I Dreamt That You Loved Me

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“I’m telling you he’s different,” Annika insisted.

“That’s what you said about Dick and look how that turned out.” I lined my eyes with kohl while she coated her lashes with mascara in the mirror above the bathroom sink.

“He really was such a dick,” she said. “What did I ever see in him?”

His name wasn’t actually Dick. It was Mick. Or Mitch. Jim? Whatever. We called him Dick because he had a pierced dick and because he was a dick.

Whenever he stayed over, I had to wear headphones with music blasting. When they had sex, it always sounded like he was being murdered.

Which was exactly how his music sounded. He was the lead singer in a heavy metal band. Their “hit” song was “Women are Vipers.”

I had no idea what Annika ever saw in him.

“The good news is that Gabriel is nothing like Dick.”

“So he’s more like that punk rocker you dated in high school?” Annika’s obsession with musicians was legendary, but she’d yet to date one who had any real talent.

“The one with the green mohawk?” She unwound her hair from the heated rollers and finger-combed the loose waves. Annika changed her hair color with the seasons. It was currently silver. “Or the guy who safety-pinned his lip?”

“I think they were both the same guy.”

She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I think you’re right. He works at Gap now. He swapped safety pins for khakis.”

“Seriously?” She nodded and we both cracked up. “He was so anti-establishment. What a sellout.”

“Just don’t judge Gabriel until you’ve gotten to know him,” she cautioned on our way out the door. “He’s the real deal.”

“So he can actually sing and play a guitar?”

“Yes.” She waggled her brows. “And he’s a cute boy.”

Annika’s idea of a cute boy vastly differed from mine. I went for the quiet, nerdy guys who hid their genius behind thick, black-framed glasses.

Annika went for the bad boys who always looked like they needed a shower and an exorcism.

And I never, ever went for musicians. Not only because I had daddy issues, but because I didn’t trust them. They’re driven by their egos, and they want to be adored. You’ll never come first with a musician.

But Annika was crazy about this guy she met last month. A chance encounter on her way home from the dance studio that culminated at four a.m. when they drunkenly stumbled into Leshko’s for coffee and greasy breakfast food.

I had yet to meet this mystery boy, but tonight was the night.

Gabriel had a gig at Monks Café on St. Mark’s Place, right around the corner from our apartment.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you…” Annika linked her arm in mine as we slogged through the drizzle, skirting puddles and crack vials on the garbage-strewn sidewalk.

When we turned onto Avenue A, a man clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag stumbled out of the doorway, unzipped his fly and urinated on the graffitied wall.

Annika scrunched up her nose. “Ugh, that’s the third time this month.”

If I had a nickel for every time I’d witnessed public urination, I’d be able to quit my day job.

“Gabriel asked if you’d make him a shirt,” she said. “I wore this dress two weeks ago and he’s madly in love with it.”

To hear Annika talk, Gabriel was madly in love with everything.

I made the dress for her 22 nd birthday. A collage of textiles sewn together with silver thread. She looked stunning in it, but Annika could wear a shapeless burlap sack and still look amazing.

Her hair shimmered like moonlight and her skin had a dewy glow. I was neither dewy nor glowing.

I always thought I looked a little bit dirty.

Monks Café was a tiny hole in the wall with sponge-painted brick walls, creaky wood floors and a few tables scattered around the room.

It was a haven for writers, artists, and musicians—the kind of place where you could order a cappuccino and spend all day reading a book or the newspaper without anyone bothering you.

My mom and I used to hang out here on cold winter days when the radiators in our apartment hissed and clanked but didn’t emit any heat. Sean, the owner, served us Irish stew from a crockpot.

By day it was a coffeehouse, and at night they hosted poetry readings and live music. The “stage” was a spot along the back wall where the waitstaff cleared away the tables.

Tonight, there were only about a dozen people in the room, including us. Not exactly a crowd.

“I’m so excited.” Annika grabbed my arm and dragged me to the bar strung with Christmas lights next to the glass pastry case. “You’re going to be blown away.”

I bit my tongue and stifled the urge to remind her that she’d said the same thing about Dick.

Annika bummed a cigarette from the barista who served us bottles of Rolling Rock and rang it up as cappuccinos with extra cream. Sean didn’t have a liquor license.

We passed the cigarette back and forth and drank our beers while Annika stared at the front door, waiting for her rock star to turn up.

That was another thing about musicians. They always kept you waiting.

Two more bummed cigarettes later, the door flew open and a guy with a guitar charged in— late . Annika passed me the cigarette and ran right into his arms.

“You wore the dress,” he said, taking her face in his hands and kissing her lips.

The kiss was so intimate that I felt dirty just watching them. I quickly averted my head and crushed the cigarette in a scalloped ashtray as Sean appeared from the back with a tray of clean cups and greeted me.

“Cleo Babington. Long time, no see.” He ducked under the bar and gave me a big hug. Sean was a bear of a man with wavy black hair and ruddy cheeks. He smelled like Irish Spring. “How’s your mom?”

“She’s good. She’s holed up in a cabin writing a book. She lives like a hedgehog.”

