicide note to an immense
gathering of his fans on television from Seattle Center.

I’ve been to his memorial bench which stands outside his
home on Lake Washington Boulevard and though it wasn’t until after his death
that I came to appreciate his music, I can honestly say, as late to the party
as I was and am, I am a Nirvana fan too and still remain a fan of Nirvana’s
drummer, Foo Fighter’s front man, Dave Grohl.

The apparent suicide of Kurt Cobain effected fans across the
Nation and across the world and in no way am I trying to trivialize that. My
thoughts on the matter is that this was, is and continues to be a devastating
tragedy that the people closest to Kurt will have to live with for the rest of
their lives.

Exit Stage Six came about when I had a very strange dream
about what it would be to deal with something of this magnitude on a much
smaller scale. To be someone on the outside looking in on a tragedy this
monumental when it came to someone close to the person who’d gone. Dorian’ pain
is a very raw and powerful thing in this aspect but Drake’s suicide reaches far
beyond him and his band mates, their families, their friends and even their
fans.

Suicide is a forever decision made during a singular moment
in time when things feel like they can’t get any worse… Please, if you or
someone you know is having thoughts of suicide seek help. Visit the National
Suicide Prevention lifeline at:

http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
or call 24/7 at:
1-800-273-8255.

A.J. Downey has been a resident of Seattle, WA
her entire life, that being said she has lived in many different places and
many different worlds through her imagination. She enjoys music, coffee,
writing (obviously) and a bunch of other boring things that you probably don’t
really care about. She is ever so grateful that you either picked up her
writing or that you continue to read her stuff!