by Karen Booth
“I’m not a rock star.”
“Yes you are.”
“No. I'm not. Only assholes think of themselves as rock stars. I'm a songwriter. A performer. I'm a musician. Not a rock star.”
I rolled over to my side and pulled my knees up. “I never thought of it that way. I guess I figured that if you were famous for music, you were automatically a rock star.”
“Fame is a bloody sham. You know that, right? It's about as empty a thing as there is in the world. People spend their days trying to get it and when they do, they realize it's nothing of substance.”
“Ah, but you didn't want to go to the diner for breakfast that morning because of that thing that supposedly has no substance.”
“I didn't want to go to the diner because of the pain in the ass it can be. How much fun would we have had if we were sitting there trying to have the conversation we had and we were constantly getting interrupted by people wanting a picture or an autograph?”
“Don't those people pay your bills?”
“They do. And I love my fans. Truly. I do. But I'm like anybody else. I need a break. I need my privacy. And that morning with you was too important to me. I had a lot I had to say.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I had a lot I'd been rolling around in my head, practicing. For years. I didn't want to blow it, especially when I wasn't sure you were going to stay.”
He had certainly been on edge when I'd arrived that morning. Was that his big worry? That I'd up and leave? “Eamon. How could you think that I wouldn't stay? And I don't believe you when you say you've been practicing. That's not possible.”
“It's more than possible. It's the truth.”
A stretch of silence passed between us while I prepared to make a second run at the question that kept eating at me, the one I’d asked that morning at the Four Seasons. “If everything you said meant that much, and you were that eager to say it, I still don't understand why you didn't try to contact me.” All I could think about was what I'd been like over the last eleven years. It had taken a long time to heal from the loss of Eamon. It had been a bumpy road to get Dad sober and happy, and for Amy and I to both finish school, be reunited in the city, and find our jobs. In many ways, life wasn’t good again until Amy and I were back together. We understood each other. We never had to explain. There was no replacing that closeness, precisely why her moving out made me so uneasy. Would things get bad again? Would Eamon break my heart? Would I end up breaking his? It was hard to see rays of sunshine in my future, even when I felt so lucky to have Eamon back in my life. I couldn’t escape the feeling that it harkened the end of something.
“I thought about it. Many times.” He cleared his throat and left me again with a morass of silence. “But I told you the other morning. I felt like I had to let the universe tell me if this was meant to be. I wanted us to drift back together. Just like we did in the first place. It was total chance that you walked into the pub the night we met.”
“People meet like that all the time. It doesn't have to be fate.”
“But do people have what we did, Katherine? Do most people ever get a fraction of what we had together? I don't think they do.”
“I don’t know how to answer that. It's like my eyesight. I don't know another way to see.”
“Okay. Well then, answer me this. Was there a guy after me? A guy who came close?”
I nearly snorted into the phone. The answers on my lips were unfortunately yes and hell no. "There were some guys, yes. But none of them could hold a candle to you. If that’s what you’re asking."
“Did they make you laugh like I used to?”
“Not really.” Even the amateur stand-up comedian hadn't been able to make me laugh like Eamon could.
“Did they bring you coffee in bed?”
“A few did.”
“A few? How many are we talking about?”
“Are you seriously asking me that? I don't even want to think about how many women you've been with over the last eleven years.”
“Don't forget I was married for part of that. I was always faithful to her.”
That was a whole separate can of worms, but it didn't feel right for the first phone conversation. Things were still so tenuous between us. "Good to know.”
“What about the sex?”
I clamped my eyes shut and my face grew hot. “What about it?”
"Sex with the other guys. Was it as good as it was with me?” His voice was a low, sexy rumble and I swear to God he was exaggerating his Irish accent, just so he could kill me.
“What do you think?”
He waited to answer and I braced myself for it, eyes closed, breath heavy. “I think it wasn't the same at all. I think none of them knew to walk up behind you in the kitchen and kiss your neck. I don't think they had the nerve to slide their hand down your belly and into the front of your panties and touch you exactly the way you like to be touched. I know for a fact none of them made you come while you were doing dishes.”
That memory was as vivid as any between us. With my eyes closed, I could nearly feel my one hand gripping the edge of the cool porcelain sink with one hand, while the other wrapped back around his neck. The pads of my fingers slid over the delicate hairs at his nape while I gently dug my nails into his warm skin. His erection was pressed hard against my ass while his lips skimmed my neck. One hand was under my top, teasing my nipple. The other had me at his mercy, moving in deft circles. “That's not sex.”
“You nearly crumpled to the floor when it was over. And I seem to remember we had sex a few minutes later. In the hall. Against the wall.”
Was it possible to pass out from having a former lover retell a past sexual encounter? If so, I was about to do exactly that. “It was amazing.”
“We couldn't get enough of each other, remember?”
“I do remember that. Very well. But we were young and horny. You can’t forget that.”
“I was twenty-nine. I had things pretty well worked out by the time you came along.”
Amy popped her head into my room. I bolted upright in bed and slapped my hand over my phone. “Hey. What's up?” My face was on fire. The rest of me felt like I'd vacationed on the surface of the sun.
