Maybe that’s why it didn’t hurt as much as it should have when it ended. I supposed she did me a favor. The hardest part was getting my sexual needs met. You can only date your hand for so long, and hands that were calloused, at that, from playing drums and holding the sticks just right. Plus, my fingers weren’t exactly normal. The drum playing, for one. And what happened four years ago, for the other. Beth had actually been kind of turned on by that. She liked the way the interior skin along my knuckles was hard, how parts of my palm had callouses that she said, when I dragged them along the side of her ribcage and cupped her breast, made her feel like she was with a rockstar.

After all, she kind of was.

Someone had left a half-empty cup on my floor tom, and I threw it away. As I got ready for the next set I looked out into the crowd. The stage lights were off, and some sort of boring, late 90’s hard rock played, sounding like elevator music in the distance.

I froze. The blood drained out of me and my body went hot and cold at the same time, hands clenching around sticks I didn’t have yet. Amy? So I wasn’t making it up. Could that really be her? I rubbed my eyes. I must be getting tired, and yet...I looked again, peering out into the crowd. If it was her, damn, had four years been good to her. She still did that little thing where she stuck her pinky finger into the corner of her mouth, her tongue worrying it in a way that was so hot it made parts of me come alive.

If anyone was going to make me hard, it would be Amy. Not that I had any right to it. What I did to her four years ago was so shitty, I should be flogging myself, and not in that way. As penance. The Sam that I had been my senior year of high school couldn’t handle the fact that she, with one hug, one kiss, and one win, had cut off my balls and served them on a platter for my father to shove down my throat.

I knew better now.

Now that it was too late.

“Hey, Sam.” Liam stalked over, jaunty and sweaty. “Here,” he said, shoving a little piece of paper at me.

It was a business card, and I flipped it between my front two fingers. “What is it? Louise Erhardt Entertainment.”

“It’s a job opportunity,” Liam said. Something in the way he smiled at me made it seem like a leer.

“Job opportunity? What, like a gig?”

He pressed his lips together and puffed some air out. His arms flexed, and if he’d been wearing anything other than a cotton t-shirt, he’d have split the seams. He crossed his arms over his chest, looked down at me, and whispered, “Give her a call. Seriously, dude. It’s a good job.”

“What job?”

He stalked off and called out over his shoulder, “Pays a couple hundred a night.”

Couple hundred a night? Serious money. Shit. That could save me. I looked back at the table where Amy had been sitting and she was gone, her drink still there. Maybe I was fooling myself and it wasn’t really her. Why would she come here, and most of all, why couldn’t I stop thinking about her?

Amy

The bar’s bathroom was about as scuzzy as I’d expected, and the face that looked back at me from the mirror was, of course, exactly what I expected. Sometimes I found myself looking into the mirror and actually thinking that I would see something different, as if the layers that were inside me would somehow show themselves by giving me a different appearance. The Amy who always stared back seemed too plain for the person who lived inside. Long, brown hair, with just enough wave to give it shape. Big, brown eyes that seemed a little too fearful for the strong person I knew was smothered under some of those layers. My nose wasn’t big or small. My skin wasn’t clear or a mess.

And then there was my body. I liked to think that I was just a head. Literally. A head that walked around attached to this thing that I required in order to function in daily life. My body didn’t really matter to me, until it did. Some people like to use the word voluptuous. My mother called me curvy, while my grandma called me chunky. No one was mean about it, but it was there, as if having extra curves on my hips or a thicker than acceptable waist, and breasts that filled a cup and then some, were a quiet damning. An indictment of a body that didn’t fit in with modern society.

My ex, Brent, hadn’t seemed to care too much about my weight, though I would catch him ogling other women, most of them a good twenty pounds lighter than me. The paradox was that the same body that I pretended to ignore was the one that I explored so tentatively, and at other times aggressively, in trying to understand the core of myself.

What I wanted was someone else’s hands to do that work, someone else’s obsession to be zeroed in on me, a man’s desire to be at the center of finding Amy’s sensual self. Instead, there was only me and my books, and essays, and readings, and the occasional prop ordered discreetly online. None of those, not even Brent, came close to being a substitute for the richness that I knew was out there in the world.

Couldn’t I find that one person who would come to treasure me? Who would view me not just as a mind, as a bodiless head wandering around, or not just as a headless body, there to be fucked and thrown away,—but as the whole package? What I wanted most wasn’t Sam, although as I settled back at my table I found myself searching the crowd and the stage for him.

It wasn’t the idea of Sam that I wanted; it was the reality of a partner who would go the distance with me. Someone I could give up the entire world for, so that we could go deep and burrow into each other—mind, body, soul, and everything. I knew it was possible...it had to be, right?

If I could think it, it could be real.

