Yeah. At fourteen, I was a lot.
I edged at a jumbled-up verse inside a song I couldn’t untangle, and I pivoted to hum “Drops of Jupiter” instead. Suddenly, I heard a soft voice speaking in the distance—the kind of voice that floated through the air like a beautiful feather. I frowned up from my guitar, eager to stare away any human who would dare invade my writing-procrastination zone. My expression softened, eyes widening.
Oh.
I sat still, but my body was in a free fall, losing control as it soaked in a stranger. This guy stood tall in a white T-shirt with a plaid flannel shirt tied around his waist. He was lanky, like he hadn’t had a chance to grow into his new growth spurt. There were headphones over his ears, and his eyes were glued to a crumpled sheet of paper in his hands. I could see an iPod poking out of his black skinny jeans. He was every emo fantasy come to life—instantly the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen. Severe jawline, olive skin, puka shell necklace, thick black hair, and cheekbones that he—a male—had no right to be gifted with.
This mystery guy had no idea he was walking into my space, nor that I was committing his entire being to memory, just in case I needed to close my eyes and relive him until my dying day. He walked right past me, and I made a point to breathe him in with the breeze. Sunblock and a hint of musky citrus, most likely Abercrombie and Fitch’s Woods.
“Sit by my side, and let the world slip. We shall never be younger,” he muttered under his breath.
I knew this one. It was Shakespeare. He spun on the toes of his All Stars with an air of confidence that I envied, walking right past me again, repeating the line.
“Sit by my side, and let the world slip. We shall never be younger.” He said the last line emphatically, with so much conviction that the hair on my arms stood up. And then, his copper eyes locked on to mine.
I sat frozen in his stare, with my entire body slanted to the side and my guitar limp in my hands. His eyes softened as they searched mine, twisting my insides up into knots. There was a vulnerability in the way he looked at me—like his default was to lead with compassion. Finally, he took the headphones off his ears and sucked in his reddening cheeks.
“I didn’t see you there.”
The way words danced on his tongue…I wanted to dance there, too. He crossed his arms and raised his cheekbones into a warm grin, melting the knot inside me and sending a wave of heat toward every inch of my body.
“Well, I guess it’s only fair that you show me yours,” he said, nodding to my guitar.
He wanted me to sing for him. Oh, fuck NO. I felt my cheeks burn, and I tried to open my jaw, but it was suddenly wired shut.
Open your goddamn mouth, Maggie. Use it to form a sentence.
“I—I don’t sing for other people,” I said, trying hard not to trip over every vowel.
“What’s the point of that?” His eyebrow danced upward in amusement, waiting for my answer.
It was a good question, one I had wrestled with for years. Music was my lifeline, but music was mine alone. My voice was not for sharing. I was best behind a closed door where I could live in the fantasy of being talented without someone telling me that I was maybe, just super average. The possibility of disappointment—of being told that I didn’t have the talent to do the only thing in the world that I wanted to—was stifling. “I hope I’m good” was safer than “tell me if I’m bad.” “I hope my dad shows up to my guitar recital” was safer than “you know he’ll never show, Maggie.” Hope’s reality had mostly let me down, but the sliver of possibilities pushed me through all the same. Head in the clouds, false safety net at my feet.
I took in the beautiful boy standing in front of me, waiting for me to sing. I hugged my guitar closer to my body. Maybe he couldn’t see through me if I had an armful of carved mahogany covering my heaving chest.
“It’s okay for people to have things that are just for them,” I said, barely believing my words.
He chewed at the inside of his cheek, clearly in disagreement, but wanting to be gentle about it.
“I think art should be shared,” he said.
He sat down cross-legged on the field below the stage and peered up at me, twisting long pieces of grass between his fingers, for what felt like minutes. This was the first time a beautiful guy looked at me like he wanted to know me—like he wanted to see all sides of me. I felt the air thicken, and I swear, the second hand on my watch moved slower.
All at once, I heard the sound of my own guitar. I felt calluses strumming C, G, F, F. Then I heard my own voice. As if for the first time.
“Now that she’s back in the atmosphere, with drops of Jupiter in her hair.”
Train’s song echoed against the arched wooden arena surrounding me. His mouth parted, just slightly, as his amber eyes widened against my tone. My voice was lighting up someone else’s face. It was a high like no other.
I planned to stop singing after the chorus’s end, but a stupid grin broke across his face, and I could do nothing but keep going, until the entire song was finished.
This was love at first sight.
The final note left my lips, and I realized he was holding my gaze—his eyes staring deeply into mine, unblinking. Heat curled down my spine, and suddenly I was back in my own body—dress damp and tight against my fluttering chest, as if stage fright had simply been a fever that needed to break.
He opened his mouth slightly, but he couldn’t find the right words. Something about the way he searched for them made me think that when this guy found the words, they meant something.
“I could listen to you sing every day until I die.”
It was better than “I love you.”
He sat down next to me on the edge of the stage and outstretched his hand.
“Asher.”
I opened my mouth, which was suddenly dry. “Maggie,” I said, without actually saying it. Because I couldn’t speak.
He gave me my limp hand back, his attention shifting to the worn paperback book on my guitar case. He picked up the book, handling it with care, as if it were a relic in a museum.
“On the Other Side,” he said, reading the title. His hand brushed over the illustration on the cover: an oil painting of a young woman gazing up at the lonely moon.
“It’s—it’s my favorite book,” I found myself saying.
“Can I borrow it?” he asked.
I was dumbstruck. What did this gorgeous guy want with my book?
“Don’t you want to know what it’s about first?” I asked.
“It’s your favorite book. What more do I need to know?”
We had only known each other for the length of a song, but somehow, Asher wanted to understand the things that made me come alive.
Train was right: heaven was overrated.
12
THIRTY-FIVE
THE BEST WAY TO FOLLOW an existential crisis is to sing “Hallelujah” during a dead oil baron’s memorial service, on an eighty-foot sailboat schooner off Sag Harbor. I belted Leonard Cohen’s gospel as a wealthy man’s black-tie-clad family scattered his ashes into the sea and, thanks to the high winds, into my mouth. “Hallelujah” was, without a doubt, my most requested song. It was one of my favorites, but I didn’t have the heart to tell the grieving widowers and beaming brides that they were asking me to sing a very Jewish song about being undone by sex.
“She tied you to a kitchen chair.”
“Morty was a devoted husband to his wife, Sue Anne.…”
“Remember when I moved in you.”
“There’s nothing Morty loved more than spending time fishing with his grandsons, Morty the Third and Mason.”
After doing Leonard Cohen proud, I gave the family space to mourn, retreating to the other side of the boat as the service continued. I drew in a deep breath of the sea air, when a tiny, sticky hand wrapped around mine. I looked down, seeing a little girl, no more than three, grinning up at me.
“You’re like a princess,” she announced.
I crouched down to her big cheeks and fixed the undone bow around one of her pigtails.
“So are you.”