Chapter Twenty
LUCY
Except for the purple penises bobbing over her head and the burning sensation in her thigh, Lucy was feeling pretty good.
The bass in the place had made her mostly deaf, but the ringing sound in her ears muffling the house music was actually sort of soothing.
The three margaritas she’d had didn’t hurt either.
Lucy tried to look cool and relaxed from her spot on the absurdly long corner booth they’d reserved for the bachelorette party.
She stared across the room at the people drunkenly gyrating on the dance floor, keeping her eye out for the one set of bobbing penises that were lit up with flashing LEDs – Chloe.
‘Hey,’ panted Kim as she slid into the booth. Naturally, Kim managed to make her hot pink bouncing penis headband look like some kind of avant-garde Barbie-core fashion statement. Unfair. ‘Brought you another green one,’ she said, handing Lucy a lollipop penis.
‘Score!’ Lucy yelled over the music. ‘The green is surprisingly delightful.’
‘It is,’ replied Kim, licking her own green candy appendage.
‘What are you doing over here?’
‘Can’t dance anymore,’ Lucy grumbled. ‘You’ll be happy to know, I have a sex injury.’
‘Awesome,’ Kim said, clearly impressed. ‘Whatcha got?’
‘Pulled a hammy,’ Lucy replied.
‘Aw, that’s not too bad.’
‘It’s not a concussion,’ Lucy said, waggling her eyebrows.
‘That was not my finest moment.’
‘Ah, but watching you explain it to your dad in the hospital was mine .’ Lucy opened her lollipop and took a good lick. ‘What was that dude’s name?’
‘Oh, man,’ Kim said, squeezing her eyes together as though forcing her sloshed brain to remember. ‘Derek? Dominik? Something with a D.’
‘Oh, there was a D all right,’ Lucy said before bursting into margarita-induced laughter.
Kim followed her right over, the both of them laughing like teenagers before clinking their green penis-pops together in a toast to good old D-whoever.
‘Is there THC in these dicks?’ Kim gasped through tears of laughter.
This sent them into a whole new round of guffaws that made Lucy’s stomach hurt and wish she hadn’t eaten the whole burrito at the restaurant beforehand.
As Lucy gulped for air and clutched at her stomach, the entire club went nuts. The song had changed. She could actually feel the vibration of the dancers through the floor, even from across the massive room.
The song was fast, new. But somewhere there in the background was a sample. Something she recognized.
‘Oh, shit,’ Lucy said, dropping her chin in her penis-free hand. She stared at the bright pink bouquet of flowers lying forgotten on the table. The same one that had bounced down the hallway past Nicky’s feet that first day. Lucy mumbled, ‘Is this—?’
‘Your man?’ Kim asked. ‘Yep.’
The sample behind the dance beat was ‘The Breathing Room’ sped up slightly and laid over some other guy’s hip-hop/dance/rap combo. It was different, but it was there. All of it. As familiar as her own name, and just as ever-fucking-present.
Kim scooted closer, leaned in so that her shoulder rested against Lucy’s. A comforting hand came to Lucy’s back.
‘It’s all right, Luce. It’s okay.’
Lucy’s head turned to Kim. Shocked. Panicked.
‘Oh, God. Y-you know?’ Lucy stuttered.
‘I’m like the smartest person you know, so …’ Kim said, shrugging.
Oh, God. She knew knew. About the song. About Nicky Broome.
‘I should have told you,’ Lucy burbled.
‘No. You didn’t have to. I love you like a sister. You are the most important person in my life. My whole life. But that doesn’t mean you have to tell me everything. I don’t tell you everything.’
‘You don’t?’
Kim’s slightly glassy eyes scanned the table, squinting in thought. ‘Well, okay. I actually do. But I don’t have to.’
Lucy sucked on the unreasonably delicious green penis, then said, ‘The first time I heard it, I was on the street. Listening to the radio on my way to class. On my Walkman. Remember the Walkman?’
‘Yep,’ Kim replied dryly.