As I looked up and found Sam on stage, getting ready for the next song, and wondered if he could be the one, I saw Darla walk over to him. No, past him. She reached for Trevor, who reached back with a familiar embrace, and then a kiss that...whoa, practically set the stage on fire. Jeez, the two of them needed to get a room.

I finished my drink, the watery taste of melted ice cubes and alcohol familiar, like the words “the end” on the final page of a book, and then, out of the corner of my eye, Darla stepped away from Trevor as a hand slid up her back, under her shirt. The hand was attached to...Joe? Who then proceeded to...oh, dear. If they showed any more tongue I would think I was at a butcher shop.

Who on earth was she actually with? The kiss with Joe went on and on until my own face started to flush, and the creeping red from my chest stretched up, then down.

I felt like a voyeur, as if I weren’t supposed to be watching this, but what are you supposed to do when they’re onstage in front of a crowd? Trevor’s hand splayed across Darla’s ass, an ass about the size of my own. There I went comparing again—does any woman not? I admired whatever was going on in a sickly kind of way, my stomach twisting in knots. Was it possible? Were the two of them...no, the three of them...?

And then Sam approached her. My whole body turned to melted chocolate, and then tensed up to granite, revolving in a cycle that left me weak.

Then very, very angry as Darla reached out for Sam.

Oh, no, she didn’t.

I stood, hands twisted into fists, the blood pounding at my scalp, making the lights on stage go dim. Liam McCarthy jumped to the mic and shouted, “Are you ready to party?”My mouth went dry as I watched him own the stage. Hadn’t seen him in years, either.

Seeing the person who took your virginity really should generate an emotional reaction, right?

The crowd leapt to their feet and my view of the stage was obscured. Damn it! The raised arms, shrill whistles and screams from about a hundred fans made me lose track of what, exactly, Darla was doing to—or with—Sam.

Liam tried to calm the crowd, arms out, palms down in a gesture of quiet. “Let’s get the raffle out of the way.”

Anemic cheers.

“Three prizes tonight.”

“Free drinks!” Someone shouted. That got another round of hoots and some clapping.

“Sorry—go hook up with someone in the crowd for that.” Loads of giggles from the women. Groans from the men.

“First of three prizes—free tickets to our next concert!” I pulled my ticket out of my pocket. Why not? Going home with a prize was better than going home alone. Standing on tiptoes, I kept trying to catch a glimpse of Sam, and to see what Darla was doing to him. With him. Whatever. Liam called out a number that wasn’t mine. As the crowd settled back in their seats, I saw Joe and Sam setting up equipment in the background. No Darla. Good.

“Second prize—a CD from our best live performances.” He read off a number.

Not mine.

“Third and final prize.” Cocky grin. “Let me call out the number and then I’ll tell you what you get.”

“A night with you, Liam!” some drunk girl screamed.

He cocked one hell of a sexy eyebrow at the crowd and leered. “That would make any woman a winner.” He drew the word winner out like a finger running down a woman’s breast, over her ribs, down her torso...and the women in the crowd shrieked.

And then he called out my number.

“Anyone?”

I was frozen. Holy shit. What?

“I’ll take you if someone doesn’t claim it!” a woman cried out.

“Me, too!” screamed five or six other women.

The waitress happened to pop over and look at my ticket. “Here! She won! Right here!” She pointed at me with a big gesture that caught the crowd’s attention.

No no no no no. Sam couldn’t know I was here.

“What are you waiting for, honey? Don’t be afraid. Go for it!” With a mighty shove, she pushed me out into the crowd, a spotlight finding my face.

“Hey there! Our winner! And it’s a chick—whew!”

Every woman I walked past looked at me as if I’d won the MegaMillions lottery. I got to the stairs to the left of the stage, feeling like I was walking a death march. A red EXIT sign glowed to me right. If I bolted right now...

“Not that I wouldn’t mind kissing a dude,” Liam added. A few guys in the audience cheered really loud.

“Because the prize is a kiss from me.” Liam peered down the stage steps and when his eyes set on me, all that confidence faltered for a split second.

A what? Couldn’t I just get a CD?

One of the stage hands nudged me to join Liam, and I walked on feet made of electrified concrete.

“Amy!” I heard Darla squeal from backstage.

“Amy?” The way Sam said my name made me nearly vomit.

“Amy.” Liam’s smile spread slowly, his voice like buttered suede. “Our lucky winner.”

Lights sprayed across my face, making me half-blind, as hundreds of eyes watched me and Liam on stage. He put his arm around my shoulders as people in the crowd began began to chant “kiss!” over and over.

I couldn’t even look at Sam. Because I knew he was staring at me.

Covering my body with his to shield the view, Liam’s face came so close to mine I could inhale his aftershave, smell the sweat and musk of excitability the performance must bring out in him. A quick peck on the cheek, and he whispered, “Let’s make this look nice and juicy.”

One hand went around my hip, the other snaked up my back, between my shoulder blades, and he dipped me, the crowd seeing mostly his body and my legs.