Chapter 29
The Man with the Golden Voice
The Queen Elizabeth Theatre rises like a jewel box in the heart of downtown Vancouver. Inside, the air hums with low conversation and the rustle of coats being removed, purses placed between heels. The seats are plush and wine-colored, bathed in the soft gold of the chandeliers.
From the mezzanine, the stage is a study in precision, with velvet curtains drawn tight and lights glowing like halos above the empty microphones. There’s an ache of anticipation in the room, reverent and electric, like everyone’s holding a collective breath.
Somewhere nearby, someone is wearing sandalwood. The scent rises above the old theater scent, heady and grounding.
I brush against Gavin as we find our seats, and every sense seems turned up too loud. The velvet of the armrest. The cool air against the back of my neck. The accidental press of his knee against mine.
The crowd, a mix of all ages, is abuzz with anticipation. Leonard Cohen hasn’t toured in a decade—part of that time spent in a monastery—and this might be everyone’s last chance to see him live. You can feel it in the way people lean forward slightly, clutching programs, whispering like they’re in a church.
I am beside myself as we wait for the curtain to rise. I’m so excited that I grab Gavin’s arm and squeeze it.
He puts his hand on mine, and I mean to pull away, but I don’t. His hand is warm, still, heavy in the kind of way that says, “I’ve got you.”
He’s looking at me. Really looking. Like he’s trying to match the version of me in his memory with the one in front of him.
Then, slowly, he pulls his hand back.
“I forgot something.” He reaches into the interior pocket of his blazer and pulls out a little wrapped gift.
“What’s this?” I ask, surprised.
I gently pull the ribbon off, placing it in my purse, then peel back the wrapping paper. It’s a first-edition copy of Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen.
My breath catches. My eyes well.
Gavin’s face shifts, uncertain. He pulls out a handkerchief and hands it to me.
“It’s a happy cry,” I whisper. “This book reminds me that we still love each other in some way.”
Gavin stiffens. “Excuse me?”
“Jared. I’ve been wanting a first edition of this for years.” I clutch the book to my chest. “It must’ve been hard for him to find.”
“Yeah, about the book, Ava—”
The stage curtains pull back, and a nine-piece band and backup singers walk out to wild applause.
Whatever Gavin was about to say gets swallowed whole.
Then Cohen walks out in a sharp suit, bolo tie perfectly crooked, a sly grin on his face. He doffs his hat in a deep, almost reverent bow.
“We really began this tour four years ago, when I first dreamed about it,” he says. “I was 74 then—just a kid with a crazy dream.”
The crowd roars with laughter, completely under his spell.
As he sings Hallelujah, I feel like I’m falling into something I can’t climb back out of.
Somehow, even at 78, Leonard Cohen is obscenely sexy.
I lean in and whisper, “Warning: I may throw my underwear on stage.”
Gavin leans in close. Too close. His breath brushes my cheek.
“I may be throwing mine first,” he murmurs.
I gasp a laugh, then swallow it. Because suddenly, there’s not enough air in the room. His mouth is close enough to graze. My chest is buzzing.
I feel his knee bump mine. He doesn’t move it. Neither do I. We’re both staring forward, but every nerve in my body is tracking him.
I don’t need him to look at me again. I can feel it anyway, that gravitational pull like we’re already halfway to the thing we’re not supposed to do. My skin remembers the weight of his hand. Everything inside me is leaning, inching, aching.
In between songs, Cohen shares seductive tales and wry observations. His voice is gravel and silk. It’s the sound of someone who’s known ruin and wanted it anyway.
After the third song, he pauses and confesses: “I hope this isn’t the end. I want to start smoking again when I make it to eighty. But if that should not come to pass,” he says, “and we do not meet again, I promise you tonight we’ll give you everything we’ve got.”
And suddenly I forget everything. Olivia, Jared, even the plan.
It’s just me. And Gavin. And Cohen’s golden voice.
It feels right.
More right than I’ve felt in years.
Three and a half hours later, the concert ends with a bittersweet standing ovation.
As we’re swept outside in the press of the crowd, we get jostled hard. I lose my footing and Gavin pulls me to the side. But a new surge pushes me forward, right into his chest, his back hitting the wall.
He catches me. Holds me.
His chin rests on my head. My cheek against his chest.
And now, I am not okay.
I feel everything. The heat of him. The tension. The way his arms don’t want to let go.
My body responds before my brain can catch up. It’s an ache and a want I’ve never felt before.
I tell myself I’ll step back the second the crowd thins.
But when the moment comes, and I try to pull away, he tugs me gently back.
I need to pull away without looking at him. Because if I look at him, I am doomed. A few moments later, I see another break in the crowd, and I do as I planned.
Do. Not. Look. Back.
“Let’s go, Gavin,” I say through gritted teeth, without looking at him.
“Ava, wait.” He yanks me again.
I stop. I look around us and up at the sky, anywhere but at him. We are now under a grove of trees bursting with small purple flowers. The trees are creating a canopy over the walkway we are on, their limbs romantically lit with twinkling lights. All around us, people are laughing and smiling, dressed in their finest date clothes.
This is not the place to stop. This is a place where people fall in love and hearts get into trouble willingly.
“Ava.”
I close my eyes, suck in a gulp of air, and brace myself as I turn to him like nothing is amiss.
“We should get going,” I say, only half-looking at him, my eyes focused on his chest, the voice shouting at me again. Shouting Gavin’s name. Seeing him a little makes me want to see him more, and my eyes disobey me, traveling up his body to his face. I stop when our eyes meet. And now I find that I cannot take my eyes off him.
There goes my stupid plan.
He is standing before me, his eyes alight with something I can’t name, but I can feel. Joy and grief and hunger, all of it braided together. His eyes are riveted on my lips, and I can feel something in my core responding. There’s more desire, I realize, in Gavin not kissing me than there ever was in Jared or anyone else actually kissing me. I exhale his name in a breathy, vulnerable gasp—and that’s it.
The plan was never going to hold.
I let him pull me toward him, and for a second, I think he’s going to kiss me.
But he doesn’t.
He just holds me, forehead to forehead, his breath mingling with mine, his hands solid on my hips like I might float away.
And somehow, that’s worse. Or better. I don’t know.
What I do know is that I need to move.
“Let’s go,” I say, my voice rough and low.
“I completely agree,” he says, gaze lingering on my mouth like it already belongs to him. His voice is wrecked. Like he’s been trying not to want this and failed.