CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Morning slams into my brain. Even before I open my eyes, I take stock of the damage: my mouth is dry and sticky, my head pounding, and my body drained.
All evidence of a very good night.
My lips are still puffy and raw from the marathon make-out session with Anthony, and it took every ounce of self-control I possess to keep it from going further once we left the club. Stella’s bravery is rubbing off on me a little, but not so much that I’m ready for a one-night stand.
I pad to the kitchen barefoot and drain a massive glass of water, then root through Gavin’s bathroom in search of ibuprofen. Success. More water, then coffee, and I’m feeling sort of human again. I open the terrace doors and enjoy the cool breeze nipping through my T-shirt.
Jasper baroos to tell me I can’t just roll back into bed for another few hours of recovery. I scrub off my raccoon-eyed makeup, throw on workout clothes and running shoes, and take him to the park.
We cruise a now-familiar loop around Sheep’s Meadow, people- and dog-watching. Some kind of fund-raising run is in progress at the heart of the park. At the park’s southern edge, we cross the street to get a fresh juice from a chatty street vendor and then return to the park for the rest of our walk. The green juice settles my stomach and I think last night’s debauchery didn’t do too much damage.
Jasper whines and I let him go off-leash—he streaks around in happy chases with dogs three times his size. I hear bagpipes and crane my neck to see a man standing on top of a massive boulder playing some mournful song.
I love this. Love it! Even with the sounds of traffic and people and chaos and hawkers, New York is also full of music. Also, I suppose the bagpiper’s neighbors wouldn’t let him practice in his apartment.
When we get back to Gavin’s apartment, Raúl, one of the weekend doormen, greets us and waves me over to his desk.
“These came for you,” he says, pushing a massive bouquet of pink-tipped white roses at me.
My jaw hits the floor but I recover, thanking him and taking them up to Gavin’s apartment. The instant I’ve deposited them on the granite kitchen island I tear into the tiny envelope from the plastic spear at the heart of the bouquet.
“I want to see you again.” That’s all it says, with a phone number at the bottom of the card.
Caveman.
But I’m impressed. I never gave Anthony my phone number—he never asked for it, which I confess disappointed me a bit. The only things he knows about me are my first name and the address where the cab we shared dropped me off.
I didn’t invite him in. If he was annoyed, he disguised it well, giving me a hard, thorough kiss as I exited the cab.
I grab my phone and debate whether to send a text or call. I wimp out: a text. I simply say, “Thank you. They’re beautiful.”
In minutes, my phone buzzes back. His note is equally brief.
“Tuesday at 8? Balthazar.”
I reply, “Yes.”
And just like that, I’ve got my first real New York date with a wall of muscle. My insides clinch just thinking about it, and I wonder what other tricks Lulu has in her closet.
Mental note to look up Balthazar and figure out what I should wear.
My stomach rumbles now that I’ve burned off the green juice and most of my hangover, so I pour a bowl of cereal and decide what to do next. Even though Gavin’s gone dark online and his admission has me totally freaked out, fixing his place is my job.
I decide to start on the living room, considering the white leather-and-chrome couch still lists like a sinking ship.
What would Gavin want? He said he needs different, so I page through the decorating magazines, ripping out pictures as they suit me—warm earth tones instead of the stark white and gray that’s here now. Casual, comfortable shapes. I want a couch that’s begging to be sat on, snuggled in, and for a moment my mind flashes to cuddling up on that couch, watching a movie next to Gavin.
Stop it, Beryl.
Gavin’s thousands of miles away, and that’s just the start. He’s a rock star, filthy rich, and reckless. And if he caused Lulu’s death, he could be dangerous.
The person I need to think about cuddling up to is Anthony/ Thighs of Steel—strong, down-to-earth, and sexy as hell.
But who am I kidding? On stage, Gavin oozes sensuality, holding a microphone as if he’s holding a woman. I rein in this train of thought with another—he’s damaged. And I’m not the one to fix him.
I will fix his apartment. I feel a responsibility to make his home somewhere he wants to come back to. Somewhere good and comfortable, that will help him make all of the wrong in his life feel right again.
To do that, I need to understand him better. Which is why I quit tearing ideas out of magazines and start snooping, searching for evidence to answer my questions about who he is and what he needs.
I check my computer and he’s still offline. I haven’t heard from him in two days and I regret the accusations I threw at him. Lulu’s death might be his fault, even preventable, but he isn’t the only one to blame.
It took courage to admit what he did. He gave me his trust by telling me, and I stomped on it.
Not hearing from Gavin worries me. Not that it should. I’m not his girlfriend. Not his keeper. I’m only in charge of his place and his dog.
I push open the glass French doors to the office and wonder at the destruction here. Nearly every book has been pulled off the shelves that run floor-to-ceiling along the far wall. His filing cabinets are open, with papers strewn from corner to corner across his floor and desk.
I see the corner of a laptop peeking from beneath the papers on his desk and flip it open, hesitating a moment when a password prompt appears in the middle of the screen.
I type “Gavin.” No good.
I type “Tattoo Thief.” I type “Jasper” and “Feast” and “Beast.”
And then it hits me—I type “Lulu.”
I’m in.
The computer’s desktop screen is littered with icons and I don’t even know where to begin or what I’m looking for. But I know that this is wrong. So I close the lid.
I can’t do this to him. He trusts me. As much as I’m dying to understand what happened with Lulu, what I really need to know is what makes him tick, what he likes and doesn’t like, so I can fix his place. Whatever information I get to satisfy my own curiosity needs to be secondary to this.
By the time I’ve re-shelved and sorted all of the books, I’m sweating, confident I’ve done more squats than a Pilates instructor. Gavin’s tastes are eclectic, from unauthorized biographies of some famously troubled artists to business books, travel guides and fiction.
Much of the bookshelf holds saddle-stitched Moleskine notebooks covered in soft brown paper. I crack these briefly and see pages of ideas, song lyrics, set lists and musical notes.
The notebooks are dated and I shelve them in order. I open a recent book and immediately recognize a title: “Peace of Madness.”
I know this song, but reading the lyrics brings it into sharper focus.
Crashing, clawing world
Breakneck broken girl
I find you undone, drowned in a bottle
Tonight
Can I give you peace?
Not a chemical release
It’s madness, sadness, spinning out with you
Tonight
I can’t keep you
Can’t tame you
Can’t fix you
Can’t blame you
Suffering
I can’t help you
Can’t rescue
Can’t bring you
Back to me
Reality
It hits me so hard, so come down
I’ll catch you, wherever you’re falling from
I’ll give you peace
But it’s not enough
It never was
You want your next fix
A peace of madness.
The breath leaves my chest in a whoosh as I finally understand this song. This is his anthem to Lulu, his desperate cry to save her from the addiction that pulled her under.
And people bob their heads when it comes on the radio like it’s just another song.
Gavin said he felt responsible for Lulu’s death. The song’s lyrics make me ache, feeling the rift between what she needed and what he could give her.
Could Gavin have rescued Lulu? I don’t know. Maybe Lulu set herself on a collision course as she got deeper into drugs, and Gavin only sped her toward the inevitable end?
I’ve cursed Gavin a million times in the last two days, but now I curse Lulu. Damn her for breaking him, for falling into that pit of darkness and pulling him in with her.
It’s no wonder he ran. If I were stuck staring at these walls, wallowing in guilt, I might go crazy too.
I close the notebook and shelve it, feeling like I’ve pushed into Gavin’s life too far. As I pick up his office papers, I train my eyes on Jasper so I won’t see what the reams I gather say.
I don’t want to know any more about Lulu. This is already too much.