Keira

Score: Welcome To The Jungle - Guns'N'Roses

Benjamin's eyes scan the room, and, when he sees Jeanine, who's still sitting on the same spot on the sofa, but without Josh's arm around her shoulders, he nods quickly in her direction.

With the corner of my eye, I see Jeanine huff and roll her eyes, then lift off the sofa and walk to a table in the corner of the room, where she fumbles into the largest Louis Vuitton Neverfull bag I've ever seen. She retrieves a folder and flips through it, quickly locating what she needs and pulling a set of papers out.

"Oh, my God!" Lisa's body flashes in the field of my vision for a milisecond, as she fucking lunges for Benjamin, her eyes widening, and she dashes past the girl with the pink curls, who looks like she is about to pass out any minute. "You've always been my favourite!" Lisa yells and skids to a halt in front of Benjamin, who looks down at her, from the position of the good six inches he has on her, a wicked grin playing on his lips. The rest of the boys burst out laughing. "I am so sorry I acted all weird in the lift earlier. Let's put all that behind us, shall we?" She winks at him, linking her arm through his and literally dragging him to stand next to the rest of the group.

More precisely, next to me.

I catch some movement with my peripheral vision and pivot just enough to see Jeanine, who's now full-on glaring at Benjamin's back.

"Did you really have to? Again?" She scolds him, cocking her head to the side, even though he can't see her, and fumbles inside her bag again, her arm disappearing to the elbow inside the leather monstrosity. That thing looks fucking bottomless.

Benjamin throws her a glance over his shoulder, and simply shrugs at her remark, giving her the best version of guilty puppy eyes I have ever seen in my life.

Oh, it must be so convenient, looking so fucking adorable, whenever you need your ass saved.

"There you go, love," the girl, who's still filming on her phone reaches inyo the back pocket of her jeans and retrieves a pen, then hands it over to Jeanine.

"Thanks, Max!" Jeanine nods and walks over to the girl Benjamin brought into the room. Bless her, she somehow looks both ecstatic, and fucking terrified, at the same time. Her eyes are wide as saucers and her face has suddenly lost all of its colour. She looks like she's going to throw up, her eyes moving frantically from Benjamin to Benjamin, to Josh, Garry, and then to Benjamin again. She lifts her hands to her face, covering her nose and mouth, and starts sobbing, her entire body heaving with the effort.

"There, there, love," Jeanine sighs with a condescending look on her face, then wraps her arm around the girls' shoulders and walks her to one of the sofas. "Sit down for me, will ya?" The girl obeys and plops onto the cushion, her shoulders still shaking with stifled sobs. Jeanine uncaps the pen with her right hand and lays down the papers she's holding in her left hand on the girl's lap.

"I'mma need you to sign this for me, OK?" Jeanine smiles at the girl, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes.

What the hell is going on?

"See? Much better!" Lisa's voice causes me to whip my head back to face her, just as she clasps her hands together under her chin, a mischievous flame flickering in her black, almond-shaped eyes, as she moves them from Benjamin to me and then back to him again.

I slide a sideways glance at Benjamin, and his eyes instantly capture mine. He's full-on staring at me, and my heart fucking stops beating.

He caught me staring. Again. And he's looking at me with a look on his face, which lets me know he's enjoying this immensely.

"You know, Lisa," he drawls, his eyes never leaving mine, his accent igniting my skin. Why does it always have to have such an effect on me? A single word and my skin's on fire. "I definitely agree with you there."

Oh, my God, is he fucking flirting with me?! Right in front of the girl who he just snogged as some sort of a game? Disgusting!

I fold my arms over my chest and look away.

"Did anyone see?" Jeanine yells from behind our backs with a tone that clearly shows how unimpressed she is with Benjamin.

"A guy from Security, his name is Cam, I think," he doesn't even bother to spare her a glance over his shoulder this time. I can still feel his gaze on my face, causing heat to rise up on my cheeks. And, of course, as if attracted by two giant magnets, my eyes slide back to his again.

"Don't worry, Miss Thompson, all of the security lads have signed NDAs, it's a part of our contracts. They are well-trained professionals, madame." Jack says and my eyebrows instantly shoot up, as realization hits me.

They're making the girl sign a Non-disclosure agreement because she kissed Benjamin!

"Nevertheless, can you please go get him for me, please?" Jeanine tells Jack, who nods briefly, before heading towards the door.

"Anyone else?" Jeanine's annoyed voice drags through the room. I watch as she retrieves another All Areas Access pass, just like the one Lisa and I have, and toss it on the sofa next to the pink-haired girl. She looks at it for a short second, her lips parting in confusion, and then she grabs it, the signed papers slipping from her lap and falling to the floor.

Her eyes go wide, as she raises them to Jeanine in utter disbelief.

