22 EVIE
E VIE
We began formulating ideas for the film.
In the back of my mind, I reminded myself of the stories I’d read in my youth, of journalists on the road with the bands, telling of nights that bled into days into cities and towns in a haze.
Photos in hotel rooms alongside the likes of Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page and Grace Slick.
Those journalists managed to produce some of the most incredible stories on bands that had ever been created. Maybe I could, too, I hoped.
Throughout the weekend, I watched, scratching down words that came to me from scenes with each of them.
Mayluna could hardly have chosen a less rock ’n’ roll kind of place than a house that sits on an otherwise peaceful bay in a town that was almost the Hamptons but not quite. “There goes the neighborhood,” Tom Rollins jokes. The drummer has blue eyes that crinkle at the corners when he laughs.
“Then again, we were always causing a bit of a ruckus in the neighborhood, I think. Could’ve been worse, though.
We could be Oasis. We haven’t managed to completely destroy a hotel room.
” He offers a mischievous look and adds, “Yet.” The peace and natural beauty of the bay sit in contrast to the nature of the house’s occupants, who often stay up until dawn while on a short break from their tour with The Evolution.
“When I was a kid,” he begins, while reclining on a wooden chair along the bay while flourishing a joint in one hand as he talks about his days growing up outside of York, England . ..
There was always music playing, with each of them having distinct tastes, like the world’s best jukebox.
One night, Carter and I had escaped to our little bubble outside, and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” began to play.
It wasn’t as popular back then, that song.
It had been decades since Elton John had landed it on the charts, but in the late ’90s, it had faded a bit.
“I love this song,” I told him, thinking of the cassette tape my mom used to play.
“Do you?” He took my hand, wrapping his other arm around my waist, a slow dance. His voice was warm in my ear as he sang of sheets of linen and a girl who married a music man. I think of him every time I hear that song.
Tommy approached, holding a small home-video camera, and my eyes went wide. He leaned down, one eye hidden. “Say hi, Evie!”
“Hey, why does he get to film this weekend and I can’t?” I exclaimed.
Alex gave me a look. “Do we really need to answer that?”
“Don’t mind him,” Carter said, pushing the camera out of our faces.
“He’s obsessed with the thing. He saved up for it when he was sixteen and has been lurking around with it ever since.
Convinced we’ll want to play it back when we’re all ancient.
He has old videos of us playing to huge crowds of, like, fifteen or sixteen people.
I told you that you two would get along.
” He shook his head, laughing at his younger self. “So humiliating.”
I stopped short. “Wait a minute.” I looked at all of them, eyes wide. “Are you telling me you have video footage going all the way back to the beginning?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s shit, but yeah. I guess we do,” Carter answered.
“And you’re just telling me about this now?” If I were the type of girl to jump up and down when excited, that’s exactly what I would have been doing.
“Well, we try to ignore him,” Carter joked, shoving Tommy.
“Hey, you’ll be glad someday!” Tommy added and then skipped off. I shook my head, ecstatic.
“That’s it!” I said, mostly to myself. I could see all the frames coming into my mind. The combination of Tommy’s old VHS footage and the new tour footage that I would get out on the road was going to be the perfect story. “Don’t you see?”
“What is?” Carter asked.
“This is the movie we’re going to make.” And suddenly it all started falling into place as I looked around, imagining how beautifully it would all connect.
“I could kiss you, Tommy!” I called out.
“Pretty sure you’re taken, darling,” he called back, and Carter pulled me closer, smiling at the exchange.
I’m telling you these stories—these seemingly silly and frivolous snapshots of time strung together like pearls—not because individually they’re anything remarkable, but rather because I want you to see who I was back then.
Who we were. You’ve known me as this somewhat quiet mother, going about life with a gaze often settled into the middle distance as I washed up the dinner dishes or arranged playdates.
But I had this entirely different world I once inhabited.
And so did they. Before they became such giants, they were just boys, really, with heads filled with dreams.
Late that night, I opened the french doors to let the warm breeze in, dancing through the curtains that draped from the bedposts.
Hearing a familiar melody once again, I looked out the window to where Carter sat on one of the lounge chairs on the deck, wearing a gray T-shirt and loose pants with bare feet crossed at his ankles, an acoustic guitar in his hands as he began writing what would become one of the biggest albums of all time.
In his moonlit profile, he had a peaceful, wistful look on his face.
He felt familiar and new and like someone I’d known in every lifetime, if I believed in such things.
When he was gone, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
And when he was with me, I felt completely alive.
It was too much. I know that now, of course.
It’s dangerous to love like that. To spend years wishing more than anything that you could go back to a night, standing barefoot with a guitar calling you like a siren song.
But before I knew it, I took a step. And then another.
When I reached him, he didn’t say a word, just laid down his guitar, looked up, took my hand, and led us quietly through the darkened halls, up to the third floor and into the moonlight pouring into my room.
“I can’t stop kissing you,” I murmured, barely able to breathe.
He took my face in his hands and whispered, “Then don’t.”
He eased his shirt over his head in a swift move and returned to kissing me, his mouth pressing into mine in perfect rhythm with the motion of our bodies against each other.
I slid my hands down the taut muscles of his back, feeling the curve of his waist and hips.
He picked me up and set me down on the deep, luxurious bed and then suddenly, the quiet restraint we’d been showing was replaced by frenetic urgency.
Hands were everywhere at once, clutching, gripping.
His fingers tangled in my hair, pulling me deeper into his kiss.
The full moon filled the entire room with such bright light, it was almost like dawn. Or maybe it actually was dawn. In the hours that followed, I’d lost track of time and everything else. Later, we were lying in bed, limbs tangled together, and he said something to me:
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. My whole life, maybe.”
When someone says something like that to you, it can be dizzying.
He was always so sure of us. So certain.
I wanted so much to be that way with him, too, but it just wasn’t the way I was wired.
When you spend most of your life hearing that you don’t matter or that you’re a burden, it’s nearly impossible for your nervous system to accept anything but that message.
Yet somehow, he began to heal those parts.
I didn’t tell him this story at the time, but in the weeks before I met him, I’d started having strange dreams. Each night, I saw a man standing in front of me, holding me against his shoulder as he whispered four words in my ear—“I’m on the way.
” It was a message to have faith. To not lose hope in lovability.
I could never see his face but could sense his very essence, as real as if he had been standing there.
In the morning when I woke, I would swear I could still feel the fabric of his shirt beneath my fingertips and sense the scent of his skin.
I didn’t think it was anything at the time—merely dreams. But in the days after I met Carter, I couldn’t deny the uncanny feeling of having met him before and the overwhelming sense of familiarity.
I told him this story a long time later, and he gave me that knowing half smile he would give.
Because after all, this was how his mind worked.
He believed in these things without question.
In his mind, we had always known of the other’s existence.
To this day, I can still feel the words of both of those phrases on my neck, the feel of his skin against mine.
I’m on my way.
I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.