Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Stevie Franklin sat in her bedroom at the Copperfield House and watched the ocean roll up against a beach heavy with froth and snow.
From the opposite side of the house, she could hear the chaos of party setup, the calling out of Copperfield family members as they hurried to fine-tune last-minute decorations and roll out the red carpet for their hundred-plus guests.
It overwhelmed Stevie to think that this would be the biggest Christmas party of her life.
In the previous week since she’d arrived, Stevie had experienced creativity like never before.
She’d spent countless hours writing lyrics, deep into the night.
She’d snuck into the practice room to strum her guitar and sing until all hours of the morning.
She’d emerged bleary-eyed and underslept to practice with Ella, always finding new reasons to get excited, to open her eyes wider.
All the while, she felt the distance between herself and her daughter widening.
Still, she sang every song for Joni. She prayed that somehow, Joni would get the sense that Stevie was thinking about her.
That she would always love her, despite everything.
But a couple of days ago, a startling revelation had come to Stevie.
Will had mentioned Grayson, and her head had rung with recognition.
At first, she’d chalked it up as nothing.
Plenty of people in the world were named Grayson.
But when she dug deeper, she realized that this was the craziest of all coincidences—so much so that she struggled to see it as a coincidence at all.
Was it possible that Grayson had reached out to Will and Ella because of Stevie?
Was it possible that he was trying to make contact?
* * *
This was how the story went. It was a story that Stevie had recounted to herself repeatedly, the story that Stevie couldn’t possibly get over. It was the story her daughter needed to hear from her. It was the story that Stevie wasn’t sure how to say aloud.
That night at the burger restaurant, the night when Ella was too sick to work and Stevie covered for her, Stevie met Grayson Harris, the wealthy music lover who was nursing his beer and fries and refusing to go home when the clock said so.
He was a David Bowie fan, but he didn’t know the song “Stay.” He called her Stevie Nicks. She told him her mother was dead.
Why had she given him this piece of her soul like that?
She’d never understand that.
In the days that followed their first encounter at the burger place, Grayson returned many times for a burger and a chat about music.
Sometimes he brought albums by to show her, vintage ones he’d picked up at a local record store.
The other servers at the burger place teased Stevie with jealousy in their eyes.
They knew the wealthy guy with the gorgeous smile had a crush on Stevie.
They called it her “Cinderella story.” Stevie told them to quit.
The problem was that she could feel herself falling for him.
She dreamed of him endlessly. She watched the front door of the burger place, waiting for him to appear.
On the nights that he didn’t come in, she was moody and upset.
Once, Ella called her out on this, but Stevie denied it relentlessly.
After that, Stevie took the stage at a local concert venue and left her heart out there, howling, aching.
When she finished, a few promoters approached to ask if she’d perform at other concert venues across the city.
Funnily enough, she saw that people liked her heartache. They could feel it through her singing.
The very next day, Grayson came into the burger restaurant.
He looked pale and nervous, and he stuttered when he asked if she wanted to get a drink with him after she got off work.
She told him she was still twenty and couldn’t drink in bars.
She figured he’d leave her after that. But he told her that he had a ton of beer back at his place.
Beer and wine and whatever else she wanted. She could come there if she wanted.
Stevie heard herself say yes.
Grayson walked Stevie back to his old Manhattan building, a place with a doorman and an elevator operator, both of whom greeted Grayson by name.
Grayson introduced her as Stevie and said, “She’s going to be someone someday.
” Stevie blushed and said hello. She could tell that the doormen didn’t take Grayson seriously.
They probably knew his parents, knew that he was a rich kid pretending to be cool.
Still, there was something about him. She wanted to be near him.
When Stevie entered his apartment, the first thing she saw was the instruments: a baby grand piano, a Gibson guitar, a D’Angelico XL, and a Gretsch.
Stevie’s mouth watered. As Grayson prepared cocktails with names Stevie had never heard of, she sat at the piano and moved her hands over the keys, amazed at the emotion that rolled through her.
It felt like going to church. Because she couldn’t help it, she closed her eyes and let her voice swell.
She sang and played for nearly ten minutes, unable to stop.
When she finally pulled herself away, she found Grayson sitting behind her, captivated, his eyes wet.
She’d never seen a guy like Grayson almost cry before.
“You’re so talented,” he said. “I’m sorry. I feel so many things when you sing.”
Stevie sat on the sofa five feet away from him.
She’d never been on a piece of furniture that took up so much space.
Outside, it was autumn, and she could see the wind flutter the red and orange leaves at the treetops.
She felt as though she could hear Grayson’s heart beating.
She told herself to keep it together. She couldn’t get involved with a wealthy man like Grayson, a man who was set to take over his father’s business. He probably had a girlfriend, anyway.
“You live here alone?” she asked him.
Grayson nodded. “The rest of my family is back in Paris. I grew up between here and France. They’re sort of miffed that I came here.”
“Wow.” Stevie had never left the country before. Moving to New York City from West Virginia had felt like enough of a trek. “Why are they displeased? New York is great.”
“It is. But now that I’m twenty-four, they want me to slip into the story they’ve been telling themselves. They want me to get married and have a family and work myself to death.”
Stevie’s stomach twisted. She imagined that all of that really would happen to him. Maybe he’d even enjoy it.
“But that’s why I love going to gigs in New York,” Grayson said dreamily. “So many of your lyrics, and the lyrics of your friends’ bands, echo this discontent I’ve been feeling for years. When you sing ‘What am I doing here?’, I feel it here.” He touched his chest.
“It’s a simple lyric,” Stevie said. She’d considered changing it many times.
