Secrets of a (Somewhat) Sunny Girl Read online

  And hopefully some forgiveness for me.

  Chapter Two

  It wasn't fun to admit you came from poor marital stock, but it was the case with Amy and me. Our parents had taken good care of us, but they hadn’t done a particularly good job at being husband and wife. Even though everything with their marriage ended with Mom, the trouble started with Dad.

  You quit your job? Again?

  I met this guy and he was telling me about a fantastic opportunity.

  His list of seemingly unrelated professional pursuits was long—ad man, radio disc jockey, plumber. It drove Mom nuts, and understandably so, but she never even tried to exercise some patience. Never. That created tension, which only fed the feeling in our house that things were unsettled. Everything wasn’t fine, even when they insisted it was. On some level, it made us feel like we couldn’t truly count on either of them. Yes, there had always been food on the table and clothes on our backs, but kids see grown-ups as the barometer of familial peace. When there’s open dissension, that means there’s a storm brewing. In our case, Amy and I were in the calm of the eye.

  Thankfully, Amy and I were nothing like Dad when it came to our careers. We'd both managed to find our calling. She was a natural lawyer, able to argue for hours, running on nothing more than a Coke Zero and a handful of almonds. For me, I couldn't imagine doing anything other than being a color analyst, a job I was quite literally born to do.

  “Hey, Katherine, can I get your help?” My boss, Summer Kimble, called out as I walked past her office, a few doors down from mine. It was after six, and everyone else had gone home for the day.

  “Two secs.”

  Much of my day was popping into other people's offices and meetings to put out fires. I was known as the secret weapon. An art teacher discovered my quirky eyesight in high school, and with the help of her geneticist father, they reached the conclusion that I was a tetrachromat. It wasn't easy to explain, I only knew one way of seeing, but it helped me find the perfect career. During my first few weeks at NACI, it'd been a little embarrassing to be singled out for my vision, but over time, I came to appreciate how special it made me feel. Before I landed the job, I'd never felt singled out in a good way, aside from the few months I'd spent in Ireland—the only time I'd thought that maybe my parents' history had given me the wrong ideas about love.

  Summer waved me into her office. “I just got the print samples for the Anthem Apparel catalog.” She pushed her thick glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “These don't look right. I don't know what happened.”

  I took survey of the trim, stylish women dressed in astronomically priced clothing. The catalog covers were indeed ghastly. These would not sell clothes—they'd end up straight in the recycling bin. “This isn't the paper stock they normally use.” I flipped one of the samples to the blank side. “It has an ivory cast to it.”

  She held the paper up to the light. “Looks pure white to me.”

  Of course it did. She saw it as a solid field. I saw it as a mosaic of shades, and as anyone who's been to a paint store can attest, there are countless ways to convey colors. “It isn't. I’ll call the printer in the morning to double-check. I can go down there if necessary.”

  “Thank you so much. Now I'll be able to sleep tonight.” Summer sat back in her chair. She was a great boss. She never failed to express her appreciation. “Well, a little. Miles Ashby arrives tomorrow. Lord knows how that will go.”

  Miles Ashby was a hotshot from our UK office. He was coming to work out of the New York office for an unspecified amount of time. It was supposed to mean bigger clients and bigger accounts, but it was hard not to feel as though he was being sent to whip us all into shape. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. He’ll be blown away by how awesome we all are.” I was sure of nothing of the sort.

  “That’s the spirit.” Summer collected the papers on her desk. “Headed home?”

  “Meeting my sister, actually. She has some big surprise planned.” I'd been suspecting that tonight was a pity date, that Amy had noticed the way I got anxious every time she brought up the wedding. The truth was that things were happening very quickly. I'd assumed they'd tie the knot in a year, like normal people, but they wanted to do it in December. That was in two months. It was like they were dying to get married.

  Plus, she kept dismissing my opinion of the bridesmaids' dresses, when all I'd done was point out that it wasn't fair she wanted to squash my already limited bust line into a strapless gown.

  “Big surprise on a Wednesday?” Summer asked.

  “There's some new Spanish place she's been raving about. Hopefully that's where we're going. I'm starving.”

  “Have fun.”

  I grabbed my purse and coat from my office, and ducked into the ladies room for a make-up refresh. There was no telling if I was dressed correctly. Amy had said to wear something cute, but as to what that meant, I wasn't sure, so I'd gone with a black turtleneck and pencil skirt, hair back in a ponytail, and my favorite knee-high boots. I'd describe it as ‘quirky professor cute’.

  I met Amy in front of the diner, our usual meeting spot since it was equidistant between our offices. “What's the plan?”

  “You are going to love me after tonight.” She clapped her hands together and grinned like she was up to no good. It was weird. It wasn't like Amy to be coy.

  “I already love you.” This must be some pretty amazing paella. “And was I supposed to wear heels? Is that what you meant by cute?”

  “Remember how I told you that my firm was expanding our entertainment division to include music law?”

  What exactly did this have to do with eating? Or with what she was wearing? “Can we talk about this over dinner?”

  “No. Shut up. I'm trying to tell you the surprise. I'm taking you to see someone you know. Someone famous.”

