“Tony!” she said as they entered. A tall, slim man sitting near the door stood and moved toward Emmy with his arms open. She stepped right into them, and they held each other for a long time. Then Tony wordlessly handed her a coffee that was no doubt doctored exactly to her specifications. Evan had no idea how Emmy took her coffee.
When Emmy and her assistant parted, Tony’s gaze whipped to Evan. It was an unimpressed gaze. He might even go so far as to call it openly hostile.
He stepped forward and offered his hand. “Evan Winslow.”
Tony didn’t reciprocate, so Evan, feeling like an idiot, retracted his hand. “And what, pray tell, are you doing here, Evan Winslow?”
“The same thing you are, I imagine,” he said, allowing his tone to grow as skeptical as Tony’s.
Tony’s eyebrows shot up. Probably, as Emmy’s assistant, he wasn’t used to sass. “And what might that be? Humor me.”
Evan gave up the pissing contest and answered honestly. “Showing up for Team Emmy duty.”
That must have been the right answer, because Tony smiled and stuck out his hand, and they shook.
“So what’s going on with Brian and Claudia?” Emmy whispered. Then she turned to Evan and said, “My managers.”
Tony shrugged. “They’re freaking out, of course. But they don’t have your new phone number. You have your new credit card. Don’t worry about anything else. I’m handling it.”
Evan found himself glad that Emmy had Tony in her life.
Selfishly, he was also glad that Tony was around, because whereas Emmy had spoken only generally about her parents, and reluctantly so, Tony had no compunctions about filling Evan in on exactly what Emmy’s parents were like.
“You should have seen them the day we told them we were moving to L.A.” Tony was driving—they’d decided to leave Evan’s car at the coffee shop and go together in Tony’s—and he kept glancing over at Evan, who was in the passenger seat, as he talked. “They accused me of seducing their daughter.” He laughed uproariously. “I think I was wearing a Louis Vuitton scarf over a rainbow T-shirt. I assured them that I was gay as the day was long, but somehow that didn’t help.”
“What did they do?”
“There was nothing they could do. She was nineteen. She hadn’t lived at home since she was seventeen.”
Evan turning around to look at Emmy. “You never told me you were seventeen when they kicked you out.” He knew it had happened after her aborted driving lessons, but somehow he’d imagined it happening…later. “Where did you live?”
“With friends,” said Emmy. “I couch-surfed while I finished high school. I didn’t think it was a good idea to move in with Tony until I was eighteen. I was afraid my parents might actually get the cops involved. So I spent a year with friends, then a year with Tony, then we moved.”
Evan whistled. This was a lot more sinister than he had imagined.
“Yeah, it was harsh,” Tony said. “They thought it was tough love, but they didn’t understand that their kid was tougher than they were.”
“Or that she was talented enough to blow the lid off the music industry,” Evan said. He could understand a little parental reluctance, but honestly, anyone who paid any attention to Emmy and her songs, even back then, he imagined, would have had to see the potential there.
“I like you, Evan Winslow,” Tony said, though he was looking in the rearview mirror at Emmy as he spoke. At the next red light, he turned his attention to Evan. “You should have seen her when she came to me. She had this proto-riot-grrl look—you know how teenagers sort of try on different personas? But her music was tending toward rootsy-Americana. Not heavily, but you could see that’s where it wanted to go. It was the damnedest thing.”
“I can imagine,” Evan said as Tony turned off the arterial road they had been on into a neighborhood of suburban McMansions.
“Um, hello? I can hear you guys.” Evan could practically hear the eye-rolling going on in the backseat.
He twisted around. “So is all this to say that you haven’t seen your parents since you left?” Christ. He’d had no idea. Was doubly glad he’d insisted on coming.
“No, no,” she assured him. “I usually come by when I’m in town for a show, and we have a stilted conversation—like we’re about to have now!” She was trying to make a joke, but he knew her. Self-deprecating humor was her defense mechanism. He could sense the hurt behind the smile.
