Why'd You Want to Go and Make Me Feel This Way?
One
"What time is sound check again?" I asked Sawyer, who was busy replacing one of the strings on his guitar. He was tuned out and didn't hear me, so I threw the makeup brush I was using to apply my blush at him.
"Hey!" His blonde head of hair snapped up at me.
"Hey! What time is sound check?"
"I don't know, like 2 o'clock?" He answered, tossing the brush back at me. It was 1:30 now. We were at our first stop of the tour and the butterflies were forming in my stomach already. We had never played for a crowd this huge before and my anxiety was rising quickly. We had our first sound check at 2:00, and we went on stage at 7:00 on the dot. I stared at myself in the well lit dressing room mirror, trying to decide how much more makeup I wanted to put on before sound check, because I didn't want it to all come off before the show.
I took a deep breath trying to relax myself before going to check out the stage. Sawyer quit fumbling around on his guitar and looked up at me, smiling and shaking his head. "You're going to be fine. There's a reason we're here. And it's not any of our devilish good looks." He winked at me and I blushed, setting down my makeup on the desk.
Ryan, Jackson, and Seth were missing from the dressing room. I didn't really care, as long as they were there on time today. The three of them had bonded much quicker with everyone in 5SOS than Sawyer and I did. He and I started the band when we were 17, and played shows as an acoustic pop punk duo at small venues, opening for bands for 4 years. We had a small following and loved it. We had never thought about adding more members until Sawyer met Ryan, Jackson, and Seth at a local show and we all met to hang out, and the three of them had just left a band. We reconfigured our songs to be played as a full band, and I dropped my guitar on stage so I could put more into singing and performing. The rest was quick history. We were discovered on YouTube, signed to a label, and 3 years after our addition to the band, we were asked to open for 5SOS.
"I'm going to go ahead and head to the stage to check it out." I got up, grabbing my phone and sticking it in my back pocket. "Want to come along?"
"I'll be there in a bit." Sawyer gave me a small wave as I walked out of the door. We were the two oldest of the band, me having just turned 24 and he was 23, 6 months younger than me. Ryan was our 20 year old brunette drummer, half of our girl fans were completely head over heels in love with him. Jackson was on the bass, 21 going on 16 (again), and you never knew what color his hair was going to be. He was currently his natural brown with an underlay of tealish blue. And Seth was 22, and the other lead guitarist. He and Sawyer would switch the lead up depending on the song. I walked the long white hallways leading to the stage in silence. I passed a few crew members who were rushing around, acknowledging them but not saying much.
I felt like I was going to pass out or puke as I stepped foot into the huge arena.
"Fuck." I said to myself as I looked around, not even attempting to guesstimate how many bodies we would be playing to tonight. I made my way to the center of the stage, crossing my arms and kept turning around in circles.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Ashton creeped up behind me and scared the living shit out of me.
"Yeah, it's... Unlike anything I've ever seen before. All of these seats will be full tonight?" I pointed my black painted fingernail around at the seats.
"Mostly. I mean, I'm sure some people won't show up for the opening band but..." I elbowed him in the chest. "I'm kidding. We've already warned everyone to show up for you."
"That's reassuring."
"This is one of the smaller venues, too. Only 15,000 people."
"Only?! Jesus."
"At least we aren't One Direction. We could have you open up for 50,000 people." I stepped back as I saw the crew bringing out my hot pink microphone and matching stand. "You're going to be fine, don't worry."
"Everyone keeps telling me that, but the bile rising in my stomach tells me different." Ashton patted me on the back as the rest of my band walked into the arena with the other members of 5SOS. The 4 boys joined me on stage as Ashton hopped off and we began our sound check. I couldn't help but be a shaking nervous wreck as Ashton, Michael, Luke and Calum watched us from five rows back.
"Get with it, babe." Sawyer pinched my cheek as I looked at him for some comfort. "Can we try that one again?" Sawyer hunched down to my mic and spoke into it at the sound guy and I looked at him like he was crazy. I looked back into the crowd and Ashton was bent over whispering to his band mates. We received a thumbs up to start when we were ready and I nodded at Seth to go ahead and start.
Halfway through our sound check I had to stop to chug a bottle of water. Everyone huddled around me. "Are you going to be okay? You look as pale as a ghost." Seth leaned on me and I shrugged.
"I've never been this nervous in my entire life."
