Page 69 of Dedicated
I didn’t confirm her remark, just stirred my finger through some of the photos. Les and me backstage. The two of us onstage. Les making a stupid face. Me making a stupid face. Les scowling at the camera. Me scowling at something out of the frame. Probably Les. Me smiling at something out of the frame. Also probably Les.
I sighed.
“I’ve probably taken thousands of photos of you guys since I first saw you play at Jensen’s. And after I talked to you at the cabin, God, I was still so upset.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her nibbling at her lower lip, watching me shuffle through the photos. “But you’re my friend, you know? Before we were anything else, we were friends, and it hurt that you didn’t feel as strongly about me as I felt about you when we got together.”
I started to interrupt to explain, to apologize again, but she shook her head, cutting me off. “That night I went back through all of my photos of you two. All of them. From that first show you guys did together at Jensen’s to the one in Detroit two weeks before you guys went to Gatlinburg. And then it all made sense.”
“What did?” I sounded blithely ignorant but couldn’t ignore the prickle of knowing over my skin.
“See if you see it like I do.” She dug through the photos, carefully sorting through and selecting them, then presented me with a stack. She put one elbow to the counter and her cheek in her hand, then nodded at me to go through them.
“Jensen’s,” she said of the first. Les and I stood on the tiny stage looking out at the audience with wild grins on our faces. Our posture mirrored each other. I flipped through a few more of the early shows and saw the shift in the photos she’d taken after we’d dropped the first album. More interaction between us, more shots where we were grinning at each other or watching each other. There was a friendliness and a sense of connection that came through. I drew in a deep breath when I got to a photo from the last show in Detroit that she’d been at. The intensity of Les’s stare trained on me, that gaze I knew—the hungry, aching one.
Leigh pressed her lips together, arching her brows, like she’d caught me out on something and was waiting for me to fess up. When I didn’t, she pressed, “It’s so fucking evident Les is stupid over you that I can’t believe I never gave it proper credit before.” She shrugged lightly, somewhat ruefully as I dragged my eyes away from the picture and met hers. She stared at me evenly, then pushed her bowl aside and plucked another photo out of the pile, dropping it on the counter in front of me. It landed like an anvil around my heart. The picture was post-show, backstage. I couldn’t tell where—the rooms mostly looked the same—but I knew it was on our last tour, probably close to the middle of it. In it, Leigh had captured me sprawled on a couch, hands behind my head, a lazy, goofy, satisfied smile on my face, my gaze on Les and clearly transfixed by him as he tried to step in front of the lens, his wide grin a blur of white.
“Whatever you two are or aren’t, there’s something there, and if you try to deny it, I’ll call you a liar.” She gave me a look. “I’ve photographed a lot of bands, Ev, and no one else,no one elsethat I’ve ever worked with comes close to the vibe between you two. I mean, it’s glaringly obvious now. Maybe I just didn’t want to see it because I wanted you, too, you know?”
I sank down onto the stool next to her, resting my elbows on the counter, my forehead to my fists. “Fuck, I don’t know what to do. It’s driving me crazy.” I still felt the sting of betrayal, but I couldn’t deny the component of me that missed Les intensely, just as I couldn’t deny the part of me that worried about what he’d do next. It was a catch-22. “Just because there’s a connection, though, doesn’t mean it’s healthy or… or viable in the long run.”
“Yeah, I know, but if it’s true you’re going out solo… I don’t know.” She bit her lip, glancing down at the photos again, then back up at me, her voice softer this time. “I know you. You’re miserable.”
She did know me. And I knew her. She was stable and safe, creative and intelligent, more than a little attractive. So why couldn’t I have felt for her what I felt for Les?
Sighing, she swept the photos aside and propped her chin on her fist. “I just hate the idea that you guys can’t work out your differences.”
“It’s more complex than that.” I drew in a breath and tried to explain it to her. I told her everything, beginning with how our tour had started falling apart after the thing with Ella, pausing when she winced for the third time. “Sorry, I can stop. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“No, it’s not that.” She waved her hand through the air vaguely. “I mean, yeah, it kind of is. It’s just that… you know, I wish you’d been that intome.”
“Believe me, me too.”
The sad expression on her face made me grimace.
“Is it just because he’s a guy that you have these hang-ups?”
“No! It’s because it’s fucking Les. Les, who can’t keep it in his pants. Les, who never met a bottle of booze or a pill he didn’t like. Les, who fucking told someone it was okay to sell my sex life. Pick your poison, because he’s all of them.” I realized I was gesturing violently and folded my arms over my chest tightly.
Leigh shifted on top of the stool, her expression shading thoughtful. “That girl could’ve sold that story anytime. She never needed permission from either of you. That she even asked is shockingly considerate, really. And kind of sad. She must really like you two.”
I knew Leigh was right about Ella, but it didn’t help. “That’s not the point, though. The point is he didn’t tell me either way. In fact, he actively hid it from me because he knew he’d fucked up.”
Leigh inhaled, seeming to give up, and shook her head. “I think you should talk to him. He’s out of rehab.”
I knew that, but I wasn’t sure how she did. She seemed to predict the question from the glance I turned in her direction. “I had coffee with him two days ago. He wanted to make amends.”
“For what?” I picked up my still-full bowl and took it to the sink, my appetite gone, then lingered there with my back to the island so I didn’t have to see those damn pictures up close anymore.
“I don’t know, actually. He seemed to think that time he made a pass at me early on really pissed me off. It didn’t, but I dunno… he said he had a long list and wanted to do it right.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t heard from him since his meltdown in Vegas.” By design. I knew Byron had told him to leave me alone and let me approach him when and if I wanted to. I was undecided on that, too, though the longer I sat there with Leigh and those pictures, the more my resolve wavered and flickered inside me like a lightbulb on the fritz. I kept wondering how he was doing,whathe was doing. Was he holed up in his house writing? Doing nothing? What did he plan to do next? Had he talked to MGD?
“He asked about you. How you’ve been. I told him I had no clue, because I didn’t.” She sniffed and fiddled with the ends of her hair.
“Sorry about that. I’ve basically blacked everyone out of my social life since I’ve been back.” Except Rita and Byron. “How’d he look?” I tried to mask my interest with a bored expression, but the twist of her lips as she considered me said she wasn’t buying it.
“Good. Healthy. Sad. All of those things, somehow. I could tell he was trying to follow the program, turn himself around. He said he’s been doing a meeting a day. Told me about being in rehab. It was nice, really. A little awkward because I kept thinking of the two of you together, but nice.”
After Leigh left,I cleaned up the kitchen, studiously avoiding the photos she’d left behind until I couldn’t anymore. Then I sat down at the counter and flipped through them all again, one by one. Watching our rise and fall in stills caused a fresh, brutal pang of sadness to radiate through my chest. But when I picked up my phone and pulled up Les’s contact information, I couldn’t make myself press Send.