20 EVIE
E VIE
Snapshots bounce around my head of the group of us laughing and drinking around that giant table, enjoying the feast that Tommy had created while music played in the background.
An eclectic mix ranging from Led Zeppelin to Prince to Primal Scream and Duran Duran.
The moon was high while the guys carried on as the waters lolled in the bay.
One time in New York, I was invited to the penthouse to do a feature interview for Creem magazine.
The guy—a timeless rock singer—invited me to sit down at his table, where a spread of food had been prepared for both of us.
This wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unique either—this kind of warm welcome, especially from the professionals who knew the value of entertaining the press.
He poured wine for me and answered my questions with a friendly face.
It was going beautifully. I was midbite when he looked up and said: “Okay, thank you, please leave now,” dismissing me in an instant.
Anyone else would have been startled. But it hadn’t fazed me.
I’d lived like that since childhood. There one moment, forgotten the next.
So I suppose I waited for that moment to arrive at the beach with them, the moment I would be asked to leave, and yet somehow, it never did.
Something about that night soothed a part of my loneliness that often ate away at the inside of me.
Maybe he sensed it. Maybe that’s why Carter did it. Invited me to stay.
“As long as Alex doesn’t smother me with a pillow in my sleep,” I joked.
“Who, me?” Alex strolled past, evidently having been made aware of the situation. “Nothing to be afraid of. It’ll be a slumber party.” He rolled his eyes.
I returned to the back deck, and before I knew it, Tommy handed me another drink.
The air was warm and thick with the humidity of the salt water lazily drifting around the dock that jutted out into the bay.
Someone had brought out a radio. I drifted in and out of the conversation with the guys, losing myself in a hazy bliss that was a heady combination of a warm ocean night, cold beer, pleasant and somewhat surreal company, and a sky filled with stars, inviting me to keep my eyes turned upward.
Sometime past the witching hour, as sleep began to seduce me, I found myself sitting with my head on Carter’s shoulder, the two of us curled together as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to do.
As he talked, the vibration soothing against my ear, he lazily played with the delicate silver bangle on my wrist—an heirloom piece that once belonged to my mother.
He loved that bracelet, and it became a habit of his to fidget with it.
As the conversation quieted, one by one the rest of the guys started heading inside until eventually we were sitting alone.
“I left a girl at home,” he told me. “She’d love it here.”
I stiffened slightly and looked up at him, raising an eyebrow.
He chuckled, stroking his thumb across the top of my hand. “Mandy. My dog.”
I exhaled. “Ah. Very sweet. What kind?”
“A retriever. She stays with my mom when I’m on the road. I miss her like crazy. She loves water.” He cocked his head. “What about you?”
“I’ve always wanted a cat.” I still do.
He laughed. “No, I meant do you get home to see your family much?”
I didn’t say anything at first. “I don’t have any family.”
“No one?”
“Not really.”
His brow furrowed, and he watched me closely, waiting for me to elaborate.
“My mom died when I was little,” I said eventually.
“And your dad?”
I looked away. “Not really in the picture.”
“Brothers and sisters? Grandparents? Nobody?”
“Nope.”
He seemed to be absorbing this. “Do you get back much at all, then? To your hometown?”
I told him about your dad and Kate. Our friendship. “I don’t think they quite get my job. I think they’re secretly still hoping I’ll change my mind and come home and live a quiet suburban life alongside them. They’re like family.”
“Marry a nice, steady guy. All of your kids playing together,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Think you’ll stay here on Long Island?”
“I doubt it. I think eventually my job’s going to take me into the city. Or maybe LA. But we’ll see.” I waved my hand in the air.
“London, definitely. I think that’s what you meant,” he whispered, and I smiled.
As we talked that night, I think we both sensed that there was far more at stake than just the fate of a film I was supposed to be making.
Far more at stake than my career. Or his, as I would learn later.
None of that would matter in the end. We were these two damaged people coming together, with scars and wounds that ran deep.