“Which is how often?” he asked, wanting to get a sense of whether she put herself through this ordeal regularly.
“She’s seen them six times since the move to L.A.” Tony said, answering for her. “She’s played big arena shows in Minneapolis four times, and they’ve come to one.”
Though Evan wasn’t going to proclaim it out loud the way Tony had, he liked this guy. The fact that he knew exactly how and how often Emmy had interacted with her parents suggested that he was paying attention, and not just to things like record sales and red carpet outfits.
“All right,” Evan said as Tony slowed down in front of a house that looked like someone had plunked a southern plantation down on a one-acre lot in suburban Minnesota. It had a grand staircase leading to a veranda studded with four huge columns. “Wow.” Then, “Hey, is this where ‘Plantation in the Snow’ came from?” One of the songs Emmy had been working on that summer talked about suburban alienation and isolation, about people searching for—and falling far short of—some kind of authentic connection.
“Wait till you see the back,” she said. “It’s the antebellum south in front, but it’s Japan in back—all cherry trees, koi, and rock gardens.”
Tony, who had stopped the car, turned to Evan with his eyebrows raised. “She let you hear a song in progress?”
Evan wasn’t sure what to say. Was he not supposed to hear her songs? Were they embargoed or something?
“Let’s go,” Emmy said, getting out of the car before Evan could answer.
Silently, the men followed Emmy up the fake cobblestoned path. Unlike his own, which was bumpy as hell and missing stones, this one was actually, upon further inspection, made of concrete poured to look like cobblestones, which pretty much summed up the whole place. It was a collection of signifiers of wealth. What his parents, back in the day, would have sneeringly called new money.
At the enormous double doors, Emmy raised her hand to knock but then paused and turned to him. “Thank you for coming with me,” she said, her face impossible to read.
“Anytime,” he said, and he meant it. Because apparently he was addicted to doing whatever he could to protect this woman, to ease the way for her. He could only wish this wasn’t his last chance to do it.
The visit went about as well as Emmy could have expected. No worse or better than they always did. She wasn’t even sure why she persisted in coming when she was in town. Did she honestly think that one day she would show up and her parents would hug her and say, “Oh my gosh, we were wrong all along”? Or even “We missed you”?
No, they went through their usual routine of coffee and painful conversation. Emmy asked about her parents’ accounting firm, at which they’d both made partner in the years since Emmy had left, and about the horrible house, which they loved, and which Emmy was thankful she’d never had to live in. At least they weren’t money-grubbing stage parents, she consoled herself, coming out of the woodwork after she’d risen to fame. They had plenty of money and had never expressed interest in any of hers.
“Oh! I almost forgot!” she said, after the conversation, which Evan had been trying valiantly to keep alive, started to dwindle. “I got you a present, Dad.” She took out her phone and pulled up an image. “I randomly met this koi breeder.” She almost laughed, thinking back to the party where she’d met him. It had been after a show in…Houston? Orlando? She couldn’t remember. It seemed like a lifetime ago, like it had happened to some other version of her. “We got to talking, and it turns out he breeds Tancho koi.” She shuffled closer to him on the sofa. “Do yo
u know them? Their only markings, apparently, are these single huge dots on the back of their heads.” She’d thought they were so strange-looking, and, knowing her dad was getting more and more into the koi pond, she’d ordered two for him. “They’re supposed to be ready to go by mid-September, and they’ll arrive via UPS. Can you imagine that? UPS ships live fish!” Not to mention that two stupid goldfish could cost thousands of dollars, but she didn’t say that.
“That’s very kind of you, Emerson,” her mom said, “but we don’t need any more fish. The pond is well-stocked.”
Emmy looked at her dad. He had seemed into the picture, but now he was scooching away from the phone.
“And, you know, we’re trying to restock only with black-and-white breeds,” her mom added.
“Black-and-white goldfish?” Evan said. She could tell he was not impressed.