“Talking to Eamon, finally?”
“Yeah. I won't be much longer.”
“Take your time. By the flush in your cheeks, I'd say you're having fun.” Her eyebrows bounced.
She really thought she was so damn smart. “Did you actually need something?”
“Just wanted you to look at some of these clothes before I give them away. We can do it later.”
I slumped back down in bed. “Give me ten minutes. And close the door, please.” I removed my hand from the phone. “Sorry. Amy needed me for a second.”
“Hi, Eamon!” Amy shouted before making her exit. It was like being in high school all over again.
“Your sister says whatever she wants, doesn't she?”
I laughed. “Yeah. But I love her.”
“How are the wedding plans coming?”
“Good. Fine. They're keeping it small, so it's been pretty low-key so far.”
“And how do you feel about it? Your younger sister getting married.”
“It's great. I like her fiancé. He's nice.”
“That's not the most ringing endorsement I've ever heard.”
I'd thought it sounded pretty good. “You know I'm not like that, Eamon. I don't gush about much. It's just not my thing.”
“I know nothing of the sort. You were always happy and enthusiastic about everything when we were together. I didn't call you Sunny Girl for nothing.”
I wanted to tell him that I’d been Sunny Girl for only a short time, when I was with him. Would a second time with Eamon bring Sunny Girl back to life? If that happened, could I maintain it? That was my biggest fear about Eamon encapsulated. Did he just have a thing for me from eleven years ago? That version of Katherine had never told Eamon about her past. She hadn’t given him even a whiff of her bad m
emories. That Katherine had blinded herself from them, if only to have what she’d waited years and years for—a chance to be less complicated. “Amy still isn't sure that song is actually about me, you know. She thinks there's a good chance I'm lying.”
“Remind me to tell her when I come back to New York at the end of the tour.” He cleared his throat. “If you'll have me, that is.”
I blushed again. “So you’re definitely coming back to New York?”
“Always have been. I record in January and most of my band lives in the states, so there's no reason to go back home.”
“Well, of course I'll have you. I want to see you. That's why I called. You told me to call only if I’m serious. Remember? If I wasn't ready to try. This is me trying.”
“Good. That's all I wanted. Truly.”
“So when would you get here?" I rolled back on to my side and swished my foot back and forth across the duvet. I'd never thought of myself as the type for phone sex, but Eamon was making me reconsider everything. “I hope it's not too long. Now that I've seen you, I'm anxious to see you again.”
He sighed on the other end of the line. “Three weeks.”
“So forever, basically.”
“A lifetime.” He laughed it off. “We'll make it work. Lots of phone calls. Maybe some late night ones. When I'm alone and need to unwind after a show.” His inflection was leading me right down that phone sex path. I was going to have to brush up on my dirty talk, practice saying “cock” out loud without giggling.
“After Amy moves out. She's very nosy. She's probably out in the hall listening right now.”
He chuckled again. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. We're leaving for the venue.”
“Okay. Have a good show.”
“Talk tomorrow?”
“Talk tomorrow. Definitely.”
“Bye then.”
“Bye.” I hung up and simply stared at my phone. For all of my stupid trepidation over the decision to call him, I was so glad I'd done it. I felt as light as air.
“I wasn't listening. I happened to be walking by,” Amy said from somewhere beyond the confines of my room. I noticed then that she hadn't closed the door all the way.
“You're terrible,” I called. “A grown woman deserves her privacy.”
“Not with her sister around. You should know that by now.” My door swung open and there was Amy with an armful of magazines. She waltzed right in, uninvited, and dropped an avalanche of bridal mags onto my bed.
“I always hoped you'd get some damn manners one day. Apparently not.”
“Let's talk bridesmaid dresses.” The bed shook when Amy flopped down next to me. “I picked one out and want to see what you think.”
“Yay. Can't wait.”
“You don't have me around for that much longer. We should get as much of this wedding stuff out of the way as we can while I'm still living here.”
The end of Amy and Katherine, roommates, was coming. Things would never magically wind their way back to the way they'd been in this apartment, the way they'd been when we'd shared a room at home. Being close to Amy was the only thing that had kept me together all these years. Well, aside from Eamon. But he'd been his own kind of drug. And I still wasn't sure it was a good idea to start using again.
But damn, I really wanted to.
Chapter Six
It was more than twenty years ago, the day after Mom's funeral to be exact, when Amy moved her stuff into my room. The three of us—Dad, Amy, and I—were clinging to each other, but we girls had become especially inseparable. We were too scared to be apart, too freaked out by everything that had happened. We were little rabbits jumping at noises and always looking over our shoulders, ready to scamper off to save ourselves.
Amy had no idea I was carrying around a separate set of worries. She thought the horribleness had passed and we were simply dealing with the aftermath, adjusting to our new sad life. Amy had no idea I was convinced Mom's boyfriend, Gordon, was going to come and take her. Just her. She was the special one.
The move-in had been my idea. Amy eagerly agreed and Dad acquiesced. The man loved having a project, and the truth is that he would've done anything for us during the days and weeks immediately following the accident. He was our rock, treating us to whatever we wanted at the grocery store and reading us stories before bed. He was Super Dad. It wasn't until later that he fell into hundreds of tiny pieces.
