“Where’s my autograph?” Beatrice asked me when I came back to her house, empty handed.
“No luck today,” I told her, helping myself to her bed. “Security’s really tight.”
“Figures…” she sounded disappointed.
Most of the time, I really did care a lot about Bea and her feelings, and I honestly would try anything within my reach to cheer her up when she was down. She had just been through a bad breakup with this cheeky uptight boyfriend whom I’ve always hated, and I thought that getting her this autograph would be a way to put a smile on her face. So much for that plan.
I rested my head on Bea’s pillow, and looked up at the empty ceiling, distraught.
I had just been kissed by a complete stranger.
And the worst part of that was that I enjoyed it. Every bit of it.
“Hey, Giu?” she asked me, leaning onto the bed next to me. “You seem out of sorts. Did something happen?”
Bea wasn’t usually very perceptive about this stuff. I must have been acting really awkward if she was the one telling me that.
“Who’s Valerie?” I asked her.
“Huh?”
“From that band,” I explained. “What instrument does she play?”
“Oh, you mean Val Sunset. She’s the drummer.”
I turned to look at Beatrice. “Is that her real name?” Honestly, what kind of family name is Sunset?
“Of course not,” she told me. “Her full name’s Valerie Lira Cooper, but she goes by her stage name, most of the time.” So her middle name was Lira… And she thought my name was cute, but hers was much cuter. Bea didn’t stop talking, though, determined to give me the girl’s entire biography if she could. “She’s 27, born April, 3rd, and apparently she doesn’t have a good relationship with her family.” Honestly? It scared me how much Bea knew about the people from that band. If only she could apply those learning skills in class, rather than music, she could be an excellent student. “Oh, and she’s a lesbian.” Hah! That much I already knew. “Why are you asking me about her? Did you see her there?”
I nodded. “Something like that.”
Beatrice sounded really excited to hear that. “Really?! Wow, that’s so lucky! Now I wish I had been there, too.”
I snorted. Bea was one of those girls who were as straight as they come. I was fairly sure that she wouldn’t have enjoyed being in my place. Not as much as I did, anyway.
Beatrice got up from the floor, and went to her desk to pick up her band CDs. She opened one of the cases, and pulled out the leaflet to show me a picture of the band members.
“This is her,” Bea said, pointing at the picture. “Right next to ZAK.”
She was smiling widely on the photograph, which made her look really, really cute. Much cuter than she had been when bossing me around earlier. God, I almost forgot about that. Focus, Giulia. I turned my eyes back to inspect the picture. Valerie wasn’t wearing her trademark piercings on that one, and she was wearing box braids at the time of the picture, but that was unmistakably her. God damn it, how could she be so pretty?
“I follow her web channel,” Bea informed me. “She’s always posting videos along with ZAK. They’re best friends.”
“Can you show me?”
“Sure!”
I began to doubt my decision to ask her. Once Beatrice got started on Empty Memories, it was hard to make her stop talking about it. Still, I wanted to know more about that elusive brunette who kissed me. Because, come on, I just had to figure out what was going on in her head, for her to do that.
Bea got her laptop from the table and instantly switched tabs to her video website. She pulled in a list of videos by @DrummerValSunset.
Most of them were solo drumming videos, or self-shot update videos recorded on whichever city their band was touring at the moment. ZAK showed up on only a few of those, but obviously, knowing Bea, those were exactly the ones she would choose to play for me.
She jumped on the bed, and sat by my side, placing the laptop on my legs.
The video on the screen was one recorded from a cellphone, which apparently belonged to a third band member, off camera. Valerie and ZAK were challenging each other on who would be brave enough to take a dip into one of those holes in the ice, the kind that people dig inside frozen lakes in those really cold countries like Sweden.
ZAK was going to go first. He took off the heavier articles of clothing he was wearing, and approached the edge of the hole, looking at the ice cold water. After ten seconds of wondering, he decided to submerge his feet into the water, and took it off immediately after.
“No fucking way!” he screamed, as Valerie and the other band member burst out laughing at his silly face. “Stop laughing,” he told the others. “Val, you do it, then, if you’re so brave.”
Valerie walked up to him, and pushed him back, away from the hole. “Step back,” she said, as she did it. She then proceeded to take off her clothes — oh my fucking God, Bea, out of all the videos on her playlist, you just had to show me this one? —, stripping until she was just wearing a swimsuit. And then she simply somersaulted into the water hole, splashing icy-cold water everywhere around her, and disappearing into the lake.
“Shit!” said ZAK, running toward the hole. “Val, are you okay?”
She swam back to the surface, and spit cold lake water right on ZAK’s face, to the amusement of their other band member.
“I love that video,” said Bea, giggling. “ZAK looks so handsome in that one.”
Oh, right. I forgot that the whole point of the video for Bea was watching ZAK deprived of most of his clothes. Honestly, I was too focused on that Valerie girl to even pay attention to that fact.
I have to admit it, she looked really cool.
Bea showed me another of their videos, this time of the whole band drinking together to celebrate the end of a tour. Val and ZAK really did behave like best buds, joking at each other and at the other band members. Seeing her like that, all sassy and funny, laughing with the others, it almost made me forget that this was the girl who had less than an hour ago pinned me against a wall and forcefully kissed me, telling me that she was the one who gave me orders, and not the other way around. How could one person behave so differently around two different sets of people?
That was the girl who invited me to stay behind with her that night, after their concert ended, a suggestion that I knew, being no fool, carried a lot of sexual connotations.
I surprised myself in thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to take Valerie up on her proposal. I had to mentally slap myself back to reality. Get it together girl, I told myself. You need an honest, decent person this time. Not a batshit punk girl who kisses strangers like it’s nothing.
To be fair, I wasn’t even supposed to be thinking about that. I had several assignments to turn in for work, during the course of the following week, not to mention the competition at the end of the month. I had to work, I had to study, I had to train. And I had no time to waste thinking about Valerie “Val Sunset” Lira Cooper.
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