"Once those lights go out and everyone is screaming for us, you'll be better. Quit looking at those four fuckers, they're just trying to psych you out." Ryan patted me on the head as I finished my bottle of water and I went back to my spot in the center of the stage and swallowed, giving a thumbs up to the sound guy that I was ready to continue. After making a few adjustments with some of the last few songs, we walked off stage. Everyone was patting each other on the back and jumping around, except me.
"Hey, I'm just going to go take a small nap for a bit on the bus, alright?" I told them, hugging each of them before I left our dressing room to make my way to the bus. As soon as I turned around from shutting the door, I ran into someone. "Sorry!" I mumbled, not realizing who I ran into.
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Where you going to so fast?" Michael shrugged it off and started walking in my direction.
"Take a nap on the bus. They're way too loud for me to get any peaceful sleep."
"Want some company?" He asked entirely too sweetly.
"It would be nice... But I kind of plan on sleeping, so I'm not sure I'd be too much fun. Don't you have to do your sound check?" We both flashed our badges to security as we switched hallways.
"Nonsense. We did our sound check this morning so we could pester all of you the rest of the day."
I rolled my eyes, "Fine. But like I said, I'm going to be sleeping. I slept none last night."
"And what makes you think you're going to sleep now? A few hours before you perform in front of roughly 15,000 people?"
I glared at him as I leaned on the door to outside. "You're not helping." He opened the door to lead me out to the buses. We didn't speak as I walked over to our all black tour bus that was given to us by our label.
"Well, if it does help, you sounded really, really good on stage."
"Thanks. Want anything to drink?" I opened our refrigerator. "Beer? Whiskey? Water? Gatorade? Have to keep the whiskey out here for some reason."
"Beer is fine." Michael answered as he sat down on our couch. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey and poured some for myself after tossing a beer to Michael.
I took the first sip of whiskey and instantly felt warmer on the inside.
"I had to do that the first time we opened for One Direction, too." Michael laughed at me as I finished my glass almost immediately.
"Does it ever get any easier?"
"Listen, when we first started, I couldn't even look at anyone when I sang." Michael started picking at the label on his beer. "You were staring us straight in the face earlier. Minus being paler than me, you really seemed okay." I chuckled at his comment as he stood up and brought me the bottle of whiskey. I poured more into the glass and sipped on it slower.
"I just can't believe this is finally here, you know? I mean, seven years. I've been a part of this band for seven years and when we started we never even wanted to play to more than 10 people. Much less 10,000."
"Same here. We used to play garage shows. And Ash used to work at KFC."
I busted out laughing, Ashton liked to remind everyone every chance he could that that's where he started out. "I think minus hey, this is the most you've ever spoken to me." I sat indian style on the couch, facing Michael.
"Same. You're kind of intimidating. But less intimidating when you don't have 4 guys standing behind you."
"I get that a lot." I blushed and took another sip of the whiskey, feeling more relaxed. "You're nice though. I mean, all of you are. But you and Ash are the least intimidating. Luke is too tall. I mean, really you're tall too but not as tall as Luke." Michael was laughing through his beer as he took another huge gulp.
"You're getting drunk. You should stop after that." He pointed at the almost empty glass in my hand.
"Yeah, I probably should. But it's only 4:30, so a little bit more might help my nerves even more." I stuck out my tongue at Michael as he helped himself to a second beer. The two of us sat and talked for another hour and a half before Jackson was calling me on my cell phone, wondering when I was going to come back to the room to get ready.
"I need to make my way back. But I don't want to." I leaned my head against the back of the couch and watched Michael finishing off his fourth beer.
"Come on, come on! You've gotta go sing for all these people."
"Now I'm too relaxed." I pretended to make my body go limp as Michael cleaned up the small mess we had made and grabbed a bottle of water for me.
"Here, drink this before we leave. Your band is going to hate me." He ran a hand through his dark hair and I let out a chuckle.
"I can hold my alcohol. I've been drinking for seven years."
"What? How old are you?"
"24..." I trailed off.
"Oh, fuck. I thought you were like, older, by the way you said that."
"I mean, I'm old enough to need help getting off this couch." I held my arms out and Michael pulled me up, steadying me by my waist. The feeling in the pit of my stomach returned as I got a whiff of his scent.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, Yeah." I nodded, stepping back and pushing my bangs out of my eyes. I walked down the stairs to the exit of the bus and we quietly walked back to our assigned rooms, Michael wishing me a quick good luck before I walked into the room.
"Where have you been, missy?!" Seth was fixing his curly brown hair in the mirror when I walked in at 6 o'clock.
