No, You Gotta

WELCOME BACK

You’re way too ugly to be a groupie.

“I’ll be sure to dress trashier next time,” Nora said, gesturing with her head to the scantily clad trio of what looked like barely legal teenage girls standing on the other side of the hallway.  They all stared daggers at Nora, wildly jealous that Stone still had his hands on her arms.  When Stone glanced over at them, it was like someone instantly strapped boards to their backs and they all stood at attention, trying awkwardly to show off their best assets.  Stone rolled his eyes conspicuously and turned back to Nora.

“Let’s really make ‘em squirm, shall we child?” he suggested, and before Nora could agree, which of course she was going to, Stone reached out for her face and planted a closed mouth but rather long kiss right on her lips with a smile that she could feel growing against her skin.  She was swept right off her feet and back to being sixteen, her eyes closing and muscle memory pricking at the surface of her skin.  When she regained her composure and opened her eyes back up, surprised with herself for losing composure in the first place, she saw that Stone was studying her intently.  A smile remained on his face, but it had faded a tiny bit, like the threat of something more serious was creeping just beneath the surface of his thoughts.

Um, how long were my eyes closed?! Nora thought to herself.  She had no idea– Stone had just drained the battery on her internal clock and rendered the notion of time a figment of her imagination.

“Let’s get out of this hallway, there’s some people I want you to meet,” Stone said, clearing his throat and releasing Nora’s arms at last.  Before he took her hand and started leading her down the backstage corridor, he spent a few seconds eyeing her face and all the changes that occurred there since the last time he saw it.  Nora, too, eyed her old friend and, noting that not much about Stone’s baby-smooth face had changed in seven years, she giggled.

“Why the staring?” she cracked, tilting her head and meeting his eyes with hers. “Taking mental notes on how to ugly?”  Stone laughed and blinked slowly, fluttering his eyelashes in the process.

“Something like that.  I can’t believe you’re here, Nori.  I can’t even fucking believe you’re here…  It’s like this isn’t even real.  Where have you been?”  He asked this rhetorically, of course, but the tender feeling that came across in his voice made Nora’s stomach flip a little.  A few friendly tears rose up to frame her icy blue irises as memories of childhood came to wrap her up like a warm blanket.  Now that she was back in Seattle with Stone standing right in front of her, she realized she missed him much more than she ever thought.

“I’ve been… everywhere I guess,” she said, blinking away the mist and answering him anyway.  Stone laughed again, tucking some stray hairs behind Nora’s shoulder and shoving her playfully with his knuckles.

“You would,” he said softly, and he took his old friend’s hand in his own, just the way he used to when they were carefree and fourteen.  “Come on, I want you to meet the band.  Then we have some serious catching up to do, flowerchild.”  Nora saw his eyes dart toward the daisy tucked behind her ear, and she found herself peering strangely at his mile-wide grin as they walked together to the door marked ‘Dressing Room’.

Stone led Nora around and introduced her to his band mates in Mother Love Bone.  She was glad to discover that the people Stone had gathered around him over the years were kind, warm and generous– the sort of people that made the most loyal friends.  They all greeted Nora with open arms, eager to accept such an old pal of Stone’s into their circle.  She tried to commit their names and faces to memory, but she noticed something particularly special in the singer, Andy Wood.  If you looked up one-of-a-kind in the dictionary, Nora mused to herself, there would be a full page, technicolor glossy photo of Andy.  He had seemed so outlandish and wild on the stage during Mother Love Bone’s performance, but in person he seemed to have a quiet joy about him– one that was more pure and, well, childlike.  That’s not to say that Andy was quiet in any sense of the word– he seemed almost jolly, and willing to laugh easily.  Andy was hysterically funny, and she noticed this pretty much one half second after meeting him.  His jokes were spot-on, his laughter contagious and his face lit up like a blinking neon sign reading ‘charisma’.