Beat Of My Heart

Verse One

Two hours into the concert, and my feet were hurting, my ears hurt, and somehow even my eye lids hurt.

We were on the last opening act, and it was finally time for the main singer to come out on stage. Sebastian Jennings, King of the world for all intents and purposes.

"I think I'm gonna go get a drink," I told Josie, and she just nodded her head and kept her gaze attentively trained to the stage in awe of the man about to come out and sing.

I shook my head at her, acting as if he were a god among men. He was just a dude.

The drink line was longer than the ceremony at my great aunt's third wedding that I was forced to stand in when I was eleven.

'Be the flower girl', they said. 'It will be fun!' they said. Lies.

I was about to give up when a spot in the line opened up and I walked right up. It wasn't until after the person handed me the drink that I realized it was only for alcohol, but I wasn't about to say no to that. I grabbed the very long stem of the plastic glass and retreated back to my seat on the front row of the concert and sipped away at my frozen drink, confused as to why the person hadn't asked for my ID.

I shook it off and slurped down the frozen contents, the sugar in the drink almost instantly giving me a rush.

I smiled at Josie as she eyes my drink when I returned but refocused her gaze on the stage nevertheless as everyone began chanting Sebastian Jennings' name.

Except me of course. I just drank my drink and waited.

Fireworks. Explosions. Loud drums.

That's what I saw and heard right before the audience destroyed my eardrums and I would have to go to a doctor to get a cochlear implant if I ever wanted to hear again.

He was wearing tight black skinny jeans and a white v-neck t shirt. He had tattoos crawling up and down his body sexily that showed just why every girl in the world pretty much wanted a piece of him.

Except me of course...

So why was I ogling his body like everyone else?

The alcohol, that had to be it. Duh, of course.

And then his voice. It was deep and masculine, but it could hit high notes that I never would have imagined he could hit.

I was so thankful that he started out by playing new music that I hand't heard before, and it was actually quite refreshing.

We were so close to the stage, I could see everything.

Everything, from the way the sweat dripped off of his forehead, to the way his arm muscles bulged and flexed every time he would play a chord on his guitar was amplified by how close we were to him.

I could have touched him if I reached out. Which is exactly what Josie did, and when she did this I swore he looked down at her, and then to me.

My heart stopped.

The microphone was almost attached to his lips as he kept singing, his eyes trained on me I was sure of it.

I blushed and looked away immediately of course, not wanting to be that close to a stranger. Sure he was an international superstar, but he was still a stranger nonetheless.

He crouched down lower, and I could see in my peripherals that he was still so very close to me. I snuck a peek and he smiled when I finally locked eyes with him again. It was getting hard to breathe. Everyone around me was screaming.

I threw back the rest of my drink and walked away from my seat, leaving the echoes of the screaming fans and glorious vocals of Sebastian Jennings in my wake.

***

I sat on the toilet seat in the girls bathroom for a few minutes to collect my thoughts. I looked in the mirror to check my waist length auburn hair and fixed my makeup, collecting myself before going back to the concert.

I then went back to the drink line where the worker had given me alcohol without checking my age and sure enough, another drink was handed my way.

I didn't have much experience with alcohol, but I knew it was working. I took a selfie on my snapchat with my drink in my hand and posted it to my story, hoping that Dylan would see it and prove to him that I didn't need him or anyone else to have fun.

I wanted to show him that I was completely and totally fine without him. And I was...

I went back to my seat with Josie to find that Sebastian Jennings was on the other side of the stage wooing the girls over there for a while so I took a deep breath, glad that he wasn't close enough to touch anymore. That would've driven me insane.

"You missed it! Why did you leave right when he was looking right at you?! As soon as you left he went to the other side!" Josie screamed at me and I just shrugged a little, and took yet another deep sip of my drink, feeling my head start to grow a bit woozy.

"Is the concert almost over? I want to go to a party after this!" I yelled in Josie's ear, the bass of the music becoming almost too loud to hear my own thinking over it.

"I don't know, don't rush this! We still have meet and greets!" She shouted and I groaned internally to myself.

I wanted to party.

I started dancing when a pop song came on that I knew Sebastian Jennings didn't write himself. Sometimes in concerts, artists sing random covers of other artists to switch up the playlist, and it was a song that I loved to my very core.

I sang along and danced to every single part, making sure to finish drinking the rest of my ridiculously large drink so that I didn't slosh it all around the place.

I grabbed Josie's hands and danced and swayed to the music, not realizing that the microphone was shoved into Josie's face and she started singing into it like her life depended on it.

I gasped and realized that Sebastian Jennings had walked over to us during the song and was letting Josie sing along to the song into the microphone!

I did what any best friend would do and immediately started recording the entire thing on my phone so that we would have documented proof of the experience for social media and years to come.

What I wasn't expecting was the microphone to then be thrust into my face, the actual singer of the song nodding his head at me in encouragement to start singing along like Josie had just done, his crystalline green eyes staring at me expectantly.

So I did what any normal half drunk teenage girl in my position would've done:

I threw up into the microphone, all over Sebastian Jennings' hand.

I'm totally kidding.

But I did actually think about puking all over him for a nano second and then my rational thoughts kicked in and as a reflex I started to sing.

It was at the part where the chorus goes to the bridge, the climactic part of the song with all of the high notes and I knew that I could sing them well in the car when I was sober, so I only prayed that I could sing it half drunk.

When the audience's cheering got so loud that I couldn't even hear my own heartbeat I realized that I must have done something right, and the one and only Sebastian Jennings had a surprised look on his face and pulled the mic away from my face after the long high note in the middle that I finished singing for him.

Did that really just happen?