Underneath by V. J. Albert (great novels .txt) 📕

isn’t it?” At that Marcus stops in his hustled track and stares at his friend and boss in quite a confusion. It was his rule in the first place and now he changes them to let the boy, who insulted him, sit seven rows behind. Well, it kind of stands to reason.

“Sir, the boy obviously is the owner of the ticket. A ticket isn’t assignable to anyone else.”

“I ask you kindly to let the boy switch. I don’t think he’d be happy in front row.”

“Why would he be at your concert and have a VIP ticket when he doesn’t even want to be here obviously?”

“He’s here for his sister, that’s all. Let him switch!”

“As you wish, Sir”, Darren replies and walk away to declare his commission.

“I understand that you don’t want the boy near you that insulted you so badly but you’re breaking your own rules here. You made the rules in the first place, so people that got a ticket can put their names on the ticket and no one else can use it as theirs to get a better seat that they didn’t pay for.”

“Thank you very much, Marc. I know what I’m doing.”

“Don’t let this idiot get to your head, yeah? Just because one person doesn’t like you, in fact kind of hates you, doesn’t say anything about you as a person. He just doesn’t know shit about you.” With that Marcus turns around and hushes out of the room, who knows where to. Marcus is always on the move. He’s the best assistant Henry could wish for and the fact that Marcus’ also one of his best friends makes him even more irreplaceable.

Don’t let him get to your head? Well, the sentence should be: Don’t let him get to your heart. Don’t fall in love. That be more accurate.

But to be honest, Henry thinks he already did, head over heels.

 

Luca can’t relax. He’s too annoyed with the situation. Who made this dumb rule that tickets aren’t allowed to be switched? Who had the brilliant idea that it would help in any way to make tickets unassignable? To Luca it’s totally unnecessary.

Chel next to him is tweeting and messaging with Emily about how shit all of this was and it being terrible fate. When Luca is being honest, he’s quite surprised that Chel hasn’t tweeted about her embarrassment at the Meet & Greet yet. Luca himself wasn’t even in the mood to tweet. What shall he even post? That he kind of destroyed his sister’s Meet & Greet because he just hates Henry and he couldn’t keep himself together?

Sure, his followers would love him even more – not. Especially his new Shawtie followers would start a shit storm towards him. They would love to tear him apart for shouting all the insults at their hero. He wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt. Aka, what they don’t know won’t hurt them – or better him.

Luca fishes out his iPhone because he could at least tweet that he was in the arena and maybe add a picture from his view. People would probably freak the shit out because real fan girls would immediately notice that he’s front row. His Shawtie followers would totally demand any information about the Meet & Greet and they would want pictures and videos so badly. Luca just doesn’t want to have evidence on his phone that he has even been there.

“Excuse me, Sir”, a voice startles him to look up from his phone which he just unlocked by now. Luca looks up and sees the guard from earlier, Darren, look down at him. “You’re allowed to switch the row. I shall lead your sister’s friend here, so she can take your place while you’ll take hers.”

“Why did you change your mind?” Luca asks, completely confused to why he’d be allowed to switch now.

“I didn’t. It was an order.” By now Chel looks at her brother questioning. He just shrugs his shoulders at her. “Are you coming, Sir?”

“Yeah, sure.” Luca has never been out of a chair faster than right now. He’s glad that he won’t be front row. Seventh row was still really close but it’s manageable for him, so he thinks.  

As soon as Luca is out of the seat, the guard already starts walking away from the stage. Luca says his goodbye to Chel and then follows the guard quickly. It’s the first time he hasn’t hugged his sister goodbye but he’s quite sure that Chel wouldn’t appreciate to be even touched by her brother right now. She’s still angry at him, will be for the next few weeks till Luca does something amazing and then she acts like nothing even has happened. Chel just might dig up all of it the next time she has to find arguments to fight with him. He can live with that.

When he sees Alexis, he waves at her and she smiles back at him. Emily jumps right out of the seat and runs to Luca.

“Oh my god, are we now allowed to switch places though?”

“Yes, obviously”, Luca answers monotone. He’s kind of glad he can make Emily happy with just something so simple. If he’s quite honest it’s also making him happy because he can hope for some idiots in the front stand up or put up some huge posters to block his view on the stage. Luca wouldn’t even be sad about this.

Emily hugs Luca and then she looks at Darren.

“Do we have to do something or can I just go to my friend?”

“Sure”, the guard says and Emily’s off running towards the stage to sit down next to Chel.

