Aston’s POV
While Jess had been off getting her stuff together to DJ, I’d pulled the concert Director aside and asked him if I could introduce her.
“I mean, someone has to go out and explain why they aren’t getting the opener they expected. Let me go out there… she’s my girlfriend after all,” I pleaded.
“But Aston, we need you to be getting warmed up and changed.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to do that, please!”
“Fine, but this means you have to be ready on time… we aren’t waiting around for you tonight.”
“Got it,” I said.
I spent a fair amount of time with Jess over the rest of the afternoon, as we were waiting for the show to start. To be honest, I couldn’t pull myself away from her if I tried. She looked so amazing in her hot pink dress, my eyes were glued to her. All I wanted to do was be near her.
When it came time for her to go on stage I led her up to the wings, smiling to myself as I knew she didn’t have a clue that I was planning on doing anything.
“Aston you ready?” asked the Director after we’d been standing for a few minutes.
I nodded my head as he passed me a microphone.
“What’s going on?” asked Jess, a slightly shocked expression on her face.
“Just roll with it…” I smiled, and then I quickly moved away from her and towards the stage, smirking to myself.
“Ok Aston, you’re on in three… two… one…” said a stagehand. As soon as he said one I strode out onto the stage to be met by huge screams from the thousands and thousands of people who were in the crowd.
“What’s good everybodyyy!!” I yelled into the mic. More screaming. I could never in a million years get tired of this.
“So I’ve got some bad news for you…” I started. I could see hundreds of shocked faces, causing me to smile a bit, “…but I’ve got good news too.” Then there was cheering.
“So the bad news… Unfortunately our opener is stuck in London!” A fair amount of booing for that, he was a pretty popular performer. “I know right! Bit of a shame, poor guy is trapped in the airport and can’t get up here.”
I smiled again and then looked over at the wings to see Jess standing there, a somewhat comical terrified look on her face.
“Obviously we can’t leave you guys here without an opener can we?” I asked. More cheers. “So I may have talked some one very special into playing some music for you instead…”
I grinned and then turned to the side of the stage, beckoning Jess over. Very slowly she walked out on the stage, her face flushing red.
“I would like to introduce you all to the lovely Jess Rego,” I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulder loosely as she stood awkwardly next to me. There was a bit of a hush across the crowd as I’m sure many of the figured out who she was to me.
“Helloooo Glasgow,” said Jess into her own mic, relieving the tense air in the park. “You ready for a bit of a rave?” she asked, slipping out of my arm and wandering over to the DJ set up she’s managed to put together with some of the technicians.
As she slipped on some headphones I grinned at her and then turned back towards the audience, “Have fun Glasgow, and be good for my girl,” I winked, before running off the stage.
I literally had one foot off the stage when Jess put on the first beat. It was loud, it was electronic, and the bass was unreal. I couldn’t help but stop and turn around and watch her for a minute. As I stood there watching the other boys came and stood with me, our eyes wide as we watched her mixing away with the equipment in front of her.
“She isn’t doing what I think she is…” said Marvin, narrowing his eyes at her.
“I don’t know man…” said Oritse, craning his neck to get a better glance.
“Oh she is,” I smirked. “She’s remixing live.”
“Damnnn girl!” shouted Oritse.
“Reesh your voice,” laughed JB, clapping him on his shoulder.
We stood and watched Jess for a few more minutes, absolutely entranced by what she was doing. I’d seen her DJ plenty of times, as recently as two months or so ago back in LA. But I’d never seen her do this before. It was absolutely effortless. She was playing beats onto her keyboard, tweaking them with the switchboard in front of her and scratching different beats with the turntables here and there. You could hardy tell what the original songs were because what Jess was doing to them was unreal.
“She’s being well cheeky tonight,” I laughed as we walked into our dressing room ready to start vocal warm-ups.
“How so…” asked Marvin as he changed into his first outfit for the show.
“Like two-thirds of the music she is playing is stuff that she’s produced,” I laughed.
“I was wondering why I didn’t know a lot of it,” said JB.
“She’s obviously on a mission right now,” I responded.
We took our time getting ready and doing our vocal warm-ups before going back to the side of the stage ready to go on when Jess was done. I peaked out at the crowd to see them absolutely raving away. I was insanely proud of Jess at this moment, she’d literally gotten a crowd of thousands jumping like mad. It was electric.
“Who’s ready for JLS?” Jess shouted into her mic as the last track faded out. I grinned when I heard lots of cheers. With that the curtain fell and she ran off stage.
As soon as she got near me I grabbed her around the waist, lifting her off the ground and placing my lips on hers. I didn’t care that we were amidst all sorts of people or that I was supposed to be getting ready to run on stage in just a few minutes.
“You are my hero,” I whispered to her, pushing her hair out her face. It was only then that I noticed she was crying. “Hey what’s wrong.”
“Oh god…” she sighed laughing, “These are happy tears! That was incredible. I want to do it again!”
“Ahhh yay babe!” I grinned, pressing my lips against hers again.
“Aston!” shouted a voice.
“Shoot, gotta go. Find Chloe and get down in the audience,” I told Jess as I jogged off.
Within minutes the boys and I were onstage, doing our think. For the first few songs I couldn’t help but scan the crowd, trying to figure out where they’d put Jess and Chloe. And then I spotted them off to my far left, raving away. I couldn’t help but grin and blow Jess a kiss between songs. I was just so happy to have my girl there with me for that show…
