OCTOBER 11th, 1990, OLYMPIA, WA
REAGAN DROVE HERSELF to the show, insisting to Dave that it was okay for her to take her own car. He needed to drive to the venue that night with the band anyway. It was a rite of passage, especially with it being his first performance with Nirvana.
She'd told herself that she was going for a multitude of reasons. She loved shows, she loved Nirvana, and Kurt and Krist were both her close friends. She would have shown them support on any given day of the week.
But, as Reagan walked up to the North Shore Surf Club after parking her car in the venue's lot, she couldn't help but to feel like she was primarily there for Dave and Dave alone.
It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Indisputably, she and Dave had become very close. It only made sense that she was present for his first time performing as Nirvana's drummer. That's what friends did for each other.
Of course, it would have made even more sense to Reagan if she and Dave were truly just that — friends. To her, she felt as if her attendance in the audience that night meant something else. It was a sure sign that her and Dave's relationship was intensifying.
Her motorcycle boots crunched gravel beneath their soles as she walked up the club's front doors. A young guy with a crop of scraggly blonde hair was manning the cover fees, leaning against the open door and counting money.
"Five bucks," he told Reagan as she approached him. She reached into her pocket for the slim stack of one dollar bills that she'd brought along, but someone interrupted before she could pull them out.
"Wait, no! She's with me."
A young woman appeared through the doorway, donning a clean white Melvins shirt that she'd knotted at the waist. Her black hair framed her delicate face, and although she stood at a much shorter height than the ticket seller next to her, she looked adamant and fierce.
"Shelli," Reagan said brightly, identifying Krist's wife right away. Shelli grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her inside, ignoring the displeased look on the club employee's face. They quickly entered a sea of people.
"I can't believe you were going to buy a ticket," Shelli called over her shoulder, using her free elbow to push her way through the crowd. "The guys would have given you hell for doing that."
"I'm just trying to be a good, paying customer," Reagan said, allowing Shelli to tug her along. "Did you know I was coming?"
Shelli threw her a smirk, seeming to take great amusement in Reagan's question. She found the cluster of Kurt and Krist's mutual Olympia friends that she'd been looking for and pulled Reagan into the group.
"I only knew because New Guy wouldn't shut up about you being here tonight."
Reagan did not have to ask who 'New Guy' was. She huffed a little, avoiding Shelli's knowing stare. She wondered how Dave would take to her potentially duct-taping his mouth shut.
"Do you want to go back stage and say hi? Before they go on?" Shelli asked, tucking her hair behind her ear.
"No," Reagan said. "That's okay."
"Are you sure? He'd probably like to see you first. Might ease his nerves in case he thinks you're not coming."
Reagan smiled, not even caring that Shelli must have thought she was either crazy or downright evil telling by the look on her face.
"Nah. Let him wait to see me. It's healthy to be nervous before a big performance."
Shelli cocked her eyebrow questioningly, but Reagan didn't elaborate further. Dave may have made it plainly clear that he wanted her, but she wouldn't make it easy on him. If she was going to abandon her personal morals, she was going to at least make him work for her attention.
Reagan went around and said hi to the circle of people she was surrounded by, smiling warmly at the familiar faces she recalled happily and remaining coolly polite towards those who she didn't like so much. Olympia was brimming with all sorts of talented musicians, but many of them could be snobs. It was a common thing that she'd grown used to encountering.
As she stood surrounded by the plethora of people, Reagan began to miss Chris. She questioned why she hadn't invited her old friend, but mentally sighed, knowing the real reason. She wasn't ready for Chris and Dave to meet. That alone felt like another stepping stone in their already rapidly accelerating affair.
"Reagan, hey!"
Reagan felt a hand clutch her upper arm. She turned and came face to face with one of her many acquaintances, Lucy.
Lucy was just one of several girls that Reagan had met while frequenting Olympia's scattered music venues. She was rail thin and shorter than Reagan was, her hair pitch black with the help of box dye. A nose ring sat snugly against her nostril, but the thing that made her the most dangerous looking had to be her electric blue eyes. Lucy was also a student at Evergreen College, the new age school of Olympia that Reagan occasionally liked to poke fun at.
She was by no means close to Lucy, but Reagan appreciated the young woman's thirst for all things music, even when her opinions got to be a little overbearing.
"Hey," Reagan greeted, smiling.
Lucy rolled her eyes hugely and fiddled a box of cigarettes out from her jacket pocket. With her teeth, she pulled one out and tilted the box in Reagan's direction.
"It's so fucking packed. Someone's walking out with a concussion tonight, I swear," Lucy said with annoyance.
