Chapter 13 #2
So, Gabe had a crush on Maggie, and in turn, Maggie saw him as a very good friend—that lopsided relationship from all romantic comedies where one day the girl was going to wake up and realize the right guy had been next to her all along, listening to her complain about her meathead boyfriend and rubbing her back when she cried.
In their downtime on set, when they weren’t hitting educational requirements, young Gabe and Maggie goofed off in their trailers.
They had a book club. They started writing their own songs.
This was where Gabe’s time pining for Maggie began to pay off.
There was a musical tension between them—when he described it, I imagined it was like tantric sex, where you come so close to consummation that something’s born out of the longing, a raw nerve in the form of a sound wave, a silence between notes on a guitar.
Gabe and Maggie messed around together with music—only music!
(the lady doth protest too much)—and when The Tiger Crew ended, she sang harmonies on some of his solo stuff before her record label chewed her into bubble gum.
Gabe moved to Nashville to work on other artists’ tracks for cash, and Maggie came to visit him.
They spent a week in his apartment, playing guitar on the kitchen floor.
Listening to old LPs. Losing track of what meal should come next. Writing.
Apparently, they wrote something wonderful.
They wrote the song of all songs, the one that could make their careers.
A song that would show Gabe’s parents they’d done right to uproot their lives so their son could perform, would show the record label that Maggie was more than just an underage sexpot.
He didn’t say if they’d slept together, but I had trouble believing that they hadn’t. Gabe didn’t kiss and tell.
Immediately after that writing session, Maggie met Jason.
“Okay,” I said. “Got it. You two wrote the best song in the world.” We were ascending, still. I’d worn canvas sneakers, which were not the right choice. Gabe hadn’t mentioned that this trail would be so steep.
“We had this song, and I thought I would record it with Maggie, since she was the one with the record deal. It was better than the stuff her label was giving her. You know they have her do that . . . gyrating shit, with the really thin vocals and all? This is the opposite. It’s good.”
“Tell me what you really think.”
“But she didn’t want it,” said Gabe. “Or I guess the label didn’t. It wasn’t the image they were going for.”
“Too good a song,” I said. “Noted. So, instead, you recorded it yourself? Which one is it?” I knew most of Gabe’s songs by this point, from listening to his bootlegs and listening to his concerts and listening to him play at the foot of his bed while I lounged in nothing but a borrowed T-shirt.
His songs were thoughtful, poetic, occasionally angry in a cutting way you wouldn’t expect if you knew him only casually.
None of them screamed top of the charts.
“That’s the thing. We never recorded it. We decided to sit on it, to wait. She’d make what the label wanted her to make and get a real foot in the door, and I’d keep doing my own stuff, and when we both had fan bases, we’d do it together and give it a chance to get huge.”
“This was your idea?” I frowned at Gabe.
“No, Maggie’s.” Gabe pressed his lips together.
“So are you guys big enough yet? Are you about to take the music-listening world by storm?”
“Well, no. I want to record it alone, but she still won’t give me permission.”
“So instead of just asking her like a normal human person, you used me to get to her,” I said, voice cold. Gabe winced.
According to Gabe, that was not the case. Also according to Gabe, he couldn’t just call Maggie up and ask her, because of Jason.
When Maggie McKee met Jason Dean, he was at the top of his game.
He had a chiseled jawline and white teeth and an arm that could strike out the most formidable opponents.
He had a $200 million deal with the Braves and a tripped-out condo in Atlanta and a boat.
From the start, Gabe did not like him. Gabe was a former child star living in Nashville with a roommate, pining for the girl who’d never seen him as more than a friend.
He did not have ripped abs. He did not have endorsements. He did not have Maggie McKee.
He held his tongue for a while—by this point Maggie had realized that Gabe wanted more from her, and was giving him some distance. Her career was miles ahead of his and moving in a different direction. She was outgrowing him.
“I’m not in love with Maggie,” Gabe said.
“But you care about her.” Funny how urgent it seemed to look down at my feet.
“I do.”
“Enough to mess around with what we had,” I said. “Enough to lie to me.”
Gabe didn’t deny it. He stopped, but I kept going, the same steady rhythm. Up and over. One foot in front of the next.
