Page 32 of Tangled Up In You

He wanted to give in to it. To wallow in the misery and pain.

When he heard a light tapping on his window, his first instinct was to ignore it. But it persisted, so he got up and opened the window to find Conor waiting.

Conor, his good friend who had always been there when it mattered most.

“She gone?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Gavin replied softly.

“Are you okay?”

Gavin shrugged.

“Come on, let’s go get drunk,” Conor urged with a smile.

Gavin grabbed his jacket and climbed out the window.

“Sounds about right.”

NOW

15

GAVIN

2002

“Oh, get out of there. Get out of there! We’re gonna die!”

“Steady on, Marty. We’ve got them where we want them.”

Gavin barely registered his bandmates’ videogame-inspired banter—not just because he was distracted, but because the dynamic playing out between bassist Martin and drummer Shay was typical. Shay was the solid force within their rhythm section, the one to impose some discipline onto Martin. Whereas Martin was stocky, baby-faced, and aimless, Shay was all compact muscles, prominent Irish cheekbones, and laser-focused. Gavin had no doubt that Shay would be the one to lead the two of them to victory in their Call of Duty gaming battle.

They were on their tour bus heading to Los Angeles after sold-out shows in San Francisco. This was the band’s first time in America and it had been a wild ride with both the college scene and alternative radio latching onto their debut album,It Could Be Now. With two singles charting in the top ten, they’d sold just over three million albums worldwide.

So why was he feeling such a strong sense of desolation? The view through the tour bus window was of a barren landscape, all beige and lifeless in temperatures so hot and foreign to him that the heat of the sunbaked glass nearly singed his fingertips.

“What’s rattling around in that head of yours, Gav?”

Gavin reluctantly pulled his eyes away from the window to look at Conor, his best friend. Conor was lounging on the sole sofa in the bus, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles with his head resting in the crook of his folded arm as he read a book. If Gavin showed the slightest interest in the book—Life of Pi—Conor could recite an on-the-spot essay on its literary merits. Besides being the best-looking guy in the band, he was also the smartest.

“What’s that?” Gavin asked, still feeling out of sorts.

Conor didn’t look up from his book. “What’s keeping you from finalizing that setlist?”

The sheet of paper on the table in front of him was blank, the Sharpie in his hand still capped and unused.

“Ah, I feel like boiled shite,” Gavin said with a grimace and rubbed the scruff on his face. While it was true that he was hungover, the thing that had sent his mind into a fog more than anything were thoughts of Sophie Kavanaugh.

In fact, he’d been thinking of her nonstop since their most recent shows in northern California. Fantasies that Sophie might be in the audience of one of those shows had swirled in his head, tripping him up during a couple of songs before he regained his concentration. Knowing Sophie had grown up in nearby Menlo Park in Silicon Valley and returned there after her year of studies in Dublin made him hope she would turn up for the band’s shows.

But she hadn’t.

And he’d partied especially hard after each show to numb the disappointment he felt.

“I wouldn’t know from experience,” Conor said, “but I hear a bit of the black stuff is a good tonic for what ails you.”

“You got a magic stash of Guinness, then?” Gavin muttered grumpily but Conor just raised his eyebrows in self-satisfaction.

---