Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,23
matter what he did to it; beauty inhered in his proportions, his graceful slender hips, angled perfectly to press into her exactly where she wanted to be pressed. She lifted her face up so that he could lean down and kiss her, but he was shivering.
“I’m gonna get out, okay? I’m too afraid of losing my balance,” he said, and headed for the shore, leaving her no choice but to trail after him, awkwardly bodysurfing the small wave that carried her all the way in.
They dried off with the gross towels Laura had packed, then put their clothes on and headed back to the boardwalk because Dylan wanted to get a beer and go on a ride. Laura got an ice-cream cone and licked it pensively while Dylan chugged his entire first beer, then bought another one right away. They walked down the boardwalk toward the Cyclone, and Dylan reached for Laura’s hand again. Laura thought about whether anyone they passed would recognize Dylan and wonder who his girlfriend was.
They rode home as the sun was setting, watching the last of the day wash over the exotic faraway neighborhoods as the elevated train passed avenues far into the alphabet, beautiful and ugly streets alike rendered cinematic by the golden light. Dylan smelled objectively bad, because he was unshowered and sweaty and had alcohol oozing from his pores, and though Laura was a little bit self-conscious about what their fellow passengers thought, to her he smelled good.
The train was full of smells of its own, and raucous noises of sunburned families coming home laden with inflatable toys and buckets and chairs, shouting at one another. Dylan swayed and nodded. She had to ask him now. The worst he could say was no. It would be humiliating to admit to Amanda that she’d lied. She could always say it had been canceled or called off for some reason beyond her control, but Amanda had barely believed her to start with and would definitely not believe any excuse she proffered. On the other hand, who even cared what Amanda thought? She had just given Laura an excuse to do something she’d wanted to do anyway.
She didn’t want to seem pathetic. She wanted to seem triumphant, like she was conquering her new New York life and beginning her real musical career. And she also, despite her fears, wanted to play for a big audience. Some of them might like her music, and those people would become her fans. Then her band would be real, and playing in a band could become the focus of her life, the way it was the focus of Dylan’s. She wouldn’t have to feel like she was waiting to fail definitively so that she could give up and get back to real life, the way her father had. That was the version of her future that her mother and brothers probably envisioned, if they even bothered to envision her future. But Laura now had access to a different vision: given the chance, she now knew she could be like Dylan, or better. If Dylan could manage to be Dylan even though he barely bothered to make an effort at anything in his offstage life, then she should be able to do as well as he did. She tried so much harder than he did all the time.
She thought about explaining all of this to Dylan, but he would probably fall asleep before she got to the point. So instead she just asked, point-blank, whether he thought her band was good enough to open for his.
He was breathing with his mouth open, head on her shoulder, almost dozing, but he perked up for a moment. “Of course you’re good, baby. I love your little songs.”
“Okay, well, do you think you could talk to someone about putting us on the bill before your next show?”
He shook himself more awake. “It’s in DC, next Tuesday. You work Tuesdays, right?”
“I can get someone to cover for me,” she said, trying to keep her tone casual as the thrill of terror and joy vibrated through her entire body. Dylan probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He curled up and dozed off for real just as the stations began to be more recognizable, and then the train dove back underground for the final time. Soon she was shaking him awake at Second Avenue, wiping at the spot of his drool that had pooled on her shoulder, composing a triumphant email to Amanda in her mind. She