Lucy exhaled a sigh. ‘I knew from the first note that it was him. I knew from the first chorus it was about me. I started sobbing. Like uncontrollable sobbing. On the sidewalk. I mean, it was New York so people mostly tried to ignore me and give me a wide berth but …’ Lucy could remember that day perfectly.
It was firmly imprinted in her psyche. ‘Never made it to class.’
‘The Breathing Room’ ended up becoming the undisputed heavyweight song of the year. A breakout hit by a little band no one had heard of called Super, featuring a dynamic and beautiful lead singer named Nick Broome.
The song was everywhere. He was everywhere. TV, the radio, posters in the Virgin Records down the block from her dorm. In the background at every party.
From the very start, people theorized who the song was about.
It was a luscious secret, like the subject of ‘You’re So Vain,’ only fueled by a burgeoning internet and fans whose every drunken two-a.m. musing could be shared with the whole fucking world in an instant.
Over the years, ‘The Breathing Room Girl’ had stamped itself on American culture, become a shorthand phrase for an enticing and unknowable mystery.
Nicky never told anyone. If he’d only said publicly that the song was just fantasy, or that it was about some girl he knew once, the whole mess might have blown over.
But he didn’t, and the mystery of the thing made it tantalizing.
Compelling. Made it last. Well, the song did that too, Lucy supposed.
Because it was amazing. Beautiful and powerful.
A love song you could dance to, rock out in the car and scream at the top of your lungs.
When Super’s first album was rereleased for the ten-year anniversary, the fervor really ticked up.
The lyrics, reprinted in the CD liner notes (because that was still a thing) included new punctuation.
A question mark, of all things. Websites popped up, dedicated to pondering the addition of a fucking question mark.
( Was it always supposed to be there? Was it added now for a reason?
What did it mean? ) A few tiny pixels of difference between the original lyrics printed in the late 1990s and the ones from the 2000s made the subject relevant again.
At the twenty-year anniversary, there was a call from a music magazine willing to pay a million dollars – one million actual American dollars – for the answer to the mystery.
‘Who Is the Breathing Room Girl?’ was a funny human-interest blurb on The Today Show , the local news, in the damn Wall Street Journal . You too could be a millionaire if you just speak up, people!
Lucy didn’t. Even though a million dollars would have vastly improved her net worth.
‘Jesus,’ Lucy exclaimed to Kim. ‘You could have made a million bucks off that info.’
Kim shook her head, pink penises swaying dramatically from side to side. ‘I don’t need a million dollars as much as I need you.’
Lucy’s eyes went all misty. She felt a lump of emotion forming in her throat. Damn, margaritas and memories are a terrible combo. ‘I love you,’ she told Kim.
‘I love you, too,’ replied Kim, slinging her arm across Lucy’s shoulders. ‘There is one thing, though.’ The statement came with a grimace, and a look of contrition Lucy could never remember seeing on her best friend’s ever-confident face.
‘What?’ Lucy prodded.
‘The question mark.’
‘Not you, too!’
‘Well, come on! It’s a fucking national mystery. It changes the whole meaning of the song, dammit! Have you asked him about it? Do you understand it?’
Lucy’s body curled in on itself. A teensy bit of shame washed over her. ‘I’ve been avoiding the subject.’
‘You haven’t mentioned the song?’ Kim asked, clearly floored.
‘No.’
‘At all?’
‘No.’
‘God,’ Kim said under her breath.
‘I don’t … want to,’ Lucy sputtered, feeling childish and weak.
Kim pulled her phone from her back pocket and typed furiously with her thumbs. She propped the thing up against the flower bouquet and scrolled.
The lyrics to ‘The Breathing Room’ glared up at them in glowing black and white. Lucy didn’t really need to read them; she knew all the words by heart though she avoided the song at every possible opportunity.
Kim placed her hand over Lucy’s, a tangible reminder of the unwavering strength of the nearly forty years of friendship and support between them.
For the first time, Lucy read the lyrics – really read them.
