Page 102 of Tangled Up In You

GAVIN

Rogue’s tour ended in Dublin and the after-party was at the Rogue organization’s new offices in the Docklands where Sophie had worked with event planners to transform the raw industrial space with lounge furniture, specialty lighting, and plentiful bars.

Gavin sensed everyone’s relief to be done supporting an album that even he had to admit was a downer. But he gamely played his expected role as the life of the party, keeping multiple conversations going and interacting with both friends and strangers in the animated, engaging way he had become known for.

It was still early in the evening when things took a turn. He had just stepped out of the restroom when a man cornered him, introducing himself as Gary Paulson, a writer for the American magazine Vanity Fair.

“Good to see you,” Gavin said, wondering how the journalist got in. “But I’m not doing any press just now.”

“Just a quick question. I’m doing a piece on the tenth anniversary of Rogue’s first album and need a little backstory,” Paulson said.

“What is it?” Gavin asked.

“Can you tell me whether your mother is dead or alive?”

“What?” The air got thin and the lights bright, as if he had been sucker-punched.

“See, there’s no death record. So we’re looking into the details,” Paulson said. “Care to help me out?”

Gavin didn’t respond. Instead, he headed back to his group of friends in a daze.

“Aye, Gav,” Martin said, “tell these guys what you were saying about them songs. You know, the length of the lyrics.”

Gavin heard Martin’s entreaty but was slow to respond. Everything around him felt off. It seemed to take a massive effort just to blink and clear his throat. Then Paulson came into his line of sight and he needed the distraction that Martin had offered.

“The thing is,” Gavin said, and the group collectively leaned forward to hear what he would say, “your average rock or pop song is around two to three hundred words. Then there’s Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row.’ That one goes on for six hundred and fifty words. That’s huge, right?” He was enjoying the telling of this now, the reporter gone from his thoughts. “And the bleedin’ song is over eleven minutes long!”

“I’ll murder you if you’re after a song that long,” Conor said, and the group laughed.

“No, but here’s the interesting thing. There’s another song—a better song if you ask me—that is four hundred and seventy-three words. Here’s the catch: it’s only four minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”

“Less than half as long, then,” Martin said.

“Well less. Done by The Killers with their brilliant song ‘This River is Wild.’ Imagine the lungs on that singer—Brandon Flowers is his name—to write a fucking novel as a rock song. Seriously, I never knew that many words could work in one song. But it does.”

The group went off trying to think of other lengthy songs, and Gavin saw that Paulson was still watching him.

“Is that guy a problem?” Shay asked, following Gavin’s gaze.

Instead of answering, Gavin heard a line from that Killers song in his head about always holding your head up high, “because it’s a long, long, long way down.” He got up and went to the bar, ordering a whiskey before locating one of Rogue’s security staff to have Paulson removed as an uninvited guest.

63

CONOR

Though it was well past eight in the evening, Conor kept his sunglasses on to withstand the bright flashes coming from dozens of photographers crowding the red-carpet premiere of his friend Jackson Armstrong’s latest splashy romantic comedy. He obliged the frantic paparazzi for several minutes, turning ever so slightly from one side to another as they shouted his name familiarly.

Coming to London for this event had been a last-minute decision, one born out of post-tour restlessness. Rogue had been home less than a month and he had yet to make the transition from the touring routine to quiet home life. They had performed better than they ever had, turning each show into a thrilling display of their cohesion as a band. And he ached for the adrenaline rush of performing before a rowdy audience on a near nightly basis. Going to pubs and parties once home was no substitution. He needed a distraction and he wasn’t going to get it by working with his bandmates on a new album.

Gavin was sullenly lost in his own head, overcome by worries of when and how the story of his mother’s abandonment might surface. There was little Conor could do to pull him out of his funk, and besides, he knew that if it was anyone’s job to do that, it was Sophie’s.

Martin was dedicated to making up for lost time with his wife and sons. Donal was now a big brother and the two boys kept Martin and Celia busy. Martin had arranged for the family to go away for a month to live in a cottage in a small town outside of Burgundy, France.

An opportunity had come up for Shay to score an independent movie soundtrack, which he promptly accepted, and was thus spending all his free time in New York.

All of which meant Conor was now attending a movie premiere in London where he would be lucky to get five minutes of the star’s time. The media crush was intense, and he was beginning to regret his decision to make a spectacle of himself when he felt a hand on his arm.

He turned with the expectation that it was a publicity person urging him along and was delighted to instead find himself face to face with Colette Devereaux.

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