Page 95 of Only After We Met
“Fine, we won’t talk about it if you don’t want.” She gave in. “But at least tell me how things are going, honestly, with details, not just by sayingcoolandgreatthe way you do over the phone. Iwant to know what’s happening with that song.”
“We didn’t expect it would be so big.”
“I’ll bet. Are you happy?”
“I guess.” I shrugged.
“You don’t seem like it.”
“I don’t know.” I spun my fork in the noodles. “I guess I was fine, you know? In Australia. It was chill there, and I was living by the ocean, and I thought… I thought I’d stay longer. I wanted to. I think it weirded me out having to go somewhere for the first time without deciding it on my own, you know?”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “You and obligations.”
“And life in LA is the total opposite. Fast. You almost don’t even notice it passing. You should come out sometime for a few days. Or a week. As long as you’d like. It would be fun.”
“Is there a girl in the picture?”
She looked amused. I laughed.
“Sort of.”
“Ginger, wasn’t that her name? Are you still talking with her?”
“It’s not Ginger, Mom.”
She was the only person I’d spoken to about Ginger. About how important she was to me. About how we’d been talking for almost two years, even if our conversations had thinned out in recent months. I thought it was my fault, because I was always busy, but it was her too; she was busy with work, her new schedule, her life in London…
I missed her when I had a free second not surrounded by people or when I was having fun and doing something crazy. In those moments, Ginger would creep once again into my mind, as if shewere there to fill my empty spaces. I thought of her and the gift she’d sent me for my last birthday, which had never reached me, because I had left before it arrived. I imagined the box at the door of my house on the beach, carefully, painstakingly wrapped. I imagined that and I had the feeling that not everything was well.
“Who’s the girl then?”
“Alexa. The one who sings with me.”
“You’re going out with her? Is it serious?”
“Not exactly…”
“It’s one of those hookups you kids are into.”
I couldn’t really call myself a kid anymore at twenty-eight years old, but yeah, I guess that’s what it was. A kind of closeness. A relationship, but different. Because unlike the girls I’d been with those past few years, with Alexa it wasn’t just sex. We spent every day together between promotional work, shows at night, plus the trips to festivals we had coming up…
“I guess everything’s going great then.”
“I suppose,” I whispered.
But I couldn’t escape a feeling of heaviness, apathy, the idea that something about all that wasn’t right, as much as I wanted to just give in, go with the current, stop fighting against myself.
49
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: The Little Prince
I read the book again. It’s fascinating. When I think about the dedication, I keep asking myself: Am I your domesticated fox?
From: Ginger Davies