‘The Breathing Room’
Music and Lyrics by Nick Broome
Gazes like smoke and whispers
Strokes of sparks like wishes
Sharp breaths, panted names
Beginnings and endings
Sometimes feel the same
Doubt like ocean wind within
Burdens and hassles without
Weight lifted under the weight of you
Wanted to spend all summer
In that breathing room
There with you, that was it.
It was the calming.
It was the fit.
In the Breathing Room,
You gave me breathing room.
Praises like balm, a zephyr
A draft to ease the pressure
Soothed and strong over the heart of you
Should have spent all year
In that Breathing Room.
There with you, that was it.
It was the calming.
It was the fit.
In the Breathing Room,
You gave me breathing room.
Gasps, fiery and resounding
Sated and restless, I cling
Come undone, life changed
Endings and beginnings …
Sometimes, they’re the same
There with you, that was it.
It was the calming.
It was the fit.
In the Breathing Room,
You gave me breathing room.
Everything from you.
Anything for you?
‘Ugh,’ Lucy groaned, throwing her head in her hands.
Kim exhaled dramatically. ‘I mean … whoa.’
‘I know, okay?’ Lucy griped. ‘But in the end, it’s just a song. One of about a million he’s written over the years.’
‘Sure, but it’s a question, Luce. The song is a question. For you. You get that, right?’
‘You think he’s been waiting twenty-some-odd years for me to answer?’ Lucy asked, disbelieving.
‘You don’t?’
Lucy knew that Nicky had been trying to get her to bring up the song since the moment they ran into each other; she knew that. She could feel it lingering in his avaricious dive into her Spotify app. In the way he jumped on the swing to rock love songs in their conversations.
She should bring it up; they should both get it all out on the table.
Lucy was a grown-ass woman; she knew how to talk about difficult things.
However, she was also really fucking adept at denial and deflection.
And she’d been avoiding all talk about ‘The Breathing Room’ for decades.
It was a form of self-protection that was second nature to her now.
‘It doesn’t matter, Kim. It’s old news.’
‘You had sex with him last night ,’ Kim objected, punctuating each word with a finger stab at the table.
‘And I’ll be going back to Ohio and tenure review on Sunday.
He’s headed off on a European tour on Monday.
A European tour . Because he’s a certified rock god.
He doesn’t even live in the real world, Kim.
This is just another weird fling. We’ll probably meet up again when we’re in our seventies.
’ The thought of that sent a sick feeling washing over her. It was probably the burrito.
Kim tapped at her phone again. Lucy caught a glimpse of the Google doodle before Kim tipped her phone away.
After a moment, Kim huffed, ‘Oh, boy.’
‘What?’
‘Spain, France, England … fucking Monaco .’ Kim scrolled up on her phone. ‘A show every two or three days. Sometimes four days between countries. It goes from the end of July to …’ She groaned, ‘ Next year . In July. It’s a full year. In Europe. Damn, a lot of these shows are already sold out.’
Lucy’s heart sank. She felt it settle on the overlarge burrito in her belly and tap out a sad tune. Dumb. This is a short-term thing with Nicky. Till Sunday. Nothing more.
‘See?’ Lucy said, gathering the futile little scraps of hope that had somehow formed without her noticing. She shoved those pesky things right into a familiar old mental box marked ‘Nicky Broome’ and locked them up tight.
‘Shit,’ Kim said before exhaling heavily and putting her phone down. ‘Okay, it’s like I said before. A nice distraction.’
‘Yep,’ Lucy agreed, wishing she’d gone for the fourth margarita instead of water.
The beat from the speakers slid into a rhythm that had a Pavlovian effect on Lucy. It felt like bouncing in a tub of joy bubbles. She couldn’t help but smile.
‘Oh, hello!’ yelled Kim. ‘I believe they’re playing our song! Sex injury or no sex injury we’re going out there.’
Kim took Lucy’s hand and dragged her out of the booth, their dick headbands springing to the beat of the Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Hypnotize’ as they sauntered to the dance floor.
There, Lucy lost herself in the music, screaming the lyrics with Kim until she was hoarse and dancing until the pain in her hamstring was nothing but an afterthought.