BloodLust // yungblud fanfic

Chapter 4

She made it to the audition 10 minutes early, which ended up being a terrible idea, because there was nothing to do but sit around in the lobby and stare at the competition. There had to be twenty people waiting in the cramped room, mostly men, clutching their instruments and giving each other the evil eye. They were all dressed to the nines in the latest alternative attire of choice. Holly looked down at her old band T shirt and baggy Levi's. Probably not cool enough. Whatever.

She found a seat in the corner of the room and waited. Ordinarily this was when she would be getting nervous, but since she didn't actually want the job, she felt oddly calm. Everyone else in the room was clearly sweating bullets, but Holly was just there to check things out. Stay in the loop, or whatever. Gawk at these Yungblud guys. She wondered if Making it Big left a visible sign on a person, like a tattoo or a scar.

The door opened. A man wearing thick framed glasses emerged, carrying a clipboard in his left hand and a coffee cup in the other. Probably a PA of some sort. He was medium height, skinny, and pale skinned. He had soft looking, glossy black hair, brushed up and styled. "Okay, everyone, thanks for coming today." he said, loudly. "We will get through this as quickly as possible. I'm sure you all have other things to do. Please write your name on this sheet of paper. We'll go in alphabetical order."

There was some irritated muttering. "But i've been here for two hours!" One man said.

The PA man shrugged. "Not my problem. This is how we're doing it." He handed the clipboard to the closest person and went back into the other room.

"It's not fair." said the man who'd protested. He was short and buff, and was wearing even buffer jeans.

Holly rolled her eyes. With a last name like Zimber, she was going to be there longer than anyone else. That guy was just a whiner.

She wrote her name on the sheet when the clipboard came around, and then she settled in to wait. She should have brought a book or something. At least she had her ancient MP3 player. Everyone else was busy with their smart phones, and for once Holly regretted being such a cheap bastard. Her phone could make calls and send text messages and that was about it. She hadn't paid a dime for it, though.

The clipboard man came in and out, calling peoples names and ushering them into the next room. Holly watched people's faces as they emerged after their auditions. Nobody was in there for more than five minutes. Nobody looked happy. A few guys looked like they wanted to cry. The only other woman who'd showed up actually did cry.

It didn't bode well.
Finally, after more than an hour and a half, the clipboard man came to the door and called out, "Zimber."

Holly stood up. She was the last person in the waiting room. Her butt had long since gone numb from sitting on the hard chair. She picked up her guitar and followed the man into the room.

Amps and cables littered the large room, with an open space in the middle facing a long table where three men sat in various poses of boredom. Holly tried not to look too closely at any of them; seeing people's faces just made her nervous when she performed. She walked into the middle of the room and crouched down to open up her case. The room was cold, the air conditioning cranked up too high. Her bare arms prickled.

"This is Holly Zimber," The PA man said. "Last one of the day."

"Thank God," one of the men said.
Holly didn't look up, busy plugging into a nearby amp.

"Shut up, Michael." another one said.
"We will talk about this later."

Holly took her guitar out of the case and stood up, slinging the strap around her neck. "Okay." she said.

She looked toward the table, at the men sitting there, waiting for her to play.

And there he was, sitting on the table instead of the chair. Legs crossed and and his chin propped up in his hands.
The guy she hooked up with at the club the night before.

Their eyes met, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach, a sudden dive like going down a roller coaster. It was totally him— there was no mistaking it. She'd felt that long black hair in her hands, and seen that full mouth breaking into a helpless grin.

God. Didn't it just figure. Out of all the bars in the city, he walked into hers, her favorite dive bar on the night her favorite band was playing, and now here she was, turning bright red while the entire lineup of the Yungblud crew sat there and stared at her.

Talk about stage fright.

Her first impulse was to throw her guitar back in the case and walk out. She didn't owe them anything, and she'd already done more than Dylan had asked. He'd just told her to show up; he hadn't said anything about actually auditioning. And even if they wanted her—even if she played well enough that they asked her to go on tour with them— she'd learned a long time ago not to shit where she ate. No way was she mixing business with pleasure. The pleasure had already taken precedence, and it was too late for business at this point.

She wouldn't ever be able to forget the way he looked at her right after she kissed him, her arm pressed against the bar, her hands fisted in his T-shirt.

Her second impulse was to stay, and see if she could convince him to kiss her again.

In the end, she didn't get to decide. The guy sitting in the middle said, "We're waiting," and Hollys reflexes took over. She started to play.

She started with the chorus for one of their songs, their biggest hit, "Hope for the Underrated Youth." She listened to the entire album while she was waiting, and it was actually pretty good. She was a huge snob, of the "I liked them before they were popular" kind, and she never listened to the type of radio station that would play their music; but they weren't bad. Catchy. Good melodies. The lyrics were the best part, though. They sounded like poetry.

Halfway through, she started improvising, directing the bass line away from the album version and adding her own flourishes. She glanced up to see the reaction she was getting. The guy in the middle was frowning, but the one on his right was nodding his head slightly, bobbing along along with the beat. And her guy—hers, even if she didn't know it, even though she didn't know his name— was still staring at her, an expression on his face that she couldn't read.

She came to the end of the song and stopped. The amp let out a squeal of feedback. She winced. Not really ending things on a high note, there.

The guy in the middle said, "Let me hear some more."

Holly shrugged and launched into "King Charles," and segued from that into "Kill Somebody." Standard audition fare. She played the last note and stopped again.

The guy on the right, slumped in his chair with a knit beanie hiding his long hair, said, "Fretless bass."

"Yeah," Holly said. "It gives me more options."

The one in the middle said, "Thanks. Someone will be in touch."

Holly stood there, staring at them dumbly. They stared back. All of them, even the one she had— well, it obviously hadn't been a big deal to him. He probably hooked up with a different girl every night of the week. Just because it had been— just because Holly had been stupid enough to think it was something special, that they'd have a connection, didn't mean it was true. Didn't mean he'd felt the same way.

She swallowed her humiliation. "Thanks for your time." she said, and knelt to put away her guitar, face burning.

Some small, idiotically hopeful part of her still thought that he would run after her, that as she walked out of the building she would hear him call out to her, and she'd turn and he'd be there, jogging through the parking lot, and he'd give her his number and say, Call me, lets have dinner, and she would let her bangs fall in her face and look up at him, all mysterious, and tell him she'd think about it.

But of course that didn't happen. She walked out to her car and got in and drove home, hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel.

Things like that didn't happen in real life.
She probably wouldn't get the job, either.