"Getting drunk on the bus with Michael." I said as I sat down in my chair to fix my makeup. No one said anything to me, but I could feel them shooting glances at each other as I added more eyeliner to my cat eyes, and darkened my lid, adding some black glitter.
"Wardrobe brought your outfit by already! We'll leave you alone when you're ready to change." Sawyer sat beside me, watching me put my makeup on. "You okay to perform?"
"Yeah, I feel a lot better. I'm kind of sober feeling. Just relaxed enough to not puke on stage now." I applied my magenta lipstick effortlessly and made a kissy face to help settle the lipstick. "Okay, you can leave me alone now." I shooed the boys out of the room and changed quickly into my outfit, braiding my bangs out of my face. I didn't hear the knock on the door ten minutes later as I was jumping up and down, warming up my body for the show.
"That's how I like to warm up too." Michael stood at the door with Jackson and Seth watching, both of which weren't surprised, they were used to my absurd warm up.
"So how long is the jacket going to last tonight?" Ryan plopped down on the leather couch as I continued to pace the dressing room.
"Six songs. This top is a lot shorter than I remember it being." I pulled at the top, trying to cover more of my belly.
"I say three." Jackson and Seth jinxed themselves. The guys continued cutting up as I sat on top of one of the counters that went around the outside of the room. Ashton joined me and elbowed me in the side.
"You ready?" I looked up at the clock which had 10 minutes until showtime.
"No turning back now, is there?" He shook his head and I sighed. A crew member peeped their head in the door, followed by our tour manager Steve.
"We've been ringing for you guys for five minutes. Come on!" I hopped off the counter and made my way to the door and felt a pair of hands squeezing my shoulders from behind. I thought it would be Sawyer, but when I looked back I was met with Michael instead. He joined me in walking side by side down the hall to the stage.
The nine of us and our crew made a circle and put our hands in the center and chanted before splitting up and we made our way to the stage. there was a giant black curtain around the stage so no one could see us, but we could see the lights filling the arena. All five of us huddled around the drums and joined hands again, doing our signature chant before the show started. I somehow heard the sound booth guy count down in my ear piece over the erratic heartbeats in my ears and I took my spot, center stage, gripping my pink mic with white knuckles.
"Here... we... GO!" I yelled into the mic as the black curtain dropped and the fans went wild for us, singing along to the opening song.
"Hey!" His blonde head of hair snapped up at me.
"Hey! What time is sound check?"
"I don't know, like 2 o'clock?" He answered, tossing the brush back at me. It was 1:30 now. We were at our first stop of the tour and the butterflies were forming in my stomach already. We had never played for a crowd this huge before and my anxiety was rising quickly. We had our first sound check at 2:00, and we went on stage at 7:00 on the dot. I stared at myself in the well lit dressing room mirror, trying to decide how much more makeup I wanted to put on before sound check, because I didn't want it to all come off before the show.
I took a deep breath trying to relax myself before going to check out the stage. Sawyer quit fumbling around on his guitar and looked up at me, smiling and shaking his head. "You're going to be fine. There's a reason we're here. And it's not any of our devilish good looks." He winked at me and I blushed, setting down my makeup on the desk.
Ryan, Jackson, and Seth were missing from the dressing room. I didn't really care, as long as they were there on time today. The three of them had bonded much quicker with everyone in 5SOS than Sawyer and I did. He and I started the band when we were 17, and played shows as an acoustic pop punk duo at small venues, opening for bands for 4 years. We had a small following and loved it. We had never thought about adding more members until Sawyer met Ryan, Jackson, and Seth at a local show and we all met to hang out, and the three of them had just left a band. We reconfigured our songs to be played as a full band, and I dropped my guitar on stage so I could put more into singing and performing. The rest was quick history. We were discovered on YouTube, signed to a label, and 3 years after our addition to the band, we were asked to open for 5SOS.
"I'm going to go ahead and head to the stage to check it out." I got up, grabbing my phone and sticking it in my back pocket. "Want to come along?"
"I'll be there in a bit." Sawyer gave me a small wave as I walked out of the door. We were the two oldest of the band, me having just turned 24 and he was 23, 6 months younger than me. Ryan was our 20 year old brunette drummer, half of our girl fans were completely head over heels in love with him. Jackson was on the bass, 21 going on 16 (again), and you never knew what color his hair was going to be. He was currently his natural brown with an underlay of tealish blue. And Seth was 22, and the other lead guitarist. He and Sawyer would switch the lead up depending on the song. I walked the long white hallways leading to the stage in silence. I passed a few crew members who were rushing around, acknowledging them but not saying much.