“Cassidy.” With his long legs it was easy to catch up to me. “Let me tell you the rest.”
With Jason on the scene, Gabe talked less and less to Maggie, which made sense to him.
She had another man in her life, and she had a career.
They lived in different cities. Gabe was ready to let go.
He had his own life; he was making decent money.
He dated other people. He honkey-tonked in Nashville.
He recorded an indie EP. Occasionally, he caught up with Maggie on the phone, but it was shallow old-buddies stuff. Then Jason got hurt.
Along with everyone else, Gabe sent them a note of condolence. This sucks, how can I help, I’m here for you guys—something along those lines. She must have known that Gabe was still in love with her.
“Anyway,” said Gabe. “It was fine, and he did surgery and rehab and all that stuff you already know. And Maggie kept doing her thing, and I kept doing mine.”
“But then the surgery didn’t work.” I wasn’t sure where this was going. If I hadn’t known this part already, I might have guessed that Maggie had left Jason once his luck began to change. Instead, when the money dried up and Jason’s career was trash, they’d gotten engaged. “How is this relevant?”
Gabe looked around, making sure no one was watching us. He pulled me to the side of the trail, as if this next part required total privacy. I took back my arm.
“Jason wasn’t okay after the surgery,” said Gabe.
“Well, yeah. Everyone knows that. That’s why he is where he is. That’s why he’s doing Honeymoon Stage.”
“No. I mean like . . . mentally he wasn’t okay. He was in a very bad place.”
Maggie called Gabe one night at four in the morning East Coast time.
Jason had been out; he was driving; someone sideswiped his car.
He had called the police to report it as a hit-and-run, which in most circumstances would have been the totally appropriate thing to do, but in this case was idiotic because Jason was blasted out of his mind on vodka, Xanax, and cocaine.
They’d have to book him. After calling the cops, he’d called Maggie, who told him to get out of there before anyone showed up.
Just come straight home and pretend he’d been with her all night, had no idea what they were talking about.
Jason was lucid enough to agree. One million thousand percent, he should not have been driving.
When Jason got home, Maggie came out to see the damage.
The passenger side door was scraped, which tracked with his story about getting swiped in a parking lot.
But the front bumper of the car was also totally crushed, as if Jason had hit something big.
It was dark, and Maggie didn’t see any obvious residue. She was scared to look closer.
Jason had no explanation. Adrenaline spent, he passed out in bed, and Maggie sat in the living room, the telltale heart of the wrecked car beating at her from inside the garage. She called Gabe.
“I told her she should call the cops, and obviously, she didn’t.
She’d had situations before—Jason drunk and locking her out of the house; Jason’s teeth chattering because he was all hopped up on Adderall.
I’d told her to get him help. She really should have called someone else, someone close by, who could help her.
I think she called me because she knew I was too far away to do much more than listen.
And because she knew I wouldn’t go public. ”
We still stood in our little off-road area, and I was itching to get back on the trail. I could handle being close to Gabe as long as we were moving. When we were standing here, his eyes seemed so sad.
“Why didn’t you go public?” I asked him.
“No one wants their lowest moments broadcast all over the tabloids,” said Gabe. “Even though this did seem like the tipping point. The other stuff sucked, but this? To not know what Jason had hit? Fucking terrifying.”
An internet search the next morning showed two hit-and-run accidents, at least one person dead in the general vicinity of Jason’s midnight bender.
Maggie had to call it in, no matter that it would totally ruin his good guy public image.
Gabe tried to convince her, but the more time passed, the more she was adamant that she shouldn’t.
Maggie thought Jason should just go to rehab, and if he could stay sober, it would all be okay.
Gabe told her it was not okay. Gabe told her Jason was dragging her down with him, that she should leave him.
Maggie told Gabe that of course Gabe would say that—Gabe had always been in love with her; did he think she hadn’t noticed?
Gabe told her to leave him alone forever, or something along those lines. Maggie told him not to call her again.
The news about Jason never broke. It was possible that no one else knew about that night except the three of them. Maybe whoever had handled fixing the car. Gabe wasn’t sure what they’d done about that. It was no longer his concern.