“Yes,” said her mother. “They’re not as common, but they’re really rather striking. I think it will make quite the statement. Your father can’t bring himself to dispose of the ones with the orange markings.” Her mom pursed her lips as if this display of compassion was distasteful. “So we’re left waiting it out.”
“Waiting for the orange goldfish to die so you can replace them with black-and-white goldfish, which are more striking?” Evan repeated, as if he couldn’t believe that his interpretation was correct.
“Well, they’re koi,” Emmy’s mother said.
“So…big goldfish,” Evan said, and Emmy almost burst out laughing. His incredulity, and to be honest, his obvious annoyance at her parents, was gratifying.
“I think we should get going,” Evan said, “The later it gets, the harder it’s going to be to find parking around the fair.”
“You’re going to the state fair?” her mother said, eyebrows lifting.
Emmy was wearing her normal clothes—she hadn’t wanted her parents to see her in her schleppy disguise. “Yeah, I discovered that if I wear really baggy clothes and a hat and glasses, I can pretty much go incognito.”
“So that explains that…” Another sniff. “Hair.”
Emmy knew her hair was awful, but the disdain in her mother’s tone still stung. She didn’t want it to. She wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t get her feelings hurt when her parents rebuffed her overtures. But every single time, she ended up sitting in front of them, a lump growing in her throat.
It was always the same.
Except when it wasn’t.
A hand came to rest on her arm. A familiar, strong, warm hand. She was playing out the same old scene with her parents, but that hand was a new addition.
She turned to him, and his face was hard, almost angry, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “We’re done here,” he said, and she wanted to throw her arms around him. Of course, Tony was always on her side, but that was different. Their fortunes had been intertwined from day one. But to have Evan so overtly in her court? Well, it was powerful. She admired him so much, this smart, determined, self-made, gorgeous man, and he was here for her. With her.
For one more day, at least.
And he would get her out of here. Already was, in fact. Without her really realizing it, they’d made their way to the door, and Evan was picking up her purse from the floor of the entryway. She barely had to do anything but murmur goodbye to her parents. They usually exchanged awkward, robotic hugs, but apparently that wasn’t required this time, because she was already being herded out onto the porch and ensconced in the passenger seat of Tony’s car. She tried to protest that Evan, with his longer legs, should take the front, but he had already folded himself into the back.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said once everyone else was in, too. “We have some cheese curds to eat before the show starts.”
Tony turned to her with his eyebrows raised. She was about to say, “What?” when he started the car, looked in the rearview mirror and said, “I really like you, Evan Winslow.”
“I like you, too, Tony. Want to come to the fair and watch this incredible kid Emmy turned into a songwriter win the junior songwriting showcase?”
If you had plucked Evan out of his life two months ago and put him here, in the crowd at an outdoor amphitheater at the Minnesota State Fair, and told him he’d be watching Jace, the silent, unreachable kid who always sulked in the back at the community center, stand in front of an audience and perform an original song, he probably would have expired from shock.
But, like a lobster being slowly boiled in a pot, he’d had time to get used to the idea.
Which he supposed made Emmy the chef in that unfortunate metaphor, because if watching Jace was gratifying, watching Emmy watch Jace was better.
He was starting to understand how she did it, her magic alchemical songwriting ability. She watched things very carefully; she took note. She was like him that way. If he had an eye that translated things into paintings, she had one that translated things into songs. But she also opened herself up, so utterly and unreservedly, to emotion. It sounded clichéd, but it was like it flowed through her, and she transformed it into songs. That feeling he had when he painted in the attic, in secret? It was like she let herself feel that way all the time. She was radically open to experience. Somehow, unlike most people, she hadn’t built up any armor.
Like now, for instance, she was sitting next to him watching Jace, who was giving a flawless performance, with her hands clutched beneath her chin, her whole body tense.