I felt like I was going to pass out or puke as I stepped foot into the huge arena.
"Fuck." I said to myself as I looked around, not even attempting to guesstimate how many bodies we would be playing to tonight. I made my way to the center of the stage, crossing my arms and kept turning around in circles.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Ashton creeped up behind me and scared the living shit out of me.
"Yeah, it's... Unlike anything I've ever seen before. All of these seats will be full tonight?" I pointed my black painted fingernail around at the seats.
"Mostly. I mean, I'm sure some people won't show up for the opening band but..." I elbowed him in the chest. "I'm kidding. We've already warned everyone to show up for you."
"That's reassuring."
"This is one of the smaller venues, too. Only 15,000 people."
"Only?! Jesus."
"At least we aren't One Direction. We could have you open up for 50,000 people." I stepped back as I saw the crew bringing out my hot pink microphone and matching stand. "You're going to be fine, don't worry."
"Everyone keeps telling me that, but the bile rising in my stomach tells me different." Ashton patted me on the back as the rest of my band walked into the arena with the other members of 5SOS. The 4 boys joined me on stage as Ashton hopped off and we began our sound check. I couldn't help but be a shaking nervous wreck as Ashton, Michael, Luke and Calum watched us from five rows back.
"Get with it, babe." Sawyer pinched my cheek as I looked at him for some comfort. "Can we try that one again?" Sawyer hunched down to my mic and spoke into it at the sound guy and I looked at him like he was crazy. I looked back into the crowd and Ashton was bent over whispering to his band mates. We received a thumbs up to start when we were ready and I nodded at Seth to go ahead and start.
Halfway through our sound check I had to stop to chug a bottle of water. Everyone huddled around me. "Are you going to be okay? You look as pale as a ghost." Seth leaned on me and I shrugged.
"I've never been this nervous in my entire life."
"Once those lights go out and everyone is screaming for us, you'll be better. Quit looking at those four fuckers, they're just trying to psych you out." Ryan patted me on the head as I finished my bottle of water and I went back to my spot in the center of the stage and swallowed, giving a thumbs up to the sound guy that I was ready to continue. After making a few adjustments with some of the last few songs, we walked off stage. Everyone was patting each other on the back and jumping around, except me.
"Hey, I'm just going to go take a small nap for a bit on the bus, alright?" I told them, hugging each of them before I left our dressing room to make my way to the bus. As soon as I turned around from shutting the door, I ran into someone. "Sorry!" I mumbled, not realizing who I ran into.
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Where you going to so fast?" Michael shrugged it off and started walking in my direction.
"Take a nap on the bus. They're way too loud for me to get any peaceful sleep."
"Want some company?" He asked entirely too sweetly.
"It would be nice... But I kind of plan on sleeping, so I'm not sure I'd be too much fun. Don't you have to do your sound check?" We both flashed our badges to security as we switched hallways.
"Nonsense. We did our sound check this morning so we could pester all of you the rest of the day."
I rolled my eyes, "Fine. But like I said, I'm going to be sleeping. I slept none last night."
"And what makes you think you're going to sleep now? A few hours before you perform in front of roughly 15,000 people?"
I glared at him as I leaned on the door to outside. "You're not helping." He opened the door to lead me out to the buses. We didn't speak as I walked over to our all black tour bus that was given to us by our label.
"Well, if it does help, you sounded really, really good on stage."
"Thanks. Want anything to drink?" I opened our refrigerator. "Beer? Whiskey? Water? Gatorade? Have to keep the whiskey out here for some reason."
"Beer is fine." Michael answered as he sat down on our couch. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey and poured some for myself after tossing a beer to Michael.
I took the first sip of whiskey and instantly felt warmer on the inside.
"I had to do that the first time we opened for One Direction, too." Michael laughed at me as I finished my glass almost immediately.
"Does it ever get any easier?"
"Listen, when we first started, I couldn't even look at anyone when I sang." Michael started picking at the label on his beer. "You were staring us straight in the face earlier. Minus being paler than me, you really seemed okay." I chuckled at his comment as he stood up and brought me the bottle of whiskey. I poured more into the glass and sipped on it slower.
"I just can't believe this is finally here, you know? I mean, seven years. I've been a part of this band for seven years and when we started we never even wanted to play to more than 10 people. Much less 10,000."
