Page 75 of One More Time
Half of the Lusso’s world-famous buffet room was occupied by Chloe’s rehearsal dinner. The other half was populated entirely by octogenarians more interested in the all-you-can-eat Alaskan crab legs than the large group of partygoers.
Nicky enjoyed the high-low vibe of the female guests in their five-thousand-dollar outfits carrying plastic trays to vinyl-covered diner chairs more than he wanted to admit. It made him appreciate Chloe, and by extension Chandler, for their clearly chill, unpretentious way of walking through the world.
Chloe had caught him excitedly saying, ‘Thebuffet?’ as they approached the location. And she’d replied, ‘When in Vegas, Nick. Better jump on those crab legs while you can!’ The twinkle in those blue eyes of hers – Lucy’s eyes – had his chest feeling heavy.
He spotted Brandon solicitously carrying a tray for his pregnant wife and his mind tumbled over itself wonderingwhat might have been. Whatcouldhave been if only he hadn’t been such a fucking idiot when he was eighteen. Wondering if Chloe, or some other dazzling young woman, might have beenhisdaughter. His and Lucy’s.
It was amazing how much the glaring spotlight of truth had opened his eyes in the previous twenty-four hours. Lucy had lived inside him for so long; her memory cloistered deep. She had never been the subject for bandmate banter, or even the supposedly safe confines of any of his marriages. He had spoken to no one about ‘The Breathing Room’ or the real story of how he’d ended up in Seattle. Those thoughts and feelings had never been exposed to the light and examined. No second opinions or outside advice had ever informed his reflections on it.
Now, knowing Lucy’s side of things, Nicky was seeing it all with new eyes. It was easy, ten … fifteen … twenty years away from it, to forget what life had been like in the late Nineties. Before cell phones and email. When the lucky few had pagers and answering machines. When phones were tied to places not people. A time when silence was the norm and people tended to fill it with conjecture and, more often than not, their own fears and self-doubt.
When Nicky left for Seattle, he was G-O-N-E gone. In the wind. Whathadhe expected her to do? What would have happened if she’d shown up at Madison Square Garden trying to connect with him? Nothing, that’s what. And fan mail? Jesus, who the fuck knew? Sometimes he would get stacks of promotional shit thrown at him to sign, but he never saw a request. Not once.
He could have tried harder. Tried to track down a phone number, any phone number to get to her. Writtenhera letter. Stopped at the goddamn beach on his way out West –anything. But the fact was, he’d just been a stupid fucking kid. He’d run, then been sucked into the riptide of fame and fortune, and had held on for dear life. His memories from huge swaths of the early 2000s were sleepy, hazy visions of tour buses and terrible hotels and poorly ventilated recording studios.
Oh, he had googled ‘Lucy Rollins’ beginning in, like, 2000 maybe? But almost no one had an online presence then. By the time they did, she was Lucy McManis. A name he couldn’t have come up with if someone had put a gun to his head.
Nicky took a deep breath to shake himself out of the weeds. Intellectually, he knew that forgiving himself for being young and stupid was the best plan. No good could come out of ‘what if.’ ‘What if’ was a goddamn mind fuck and didn’t resolve anything.
If he was going to convince Lucy that this thing between them was worth exploring for more than a few days, he had to get his head in the game. He had to stop beating himself up about the past and focus on the moment he was in. He was already running out of time.
Nicky’s plate looked like the scene of a grizzly crab massacre. The pile was obscene. The guy behind the buffet, a crab-leg security professional, no doubt employed to keep little old ladies from stuffing their handbags with crustaceans,had given him at least twice the portion of everyone else. At Nicky’s quizzical look, the guy had tugged at the neck of his chef’s coat to reveal the top of a Super T-shirt. Occupational hazard.
Though he wasn’t exactly sure how, Nicky found himself seated between Chandler’s dad and someone called Aunt Glinda. The latter of whom was not, actually, a good witch. Aunt Glinda had felt him up pretty good while ‘mistakenly’ grabbing the napkin from Nicky’s lap instead of her own. She was at least sixty, so old enough to know better, but fame did strange things to people. He doubted that Glinda went around groping random strangers on the regular.Probably.
Lucy was miles away; directly across from him, but the table between them was too wide for his liking.
‘So, how long have you two known each other? A couple days or so?’ Lucy’s ex Devin asked, gesticulating wildly between them with a crab leg. The hint of a slur in his speech made all the little hairs on Nicky’s neck stand on end.
‘We knew each other in high school,’ Nicky replied.
Devin’s head turned to Lucy with the slight wobble of a man with several gallons of alcohol lubricating his movements. The look of unadulterated shock was probably down to the same condition.
Lucy’s eyes drifted down to her plate. She took a hurried bite of cornbread, her sleek bob falling over her cheek like a curtain.
So, it seemed Nicky wasn’t the only one who hadn’t confessed the story of ‘The Breathing Room’ to a spouse.
‘High school?’ Devin repeated to Lucy’s hair.
‘Yep,’ Nicky answered, tearing into the crab graveyard in front of him.
‘Y-you,’ Devin screeched as he continued to gape at Lucy. ‘You knew him inhigh school? And didn’t tell me? I talked about Super multiple … multiple.Multipletimes. And you never thought to say “hey, funny fucking story, I know that dude?”’
‘Devin,’ Lucy soothed. ‘This is probably not the best time—’
‘When would be a good time?’ he asked, tone oozing with sarcasm. He pulled up his arm and began tapping the screen of his smartwatch with the long pointy end of a crab leg. ‘Here, let me pencil you in.’
‘Devin,’ Lucy tried again.
‘No, no. No. I get it. I really fucking get it,’ Devin grumbled, then seemed surprised to find a crab leg in his hand, giving the thing a look like it had just slapped his mother. ‘You were always so … closed off. I mean, the sex was great …’
The word ‘sex’ had even the octogenarians across the room staring their way and turning up their hearing aids.
Devin continued, oblivious to the uncomfortable non-looks of everyone at their table, ‘But you never really let me in.’
Nicky heard Lucy mumble, ‘Really hitting theThis Is Your Lifehighlights this week.’
‘Devin,’ Nicky growled. It was a tone so serious and menacing that everyone’s eyes shot up. Nicky could feeltheir collective gaze on his skin. (Or maybe that was the rage?) ‘You need to mind. Your. Mouth.’ Nicky offered the drunk man his death stare. The one that had frightened paparazzi and made one obsessed fan piss his pants.