With some extra muscle from the high school boy who lived next door, Dad moved Amy's bed across the hall. I coordinated the careful migration of Amy's kitten poster collection to my walls. Dad added an extra shelf to the inside of my closet and since we were only ten and eight, he stepped in when we struggled with space planning. It only took one day to create our new sisters' refuge, and Amy and I lived like that for another eight years, through zits and training bras, homework and breakups. We were together until I went off to college.
I'd slept well the first night we shared a room. Amy and I were both knee-deep in exhaustion, which was the only thing that could drive out the too-fresh memories of the events that had turned our entire world upside down. The second night, however, wasn't so easy for me. It was like the ghost of Mom was visiting me, but not the sweet and loving version of Mom. It was the angry one. The last version of her I ever saw. She stomped around in my head, blaming me for everything.
You're sad? Well, too bad. You wouldn't be so sad right now if you'd just minded your own business. What am I always telling you girls? Worry about yourself, not everyone else.
I could see the azure blaze of her eyes and the flame red in her cheeks, just like the day she'd died, when she'd screamed at me to get in the car. If I lived another day on this earth, I never wanted to see that expression in anyone's eyes again. I reached into my bedside table drawer that night, pulled out the flashlight I used for reading and stuck it under the covers. It provided just enough glow for me to see, so I did what any normal, hopelessly paranoid ten-year-old would do—I watched my sister sleep.
She was so beautiful when her mouth wasn't running a million miles a minute. Her complexion was perfect, her golden blond hair draped across her cheek, her mouth in a tiny “o”. Somewhere in my wound-too-tight mind I decided that this was how I could keep Amy safe. I would keep watch over her every night to make sure I wouldn't lose the person I loved most in the world. Eventually, I fell into a routine—I pretended to be asleep, carefully listening to her breaths until they became slow and perfectly even. I would then get out of bed, double check the locks on the windows, and make sure the shades were closed as tight as possible. I'd climb back under the covers and keep an eye on Amy for as long as I could stand it, before my body would eventually wave the white flag of surrender and slip into sleep.
To pass my time awake, I thought up ideas for booby traps to capture Gordon if he tried to get into our room. Unfortunately, most of my ideas were the stuff of Wile E. Coyote and involved things like anvils. I was ten. I had no clue where to get an anvil. It kept me up, though, and most important, Amy stayed safe and sound. There was no way I could've lived through another loss like the one we'd just endured. All these years later, I still felt that way—I couldn't live through another family tragedy. No more loss.
“Getting down to the nitty gritty, aren't we?” Amy's fiancé, Luke, stood in the hallway of our apartment outside her room, slugging down the remnants of a bottle of water, the flimsy plastic crinkling in on itself. He flashed his super sweet self-assured smile, the one that always made me think of Ryan Gosling memes. Hey girl…let me rub your feet while we watch Downton Abbey.
“We're getting there.” Amy folded in the flaps on another box and handed it to him while I packed up the last of her books.
Sweat dripped from Luke's brow. He'd been working hard all afternoon, up and down the stairs of our building with armfuls of my sister's stuff. His heather gray t-shirt said This is What a Feminist Looks Like. It clung to his pecs like it couldn't bear to let him go. The guy was buff, ridiculously go
od looking, and certainly knew his audience—I'd give my sister that much. “I’ll take this down right now. I've got a few things to rearrange in the truck, so I might be a few minutes.”
I wasn't sure if it was a good thing that they'd opted to not hire movers. It was certainly giving me more time with Amy, but it was also making it a horribly long and drawn-out process. There was a part of me that just wanted today to be over so I could start getting used to the new normal.
“The books are all packed up now. Do you think Luke can take the bookshelf down on his own?” I folded in the flaps of the cardboard box and sat back on my haunches.
“I’m not sure I want it anymore. It doesn't really go with the decor of his apartment.”
I tried very hard not to roll my eyes at the concept of Luke's second-floor walk-up in Brooklyn having decor. “You've had this bookshelf since we were kids. Grandpa and Dad made it for your room when you were born.”
“I know who built it, Katherine. Sometimes it's nice to get a fresh start, you know?”
I bunched up my lips and choked back a sigh. She was getting huffy because she was tired. Moving was a real test of everyone’s patience. “Okay. I'll hold on to it. I'm pretty sure you're going to change your mind anyway.”
Amy crossed her arms over her chest. “Did you seriously just say that to me? You're sure I'm going to change my mind?”
“It's a nice bookcase. And it's sentimental.” I got up from the floor and wiped the dust from my knees.
“Oh. You were talking about the bookcase?”
“What else would I be talking about?”
Amy looked away from me, staring out the window, blinking like crazy. The sun was setting, getting ready to duck behind the buildings across the street. The light made me second-guess what I was seeing—glistening, dewy teardrops.
“Ames, are you crying?” I walked over to her and put my arm around her shoulder. Amy never cried. She was tough as nails, tougher than me for sure.
“What if this is a mistake? What if things don't work out?” Her voice was croaky. “I love him, but we don't really know each other that well. Maybe this is moving too fast.”