“I know. I know. It's just so damn sweet. You always know the perfect thing to say.”
“You give me too much credit, but I'll take it.”
I lay back in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Amy was in the other room packing, an activity I tried not to think about too much. She was going to be gone in fewer than ten days, but I didn't want to dwell on it. Nor did I want to abet it, although if she were to ask for my help, I would've absolutely done it. She merely hadn't asked yet, so I'd let it be. "So. What are you doing?"
“I’m at the hotel, staring at four walls. I spend entirely too much time doing that. We head to the venue in thirty minutes.”
“That doesn't sound very exciting. I guess I thought that being a rock star was exciting.”
“I’m not a rock star.”
“Yes you are.”
“No. I'm not. Only assholes think of themselves as rock stars. I'm a songwriter. A performer. I'm a musician. Not a rock star.”
I rolled over to my side and pulled my knees up. “I never thought of it that way. I guess I figured that if you were famous for music, you were automatically a rock star.”
“Fame is a bloody sham. You know that, right? It's about as empty a thing as there is in the world. People spend their days trying to get it and when they do, they realize it's nothing of substance.”
“Ah, but you didn't want to go to the diner for breakfast that morning because of that thing that supposedly has no substance.”
“I didn't want to go to the diner because of the pain in the ass it can be. How much fun would we have had if we were sitting there trying to have the conversation we had and we were constantly getting interrupted by people wanting a picture or an autograph?”
“Don't those people pay your bills?”
“They do. And I love my fans. Truly. I do. But I'm like anybody else. I need a break. I need my privacy. And that morning with you was too important to me. I had a lot I had to say.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I had a lot I'd been rolling around in my head, practicing. For years. I didn't want to blow it, especially when I wasn't sure you were going to stay.”
He had certainly been on edge when I'd arrived that morning. Was that his big worry? That I'd up and leave? “Eamon. How could you think that I wouldn't stay? And I don't believe you when you say you've been practicing. That's not possible.”
“It's more than possible. It's the truth.”
A stretch of silence passed between us while I prepared to make a second run at the question that kept eating at me, the one I’d asked that morning at the Four Seasons. “If everything you said meant that much, and you were that eager to say it, I still don't understand why you didn't try to contact me.” All I could think about was what I'd been like over the last eleven years. It had taken a long time to heal from the loss of Eamon. It had been a bumpy road to get Dad sober and happy, and for Amy and I to both finish school, be reunited in the city, and find our jobs. In many ways, life wasn’t good again until Amy and I were back together. We understood each other. We never had to explain. There was no replacing that closeness, precisely why her moving out made me so uneasy. Would things get bad again? Would Eamon break my heart? Would I end up breaking his? It was hard to see rays of sunshine in my future, even when I felt so lucky to have Eamon back in my life. I couldn’t escape the feeling that it harkened the end of something.
“I thought about it. Many times.” He cleared his throat and left me again with a morass of silence. “But I told you the other morning. I felt like I had to let the universe tell me if this was meant to be. I wanted us to drift back together. Just like we did in the first place. It was total chance that you walked into the pub the night we met.”
“People meet like that all the time. It doesn't have to be fate.”
“But do people have what we did, Katherine? Do most people ever get a fraction of what we had together? I don't think they do.”
“I don’t know how to answer that. It's like my eyesight. I don't know another way to see.”
“Okay. Well then, answer me this. Was there a guy after me? A guy who came close?”
I nearly snorted into the phone. The answers on my lips wereunfortunately yesandhell no. "There were some guys, yes. But none of them could hold a candle to you. If that’s what you’re asking."
“Did they make you laugh like I used to?”
“Not really.” Even the amateur stand-up comedian hadn't been able to make me laugh like Eamon could.
“Did they bring you coffee in bed?”
“A few did.”
“A few? How many are we talking about?”
“Are you seriously asking me that? I don't even want to think about how many women you've been with over the last eleven years.”
“Don't forget I was married for part of that. I was always faithful to her.”
