Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [79]
And she realized that she had, indeed, fallen in love with someone she shouldn’t have.
TWENTY
His first live show! Jess could feel the excitement bubbling inside him, just waiting for the chance to spill over in a tidal wave of inane babble that would immediately brand him as a total loser from Moronville.
But damn it, this was a big night for him. He was with the band. Well, sort of. No one except Frankie and Adam knew about it, and Jess himself wasn’t entirely sure what to even call it, but still. There was a big part of him silently squeeing that his boyfriend played the bass in a punk band.
There was a difference, Jess had discovered as he stared up at the band onstage, between knowing that Frankie was a punk rocker and actually seeing it. Sort of like the difference between Patti Smith’s studio recordings and her live albums. No contest, the live stuff was way better. Raw and emotional, thrumming with heat and life and the untamed fury that characterized the best of seventies punk.
Jess had done quite a bit of research since that first night at Market. He thought he could now be considered something of an expert on punk music.
So when Dreck finished their set, and Frankie finished pretending he was going to stage-dive and finally let Jess help him off the platform, Jess felt perfectly qualified to say, “You were fantastic! The show rocked.”
Frankie was pouring sweat, his normally moon-pale skin red at the cheekbones.
“Yeah? That’s odd, because we’re usually crap.”
Exhilarated and giddy with the pulse-pounding thrill of live music, the residual beat of the bass in his blood, Jess couldn’t stop himself from crowding in close. He nudged Frankie playfully in the chest, staring up at the taller man’s eyes glittering in the dim light.
“Stop it. Modesty isn’t believable on you. You rocked and you know it! That last song, the fast, funked-out version of ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’? That was insane.”
“Better than the Ramones?” Frankie asked, eyeing Jess keenly.
Jess laughed and pulled him aside, away from the front of the stage where too many people were still pressed together waiting for the next set. Jess saw Adam setting up out of the corner of his eye and wanted to smile for Miranda. In a second or two, she’d know how Jess was feeling—although if that soul kiss they’d all just witnessed was any indication, she was already flying pretty high.
“Answer the question, Bit,” Frankie said with a grin. He’d snagged a towel from one of the other band members and was mopping off his forehead and neck.
“Not better than the Ramones,” Jess decided, taking the towel from him and rubbing at a patch of sweaty skin just below Frankie’s chin. “But that’s a trick question. No one’s better than the Ramones.”
“You’ve learned your lessons well, young one,” Frankie intoned, his voice harsher than usual from screaming backup vocals. He sounded like he’d just smoked three packs of Dunhills in a row. The rough gravel of it sent a shiver down Jess’s spine.
“You guys were better than the New York Dolls,” Jess said.
“Enough of that,” Frankie replied sternly. “Heathen. I’ll make a Dolls fan of you yet.”
“I dunno,” Jess said, affecting a skeptical head tilt. “They just don’t do it for me. Even if Johnny Thunders is hot.”
“And famously bent,” Frankie said. There was a sly twist to his smile that made Jess want to lick it.
“You’re joking,” he gasped. Get it under control, Jess. “I never would’ve believed it of a guy who teased his hair and wore more makeup than my sister.”
“Mmm. Not to mention tighter clothes and higher heels.”
Frankie grabbed Jess’s hand, the one still holding the towel to his clavicle, and squeezed his fingers. He had that predatory gleam in his dark eye, the one Jess had come to recognize over the past few days as a prelude to pouncing. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, Jess picked up the cue and responded instantly with racing blood and shallow breaths.
Their linked fingers started traveling slowly down Frankie’s chest, grazing over bone and sinew covered only by