Chapter Twenty-Four
LUCY
Lucy’s eyes shot open with a start. She had no idea what time it was, and only a vague notion of where she was.
The room was familiar, but the bed was positioned differently to the window than what she was expecting.
The weird abstract hotel art was the same, but also not .
Catching a glimpse of her black T-shirt, worn and faded to buttery softness, she remembered lying on the bed with Nicky, his hand in hers.
They both replied immediately with a string of eggplant and peach emojis.
Then, she folded up Nicky’s note, chiding her own sentimentality even as she slipped it into her bra. It was the kind of reminder she didn’t have of their first time together all those years ago. Unless you counted ‘The Breathing Room.’ (She didn’t.)
Lucy traipsed to her room in Nicky’s sweats.
She showered and shaved. Exfoliated every damn thing she could reach.
Applied three different lotions and mascara.
She threw on her own joggers, which were a sexy/comfy combo, and topped it with an old Foo Fighters concert tee – unable to resist subtly needling Nicky about Dave Grohl just a little more.
Helpful signs led Lucy through the main part of the casino to the theater, which was down a long corridor set away from the blinking slot machines and crowds of people willingly parting with their life savings at the craps tables.
She had to try several of the hulking main theater doors by their giant-sized brass pulls before finding one unlocked, then slipped through as quietly as she could.
The theater was mostly dark, with the house lights completely dimmed.
LED strips of a muted amber lined the aisles, and she could just make out several stories of box seats behind lavish Italianate arches.
The proscenium and stage were lit up, and one of the best-selling, highest-grossing bands in history was on the stage making discordant, incomplete musical sounds.
The shock of it – the reality of it – made Lucy’s empty stomach drop out like she was being launched from the top of a roller coaster.
A man stepped out of the shadows to her right and approached.
‘You must be Lucy,’ he whispered. ‘I’m Jacob, one of the tour managers. Have a seat anywhere and enjoy the show. Shouldn’t be more than another hour at most.’
‘Thank you,’ Lucy whispered back.
Lucy tiptoed down the aisle, willing herself smaller and more mouse-like. She shimmied her way down a row so that she was precisely at center stage and midway into the section. If she was in for a private show, she was going to make the most of it.
She took a moment to look around her and spotted maybe five or six other people in the theater. Each of them had an iPad or a clipboard. Some wore headsets. It seemed that Super had a skeleton crew, and an audience of exactly one.
When she glanced back at the stage, Lucy caught Nicky looking up from his guitar with a deep, concerned furrow between his brows.
The second he saw her, though, the lines on his face smoothed and he smiled, wide and guileless.
Because of her. Lucy was fully fucking slayed by that smile.
She was surprised to look down and see her legs still there, not melting to a puddle.
Nicky strummed another chord on his guitar, then silenced it with a slap to the frets. He called out to the cluster of people at stage right, ‘Finn, the sound is still weirdly hollow. You get me, man? Like an echo, but not an echo. I think it’s the room, not the IEM. But it could be the IEM.’
‘Working on it, Nick,’ came a grumbly voice from behind one of the iPads.
Behind Nicky, the drummer, a man she knew was named Gill (because she was a woman of a certain age and those guys were just that famous) spoke up: ‘If we really go hard it’s going to sound like a mess.
’ Then: ‘I like Nick’s idea of being closer to the audience for this whole thing but, as it stands, they’re gonna get nothing but a wall of formless sound. ’
‘And leave deaf,’ added the rhythm guitarist, a guy named Hooper, sporting a man bun and almost as many tattoos as Nicky.
‘More sound-deadening or something?’ Nicky asked. ‘This theater was built for a lounge singer or a string quartet.’
‘Maybe we should just do the whole thing acoustic?’ asked the bassist, Vinny.
‘If you guys stick me back here with some brushes and a single fucking snare, I will murder you in your sleep,’ said Gill.
The other three guys onstage just laughed.
‘Look,’ said Nicky, ‘maybe we should just demonstrate.’ He shoved a guitar pick between his teeth and ran his fingers through his messy dark brown hair. Then he winked at Lucy.
She felt it in her spine.
Nicky pulled the pick from his mouth and adjusted his guitar strap. ‘Sound?’
A disembodied voice from high above called back, ‘On it.’ Then, a few seconds later, ‘Good to go.’
Nicky padded upstage and said something to the rest of the band that Lucy couldn’t make out. Then he stepped up to the microphone and began playing a song she recognized. A newer one, ‘Mix-up,’ that she’d keenly avoided on SiriusXM only a few years before.
