Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,14

same movement, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward him.

“?‘I want my tapes back,’?” he sang in his dramatic, growling deep voice, nothing like Laura’s clear, no-nonsense alto. He spun her around the room in a little waltz. “?‘I hope you know where they are.’?” She was intoxicated by sheer physical proximity to him, and so flattered that he’d remembered the words to her song.

* * *

Dylan had been gone on tour for two weeks, and Callie and Laura were on their way to alt.coffee to check their email when they passed the magazine store on A and Fifth Street and saw the cover of NME with Dylan on it. The other band members were on it, too, but the photo was mostly Dylan, standing in front, looking into the camera like he was sad and annoyed about having his photo taken. They both saw it at the same time and came to such a screeching halt that the man walking behind them bumped into them.

“Fucking morons!” he shouted as he pushed on past. They ignored him and kept staring at the magazine.

“Oh my God, you’re dating a rock star,” said Callie.

“Dating?” said Laura.

“Oh my God, we’re groupies!” said Callie.

“Gross, no. Do you think he’s famous now?”

“Yes! If you actually want to be his girlfriend now, good luck. Girls are going to be throwing themselves at him after this.”

Callie was always so pragmatic, but she was probably right. The way Laura had felt about Dylan the first time she’d seen him play hadn’t just been lust, it had been admiration for his talent; his magic was real. It was inevitable that other people would acknowledge it, too.

She felt both vindicated and frustrated—it was good to have been proven right about Dylan, but she also wanted something like credit for having known him before he became more generally known. Mostly, though, she wanted to actually talk to him.

They hadn’t said anything about how they would stay in touch while he was away—it hadn’t seemed like a long enough amount of time to justify a plan for keeping in touch—but now Laura wished she’d said something. He didn’t have a cell phone, but that was probably for the best. If she’d been able to call him at that moment, she would have asked whether he loved her. Asking someone you’ve had sex with a handful of times whether they love you, especially if they’re turning out to be a famous rock star, is not the right move, she knew. But she also knew that if he called her at this exact moment she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. She decided instead to email him. She didn’t know whether he would be checking email, but she had his address that he’d scribbled somewhere and she would be able to control herself better if she could revise what she wanted to say to him as much as she liked before sending it.

They went into the café, which was dark and smelled like old couches and cigarettes, and ordered their drinks and their allotments of internet time from the guy at the counter. Laura stalled by going into the bathroom, where a bunch of computer parts sat in a bathtub, some kind of dumb art installation, and while she peed she thought through the decision she had just made to email Dylan. It was such a low-stakes way of reaching out to him. But what would she say?

She sat down at one of the shared monitors, trying to ignore the greasy feel of the keyboard, and began to type. She asked how the tour was going, what the different cities were like. She fished delicately for a response that would indicate that he was looking forward to seeing her when he came back, but she didn’t make any dramatic declarations. She tried not to mention her feelings at all. She needed to include at least a sentence about what she’d been up to, but this was tricky because there really wasn’t much going on in her life besides working at the bar, hanging out with Callie, and obsessing about him. So she lied a wishful lie about working on her songs and playing a small show that a friend of Callie’s had hooked her up with. Callie had mentioned something about introducing her to someone who booked bands at the Sidewalk Café, so it wasn’t exactly a lie. Plus, she could even use the lie as motivation to make it true before