When Jace finished, and the crowd erupted into applause, she turned to Evan with a look of utter astonishment, like she was surprised it had gone so well. Like she’d been expecting a disappointment. Like she’d grown so accustomed to heartbreak that she wasn’t sure what to do with the opposite.
There was a downside to her talent, to her extreme openness to experience and emotion, and that was that she couldn’t turn it off. So people could hurt her. Men who wanted to take advantage of her. Managers who didn’t understand her aims. Her own parents, for fuck’s sake. That was a perfect example. There was her eye for detail: the perfectly-thoughtful gift, which Evan swore her father had actually been into before her mother had shut things down. There was her vulnerability, her openness, which kept her coming back for more of the same freeze-out from her parents, who were apparently robots.
She leapt to her feet, joining the crowd, which was giving Jace a standing ovation. She turned to him again, and briefly hugged him, hard, harder than her thin arms should have been capable of. Then she turned her attention back to the crowd, screaming so loud he was sure she was going to be hoarse tomorrow.
Tomorrow. The word arrived in his body like it was made of iron and sank to the bottom of his gut. Tomorrow she would be gone. He and Jace would be on their way back to Dane and she’d be…somewhere else. Staying with Tony? Surely she wouldn’t go back to her parents’ place. Maybe she’d give up on hiding out and head back to L.A.
No. And that word, the no, was stronger than the terrible knowledge that had settled in his gut.
There was no way she could go back. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t ready.
So he waited until the applause died down, and he hugged her. She thought it was another celebratory hug, and as he picked her up off her feet and gathered her close, she said, “Wasn’t he so amazing?”
“Come home with me,” he said, speaking over her. “Stay for the rest of the summer. You’re not done yet.” He squeezed her tighter. “We’re not done yet.”
She squirmed out of his embrace and searched his face, eyes wide.
“What does it matter if we say goodbye now or we postpone it for a bit?” he said, shoving down the surge of emotion that had prompted him to ask in the first place and preparing to deploy logic. “Classes don’t start until the second week after Labor Day—that’s still two and a half weeks away. I’ve heard you. You can get a lot of songs done in two and a half weeks. And we can—”
“Okay,” she said.
“What?” He hadn’t be
en prepared for such easy capitulation.
“Okay, I’ll come back with you. But what were you going to say?”
He had to fight through the fuzzy cloud of happiness that materialized in his chest to follow her meaning.
He must have looked confused because she prompted, “You started to say, ‘We can…’ Fill in the blank.”
He thought about making up a lie, of saying something like, “We can get the art show hung,” but he decided to tell her the truth. “We can have sex in every room in my enormous house.”
Chapter Nineteen
When Evan emerged from his house onto the porch and handed Emmy a beer, she had the astonishing thought that she didn’t think she’d ever been happier. Yes, she’d had sharp, wild moments of joy-mixed-with-pride at certain milestones of her career: her first record deal, her first gold record, her first Grammy. But this was different. After a morning of bone-meltingly great sex with Evan, she’d spent the day working alternately on a new song and on the last upstairs bedroom she had yet to tackle. She assumed Evan had spent the day working, too, though she hadn’t seen him until he’d emerged from the basement in his workout clothes. And now, fresh from said workout and a shower, damp and bare-chested—he was doing that to bait her, she knew, and it was working—here he was. And soon, Mrs. Johansen would be leaving for a date. He lowered himself to sit in the swing next to her. She sighed happily as he settled an arm around her shoulders. To have done good work…and now the rest of the evening stretched ahead of them like it was a feast and she was starving. It was a delicious feeling.
And Jace had won the competition—and, more importantly, the scholarship that came with it. She was still practically bursting with pride.
“You eat already?” he asked.
“Yep. Chicken spaghetti,” she said, because in addition to being metaphorically starving, she’d worked up quite the appetite moving boxes around. “I was too hungry to wait.” And in truth, she loved the fact that they had established a routine that allowed them to be together but also to do things on their own without it being a big deal.
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