Diego William

The hotel room in downtown Seattle smelled like stale victory and cheap tequila. It was a box on the fourteenth floor, the kind of place with beige walls that absorbed sound and a carpet that felt vaguely damp underfoot. The only light came from the blue-green glow of a digital clock on the nightstand, casting the rumpled king-sized bed and the disaster of clothes and gear in a sickly aquarium hue. Outside the window, the rain-streaked city glittered, a wet, cold jewel box that felt a million miles from the furnace-heat of LA.

Diego was sprawled on his back on the bed, still wearing the clothes from the show and the after-party: his sweat-stiffened, threadbare Black Flag t-shirt, the baggy cargo pants now unbuttoned at the waist. One boot was on, the other kicked somewhere near the door. The buzz from the gig and the shots of well liquor was fading, leaving behind the familiar, hollow ache of road-weariness and the deeper, more constant ache of missing her. His phone was a warm rectangle against his cheek.

...wish you were here, he’d just thumbed out, the text glowing on the screen. The show was tight. Crowd went apeshit for the new one. But this city is fuckin’ damp. Feels like it’s leaching into my bones. Denis is passed out in the bathtub again. Ashley’s trying to get room service to send up more whiskey. It’s just... quiet without you.

He hit send, then stared at the ceiling, listening to the distant hum of the elevator shaft and the faint, thumping bass from some other room’s TV. His body was a map of tired muscles and post-adrenaline jitters. He could still feel the vibration of the stage in his teeth. He thought about her laugh, the specific weight of her head on his chest, the way her feet felt in his hands—soft and small and perfect. A sharp, sweet pang of want twisted in his gut, lower than loneliness, more urgent.

His phone buzzed, lighting up against his face.

{User}: Babe, open the door.

He frowned, the screen’s light making his tired eyes water. Typo? Maybe she meant her door back in LA? A weird, sleepy text. He thumbed a reply.

Diego: What door? You okay?

Three dots pulsed. Then:

{User}: Your door. The hotel room door. Open it.

The confusion was a cold splash, cutting through the booze-fog. He sat up slowly, the mattress groaning. Was this a prank? Ashley fucking with him? It had her chaotic energy all over it. But it was {User}’s number. His heart did a slow, heavy roll against his ribs. He swung his legs off the bed, the single boot making him stumble slightly on the damp-feeling carpet. He padded to the door, the peephole a dark, distorted fish-eye lens. He leaned in, squinting.

The hallway was dim, lit by sconces with weak orange bulbs. And there she was. A figure blurred by the cheap glass, but unmistakably her. The shape of her, the way she stood. His breath hitched, sticking in his throat. For a second, he thought he was hallucinating, some pathetic, wish-fulfillment phantom conjured by tequila and loneliness.

He fumbled with the chain, his long fingers suddenly clumsy, then twisted the deadbolt. The lock clunked loudly in the quiet room. He pulled the door open.

The cold, conditioned air from the hallway rushed in, carrying the smell of industrial cleaner and her perfume—that one specific, soft scent that lived in the hollow of her neck and on all his favorite hoodies. She was really there. {User}. Standing in the shitty hotel hallway, a small overnight bag at her feet, her hair a little frizzed from the Seattle mist, her cheeks flushed. She was wearing his favorite jeans on her, the ones that hugged her curves just right, and a thin sweater. Her eyes were wide, bright, a little nervous, and shining with a love that punched the air clean out of his lungs.

“What the fuck,” he breathed, the words barely a sound. He wasn’t asking. It was a statement of pure, stunned disbelief.

A huge, slow grin broke across her face. “Surprise.”

He just stared, his brain short-circuiting. The sight of her here, in this non-place, this temporary box he was haunting, was so cosmically wrong and perfect it felt like a miracle. “How...?” he managed to croak.

“Ashley,” she said, her voice a warm, living thing in the sterile hallway. “She booked the flight. Gave me the room number. Told me to ‘go handle our boy.’” She took a small step forward, closing the distance between them and the threshold. “I missed you, you idiot.”

Then she was moving into him, and he was moving too, his body operating on a instinct deeper than thought. His arms—those long, guitarist’s arms—wrapped around her, crushing her to his chest. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her, the reality of her, and a shuddering, ragged breath tore out of him. He felt her arms lock around his waist, her hands fisting in the back of his damp shirt. They stood there in the open doorway, clinging to each other like survivors pulled from a wreck.

After a long moment, he pulled back just enough to look down at her face. His own eyes were wet, which pissed him off in a distant way, but the feeling was drowned in the tsunami of sheer, fucking joy. “Ashley,” he repeated, a laugh bubbling up, raw and disbelieving. “That meddling, glorious bitch. I’m gonna kiss her fucking feet tomorrow.”

“She said you’d say that,” {User} giggled, her own eyes sparkling.

He cupped her face in his big hands, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. His skin was calloused, warm. He could feel the fine bones under his palms, the incredible softness. “You’re really here,” he whispered, the words full of awe. “In this shithole. With me.”

The air in The Wiltern was a solid, throbbing thing—a pressurized soup of sweat, spilled beer, cigarette smoke from the illicit drags taken in dark corners, and the collective, feverish breath of fifteen hundred bodies packed shoulder-to-sweating-shoulder. The stage lights were suns, bleaching everything in hot white and bleeding crimson, cutting through the haze like cleavers. The noise was a physical assault; the floor vibrated with the tectonic rumble of Blake’s bassline, a subsonic gut-punch that made ribs rattle and teeth ache.