Reagan accepted her offer of a cigarette, holding it loosely between her lips while she waited for Lucy to light her own. When Lucy held out the wavering flame, Reagan bent forward and cupped it carefully to light her cigarette's tip, sucking back a cloud of smoke before exhaling deeply.
"Yeah it's pretty crowded," she said vaguely, looking around with feigned interest. The amount of people at the club that night was the least of her worries.
"Where the hell have you been, by the way? I haven't seen you at a show in ages."
"I have work," Reagan explained, hating how lame she sounded. "My parents have been making me pick up more shifts."
"Shit. Parents suck. But hey, I heard you helped Kurt and Krist out of a rough patch last month. Sorry I couldn't have been there to see you play."
"It was nothing."
"It must have been something. People were talking about how great you were."
Reagan raised her eyebrows, inhaling more cigarette smoke before blowing it out of the corner of her mouth. Lucy's claim was surprising, mostly because she never guessed that she would have been worth talking about amongst Olympia's inner circle.
"Really? Huh. That's interesting."
She tried to sound blasé, but deep down inside, Reagan felt a twinge of pride.
"I'd say we should go ahead and form an all female band, but I'm a shit guitarist and an even worse singer," Lucy lamented. "Otherwise, we'd be fucking amazing."
"I'm sure," Reagan smiled. It was difficult for her to accept Lucy's wild proposition after she'd been told one too many times to join a band. The whole charade was starting to get old.
"You want to come with me to the other side? I've got friends waiting," Lucy asked, gesturing over people's heads with her cigarette still in hand.
"Who's waiting for you?"
Reagan would have never accepted an invite to hang out with someone not knowing who else she'd be around. She knew Lucy's usual batch of friends, and she couldn't say with confidence that she could stand to be around them all.
"Uhm, let's see, I know Tobi is over there. Kathleen is too. Want to come or not?"
Ugh. No thanks.
The last thing Reagan wanted was to be around the members of Bikini Kill. She couldn't find a singular time in the past in which bad blood might have spawned between them, but she could only take so much of their condescending jargon.
"I'm good actually. Thanks, though," Reagan said, flicking ash from her cigarette on to the slimy, beer-covered floor.
Lucy smiled as if an invisible understanding had passed between them, nodding a goodbye before disappearing into the throng of bodies. Reagan watched after her, wondering if she'd sensed her coolness. It hadn't been intentional.
"It feels like years since I last saw you," Shelli said, suddenly appearing at Reagan's side as if she'd materialized there from thin air.
Reagan sighed. Again, with the accusations that she'd been absent. Didn't anyone else that she knew have a job?
"Work," she said blandly.
"Oh, right. Krist mentioned that your parents have been putting you through the ringer."
"Like you wouldn't believe," Reagan confirmed.
"You deserve better than that, honey," Shelli empathized, putting a thin arm around Reagan's shoulders.
"Maybe," Reagan said, though she couldn't full-heartedly agree with her. Lately, she wasn't sure of what she did or did not deserve. It had to be something better than working at Wilson's every day, though.
"So . . . Dave . . .," Shelli started, a slow smile spreading on her face.
Reagan held up her hand with the cigarette balanced between her fingers, tensing under Shelli's arm.
"It's not what you think," she assured. Those words sounded like a blatant lie, even to herself.
"Or maybe what you're trying to say is, it's not what Dave thinks?"
Reagan felt her shoulders sag. When Shelli put it that way, it made her feel like she'd been socked by a champion boxer in the gut.
"I would never want to hurt him."
"I don't think you will hurt him."
"But you're right. I think he thinks that whatever we are is more than what it really is."
Shelli blinked rapidly. "You're speaking in riddles."
"Well, that's just literally how complicated and confusing this whole debacle has come to be," Reagan said. She took another drag off her cigarette, hoping it would slow the gushing blood flow through her veins that in turn made her heart pound.
"My point is that I think you like him back, Reagan."
Reagan froze. She was always quick to respond such hefty allegations, especially when they were being made against her, but she had no idea how to reply to Shelli in that moment.
She may have been Krist's loving wife, but in reality, she and Reagan did not know much about each other. It felt absurd that Shelli would try to pin Reagan's feelings on someone when Reagan herself fought so hard against them.
"That's crazy," Reagan muttered.
It was the worst reply that she had yet to come up with.
"Love is supposed to be crazy, right?" Shelli laughed.
Reagan scowled and flicked her cigarette's ashes again, this time in Shelli's direction. They may not have been the closest of friends, but she wasn't afraid to jest with her.
"That word doesn't exist in this situation," Reagan said, making her voice firm.
Before Shelli could counter argue Reagan, the lights of the club went down and the stage became brighter than before. A dull roar rose throughout the audience and caused Reagan to face forward, momentarily forgetting Shelli.
