Epilogue
The support act strums the final chord on his guitar and smiles out at us. ‘Thanks a lot, Austin!’ he shouts to the crowd. ‘You’ve been great, goodnight!’
His name is Tony, and he’s a nice enough guy. I went out for a drink with him and the band and the road crew one night, when the tour made its way down to New Orleans and my time away from Hale became too much to bear. I figured, why not? I had a weekend free from college, and with Hale splitting the cost of the plane fare with me I could just about afford it. He made a bit of a fuss about that, telling me he’d pay for the whole thing if it meant having me there with him for a couple of days, but I shot that idea down pretty quickly. I pay my own way, no matter what. No matter how successful he is.
As Tony leaves the stage, he shoots me and the girls a little wave, and I swear that Rachel almost swoons her way into a dead faint right then and thee. ‘That’s it,’ she says with a grin. ‘If you can date a rock star, I can too. This is the life, Carrie. This is the life.’
I make an executive decision not to tell Rachel about Tony’s boyfriend. I’m scared the disappointment might crush her.
On the other side of me, out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ashley manoeuvring her way through the crowd with three overpriced and undersized beers in her hands. ‘Sorry I took so long,’ she says as she draws close. ‘Got chatting to a cute guy at the bar.’ She gestures with her head over to a guy about her age – twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, his chin covered with a dusting of designer stubble and his hair piled high into a man-bun. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her the whole time she spent walking back to us, and when she turns around he gives her a sly wink that tells me we’ll probably be making his acquaintance once the show is over. Good for you, Ash, I think. She deserves a bit of a break. She’s been so busy with our various courses that she’s barely had time to breathe recently, let alone flirt with hot guys with questionable hair choices. Then again, none of us have had what you’d call an easy time of it. This is the first night we’ve really had off since the course started. Nursing school is rewarding, for sure, but no one could ever say it’s not hard work. Still, the three of us are getting through it, together.
For the first time since I was a teenager, I actually have friends: honest-to-God, real-life friends. It’s a weird feeling, but not one I’m going to start complaining about any time soon.
I take my drink from her, but as soon as she sees me reaching for my bag to pay for my share she bats my hand away. ‘No chance,’ she says. ‘You got us these tickets for free. The least I can do is buy you a beer.’
‘Right up against the stage, too,’ Rachel chimes in. ‘Pays to have connections, eh?’
More than you could know, I think.
I’ve missed Hale like crazy these past few months, while he’s been out on the road. If it hadn’t been for the girls, I don’t know what I would have done. It’s weird to think about, really. For years, I barely even thought about Hale, except as a vague concept. I lived my life perfectly fine without him, thank you very much – and I still do, don’t get me wrong; I’ve got more going on right now than I have at any point in the last decade – but I find myself thinking about him constantly throughout the day.
It’s worth it, though. By all accounts, the tour has been a massive success – far beyond even the wildest expectations of Hale or his record company. His new publicist – a friendly Midwesterner with small, dark eyes over an enormous beard that makes him look more like he should be chopping lumber than managing an Instagram account – can’t keep his excitement to himself, but Hale’s taking it all in his stride. He’s got another two weeks running up and down the west coast, and then it’s back to New York to work on the new album – but not before he comes down to Austin to visit me for a well-deserved rest.
I can’t wait.
Even Mom seems to have come over to the idea of it all. The last time I spoke to her, she told me to make sure I invited Hale over to dinner sometime so she could get to know him personally. Just the four of us, nothing too fancy: me and Hale, Mom and Pete. ‘I’ll even cook,’ she said. ‘If Pete will let me get into my own kitchen, anyway. Honestly, it’s like that man forgets I ran a restaurant for thirty years sometimes, it really is.’ She grumbled, as she tends to do, but I could tell she was smiling while she did it. I took that as a sign that things were going well between them.
‘Is that Carrie?’ Pete asked from across the room. ‘Tell her I say hi.’
Our phone call took place at eleven o’clock, well after her usual bedtime. I took that as a sign that things were going well too.
Mom’s happy. I’m happy. Even the Diner seems to be doing just fine without me, three months on. Pete’s new menus are… well, I won’t say they’re going down a storm, but they’re at least a firm fixture now. Even Jerry and Al have been tempted to try his moussaka from time to time, and have deemed it passable. ‘I’m pretty sure they think it’s got actual moose in it,’ Pete said when he told me, ‘but I’ll take it. As long as I don’t start serving ratatouille, I think we’ll be fine.’
Sometimes I wonder if I really was worrying over nothing for all those years. Maybe I could have moved away all along. Maybe everything wouldn’t have imploded the second I left Eden. I could have gone to do my nursing degree years earlier. I could have spent all this time working towards the life I always wanted, way back when.
But if I had, I wouldn’t have been there when Hale rolled back into town. I would have missed seeing him again entirely, passing each other by like two ships in the night. All this would never have happened.
And how could I have let myself miss out on that?
The crowd is growing restless behind me, eager for the main event. I can feel the nervous crackle of excitement, of two hundred people all waiting for the same thing. When he finally comes out a minute or two later, the audience has whipped itself up into a frenzy; at the sight of him, they let out a loud cheer of approval.
I can’t say I blame them. He looks magnificent. He’s wearing a black button-down shirt, open to a little way down his chest – far enough to tease, but not far enough to reveal any of the scars. The bruises from his fight with Scanlon have long since healed; in fact, that night seems a world away now. Three months is a long time.
He pulls a stool over to the microphone, and adjusts the stand downwards until it’s just in front of his lips: a perfect fit. I watch as he scans the crowd, his eyes creased up against the spotlight as he runs his gaze along the front row, until it stops on me and he smiles. I wonder how many women in the audience would like to be in my position right now. I wonder how many of them think that smile is meant for them.
A lot, I’d wager. Hale always did know how to work a crowd.
After the whole Merry fiasco, we decided to keep our relationship private – not hidden, but not splashed all over the internet either. I was very firm about that, and Hale agreed. Just because I was dating someone famous, it didn’t mean I wanted to spend my life staring down a camera lens. I was much more comfortable behind the scenes than in the spotlight. As far as I’m concerned, he can sing his heart out and make every woman in that room feel like he’s singing directly to them. I don’t mind sharing him with them for a couple of hours a night.
Not as long as I’m the one who gets to take him home after the show, anyway.
That’s the difference between me and the rest of the crowd, I think. I don’t just see Hale as he is now, on stage with hundreds of people giving him their applause and approval. In my mind, that’s just a part of him.
I see him as he was at sixteen, out by the river, strumming along to Otis Redding and Chuck Berry for a girl he’d only just met – a girl who had wandered a little way off the beaten track and changed her life forever.
I see him under the cherry blossom tree out in the park, hesitantly waiting to kiss me for the first time as the flowers shed their petals all around us.
I see the way he looked at me the first time he saw me naked, before he pressed his body against mine and showed me what I had been missing all those years.
I see him broken and bruised and in need of care – and I see Hale the fighter, always pushing himself further and harder, no matter how hard that might be. I see his softness, and his stubbornness, and everything in between.
I see the moments we’re alone, and the future we’re going to have, stretching out into the next few weeks and months and years, and so, so far beyond…
I see what was and what is and what one day will be.
And it’s always, always Hale.
‘Hey there, Austin,’ he says, pulling his eyes off me and turning at last to the crowd. ‘How are you all doing tonight?’
Pretty fine, I think as the cheers swell like an ocean behind me, and I smile. Pretty damn fine.