Maybe It's Been You All Along - Alex Turner

63

It was ten minutes to nine on the fourth of September. The venue was dimly lit by a series of custard yellow lights that hovered like fireflies by the bar, and fluorescent pinks, purples and blues illuminating the act on stage. The walls were fairly close together, a small lounge, definitely not an arena. There were people chatting at the bar, others playing pool in a conjoining room, the majority were however, stood before the small rise, eyes glued on the act that was performing their final song. Unless one was invested in conversation or the lullaby of live music, the place offered a blissful white noise. Chaotically calming under the moody lights.

  Rosanna was standing to the side of the stage, preparing to take the current bands place in mere minutes. With her were the friends kind enough to lend their talents to play instruments for her live. She'd played to quiet rooms before but now that there was excitement and eagerness she was nervous — people had come specifically to see her. People she didn't even know. People who had listened to her record and enjoyed it enough to come along and see her live. Rosanna rarely played live so every time she did, she got the same butterfly feeling.

  Half her consciousness was in the conversation her Londoner friends were having and the other half was searching around the venue for one particular face. She hoped he was still coming.

  There was a tap at her shoulder, she turned around as the owner of the venue told her to start setting up as soon as the act on stage got off. She sipped the wine someone bought her and forced herself to finish it despite wine being her least favourite alcoholic beverage. She kept one eye constantly scanning the room, arching over heads and peering between cracks, in search for Alex but she never managed to spot him before she had to go up on stage.

  She set up her guitar and adjusted the microphone to fit her height, finding herself looking over to the entrance just in case and saw four familiar faces entering the venue. An excited grin quickly took over her lips, barely faltering despite her efforts to hide it.

  The four men shuffled along the back of the crowd and settled just in front of the bar with a clear view of the stage. Alex's stomach was in knots. His hand in his pocket to stop him from fumbling with things as the other clung to the neck of a bottle. He looked up to the stage once he and the guys had settled in a comfortable spot and immediately made eye contact with her.

  She looked beyond beautiful. Almost angelic. Unfair to any other woman in the building. And the small smile she gave him made his heart melt like ice cream in the sun. He didn't get that feeling he used to get when he saw her. He wasn't panicked, scared nor overwhelmed. He was just excited to see her because now he knew she wanted to see him too. She really did look like the first day of spring.

  The stage now illuminated with white and blue lights, Rosanna introduced herself and thanked the people in the crowd for showing up. Her first song of the night was the title track 'Mirage'.

  Alex couldn't stop his eyes from twinkling as he watched her in awe. He'd never seen her perform before. She was evidently shy in comparison to her usual self but she had a captivating stage presence that grasped anyone and everyone's attention. She looked immersed in her music and frequently sang with her eyes staring at the ceiling as if she was imagining her own world.

His eyes travelled on one continuous cycle, her eyes, her lips, her left hand holding down the strings of her guitar, her right hand rhythmically strumming up and down and back to her eyes. Despite being in love with her, he was overcome with how proud of her he was. Doing something she'd never even dreamt of doing after releasing an album she never expected to record. That nineteen year old girl from Leeds that he met all those years ago, now matured and singing her own songs live to a room full of infatuated people.