"Same here. We used to play garage shows. And Ash used to work at KFC."
I busted out laughing, Ashton liked to remind everyone every chance he could that that's where he started out. "I think minus hey, this is the most you've ever spoken to me." I sat indian style on the couch, facing Michael.
"Same. You're kind of intimidating. But less intimidating when you don't have 4 guys standing behind you."
"I get that a lot." I blushed and took another sip of the whiskey, feeling more relaxed. "You're nice though. I mean, all of you are. But you and Ash are the least intimidating. Luke is too tall. I mean, really you're tall too but not as tall as Luke." Michael was laughing through his beer as he took another huge gulp.
"You're getting drunk. You should stop after that." He pointed at the almost empty glass in my hand.
"Yeah, I probably should. But it's only 4:30, so a little bit more might help my nerves even more." I stuck out my tongue at Michael as he helped himself to a second beer. The two of us sat and talked for another hour and a half before Jackson was calling me on my cell phone, wondering when I was going to come back to the room to get ready.
"I need to make my way back. But I don't want to." I leaned my head against the back of the couch and watched Michael finishing off his fourth beer.
"Come on, come on! You've gotta go sing for all these people."
"Now I'm too relaxed." I pretended to make my body go limp as Michael cleaned up the small mess we had made and grabbed a bottle of water for me.
"Here, drink this before we leave. Your band is going to hate me." He ran a hand through his dark hair and I let out a chuckle.
"I can hold my alcohol. I've been drinking for seven years."
"What? How old are you?"
"24..." I trailed off.
"Oh, fuck. I thought you were like, older, by the way you said that."
"I mean, I'm old enough to need help getting off this couch." I held my arms out and Michael pulled me up, steadying me by my waist. The feeling in the pit of my stomach returned as I got a whiff of his scent.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, Yeah." I nodded, stepping back and pushing my bangs out of my eyes. I walked down the stairs to the exit of the bus and we quietly walked back to our assigned rooms, Michael wishing me a quick good luck before I walked into the room.
"Where have you been, missy?!" Seth was fixing his curly brown hair in the mirror when I walked in at 6 o'clock.
"Getting drunk on the bus with Michael." I said as I sat down in my chair to fix my makeup. No one said anything to me, but I could feel them shooting glances at each other as I added more eyeliner to my cat eyes, and darkened my lid, adding some black glitter.
"Wardrobe brought your outfit by already! We'll leave you alone when you're ready to change." Sawyer sat beside me, watching me put my makeup on. "You okay to perform?"
"Yeah, I feel a lot better. I'm kind of sober feeling. Just relaxed enough to not puke on stage now." I applied my magenta lipstick effortlessly and made a kissy face to help settle the lipstick. "Okay, you can leave me alone now." I shooed the boys out of the room and changed quickly into my outfit, braiding my bangs out of my face. I didn't hear the knock on the door ten minutes later as I was jumping up and down, warming up my body for the show.
"That's how I like to warm up too." Michael stood at the door with Jackson and Seth watching, both of which weren't surprised, they were used to my absurd warm up.
"So how long is the jacket going to last tonight?" Ryan plopped down on the leather couch as I continued to pace the dressing room.
"Six songs. This top is a lot shorter than I remember it being." I pulled at the top, trying to cover more of my belly.
"I say three." Jackson and Seth jinxed themselves. The guys continued cutting up as I sat on top of one of the counters that went around the outside of the room. Ashton joined me and elbowed me in the side.
"You ready?" I looked up at the clock which had 10 minutes until showtime.
"No turning back now, is there?" He shook his head and I sighed. A crew member peeped their head in the door, followed by our tour manager Steve.
"We've been ringing for you guys for five minutes. Come on!" I hopped off the counter and made my way to the door and felt a pair of hands squeezing my shoulders from behind. I thought it would be Sawyer, but when I looked back I was met with Michael instead. He joined me in walking side by side down the hall to the stage.
The nine of us and our crew made a circle and put our hands in the center and chanted before splitting up and we made our way to the stage. there was a giant black curtain around the stage so no one could see us, but we could see the lights filling the arena. All five of us huddled around the drums and joined hands again, doing our signature chant before the show started. I somehow heard the sound booth guy count down in my ear piece over the erratic heartbeats in my ears and I took my spot, center stage, gripping my pink mic with white knuckles.
"Here... we... GO!" I yelled into the mic as the black curtain dropped and the fans went wild for us, singing along to the opening song.