“Well, don’t,” he murmured, kissing down my neck. “Not tonight.”
Chapter 54
HERE’S WHERE THE STORY ENDS
Things went back to normal pretty quickly. The charges were dropped against Bronco, and Cassie pled guilty to KitKat’s murder, sparing us all the stress of a trial. I wondered if George had really told his wife all about his affair with KitKat, if she left him, if he was okay. But I knew better than to call him. He, like Gabe and William and Catch, was a man better left in my past.
Three weeks went by. Sid and I formally announced ourselves as a couple at a party Natalie threw to celebrate the launch of the KitKat Memorial Scholarship. No one was surprised. But the morning after the party, I woke up after Sid had gone to work and found a box of Swiss Colony petit fours and a mix tape stuck in my coffee cup on the kitchen counter. Except it wasn’t a mix tape; it was just a rubber case that looked like a cassette, slipped onto my phone, with a hot-pink sticky note attached that read “Play Me.”
I smiled and cued up the New Toothbrush playlist to track one, the Vapors’ “Waiting for the Weekend.”
There are bands that are so precious to the listener that their songs aren’t given away lightly. These songs are held close, the listener waiting until he or she finds the perfect person to deliver them to. When you assign a track to a lover, that track will remain attached to that person forever. I was never going to exorcise Bon Jovi’s “I Am” from Catch, and Sid was risking forever entangling his precious Vapors with me, the way all the grand lovers before him wound their hearts in ninety-minute bursts of magnetic and digital hope.
I spent the rest of the morning on the couch, listening to his mix and eating the tiny cakes. I didn’t even get coffee. I just sat there in love, with Baldrick at my side, as everything Sid had never said played: Depeche Mode, “World in My Eyes”; Tenpole Tudor, “Love and Food”; Huey Lewis and the News, “Stuck with You”; Cyndi Lauper, “I Drove All Night”; Sting, “Fields of Gold.” He even put on Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams,” and I laughed, singing along with the “hoo hoo” parts like the Oates that I was.
My phone rang. “Hello, dear,” came my grandmother’s melodic lilt. “We got home late last night and I’m just getting settled. How are you?”
“It’s been a crazy few months,” I said. That didn’t even begin to cover it. “How was Prague?”
“Prague was beautiful, Paris was beautiful, Dubai was beautiful,” she gushed. “I have so many photos to show you. Can we get together for lunch?”
WHEN I WAS eight, our homework was to write a paragraph on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I’d written that I wanted to be like my grandmother, and, sitting across the café table from her as she scrolled through photo after photo on her tablet, I still felt the same way. She somehow seemed younger than when she’d left. She joked that she’d gotten a facelift in France, but I knew better—that radiance was the result of a life lived with joy. She’d never let the fact that her husband died young and suddenly sink her spirits. She’d surrounded herself with friends and art, took risks, and savored her days. You can’t bottle that, although someone had tried—among the many gifts she brought me, silk scarves and perfume and a hand-painted T-shirt from Tokyo, she’d filled a bag with French creams and cosmetics.
“Not that you need them,” she said. “But I thought you deserved a little pampering for that pretty skin of yours. Now, tell me, how are you enjoying the apartment?”
“I love it,” I said. “It’s a great neighborhood; I’ve made a lot of friends.”
“I’m delighted to hear that,” she said. “You are welcome to stay as long as you’d like. We’ll work something out with the landlord to get you on the lease, but I don’t want you to worry about that right now. That’s Royale’s bailiwick.”
I got out of my chair and hugged her. “Thank you,” I breathed. “Thank you!” There weren’t other words. I couldn’t wait to tell Sid.
She squeezed me tight. “You are very welcome, my dear,” she said with a warm smile. “Just assure me you won’t change the locks before I’ve had a chance to gather up my things!”
I LISTENED TO Sid’s mix again on the subway, smiling like I’d eaten a fistful of Molly. And when he got home, I had fajitas cooking in our cast-iron skillet and the Vapors record propped up on his plate. It didn’t matter that I had bought it while out with Cassie. It wasn’t a memento of my cracking KitKat’s case. It was a gift, one I knew he would adore.
He grinned and kissed me and put it on the stereo. “It does sound better on vinyl,” he agreed.
“Sounded pretty good this morning,” I said, holding up my phone.
There isn’t a better feeling in the world—not an orgasm, not a first kiss, not even that glorious soaring sensation you get when those first few notes of a new song pierce your chest and fill your whole body with absolute bliss—than acknowledgment that your mix tape was not only received and played, but enjoyed. It’s a dance of sorts, balancing songs you think the listener will love while trying to say everything that otherwise dries up in your throat before you can get out the words. The way Sid smiled at me, his fresh-peach lips parting in a grin and a breath held in his chest, I knew that he must have been feeling that wonderful relief.
“I’ve been carrying that mix around for a month,” he began. “That night at Natalie’s gallery party, when you got up on that stage, I couldn’t stand the fact that you weren’t singing exclusively for me. I’d had a couple drinks on an empty stomach and when you started singing, all that cheer turned to this, this irrational thing in the pit of my soul. I just . . . left. The whole way home I just wanted to kick trash cans, and when I got back to the apartment I poured another drink, sat on the edge of my bed, and bawled my damn eyes out. I made that mix the next morning on the subway.”
I traced my fingers down his cheek and he held my palm against his face. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I murmured.
“Because I thought I was in love with a stripper,” he said. “Because what I felt for you wasn’t giddy or jittery, the way love feels when you’re a teenager. What I felt when you started singing was something so much deeper, something that hurt. And the only thing I could think to do was start putting together this playlist in hopes that maybe one day I’d get enough courage to give it to you. It didn’t even have a title until this morning.”
For a moment I thought about telling him that I had been singing for him, that there had only ever been him. William and Jeremy and Catch had all been vapor. Instead, I just kissed him. There were words, sure, maybe even songs. In my head, I began composing a response, a way to tell him that I felt the same way. Tom Waits, “Little Trip to Heaven (On the Wings of Your Love)”; Ryan Adams, “My Winding Wheel”; Duran Duran, “Last Chance on the Stairway”; Warren Zevon, “Searching for a Heart.”
And then I stopped. “There isn’t a song in the world that can tell you that I love you,” I said, taking his hands. “I’ll just have to say it myself.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my beloved husband, Ian, who has cherished and supported me from the moment we met, filling my life with art and happiness.
To my sisters, Hilary, Laura, Shaun, and Beth, the first and most loyal of my champions. And to my nieces, Lucy, Melody, Rachel, and Josie, and my nephews, Max and Jacob, the next generation of storytellers.
To Matthew, my writing partner and BFF, whom I trust more than anyone.
To my dearest friends and fellow writers. I could write a whole other book just explaining why and how much I love each of you. And many thanks to my agent, Jim McCarthy, and to my editor, Chelsey Emmelhainz, who have been two of the most brilliant and nurturing people I have ever had the honor of working with.
And lastly, to Jason. He knows why.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LIBBY CUDMORE worked at video stores, bookstores, and temp agencies before settling down in upstate New York to write. Her short stories have appeared in PANK, The Stoneslide
Corrective, The Big Click, and Big Lucks. The Big Rewind is her first novel.
www.libbycudmore.com
@LibbyCudmore
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CREDITS
Cover design by Regina Starace
Cover photograph © Picsfive / Shutterstock
Title page art © by Apashabo/Shutterstock, Inc.
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BIG REWIND. Copyright © 2016 by Libby Cudmore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-240353-7
EPub Edition February 2016 ISBN 9780062403520
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The Big Rewind Page 22
