Follow My Heart

The snow falls heavily, drifting slowly through the air and settling like a blanket on the ground. I’m reclining on my brother’s couch, watching their descent, trying to ignore his piercing voice as he gives me roughly five hundred reasons why I should come to the show tonight.

“Come on,” he groans, kicking his skinny legs in the air and pouting. Although Freddy is three years older than me, most of the time he acts like a five-year-old and I’m the one who ends up keeping an eye on him. “Automatic Gunfire is your favorite band! Why the hell can’t you come to one of my shows just this once?”

I lean back, resting my head on the back of the couch and sighing.

Freddy owns a club down on Burberry called Cloud. A venue, as he calls it, though in my personal opinion he doesn’t see enough real acts to call it that. The biggest band he’s booked up until now was this group of emo kids from Jersey, all dressed in black and belting their hearts out. I can’t even remember their name, and I doubt he can, either.

It always cracks me up how he calls them his shows, like he’s really contributing anything besides a performance area.

“They’re not my favorite band,” I correct him slowly. “They’re . . . one of my favorite bands. I haven’t even listened to them in forever.”

“Yeah, but I remember when you were totally obsessed with them,” he presses on. “I remember. How you adored their music, not to mention their ‘hot’ vocalist.”

I can’t deny that one. For months all I could think about was Automatic Gunfire—their music blared perpetually through my earbuds, and the apartment’s stereo speakers when my roommate allowed it. The band had only released one album at the time, and those same sixteen songs were like my Bible until I finally moved on to some other little nobody band that only has a small, internet-generated fanbase. I think they’ve come out with a second album since my obsession with them faded to almost nothing.

Yeah. Maybe I was a little obsessed back then; I’m not ashamed to admit it. Not to myself, at least.

I also didn’t keep my infatuation with AG’s gorgeous singer a secret, either. I’m not shy to admit it—he’s a total hottie, and the weird thing is, I knew it before I ever saw him. The second I heard his voice, so pained and melodious, the notes ringing strongly from the speakers of Luke’s old beat-up boom box, I was certain that he was a beautiful man. I didn’t know his name back then, or his age, and even his gender was questionable until my roommate showed me the picture on the inside of the CD booklet and it was confirmed that Zeke Rutherford is an angel.

Freddy’s staring at me as I mull it over. It seems just like a silly phase now—I’m a twenty two year old man for god’s sake, not a fourteen year old girl who’s ruled by my hormones. I should be out getting an actual boyfriend instead fangirling over a singer who probably won’t bother to speak to me even if I do know the owner of the venue, but I can’t help but feel a spark of excitement at the slight possibility.

I sigh at Freddy, who bites his lower lip expectantly. “Why are you so intent on me going to this show, anyway?” I ask him.

“I ask you to go to a lot of my shows!”

There it is again. My shows.

“Yeah, and I never do. Why so intent now?”

Now Freddy’s lip-chewing is accompanied by an anxious kneading of the eyebrows. “Oh, I dunno, maybe because I care about you?” he suggests, though not angrily. “It’s not often you have a chance to hang out with someone you idolize, Seth.”

Don’t I know it. Imagine my excitement when I heard my own big brother was going to own a venue, where real musicians played. Always being a music fan, though never willing to pick up an instrument myself, I’d made my list of bands I now had the chance of not only seeing live, but meeting face-to-face.

Little did I know how unsuccessful Cloud would turn out to be, how many disappointing nights would be spent watching a scrawny kid in plaid scrape through a few Bob Dylan covers to light applause. I used to frequent the club often, getting in for free and taking my seat at the bar in the back, hoping that tonight would finally be the night that I would come in contact with some real talent . . .

It never came, and eventually I abandoned my visits to the venue altogether, giving up hope that my dream of meeting some amazing musicians would come true.

It hadn’t yet, but now it looked like it was about to. So why was I so unenthusiastic?

“I guess I’m just afraid they won’t be as great as they seem to be,” I shrug like it’s no big deal.

“They will be!” proclaims my brother, jumping up. “I promise you! Their manager sounded so happy on the phone—”

“That proves a lot.”

“—and he said this is one of their first shows since Follow My Heart.”

“Since what?”

“Automatic’s new album. Climbing the charts as we speak.”

I realize I’ve stood up, and, thinking of nothing better to do, I begin pacing the room in thought.

Why shouldn’t I see Automatic Gunfire at Freddy’s club?

I rub my face exhaustedly.

Because I’m scared. More than that, terrified. It’s just as I told my brother: What if they don’t live up to my expectations? What if Zeke doesn’t? What if they suck live, or they’re douchebags in person, or what if they don’t want to take the time out of their busy schedules to meet me at all . . .

“Fine,” I agree suddenly, halting in my pacing and, after swaying dizzily for a moment, looking Freddy in the eye. “I’ll come to your stupid show. But don’t expect me to socialize.”

“Oh, I expect you to socialize,” he replies, clapping his hands, his eyes sparkling happily. “with Zeke, Trevor, Glen, and Joel.”

I can’t keep a slow grin from spreading across my cheeks as he lists the four band members. The four men I’ll be watching from backstage tomorrow night.