I couldn’t help but smile through the entire forty-minute set.

Fifteen minutes after they went offstage, nothing could have prepared me for what came on.

I didn’t believe in love at first sight.

Lust at first sight? Sure. I’d seen Michael Fassbender in X-Men: First Class. Hello.

But what happened fifteen minutes after Ghost Orchid got off the stage, after I’d screamed my throat raw cheering for my brother behind the drum kit, Gordo on guitar, and Mason on bass, was unexpected.

I fell in love with the voice in the dark. No joke, no exaggeration. It was a pure, raw love.

The stage had been cleared when the headlining band’s sound guy

scurried about one last time, checking on the two guitars, bass, a microphone and a drum kit that had been set up hours ago. When the lights darkened, the crowd that had swelled to fill the venue’s capacity, at what I estimated to be over a thousand people by that point, went bananas. They were animals, and it was as scary as it was exciting. In the pitch-black auditorium, a wispy voice began singing softly, making the fans shriek even louder.

With a flash of elaborate, multicolored LED lights on a huge panel behind the massive drum kit, the stage lit up like fireworks in July, illuminating two guitar players who had come out of nowhere, a bass player and a drummer already onstage.

The lyrics and the song floated through the air in a whisper, the notes the singer was hitting unidentifiable, and it was over—in an emotional sense, that is.

While Gordo had a good, deep voice that was rounded and almost hoarse, the singer onstage was the complete opposite. His tone was slightly higher, breathy and incredibly strong, piercing through the air with its clarity and tone. And the range he had… good grief.

I could only see an outline of a man walking on the stage with an energy and charisma that every person in the audience including me, couldn’t tear their eyes away from. I focused on everything going on: the explosion of yellows and reds on the LED panel behind all the music equipment, that beautiful melodic voice and the catchy instrumentals that flared after the opening verse.

It was love. Plain, easy, uncomplicated love.

Unfortunately for me, a ton of fans decided to come buy merchandise during the set. Trying to hustle about and sell as quickly as possible, I kept an eye and an ear out for the singer’s dynamic presence. He was so good. Well, the entire band was. Catchy, a mix of pop rock, indie and prog—they were a genre of their own. During the quick glances I could take when I wasn’t busy, the long, sinewy figure in black dress pants and a gray button-down shirt and tie moved and jumped in time with the rhythm constantly.

The next hour and half blew by in a mix of amazing music and sales. Watching the old pickle jar on the corner of the table fill up with bills kept me shooting smiles at all the people buying stuff, even though a part of me wanted them out of my face so I could enjoy the band playing.

During brief breaks between their set, the singer would talk to the crowd, thanking them for their presence and support, or he’d introduce the next song. At one point, a bra went airborne and smacked him in the arm in the middle of a song. The singer picked it up by the strap without missing a note and draped it over the microphone stand, letting it stay there for the remainder of the set.

It was a beautiful kind of insanity watching The Cloud Collision and their audience interact. It was easy, then, between the smiles I’d share with the guy “next door” named Carter, and the screaming, earplug-to-mouth chats I had with Ghost Orchid fans, to forget about why I was going to spend the next few months of my life with my three male best friends and eight strangers.

In the madness that ensued once the band finished their encore performance, in his swanky, tenor voice, the singer thanked everyone for coming out. I relished it all. The nonstop hustle to pull shirts out of one of the bins, while making sure I marked down every sale on the tally sheet correctly, was old and familiar. Before I knew it, the security in the venue was trying to usher fans out while Carter and I packed up the bins and tore down the racks. Usually the band would be trying to load the trailer at the same time so I wasn’t too sure who was going to come and help me take the bins out. In the past, one of the idiots would come inside and help me carry everything.