Page 67 of One More Time
‘I can guess,’ Nicky whispered.
‘Yeah,’ she retorted, turning back to him. ‘The fucking “Breathing Room.” When Chloe hit fourteen, guess what song she became obsessed with when she and her friends would sit around painting their nails and talking about boys?’
‘“The Breathing Room,”’ Nicky repeated softly.
‘Yep. That was a whole new and exciting form of torture, let me tell you. She played it over and over at top volume for weeks. And don’t get me started on the grocery store. Or Muzak versions in the goddamn dentist’s chair. And every time I hear it, it’s like this gaping hole gets reopened. The good sometimes, but mostly just the pain of it. What we could have been.’
Lucy shook her head, resumed pacing in front of thewindow. ‘If you had just been some guy who promised me things and left, I would have gotten over it. It would have passed. It did pass. Mostly. I was over it. It would have been just this humiliating old memory from when I was eighteen and naïve. Like a bunch of other cringe-inducing mistakes I’ve made over the years. Big deal. But instead, the song opened up this … this old memory of hope. It made everythingunfinished. Like you’d actually felt all the things I’d felt. Like I wasn’t naïve or crazy. But you were also still so fucking far away.’
Lucy ran her hands through her hair, tried to steady herself. When she spoke again it was with more calm. ‘There was this epic reminder of it all. With a life of its own. The song colored everything. You were gone, but you weren’t.’ She stood stock-still before him. ‘It’s been decades, but it’s also only beendays, because on the way to Vegas the guy next to me in the security line at the airport was humming along to “The Breathing Room” on his AirPods. Do you understand?’
Nicky collapsed into the nearest chair and tried to stop the throbbing in his brain by rubbing a hand over his forehead. Of all the many thousands of ways he’d envisioned Lucy’s possible reaction to the song, most involved some form of indifference. He felt stupid now admitting, even to himself, that he’d never considered anything like what she’d just described.
He sighed. ‘Yeah, I understand.’
The least he could do now was fill in the rest of the picture. He didn’t dare hope that it would lead to forgiveness, but she deserved the truth.
He began, ‘The fucked-up irony of the whole thing is that I only had the guts to leavebecauseof you.’
Lucy slumped into the chair on the other side of the coffee table. He had her full attention now.
He inhaled a deep breath, gathering the strength to continue. He ran a hand through his hair, stalling for time while he tried to get his thoughts in order. If only he could grab his notebook and write it all down first. No time for that, though.
He began, ‘I went back to Dover. When I left you that morning. I was gonna pack up what I could fit in the Jeep and come back down to Rehoboth. But while I was there, I got into it with my dad. He’d been pushing college and the life-or-death importance of getting my shit together.’
Nicky could picture it, as vivid as the sunlight streaming in through the hotel window. God, how many hotel rooms had he been in since that day?
He went on, ‘All year long I’d been lying to him. Told him I’d applied to UD and a couple others. But I just couldn’t. Every time I thought about it, it just felt …wrong. Like trying to walk backwards on my hands or something. Like, how was I supposed to go four years like that? Maybe more? Maybe my whole life?’
When he paused, Lucy asked, ‘You told him?’
Nicky nodded. ‘I can’t tell you what that night at the beach meant to me, Lucy. I tried in “The Breathing Room,” but there is really no way to describe how important it was to me. It was an actual turning point, a pivot from where I was headed onto a totally different path. It felt like you openedthe windows and I could finally breathe. Like I had this weight on my chest, like I was trapped and you lifted it all away. I couldn’t hold it in anymore after that. So, I told him.’
Lucy’s eyes closed, and he watched a tear fall down her ruddy cheek. ‘My dad and I fought, right there at the back of my Jeep. Screaming, yelling … eventually punching.’ He could still feel the sensation of it. Deep in his chest. Like his heart was breaking and being set free at the exact same time. ‘He kept repeating, even as he swung on me, “This is not acceptable! You will not throw your life away! This is not acceptable!”’ Nicky let out a gust of air and added, ‘I knew – Iknew– that if I didn’t leave that day, thatminute, my dad would just keep at me. We’d keep having the same argument over and over. He’d find me at the beach and eventually either his bullshit or his fists would wear me down and I’d give in.’
Lucy wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Fight or flight,’ she whispered.
Nicky pleaded, ‘You have to believe me, I was planning to come back. Even after I was driving out West I was going to come back. Somewhere in Illinois. Or Iowa I found a payphone and spent hours trying to get your number at the beach. It was unlisted. I realized later it was because—’
Lucy huffed, hung her head in her hands. ‘Kim’s dad had played for the Eagles. None of their numbers were listed.’
‘Right,’ Nicky said. ‘So, I called your parents’ house in Dover. But I didn’t have a number for you to call me back. I just said, “Tell her Nicky called.”’
‘Jesus,’ Lucy breathed.
‘You never got the message, I guess?’
‘No.’
‘I had these teenage fantasies of snatching you up and bringing you back to Seattle with me.’
‘That’s where you went? Seattle?’
He chuckled. ‘I was a dumbass kid musician in the Nineties; where else would I go?’
She shot him a weak, watery smile, and it felt like hitting the damn lottery.
He said, ‘I met Gill at a fucking coffee house. InSeattle. So damn cliché, right? Ridiculous. Gill knew Vinny, and Vinny knew Hooper. And then it was on. We just clicked. Once we started performing it was like we were hitched to a freight train and I couldn’t get off. Not even for a minute. We got a record deal and they scheduled a tour. One album, then another.’ Nicky sighed, ‘By then, summer had long since passed. And then it was another summer. We were touring in a van, after the first album, before the second – the one that hit big?’