"There you go, love! And, remember, keep your mouth shut. Nothing happened, you saw nothing, you were never in this room, OK?"

The girl nods, then drapes the pass around her neck and bursts out into tears again.

"So?" Jeanine shoots a murderous look at Benjamin again. "Did. Anyone. Else. See?"

My eyes shoot to Benjamin, panic grabbing at my throat. I don't even know why, I can't explain it, but I really don't want for anyone to find out I was there and saw it happen. And I don't want her to find out I kissed him, too. My embarrassment is threatening to make an unwelcome appearance in the form of tears, but I somehow manage to hold them back. I shake my head slightly, pleading him silently to keep our little secret.

His look doesn't give away anything, no emotion, no acknowledgement that he's understood, as he throws Jeanine a bored look over his shoulder again, and shakes his head.

"No. Noone else saw."

I let out a deep breath, relief washing over me. Benjamin slowly turns his head back to face Lisa and the rest of the band, his gaze slowly dragging over my eyes in the process. There's an amused flame, burning in his pupils, when his eyes lock with mine, a slow smile curving his perfect lips.

I swallow.

"OK, what did I miss?" Josh's voice bursts the little bubble Benjamin and I shared for a milisecond or so, and I whip my head in his direction. Confusion's drawn all over his handsome features, as he moves his bright blue eyes from my face to Benjamin's and back again.

"Nothing! What are you talking about?" I blurt out, my voice coming out haste and breathless.

A playful smirk lifts the corner of Josh's mouth. He glances at Benjamin.

"OK, Lisa is right, you need to chill," he says, then reaches with his hand and pushes a strand of hair, which I hadn't noticed got trapped between my lips, out of my face and behind my ear.

It is a simple, innocent move, yet I feel weirdly uncomfortable from it.

"Hands off, dick!" Benjamin laughs, but there is real warning in his eyes, when I look back at him.

"You are the one to talk," Josh smirks, but retrieves his hand anyway. "Haven't you done enough already?" He nods his head in the direction of the pink-haired girl, who's sobbing again.

Ben's eyes darken and his eyebrows furrow, as he crosses his arms over his chest. The tension between him and Josh is suddenly very real, and grows stronger by the second, until it is a living, breathing thing, suspended in the air. Their eyes are locked in a silent battle and I can't help but feel pity for Josh, because I swear Benjamin's glare can punch holes in the wall right now.

"Are you alright, Kiki," Lisa's voice from my right prompts me to tear my eyes away from the scene, unfurling in front of me, and to look at my best friend's concerned face.

"Mm, yeah, why?"

"You look like you've just seen a ghost." Her eyebrows knit together, and she looks genuinely worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just excited about the concert, is all," I shrug my shoulders, trying to look as nonchalant as possible and failing miserably.

Lisa shoots a glance over my shouder at Benjamin, then moves closer to me and whispers in my ear:

"You and I are going to have a serious chat tonight," she says, then pulls away, giving me a meaningful look.

Jack walks back into the room with the security guy, whom I saw back in that corridor at his feet, and takes him straight to Jeanine, before walking our way.

"Sorry, ladies, but your time is up for now. Let's find you some nice spots to watch the concert from, OK?"

"I'll see you ladies out there," Josh says, and I move my eyes back to him just in time to see him finally give in and tear his eyes away from Benjamin's. He flashes his brilliant grin at both Lisa and me, but there's a dark cloud over his forehead. With a final glare at Benjamin, he walks past Jack, the pink-haired girl and Jeanine and out through the door.

What the fuck just happened?

A loud squeal from my right causes my oversimulated brain to cry out in protest. Lisa clasps her hands in front of her chest.

"We're going into the pit!"

**************

The noise of the crowd is deafening. Every single show of The Flying Benjamins' world tour has been sold out, including this one, which means that more than eighty thousand people, mostly women and girls, are screaming at the top of their lungs, from every direction around me. The sea of human bodies seems endless, spanning everywhere I look - from the thousands, standing next to their seats in the stands, to the swaying crowd down on the pitch, excited faces and variations of The Flying Benjamins distressed T-shirt, black boots, and fishnets are all I can see. I feel suddenly self-conscious in my typical going-out attire - jeans and a black top. The ultimate Millenials' Going-Out outfit. Depending on the top, works for anything and everything, from casual pub outings with your mates, to your aunt's funeral, to the farewell party of a colleague, who's leaving the company, and, well, rock concerts. In July. In Spain.

