Page 42 of Caught in a Storm
“You like the Stones, huh?” she says.
“Well yeah,” he says. “Who doesn’t?”
“ ‘She’s a Rainbow’ is pretty good,” she says. “I like this one, too.”
Billy sometimes does a warm-up exercise during lessons. He and a student will take turns playing for each other, and they’ll see how many notes it takes to name the song. Despite having a good ear, it sometimes takes Billy a while. Songs out of context with no lyrics, even great ones, have an elusive quality, like seeing someone you know in a crowd and not quite remembering their name. That’s not the case now, though. He recognizes “Let’s Spend the Night Together” right away. “Yeah,” he says. “A classic.”
She doesn’t play the whole thing, just the intro. She plays it again.
“People always want you to pick, right?” he says. “Beatles or Stones. Can’t we just all agree that they both changed the world? Why do we have to—”
Margot starts the song again, louder this time, cutting him off. She’s not looking at the keys now; she’s looking at him.
“Oh,” he says.
Chapter 26
Margot can’t believe she did that, the Stones thing.
She can practically hear Poppy in her head. Who, even, are you, Margot Hammer?
She blames the kiss cam. You wouldn’t think kissing someone in front of thousands of people on a jumbotron would feel intimate, but it did.
The anatomy of a kiss: two people lean in, mouths touch, eyes close, lips part just barely. All those things happened, like always. Other things happened, too, though, like a joyful feeling in Margot’s chest, like that sensation right before you laugh. She reached for his hand and found it near his lap just as his other hand took her by the chin. Based on the kisses before theirs on the screen, Margot supposes it was just meant to be a peck. Their kiss, though, lasted, like neither was quite ready for it to end.
People kept cheering even after the game started again. Margot—flushed still, heart racing—thought, I’m going to sleep with him.
It was the second time in her life she’d felt this way with such certainty. The first time had been the night she met Lawson at a Super Bowl party on the immense penthouse terrace of an obscene luxury apartment building in Battery Park owned by a tech mogul. Three of the four Burnt Flowers were there, forty stories up. Jenny had ditched at the last second, claiming a migraine. Nikki was inside at the bar pretending to know the first thing about football, so Anna and Margot, the band’s rhythm section, stood near a glowing space heater at the edge of the terrace.
“Is this caviar?” asked Anna.
They assessed the small pile of gunk on Anna’s appetizer plate. A cigarette hung from Anna’s lips.
“Maybe,” said Margot. “Is it good?”
“I don’t think that’s the point with caviar,” said Anna, and they gave each other little upward nods that said, Can you believe this shit? Their first album had come out that summer and they were the hottest new band on the planet. They were rock stars.
“Okay, don’t be a total spaz and turn and look,” said Anna, “but, you know who Lawson Daniels is, right?”
“The actor?”
“Yeah, dum-dum, the actor. British. Scorching hot. He’s…well, he’s staring at you.”
“What? Where?”
Margot has never been good at the whole “don’t turn and look” thing, so, after turning and looking, she saw Lawson Daniels smiling at her from beneath a different glowing space heater.
Like Margot, Lawson was in his early twenties then—famous, but newly so. His first movie, a little British heist called Piccadilly Hustle, had been an indie hit. He was a little too skinny. His teeth weren’t capped yet. He was dressed a notch too casually for the party, and his leather jacket was too big for him. But he was still handsome enough to make her swear aloud the first time she laid eyes on him. “Goddamn.”
“Uh-oh,” said Anna. “And now he’s coming over.”
Lawson was en route, his eyes locked on Margot as he weaved around people. Anna made a quick exit. “I’m gonna ditch the fish eggs and get some of those little hot dogs. Good luck, babe.”
She had five seconds to prepare herself. She decided to feign obliviousness, as if she had no idea that a beautiful actor was beelining for her.
Lawson leaned against the railing, smiled. “Evening, love.”
No one had ever called Margot “love” before. The effect was like being on an airplane that suddenly loses altitude. “Hey,” she said.