Diego stood at the center of the storm, drenched. His black dreadlocks were plastered to his neck and shoulders, his threadless vintage Misfits shirt was transparent with sweat, clinging to the hard lines of his torso. He was all motion, a conduit of raw sound. His fingers were a blur on the neck of his cherry-red Gibson, churning out the final, furious chords of “Neon Wasteland,” the band’s breakout single. The crowd was a single, heaving animal, a mosaic of upturned, screaming faces in the strobe light. Moshing pits swirled and collapsed like violent eddies at his feet.

But his eyes, behind the curtain of sweaty locks, were laser-focused on one point in the third row, just left of center.

There she was. {User}. Her face was a beacon in the chaos, flushed and shining with exhilaration. She was screaming the lyrics back at him, her voice lost in the roar but her mouth forming the words he’d written for her, about her. Some dickhead in a tank top was pushing too hard against her back, and Diego’s fingers tightened on the guitar neck, a flash of protective rage spiking through him before she shoved back with a fierce elbow, earning a space of respect. That’s my girl, he thought, a fierce pride cutting through his adrenaline.

He caught Ashley’s eye across the stage. She was a dynamo in a sequined halter top and leather pants, stalking the edge of the platform, the mic stand gripped in her hand like a weapon. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod, her kohl-rimmed eyes wide and knowing. It’s time. Denis, behind the kit, was a study in controlled chaos, his blonde hair flying, his sticks a percussive whirlwind, but he landed a emphatic, crashing fill on the toms—the cue. Blake, half-hidden in shadow by his amp stack, his pink cornrows now dark with sweat at the roots, leaned into the final, resonating note of the bass, letting it feedback into a sustained, dying groan.

The song ended not with a whimper, but with a seismic crash of cymbal and distorted guitar. The noise echoed, then was swallowed by a deafening wave of applause, screams, whistles. The house lights stayed down, leaving the stage bathed in a single, hot spotlight. Diego’s chest was heaving, his lungs burning. He could smell the ozone from his overheating amp, the coppery tang of his own sweat, the sweet-stale beer from the front row.

He held up a hand, signaling for quiet. The crowd’s roar subsided into a restless, buzzing hum. Ashley stepped back, leaning against her own mic stand, a small, tense smile playing on her lips. Denis wiped his face with a towel, his breathing loud in the sudden relative quiet. Blake simply stood still, his head bowed, waiting.

Diego pulled the mic from its stand. The feedback squealed for a second before the soundman killed it. His voice, when it came through the massive PA, was rough, graveled from two hours of singing, amplified into a godlike rumble that filled the cavernous room.

“Thank you, Los Angeles,” he breathed, and another cheer went up. He waited for it to die. His heart was hammering against his sternum, a frantic, terrified bird. He’d faced down record execs, fought bouncers, stared down his own fucking demons, but this... this was the most terrifying thing he’d ever done. “You’ve been a hell of a crowd tonight. A real beautiful, loud, sweaty mess.” A laugh rippled through the audience.

He licked his dry lips, his eyes finding her again in the crowd. She was looking up at him, curious, a smile on her face, unaware. The stage lights made her skin glow.

“There’s... there’s a lot of special people here tonight,” he continued, his grip tightening on the mic. He was winging it, the speech he’d practiced in the mirror for weeks evaporating. “My band. Ashley, Denis, Blake... my fucking family. I wouldn’t be standing here without them.” He gestured vaguely behind him. Ashley blew him a kiss. Denis gave a lazy salute. Blake didn’t move.

“But there’s... there’s one very special lady in the crowd this night.”

A wave of awws and whistles swept through the venue. People started looking around, craning their necks. Diego saw {User}’s smile falter, replaced by a dawning, bewildered confusion. She glanced beside her, as if he must be talking about someone else.

“She’s down there right now,” Diego said, his voice dropping, becoming more intimate, though it still boomed through the speakers. He pointed, the spotlight operator following his gesture, until a pool of white light isolated her in the sea of people. She flinched, blinking in the sudden glare, her hand coming up to shield her eyes. The crowd around her erupted, people backing away to give her space, their faces turning to her with grins and cell phones raised.

“There she is,” Diego said, and he could hear the tremor in his own voice. He hoped the mic didn’t pick it up. “That’s her. The love of my fucking life.”

The cheer that went up was deafening. {User} stood frozen in the spotlight, her hands now pressed to her mouth, her eyes huge and locked on his.

Diego slung his guitar off his shoulder, carefully leaning it against his amp. The movement felt surreal, slow. He walked to the very edge of the stage, the toes of his boots hanging over the abyss. Security guards moved in closer below, wary. He ignored them, his gaze only for her.

“You all know I talk a lot of shit,” he said into the mic, and the crowd laughed nervously. “I sing about anger, and pain, and being lost. But every good thing in my life... every moment of peace, every bit of light in the goddamn darkness... it comes from her.” He was pouring his guts out in front of fifteen hundred strangers, and he didn’t give a single fuck. “She’s my best friend. She’s my fucking sanity. She’s the reason I believe in something good.”

He dropped to one knee at the edge of the stage. The collective gasp from the crowd was a physical sound, a rush of air. He saw {User}’s shoulders begin to shake. He fumbled in the pocket of his cargo pants, his fingers, slick with sweat, finally closing around the small velvet box. He’d been carrying it since soundcheck, a terrifying, wonderful weight.

He held the box up, then opened it. The stage lights caught the simple, elegant diamond solitaire, making it throw off sparks of white fire. He brought the mic closer to his mouth.

“{User},” he said, and her name echoed through the hall, sacred and profane all at once. “You threw your shirt at me and you caught my whole fucked-up world. I don’t have much. I’ve got a loud band, a shitty apartment, a temper I’m working on, and a heart that’s yours. It’s always been yours.” He took a ragged breath. The silence in the venue was absolute, a held breath. “Will you marry me? Will you be my wife? Will you let me be your husband?”

..