“It’s simple, but it’s true,” Grayson said. “I never knew what I was doing in Paris. I had a girlfriend from a wealthy family. I had wealthy friends. I had my parents and my job. But I needed to get away from all that.”
Stevie frowned. “You and your girlfriend broke up?”
“We did. We both agreed it was for the best. I think we want different things.”
“What does she want?” Stevie asked.
Grayson chuckled. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I showed her some music from New York. I think your friend Ella was playing on the track? And she wrinkled her nose at it. That was when I knew we had no future together.”
Stevie felt strangely jealous of the fact that Grayson had known Ella’s music before he’d ever met Ella and Stevie.
Ella hardly gave him the time of day. Often, Ella forgot Grayson’s name, and when Stevie brought him up, Ella had to be reminded of who he was.
Stevie was vaguely sure that Ella was waiting for Stevie to tell Grayson to get lost. Ella wanted Stevie to date one of the other rocker boys in their clique, maybe one of Will’s friends, Kenny or Logan.
But Stevie couldn’t get Grayson out of her head.
Nothing happened that first night at Grayson’s place.
But after that, every time Grayson invited Stevie over to his apartment, Stevie couldn’t resist. The musical instruments were too inspiring, and the view out the window was like nothing she had in her awful apartment, which she shared with four other people.
She loved how he looked at her after she finished singing.
When Grayson first kissed her, Stevie’s heart swung wildly out of her chest and back in again.
Tears filled her eyes. They pulled away from one another.
For a long time, they were quiet. Tension spilled between them.
And then, Stevie couldn’t take it anymore.
She pressed her lips against his and let herself feel everything she wanted to feel. She let herself think the word love.
For a little while, Stevie dropped out of the scene and spent days, then weeks, then more than a month with Grayson.
It terrified her to feel so in love with him.
It terrified her that it felt so natural, as easy as breathing.
They never spoke about the future, but Stevie couldn’t help but think that a future was coming for them, that their hearts were beating as one.
But then one week, Grayson’s father came to Manhattan for a visit to “check on his son.” Grayson was pained by it, especially since his father gave him only a day’s warning.
He went into the burger place to tell Stevie about it and explain that he “was going to tell his father” about their relationship, but that he needed to wait for the right time.
Stevie smiled and kissed him and told him that everything would be all right. She naively believed that.
After Grayson left to prepare for his father’s arrival, Ella came over and asked Stevie why Grayson looked so glum. Stevie shrugged and said his father was coming into town.
“Are you going to meet him?” Ella asked, wiping down the bartop.
“Probably,” Stevie said. “But I get the feeling that his family is really intense.”
Ella grimaced. “As a person from a messed-up family, I say, be aware.”
Stevie’s head rang. It was rare that Ella spoke about her messed-up family—
about her father in prison and her mother, locked away at home.
But the pain that echoed from Ella’s eyes frightened Stevie.
She wondered if getting involved with Grayson and his father was too much trouble.
She contemplated whether it would distract her from her true mission of making it as a musician.
In the days that followed, Stevie threw herself back into the music scene.
She performed three nights in a row and made more money than she was used to, most of which she spent on rent and guitar strings.
Each time Grayson called her apartment to ask where she was, she was out at a music venue or practicing with her friends.
When he came into the burger place to complain about his father, he never once mentioned Stevie meeting his father.
Stevie knew this was a bad sign. But she threw herself deeper into her music life. Grayson came to the burger place less and less often, maybe because she wasn’t as receptive to him, and maybe because his father didn’t like him staying out late. They never talked about it.
One day, Stevie woke up and realized she hadn’t seen Grayson in nearly two weeks. The fact of this hit her like a ton of bricks. She walked to work, blinking out at a future that didn’t include Grayson at all. Was this really the ending of her first brilliant love?
It was on this walk to work that Stevie saw the billboard.
There they were at ten feet tall: handsome Grayson and his salt-and-pepper-haired father, the spitting image of Grayson but twenty-five years older.
On the billboard, they stood beside one another, smiling out at the city streets.
They looked moneyed and intellectual, entirely the opposite of what Stevie knew.
At that moment, she knew she could never see Grayson again.
She knew she could never walk down that street again.
Stevie was never sure when the pregnancy symptoms really began.
At first, she abruptly stopped liking the taste of beer and didn’t drink at all.
Soon after, she had stomach problems, aches and pains and heartburn.
She chalked it up to nerves. But when she realized she hadn’t had a period in six weeks, maybe longer, she panicked.
She knew what her body was telling her. But she didn’t want to listen to it.
For a little while, she pretended it wasn’t happening.
She didn’t try to contact Grayson because she didn’t want him to drop the pretenses of his super-important life for her and their baby.
She was mildly surprised that he didn’t come into the burger place at all, but soon let that disbelief go.
When she learned that he’d returned to Paris with his father, she wept with a mix of relief and sorrow.
She was grateful that she wouldn’t have to run into him on the streets of Manhattan.
But she hated that they hadn’t been allowed the chance their love should have given them.
Stevie left Manhattan after people figured out she was pregnant.
Whispers circulated about her, suggesting she was a particular kind of girl.
She stopped performing on stage and quit writing songs.
She called in sick one too many times at the burger place and was eventually fired.
When Ella came to her apartment to check on her, Stevie had her roommates tell her that she wasn’t there.
Ella left note after note: I know you’re avoiding me.
Tell me what’s going on. I’m here. But Stevie refused to answer them.
Stevie left Manhattan without a real destination in mind. It was frigid, and she wanted to find the sunshine. She embarked across the continent, tears staining her cheeks, her hands cupping her pregnant stomach. She was a young mother against the world. She was a musician who’d lost her voice.