They loped out on the stage one by one, Kurt looking down at the ground and Krist bouncing on his toes with his usual energy. Reagan's breath hitched in her throat when she saw Dave. He was shirtless, his face passive as he pushed his hair back. Nonetheless, he looked prepared and not the slightest bit nervous.
She melted back in the crowd. It would be interesting to see him play without her influence hanging over his head. He must have assumed her to be a no show since she'd declined to go backstage. If it angered him, now would be the time to find out.
They dove into their first track, a Vaselines cover that ripped the energy of the audience to life. People began to thrash around almost immediately, tossing their bodies left and right as the stage amplifiers casted the sound of angry guitar riffs and drumming into the air.
Normally, Reagan didn't mind the slam dancing that ensued at shows, but for this particular event, she preferred not to be jostled. She was much too laser focused on Dave to be bothered with being run into. All that mattered to her was him as she watched from the short distance that she stood at, Dave in her precise line of sight.
One thing was for sure — he had held back on her in the music store.
On stage, Dave played with an entirely different sort of passion that exuded from every part of his body. He banged his head with abandon and slammed his drumsticks down so hard that Reagan felt herself flinch when they made contact with the set, even though she stood several feet away.
She supposed that he had something to prove with it being his first show alongside Nirvana. In her humble opinion, he'd already gone above and beyond and the band was barely five minutes into their set. It looked as if Dave had been the missing piece of Nirvana all along. He was the key to unlocking the last bit of success that the band so deserved.
Reagan felt her toes practically curl inside her boots as she continued to watch Dave, her stare zeroing straight past Kurt and Krist. Watching him in that way only made her attraction to him stronger. She could feel it in her lower stomach, pooling farther downwards and spilling throughout her legs like a longing warmth that could only be satisfied by his touch.
She had never seen anything more sexy in her life than Dave playing to a live audience. Nothing could have topped that. She savored every detail of his body and the intense sound he produced with his drumsticks, feeling her heart stutter when she noticed the strained sinews of his arm muscles and the way his hair flailed around his face.
She could have listened to him play forever. She was content to block out the noise of Kurt's singing and Krist's bass playing if it meant hearing only Dave and relishing in the fact that someone so brilliant wanted her of all people.
For once, Reagan was willing to admit to herself that she wanted him too, perhaps even more than he wanted her. Observing him in his rightful spot as a drummer made her crave him in many ways, along with the feeling of his mouth all over her body. She didn't want to see him go to anyone else.
She wanted him. And she wanted him all to herself.
Reagan didn't have very long to enjoy the sight and sound of Dave's drum playing. Only a few songs had passed before a series of power outages began, halting the show on and off.
Reagan turned to Shelli, whose panicked face represented how Reagan felt on the inside. She didn't want to see their performance fail, not when it was Dave's first. She was too nervous to watch Kurt and Krist pace the stage, fiddling with their amps until half were turned off to settle the electrical difficulties.
Members in the audience chattered away until a resolution was found; flashlights were held up to provide illumination on the stage so that the Nirvana trio could still be seen.
"Can you believe this?" Reagan muttered to Shelli, feeling more enclosed now that the lights were nearly out.
"They've got it," Shelli said, though she chewed her lip nervously. "They'll be fine."
Her prediction came true, but only somewhat. Another matter surfaced when Dave hit his drum kit too hard, wrecking the snare.
Reagan barked out a laugh and then covered her mouth, smiling behind her hand as Dave's snare drum was replaced speedily by roadies backstage.
She wasn't sure whether to laugh a little more at his predicament or respond to the tug of desire in her stomach. Either way, she could feel it happening — she was falling for him.
When the show ended, Reagan felt breathless from the roller coaster of emotions her body had underwent during the concert. She was caught up in a maelstrom of senses, all of them geared straight to overdrive. The revelation of how she felt about Dave, no matter how much she tried to deny it, made her lightheaded.
"Where do you think you're going?" Shelli demanded as Reagan stepped toward the flow of people trickling out of the club's front doors.
"Uh, home?"
"You're not going to go say hello backstage?"
She did want to say hello, but at the same time, she also didn't. It was the same back and forth urges that had tormented her for days. Seeing Dave after the show would be the last straw for Reagan. If she looked into his eyes, she felt a strange hunch that the deal would be sealed.
"Shelli . . ."
Shelli latched onto Reagan's hand, jerking her back to where she stood. Her eyebrows were scrunched in determination, and Reagan took this as a sign that she must have really liked Dave. She was, after all, bringing his girl straight to him.
"Okay," Reagan said, a trace of annoyance in her tone. "I guess I'm going backstage then."