Sweat trickles down my neck, as I am walking right behind Cam-the-Bodyguard's massive behind with Lisa by my side, and the pink-haired girl following in our footsteps, careful not to fall behind, because this would be disastrous in this crowd. The warming-up act has been playing for forty-five minutes already, which means that The Flying Benjamins' time is coming, and the crowd's noise is growing more and more deafening by the minute. There is a migration line, splitting the pitch right ahead of us, a mutually agreed highway of sorts, with people squeezing their way up and down in both directions, most likely going on their final loo breaks before the group appears, or going for a drink to one of the stands, lining the pitch. We are slowly approaching the stage and I see now why Lisa wanted to go into the pit. It's as close to the band as you can possibly get, and Lisa, being Lisa, is checking the ticket prices for our sector online right now.

"Oh, my God, they get up to fifteen hundred Euros through resellers!" She gasps, shoving her phone in front of my nose to show me, her eyes growing wide.

"One thousand and five hundred Euros?" I huff, letting a girl with a face, covered in bright blue paint stumble between me and the bodyguard's back, before taking a wide step and closing the gap between us again. I need to be more careful and keep up. "To be crushed like Mufasa by a crowd of sixteen-year-olds? No, thank you!"

"Yet, here we are," Lisa clasps her hands, her excitement contagious.

"Because of you," I retort, shaking my head. "You have somehow always been able to make me do crazy stuff."

"Because no one would ever buy your memoir one day when you release it if it weren't for me."

"My what?" I snort out a laugh, and at the same time, I crash into Cam-the-bodyguard's back. He suddenly stopped in front of the fence, separating the pit from the stage.

"If you don't mind, don't move around a lot, ladies," he looks down at us, his huge frame blocking half the view of the stage. "If you need to pee, just let me know. Though, I hope you can hold."

He moves to the side and Lisa, the pink-haired girl and I are pressed by the crowd against the fence. Deafening screams are coming from left and right, and I feel like the wave of bodies is threatening to crash at my back. Fucking hell! And the band hasn't even emerged on stage yet.

But then the pressure is suddenly relieved. I look over my shoulder to see Cam-The-Bodyguard, standing behind our backs, his broad shoulders serving as a live fence, big enough to shield all three of us. He reaches with his hand and grasps the top of the fence on my left side. The crowd around us somehow takes a step back, as if intimidated by his presence and I feel like I can breathe freely again for the first time since we entered the pit.

I wipe at my sweaty forehead.

"Come into the shot, now!" Lisa yells at my side, snapping photos of the stage and the crowd around us. I lean in closer to her and she immediately snaps a selfie of us. The pink-haired girl is standing with her arms draped over the fence at Lisa's other side, her face drawn into an expression of complete and utter euphoria. I don't know what bliss feels like, but she definitely looks like it.

A smile creeps onto my face, as I watch her. It is so contagious, this buzzing energy from the crowd, the girl's face, Lisa's incessant phone-snapping, the noise of eighty thousand people in one place...The feeling is like nothing I've experienced before. It's like we are all one, all of us in this stadium. Like we are an unstoppable, undeniable force that can take on the world. Goosebumps rise on the back of my neck, despite the heat and the heavy air. I feel electricity humming under my skin.

Suddenly, the noise gets even more deafening. The warming-up band has stopped playing. I lift my eyes to the stage and see that the singer is standing on the edge of the stage, her guitar hanging loosely on its strap over her shoulders. She is talking now, thanking us for how amazing we've been tonight, and then she waves to the crowd, whipping her blonde braid over her shoulder, and shouts one last "Good night, Barcelona!", before she and the rest of the band walk off the stage.

The stage lights go out, but, even though the sun has fully set now, it is still pretty light outside. I check my watch. 9:09 pm.

The noise around us gradually drops to more human decibels.

"When do you think they will come out on stage?" Lisa asks in between selfies.

"They should be out at 9:15, then perform until 10:30, then come back for an encore, and be finished by 11 pm," the bodyguard says nonchalantly.

Yet, I guess it gets kind of boring, and mundane, even, if he's doing this every. Fucking. Night.

More screaming next to me makes me turn my head to my right. The pink-haired girl is reaching for something in the air ahead of her with her hands, her face drawn into a grimace that looks almost...painful. Her eyes are fixed on something on the stage. More screaming to my left and right makes me look up to the stage.

There's some movement there, at the far end. It looks like people, shuffling equipment around. Shadows are flashing briefly up and down the stage, switching the instruments and bringing out microphones and other stuff, which I am not familiar with.

The wave of screaming grows louder and louder, swiping further rows and building up to one single, deafening tone, filled with so much anticipation and energy that it could power a small neighbourhood for a week. The crowd starts chanting, "We. Want. The Flying. Benjamins! We. Want. The Flying. Benjamins!"

It is so contagious that, before I know it, I join in, chanting, screaming at the top of my lungs like a teenager, even though I am not the band's biggest fan and I have never been to a concert of this scale before.

And then, as the excitement builds up to a point, where I feel like a string has been coiled too tight in my belly, ready to snap, the sound of a lonely guitar breaks through the violet twilight.

And what follows next can only be described as complete and utter madness...