He laughed. “Ahh, the creative life. I envy her. So what brings you in tonight?”

“My friend’s dating the musician.” I lowered my voice. “Is he any good?”

“Guess we’ll see. He showed up last week and said he wanted to play. I told him to go in the back and wash some dishes and we’d go from there,” Sean said with a chuckle.

A few minutes later, Annika joined me, solo, and Sean gave us two more beers on the house. We carried them to a battered wooden table along the wall and settled in for the performance.

Everyone continued talking, ignoring the guy plugging his Telecaster into the Marshall amp, head bent while he tuned it. Black masking tape held the strap together.

When he stepped into the spotlight, I got my first good look at him.

He was all cheekbones, long lashes, and artfully disheveled hair. He looked like a demonic angel in a white V-neck T-shirt, black denim, and big black boots without laces.

Annika was right. He ticked all the cute boy boxes.

But I had no idea what to expect. Grunge? Another Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder trying his luck on the East Coast instead of Seattle?

I couldn’t say because he hadn’t played a single note. His head was bowed, eyes closed, with a stubborn lock of dark hair falling over his forehead.

A woman’s raucous laughter muffled the sound of the cappuccino machine whirring and time marched on but still he stood there with his eyes closed like he was in a meditation room instead of hooked up to an amp.

“You gonna play or just stand there?” a guy yelled. A few people tittered with mocking laughter.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my baggy camo pants and guzzled my beer like I’d been stranded in the desert for weeks and was dying of thirst.

I was having flashbacks.

A few years ago, Annika and I went to a standup comedy show.

The comedian was so nervous that he had to mop the sweat off his face with a towel.

His timing was off, and he started stuttering.

The crowd heckled him so mercilessly that he froze like a deer in headlights before fleeing the stage mid-joke.

After that, I vowed to never go to another comedy show again.

Now I had that same sick feeling in my stomach.

This guy was going to suck. I didn’t want to stick around to watch that. My eyes darted to the door, plotting a speedy exit. Maybe I could just…

Annika grabbed my arm and yanked me back down in my seat. “Where are you going?” she hissed. “Sit your ass down.”

“I have two words for you. Standup . Comedy .”

She shuddered. “Don’t jinx Gabriel like that. I need you to stay. Moral. Support .”

Two more words. Best. Friend .

Annika was clutching my hand like I was her lifeline. Even she was nervous when not so long ago she’d been singing his praises.

Thankfully, the room was dark so our secondhand embarrassment would go unnoticed.

“I need a cigarette,” Annika said, scanning the room for a smoker.

How long had he been standing up there with his eyes closed? My God, man, put us out of our misery and just throw in the towel already.

Then he strummed his guitar. It wasn’t soft and apologetic. It was hard and aggressive. The sound shot through me like a sonic boom and the air crackled with electricity. All he was doing was strumming the same chords over and over, but he had my full attention now.

When he opened his mouth and started singing, I died.

All the little hairs on my arms stood on end. Actual goose bumps. I’d never heard anything like it in my life.

I knew the song. I knew the lyrics. It was my favorite song by The Smiths. But Gabriel’s cover of “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” sounded nothing like Morrissey’s version.

His voice was the most beautiful instrument I’d ever heard. Ethereal, raw, passionate. Filled with pain and longing, sorrow and exaltation. It soared and plummeted with ease, and he held the notes for so long I was gasping for breath as if I was the one singing.

His music wasn’t grunge or rock or soul or the blues. Or maybe it was all those things rolled into one.

Either way, I was mesmerized without wanting to be. Drawn to the flame like a reluctant moth.

Even when he screamed into the mic, hitting crazy falsetto notes, and jammed for fifteen minutes straight on a Hendrixian blues song I’d never heard before, I was still riveted. Enthralled.

God, that voice. That voice.

It felt like everyone in the room was holding their breath, watching and waiting to see what he’d do next. He took us all along for the ride on his magic carpet, and I think we would have followed him anywhere.

He played for over two hours, only stopping to swig a beer and talk to the audience. He charmed. He joked. He rambled, telling stories about how he had to borrow a guitar because when he’d first arrived in New York, he got robbed.

The thief stole his guitar and his entire music collection. “Just steal my soul while you’re at it.”

He talked about music being a mystical experience.

“Music is my religion, my spiritual awakening, my path to self-discovery. One rainy day, I drank too much cheap whiskey and I just sat there and let all this sorrow wash over me, you know? When I showed up at a coffeehouse to play, I was weeping. I love that shit. Just stewing in your emotions, letting the pain wash over you.”

He was vulnerable yet self-aware. He had to have known what he looked like. I could tell by the way he angled his head and gave the audience sidelong glances. A heady cocktail of vulnerability and seduction straight out of the cute boys’ playbook.

I didn’t hold it against him though. He was a performer. Why not use all your God-given talents.

When the show ended, the entire room was silent. Until some guy said, “Yeah, man.”

What else could you really say after a performance like that?

Just, Yeah, man .

I think we all had the feeling that we’d just witnessed the birth of a legend.

Annika gave me a triumphant smile. No words were necessary.

I was officially blown away.