33 EVIE
E VIE
By the time the American tour was over, Mayluna, and Carter in particular, seemed to be gaining more and more attention, each crowd getting larger as the months went on.
Maybe that’s why I felt like I wanted to keep our relationship quiet when I went back home to Pennsylvania for a few days that winter.
I think somewhere deep down, I felt more secure keeping us in our own little private bubble for as long as I could.
I’d spent Christmas in a hotel room with Carter and the guys.
Tommy went out at the last minute and dragged back what was quite possibly the ugliest tree I’d ever seen, trailing needles the whole way down the corridor until it was nearly bare.
But it was so perfect. We all decorated it with ornaments we’d picked up from the local drugstore on Christmas Eve and had a festive dinner in a hotel restaurant strung with holiday lights.
Even Alex was in cheerful spirits. I have an image of him wearing a black Smiths T-shirt, holding a Santa hat in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other, along with a rare, light smile.
Tommy actually filled dollar-store stockings with candy and stapled them to the upholstery on the headboards of the beds after we all fell asleep.
Christmas music was played. I think there are grainy photos of the scene somewhere.
Maybe Tommy’s wife still has them. More likely they got lost amid the mayhem of the time.
I still have the bleary-eyed one of Alex and me, though. I love that photo.
Except for the years with my mom, that was the happiest Christmas of my entire life up until that point—surrounded by all of them and silly makeshift holiday decor, just a group of four displaced Brits and a formerly orphaned girl. Joyful in our youth.
They headed to London to start recording the album with a fancy new producer the label had brought in.
Much different from the first EP, which they’d recorded in a small cottage studio in Oxford a year and a half earlier.
I would join back up with them in January, but for a few days in between, I went back to my hometown in Pennsylvania.
Kate had gotten engaged and wanted me to come back to talk celebrations and wedding planning.
I think we really just missed each other, and it had been a long time.
Though, honestly, the timing of that visit still to this day strikes me as so strange.
I wonder, did the universe orchestrate it that way?
With such intentionality? Or was it just a happenstance of calendar dates?
Even Carter would probably wonder about that, no doubt.
You may be wondering about your dad at this point, and where it all comes together. Of course, if you’re doing the math, you know that none of the plans that Carter and I were making turned out like we thought.