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“You know the song is about you. ‘She’s Here’ just means I finally found you. And in some ways, it feels like I was waiting for you all along. Throughout all those horrible years of drugs and partying and reckless mistakes, I was waiting for you. I’m so grateful I waited.”
Charlotte turned her head, rubbing her nose against his. “I love you,” she whispered, saying it for the first time. “I’ve never loved anyone before. But I know it when I feel it. And I know it now.”
“I love you, too,” Quentin responded softly, kissing her again.
Quentin wrapped his strong arms around her, lifting her from the soundproof room and carrying her to the balcony, where they stood in their underwear and coats, drank wine, and spoke about the many different lives, interacting and ending and becoming beneath them. As writers, their brains were always in action. And as lovers, they would always find common, sexual ground, with chemistry akin to the most intense rock star sound.
Extended Extra Epilogue One Hot Daddy
One Year Later.
It was September again. Charlotte eyed the calendar in disbelief at her desk at Rolling Stone, unable to comprehend the fact that she’d been living in New York City for an entire year and that she’d been dating Quentin for almost that long. It had been a year since the most distressing, dramatic days of her career. Nothing could have matched that time in intensity. Nothing could have ultimately given her more joy.
Today, on this Friday afternoon, she was finishing the edits for a recent piece she’d written about a Brooklyn band, which Quentin had recently signed to the record label he’d begun the previous June. Having become a bit bored with the same-old editing and writing, Quentin had turned back to music almost whole-heartedly, retiring from MMM and writing music with greater intensity.
“It was you, babe,” he’d told her, countless times now. “You taught me what it means to feel again. And I can’t use up all this emotion inside that horrible office. I need to use it in the world—giving people music again.”
Charlotte couldn’t have agreed more. Since he’d removed himself as editor of MMM, he’d become incredibly happy, spending long days in the studio and signing bands, like this one from Brooklyn, based on the “image” he wanted to create with his label.
“Yeah, the minute Quentin from Orpheus Arise discovered us,” the band’s lead singer had said during the interview, “We knew we’d made it big. I mean, we all grew up with Orpheus Arise. It oriented who we are as musicians more than almost anything else. So, we couldn’t be more grateful to be in the studio with Quentin, playing along with him, and taking his advice.”
After she finished the edits, Charlotte sent the article to her editor, snapping her computer closed for the day. Simmering with excitement, she bolted from the Rolling Stone offices, hailing a taxi back to the Upper West Side. After her aunt had returned in the springtime, Charlotte had moved in with Quentin, becoming Morgan’s relative live-in mother (when she wasn’t at Kate’s, of course), and finding that—despite her young age of just twenty-four—she didn’t actually mind it. They worked as a strange, 21st-century family, speaking with dramatic flourish about music and then easing into discussions of homework and piano lessons and who was going to make Morgan spaghetti. Nothing about it made sense, and perhaps that’s what Charlotte loved most about it.
When she arrived home, bursting into the apartment, she found Quentin back in his studio, his back cranked over his guitar and his fingers flicking over the strings. He was humming as he played, looking the very portrait of a gorgeous, masculine singer-songwriter, with dark curls around his ears, his muscles taut, his shoulders wide. Charlotte watched him from the corner of the studio, twirling her hair as he played.
He still hadn’t noticed her.
As he ended the song, she crept up behind him, bringing her arms around his neck and kissing his shoulder blade, his ear. He laughed, knocking his head back and grabbing her hands. “Hello, gorgeous,” he whispered, whirling her around to his lap. He dropped his guitar into its case and eased her over him, bringing one leg on either side. Her crotch pressed up against his hard rod, which pulsed against his black jeans.
“Hi,” she whispered, her attraction to him igniting, making her forget anything else from her day. Nothing else existed: just this.
“Hello, there,” he returned, his dark eyes flashing. “Don’t suppose you were spying on me while I did my very important, top-secret work?”
“Me? But I’m just a girl. I have no reason to spy.”
“I have reason to believe you’re a journalist from the Rolling Stone Magazine,” Quentin said, his eyebrows high.
“Do you have proof of that?” Charlotte asked him, biting her bottom lip.