We had reason to stay apart. But it was inevitable.
There are few things in life more powerful than inertia.
We talked more about his time in London, the various stages of the band as they came together, his first torturous gig as the front man—three songs at a pub in Camden.
He loved school. He’d studied the philosophy of mathematics at university.
Not many people know this about him, surprisingly.
He loved it as much as music. Astronomy as well.
He gazed up to the night sky that night.
“‘There is geometry in the humming of the strings; there is music in the spacing of the spheres.’ Pythagoras said that.” And then a moment later, “It’s all related, you know.
Numbers. Music. Philosophy. The sky.” He pointed upward.
I shook my head in wonder, and he looked over and smiled.
“I told you I’m not exactly who you think I am.
I’ll convince you eventually.” I got the sense that people rarely truly saw him, and for some reason, it was important to him that I did.
“I’m already convinced.”
“Charmed yet?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Nope.”
“Good. You shouldn’t be.”
As I looked at him, I realized that it was his eyes that had disarmed me from the beginning—so full of pain and hope and a deep heart that was filled with kindness and romance and belief in things far beyond this world. When he turned them toward me, time stopped.
“Evie, what are we doing here? What is this?” He spoke softly.
I took a deep breath and released it. When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I know it’s complicated. But ...”
“But there are lines we probably shouldn’t cross, at least until after the film.”
“They’re already crossed. And you know it.” He was right, of course. “Okay, I have a boundary for you, then,” he said after a moment.
“Oh yeah?”
“One minute.” His eyes flashed.
“One minute?” I asked.
“Yes. One minute. For one minute, forget everything else but here and now. This moment.”
A smile danced on my lips. “And then what?”
“Then the minute is up. And we say good night.”
I nodded slowly. “One minute.”
He took my face in his hands, leaned down, and kissed me then.
“One minute,” he murmured against my mouth like a safe word. “One ...” He kissed me again, and I arched up into him, and he held me tighter. Then he dragged his lips to my neck, where I could feel his breath heavy, warm on my skin.
“My god, the way you kiss ...,” I whispered, gripping the warm skin beneath his shirt.
He smiled against my lips. “We are good at it, aren’t we?” After the seconds flew by at the speed of light, he stood back.
“That was the shortest minute in history,” he said, eyes dazzled. “I need hours ... days, years with you.”
I was lit up inside, on fire. “We did a good job. Barely.” I straightened my shirt and backed away from him. “That could’ve gotten away from us.”
“Oh, you think, do you?” He reached over and took my hand.
The word boundary became kind of a thing for us after that. A double-entendre sort of thing. We had a lot of fun with it. I’ll leave it at that.
“You’re getting tired. Come on. Let’s get you settled in upstairs. Ready for bed?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He inhaled. “Oh god, if you look at me like that ...” And he pulled me toward him again.
“One minute.” I held a hand against his chest playfully. “Right?”
“Right. Yes. Okay then. In we go.”
He led me inside, past bedrooms of pillowy white linens and mahogany woods with breezy curtains over windows that overlooked all of the beach and the bay.
Duffel bags and guitar cases and boots were strewn about three floors all the way up to a rooftop deck, dotted with terra cotta pots bursting with bright-pink geraniums and a view that looked out over the water.
“Good night,” he whispered into my ear that night before he disappeared, leaving me alone with my thoughts in a room all my own.
“Good night,” I said to myself.
I hadn’t brought a single thing with me.
I slept in one of Carter’s T-shirts, which I’d found neatly folded sitting at the foot of the bed.
The moonlight shone through an octagonal window beneath a pitched roof in an all-white room that would live in my thoughts for years to come.
In the distance, I heard the sounds of a guitar carried in on the breeze through the curtains.
Just as I drifted into the most peaceful sleep, I heard him playing a familiar melody.
It was a lullaby of sorts that I had heard in my dreams since I was a child, comforting me in the dark of night.
I remember thinking how odd it was that he knew it.