Luca thanks Darren and then takes his place next to his own best friend. Darren leaves again, maybe to go backstage again or wherever he’s been disappeared to.

"How did it go?" Alexis asks, and Luca really doesn't want to answer that. He doesn't want to lie but also doesn't want to tell his best friend the truth.

"I never go to a Henry Shaw concert and Meet & Greet ever again", Luca simply answers. The two of them leave it to that and start talking about other topics till the show starts.

 

The opening act comes on stage at exact 6 pm. It's a band Luca has never heard of till now. They aren't even that bad, Luca thinks.

Their show is over faster than Luca has thought it would be and it's kind of sad, really. Mostly because now he'd have to expect the main act soon, that is Henry Shaw.

"How was the opening act? I think they were brilliant!" Alexis shouts over the loud music the arena plays to bridge the time gap till Henry Shaw finally enters the stage.

"I agree. I need to look them up later."

"So, it's not so bad so far, is it?" Luca knows Alexis's right. So far, the only horrible thing that happened was the meeting with the pop star himself. Apart from this the day hasn't been a total disaster and the opening act was a good compromise to make Manchester not a damn complete waste of time.

Alexis and Luca go on talking till the lights go out for the second time to announce the arriving of the teen idol. 

When the screaming starts in the arena, Luca knows that he's there. On stage.

Henry starts his show with the song that made him famous and Luca is already annoyed because he just hates this song so much. The star waves into the audience and smiles and jumps and is acting like a flicking fucking four-year-old. He looks through the mass of people, as if he's looking for someone.

Between his songs he's talking about not necessary things and introduces his next song. The fans seem to love it.

When 'Things' starts, Henry still seems to look for someone and in the second verse green eyes meet blue.

The rest of the show seems like the boy on stage is just staring at the blue-eyed boy in row seven, but Luca knows that every girl in the arena would say that later. Anyway, why would Henry annoying pop star Shaw watch him through the rest of his show?

Right, he wouldn't.

Five

 

 

 

 

 

 

I survived, is the first and only thing Luca thinks when the show is finally over. Well, Luca has to be honest, it wasn’t really that bad. Henry sounded really good live and the four songs he kind of liked were now somehow one of his favourite songs and he’s even danced to one of them (though he’d totally deny it when asked about it). The pop star also performed his new song and first single 'Best Song' of his not yet released album. It was a really great song and more mature. Luca hopes internally that the whole album will sound more mature. He might even start liking the prat’s music then.

“Are you still alive?” Alexis asks and watches him suspiciously.

“Imagine, yes, I survived and I’m still alive.” Luca jokes sarcastically and Alexis chuckles. She knows Luca good enough to know that he doesn’t even mean it in a bad way. Alexis even thinks that her best friend actually liked the concert, just doesn’t want to admit it.

“Just admit that you liked Henry live and he isn’t that bad.”

“Sod off, Al!” Luca won’t confess shit. Maybe she was kind of right, yeah but still. No need to declare his undying love to Henry Shaw immediately. That came close to saying he liked the pop star’s music somehow, for Luca at least. Alexis wouldn’t understand. Of course not. Luca doesn’t understand a lot of the shit himself. He just knows he hates the guy, can’t stand him for dear god.

“How you wish”, Al says when the mass of fans starts to swarm out of the arena.

When the arena is already half empty and the stage is getting vacated, cleaned and decomposed, Chel and Emily walk towards them. The two of them still are in a state of exhilaration.

“… and oh gosh, then he looked in our direction all the time. I bet you’re totally his type Chel!” Emily shouts and jumps around like a little kid and Luca is so confused about girls right now. He’s gay, sure but sometimes girls just act totally immature and annoying.

“Oh shut up, Em. I’m for sure not his type.”

“How can you know, idiot? I swear to god he stared at our block all the time and I’m quite sure it was directly at you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Henry just looks around. Everyone in this block could say, he just looked at them the whole time. Bet Henry didn’t really see anyone in the crowd good enough to just stare at this person for the entire show. Anyway, why would he?”

“Because you’re beautiful!”

“Not beautiful enough to be in Henry’s league”, Chel says and kind of ends the stupid discussion. Luca’ sister is right, he thinks. Henry could have looked at anyone. Didn’t he think himself that the pop star seemed to just stare at him the whole time? So, yes, for once his sister did think rational, logical.

Alexis next to him just smiles politely and pushes him softly towards the aisle. He almost stumbles over a post of the seat at the end of the row and just doesn’t fall because he leans towards