Chapter 59
59
SOPHIE
S ophie was looking forward to joining Gavin in S?o Paulo, where Rogue was to play Lollapalooza in support of Gone , their fourth album. They had an agreement that they would never go more than three weeks without seeing each other but because Gavin couldn’t easily leave the tour, she was often the one to go to him. She would stay on for their next stop in Argentina, too.
The band had followed up their blockbuster second album That Need with the critically acclaimed Dream State. The breakout single of that album had been another confessional hit. In “Slip Away” Gavin admitted his fear of losing the connection he had with his wife since she seemed to “slip away” into her separate life of modeling. He also admitted his jealousy and anxiety over having to share her with the world.
Fans were obsessed with his romantic vulnerability, especially as the song became the natural soundtrack to her modeling career.
Rogue went right back into the studio after the Slip Away tour to record Gone . It was their darkest effort and the first of their albums to receive mediocre reviews, but it still earned a decent place in the charts. The single “The Truest Thing” was the biggest hit, once again because fans couldn’t get enough of the naked honesty of Gavin’s lyrics and insight into his relationship with Sophie.
In that song, Gavin posed the question, “What do you do when everything you ever wanted isn’t enough?” alluding to the fact that though Rogue was an enormous success in every conceivable way, he still felt empty. Though he didn’t explicitly state it in the song, his mother was still the big hole in his life and her lack of contact with him was getting harder to bear. His fame felt hollow given he had pursued it in part so that his mother might have an easier time reaching out to him. He turned even more to Sophie to fill the void, and this song claimed she was the only true thing in his life, while everything else was artifice.
With other songs, Gavin vented his frustrations. In “Lies (Baby, They’re All Lies),” he wrote about the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day and was especially hard on himself. And with “Do It (Til It Hurts),” he employed a familiar tactic of allowing his lyrics to have two meanings—the surface level that appeared sexual in nature, and the deeper level that had nothing to do with such things. In this song he goaded himself to keep doing what he was, which was basically beating his head against a wall. He was increasingly numb to the riches and adulation and fame they had achieved because it didn’t change the aching loss he felt from never having a resolution with his mother. Yet, he was paralyzed from doing anything about it, no matter how Sophie tried to convince him to be proactive in finding her.
She knew this tour had been a different kind of emotional drain on him because of how much energy he put into singing those songs every night. He wasn’t someone who could just put on a performance. He felt every word.
The Lollapalooza show would be him putting himself out there on an even grander scale with the expected crowd of over 100,000. It also meant that Gavin was busy doing media for it when Sophie arrived at the hotel. She resigned herself to exploring the city on her own until he was free.
With S?o Paulo being the densely populated financial center of the country and not near beaches, she chose a trip to the Museum of Art. The concierge of the hotel where they were staying let her know that it was possible to walk to the museum and was giving her directions when Conor spotted her. He had just come back from a run, sweat still dripping down his temples in the humid weather.
“Where are you off to?” he asked, and she told him her plan. “And you’re walking? By yourself?”
Sophie laughed. “Yes. I tend to do that quite often and am pretty successful at it. You know, renowned fashion designers even pay me to do it down a runway at times?”
He ignored her attempt to joke. “Give me twenty minutes to clean up and I’ll join you, yeah?”
“Sure.”
It wasn’t unusual for them to—platonically—spend time together. Over the years, they had developed a genuine friendship based on mutual interests like art and literature. They were familiar and easy with one another, so Sophie was glad for his offer of company.
Conor still spent a lot of his energy chasing after women and making a paparazzi spectacle out of himself when his girlfriend du jour was a well-known model or actress, but a long-term relationship never seemed to stick. He also continued to flirt shamelessly with Sophie when they were alone, but they had gotten to the point where it was almost like a harmless inside joke.
There had only been one incident that made Sophie question the real depth of Conor’s feelings, and it wasn’t even anything that he had done. Rather, it was the mild “scandal” of a photograph widely circulated in the tabloids along with the speculation that the way Conor was looking at Sophie in it was suggestive of a previously well-hidden love for her. Gavin had dismissed it out of hand, Conor had laughed it off, but Sophie wasn’t so quick.
In the photo, they were at an after-party and Sophie was leaning against the end of a sofa, a smile on her face as she looked at something that had been cropped out of the shot. Conor was seated not far in the background, surrounded by several women vying for his attention. But his eyes were firmly fixed on Sophie with an expression of such naked longing and adoration it was impossible to deny. She’d realized she was all too familiar with that look. Whereas once he had been charmed by her, he had for quite a while looked at her with something more. She chose, however, to push this understanding to the back of her mind rather than address it.
Now they wandered the museum, examining the Renoir, Chagall, van Gogh, and Modigliani pieces in companionable silence.
That is, until Conor leaned close to Sophie and asked in a hushed tone, “Where are all the nudes?”
Sophie slapped his arm and he laughed. “Speaking of nudes,” she started.
“You’ve got my attention.”
She sat on one of the benches in front of Modigliani’s less-than-flattering portrait of Diego Rivera, and he joined her. This could have been her alternative life, studying art like this. But her modeling career was so successful that she hadn’t seriously entertained going back to school.
“I got some news earlier,” she said.
“I’m intrigued.”
“I got the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.”
“Really?” he asked with obvious delight for her. “That’s fantastic, Sophie. And a big deal, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “Yeah, it is. It’s huge. I’ll get a look at what photo they chose tomorrow. And the magazine will be out in about a week.”
“Good for you, honey. I know you’ve been wanting this.”
“Yeah, and it feels especially good because now no one can say I got it because I’m married to Gavin. I’ve been working too hard.”
“What, people would tell you that? Give you a bad time of it?”
“Sometimes. Especially in the beginning. But not as much anymore.”
“Good,” he said protectively.
She stood and nodded toward the far exhibit hall, and they continued to walk through.
“I met a model last week. Her name was … Astrid something,” he said.
“Astrid Ekdahl?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“She’s pretty young, isn’t she?”
“Twenty-two, in fact.”
“Good in bed?”
“Not bad,” he answered automatically. After a second, he attempted a sheepish smile.
“And you don’t even know her last name,” Sophie said with a teasing tsk.
“It was a one-time thing. No need for formalities.”
She shook her head. “That’s still all you want?”
“Sophie, you’re a sweet, smart girl, but you have no clue about men. Having a ride with a girl like Astrid is exactly what I want. No complications, no expectations, no hassles.”
“If you say so. What I do know is that Gavin is going to hate this SI cover.”
“Trust me, he’ll love the photograph.”
“You know what I mean. He will hate that the rest of the world gets to see it.”
“Jesus, you’ve been doing this for more than, what? Six years almost, yeah? He’ll have to learn to appreciate your work at some point.”
She knew that was true, she just didn’t think it would ever really happen. The more she thought about this cover, the more she tried to convince herself that making a point to tell Gavin about it beforehand might be giving it too much importance. She hadn’t told him when she got her first Vogue cover. Maybe it would be better to treat it like just another job.
Wrapping her arm through Conor’s, she told him, “Thanks for your support, Connie.”
“You know I’m your biggest fan, honey.”