She could feel the sound in her chest. In her toes. It was everywhere. Inside her.
Jesus.
Lucy felt a gasp leave her chest, but she couldn’t hear a thing beyond the band and Nicky’s voice. It rattled her, down to the bone.
Nicky was a goddamn vision. The tattoos on his arms rippled as he played, his hair drifted into his eyes. Every square inch of his body was a part of the process. It was otherworldly.
She gaped, her jaw on the floor and her heart racing.
Somehow, she’d forgotten. Forgotten that he could do that.
Forgotten that what he did for a living was fucking magic.
She had intellectualized ‘rock star’ as this broad title, shuffling him into a neat stack of other musicians, as one might catalog all postmen or doctors in their own respective categories.
But what Nicky Broome did with an oddly shaped piece of wood and metal was unique.
Remarkable. His talent – this gift he shared with the world – was superhuman. Rare and precious and powerful.
And the band was so incredibly good . Not listening to Super was a form of self-protection that she’d relied on from the first moment she’d heard ‘The Breathing Room’ in college.
That didn’t mean they weren’t worthy of listening to.
They were. Everything Nicky and the rest of Super wrote was next-level amazing.
They were skilled songwriters and superior musicians.
It wasn’t an accident that Nicky had platinum records decorating his bathrooms in LA.
When ‘Mix-up’ ended, Lucy clapped robotically. Because it seemed the thing to do when her brain and her heart were buzzing in the reflected glare of Nicky’s talent.
‘How about another?’ Nicky asked his bandmates.
‘Now taking requests,’ Gill said in a goofy tone into his mic, while absentmindedly clicking his sticks against the frame of his snare.
A voice from behind her screamed, ‘“Stairway to Heaven”!’ Which the band simultaneously groaned and laughed at.
From her left another guy yelled, ‘“Free Bird”!’ and they all laughed some more.
Lucy couldn’t help herself. She called out, ‘Play “Little Wing.”’
Gill and Hooper shared glances that said ‘why not?’
‘Which version?’ asked Vinny in her general direction.
Nicky held his hand up to block out the stage lights and locked his eyes right on hers.
‘Nicky knows which one,’ Lucy replied, trying but failing to keep her tone light.
Nicky turned away from her then, talking to the band.
When he turned back, the first delicate notes of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s haunting rendition of ‘Little Wing’ tripped across the theater. They emerged from Nicky’s guitar like flashes of starlight, shooting right to Lucy’s core. Obliterating her thoughts.
Gill’s drum joined in, grounding the guitars – two now, their notes folding on and entwining with one another. Then, where Vaughan’s melody usually drifted further into the instrumental, Nicky’s voice cut through with Jimi Hendrix’s lyrics.
He sang the words clear and strong. Purred their wistful confession of awe and longing with such emotion that tears filled Lucy’s eyes.
It was the perfect marriage of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s soulful guitar with Hendrix’s dreamy acid trip of a story.
Just the way she’d always imagined it. When she could bring herself to listen to either version, that is.
Most of the time, memories of that summer night with Nicky overwhelmed her and she had to shut it off.
When the notes shifted, Nicky leaned forward to the mic and sang straight at Lucy.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t keep her heart from hammering against her ribcage.
He remembered . He remembered her . All of it.
From their ride in his Jeep that night a million years before and right into the beyond.
He had really held on to all of it. That night wasn’t just some anecdote he’d made into a song.
He’d really felt those things, everything he’d put into ‘The Breathing Room.’ All of it.
Her thoughts landed on the image of that tattoo on his back. The one with her name on it.
She could feel Nicky – every tortured emotion – in his guitar solo. Like he was speaking directly to her with each note. The band’s serene accompaniment simmered in the background, letting him go. Letting him have his say. Nicky’s face twisted; sweat beaded at his temples.
As the music swelled from all four instruments on stage, driving toward the conclusion, Lucy felt herself break.
Every barrier she’d thrown up over the decades began to crumble, piece by piece. They fell away and left her exposed. Raw.
The tears tumbled out of Lucy then, coursing softly down her cheeks and soaking into her T-shirt. It was too much. There was an earthquake rumbling inside her, and the rubble was piling up with no way to stop it.
Lucy stood, willed her feet to get her out of the seats and up the aisle. Behind her, she registered the distant sound of the song ending and of the assembled crew shouting and clapping their approval. But Lucy couldn’t stop. She had to go.
As the massive theater door closed behind her, she heard her name break through the din.
Still, she kept going.