  “I don’t know anyone famous.”

  “Yes, you do. Eamon MacWard.” She then said something about one of the attorneys in her office and tickets, but I was stuck on his name. "The show is sold out. People are scalping tickets for ridiculous amounts of money." She took my hand and led me to the street corner like I was a kid in need of a chaperone. “We're in the VIP section. Fifth row. And we have backstage passes.”

  The light changed. The walk signal turned. Everyone around us proceeded to cross, including Amy. My feet, however, were stuck to the pavement.

  She yanked my arm, then rounded back. “Katherine, come on.”

  A man bumped into us. “Watch where you're standing.”

  “Get your face out of your phone,” Amy snapped back.

  I'd known that Eamon was coming to New York. I'd have to be living under a rock to not notice his handsome face on one of the big screens in Times Square, or the way some of the women in my office had chattered about it. In fact, I'd been keenly aware of every time Eamon had played in the city over the last decade, ever since he became big enough to sell out concert halls all over the world. But I'd never gone to see him. It would've been too painful.

  “What is going on?” Amy asked. “I thought you would be excited. Remember how you told me you met him in Ireland? We've never gone to see him together. I thought it would be cool.”

  “I thought we were eating.”

  “I’ve heard he puts on an incredible show. And he's so damn sexy. The Irish accent? Oh, my God. I could sit around and listen to him read the phone book.”

  “There's no such thing as a phone book. Not anymore.”

  “You know what I mean.” She tugged on my arm again, but I didn't budge. “Come on.”

  I did not make a habit of keeping details from my sister. She was the one person I could tell anything, without judgment. I hadn't told her about Eamon when I returned from Ireland because she'd been stuck at home dealing with Dad while I was gallivanting in Europe. It wasn't until Eamon's first record came out that I casually mentioned I'd met him. Amy hadn't pushed me for more at the time, and I wasn't sure I could talk about him without crying. The more famou
s Eamon became over the years, the idea of suddenly sharing everything became exponentially more absurd.

  I didn't just meet Eamon MacWard. We had a fling. A stupid hot romance where we almost never got out of bed, and when we did it wasn't for long. He made my toes curl. He wrote a song about me. Saying goodbye to him was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

  “I need to tell you something,” I mumbled.

  “Can you tell me along the way? It's a good twenty blocks to the theater.”

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “The closer we get to the theater, the dumber it's going to sound.”

  Amy dropped her head back out of exasperation. "You are officially making me insane."

  “I didn't just meet him. I know him. I know him, know him.”

  Her eyes became so huge they threatened to swallow her button nose. “Like sex, know him?”

  “It was a long time ago. Nobody knows. I mean nobody.”

  Amy squealed like a piglet. People turned around. “Oh, my God.” She huddled up next to me and muttered in my ear. “My sister had sex with Eamon MacWard?”

  The first time we did it, we were so hot for each other we didn't even use a condom. We were half-naked in his front hall. I was out of my mind.

  “It's Aim-un. Not Eem-un. And shush. People will hear you.”

  “Sorry. Aim-un. And now you have to tell me everything.”

  I was in no way prepared to tell her this story right now—this was the sort of thing that required a comfy place to sit and at least one bottle of wine. Per person. “It was sweet and romantic. I was a kid.” Way to undersell it.

  “I want to hear everything later. Every juicy little detail.” Gleeful, she hooked her arm in mine and started walking with such force that I had no choice but to stumble along. She began to prattle on about the wedding, but I couldn't focus, not when I knew what—and who—was waiting when we arrived at the theater. Could I do this? I'd never even bothered with the question. I'd assumed the answer was no. If my vision was a one-in-a-billion fluke, Eamon MacWard was an even more rare kind of guy.

  The first time I laid eyes on him, he was setting up to perform in a pub in the small town where I lived with my host family. It was a Friday. The place was packed, smoky, and loud. I managed to grab a stool at the end of the bar, with a direct view of the tiny stage in the corner. Eamon was plugging in an amp, tuning his guitar, and wrestling with a microphone cord in earnest. His thick, wavy hair, the color of warm, black coffee, fell to his shoulders. He was lanky, his legs a mile long in dark jeans. He wore scuffed work boots and a charcoal thermal, sleeves bunched at his elbows. Scruff peppered the fair skin of his square jaw. His brows were just as dark, but heavy. He was rough-hewn perfection. And I was transfixed.

  I sat there sipping Guinness, unable to tear my sight from him while he nervously double-checked every little thing. I could tell he was talking to himself, which I found adorable. The tables in front of the stage were filled with people drinking and talking. They didn't notice a thing he did, which I couldn't comprehend. He was right there. And he was so worth watching. When he finished his preparations, he straightened to his full height, raised his arms and stretched, revealing a narrow sliver of his stomach. I had never been more turned on in my entire life. He caught me looking and peered back with his steely-gray eyes. Heat and embarrassment crept over me. It was like he could see inside my brain and knew exactly what I was thinking. He smiled. My whole world changed. For the first time ever, I had been glad I hadn't been prepared for something. I never would've believed it in the first place.

  “Ma'am, your purse.”

  I looked up. The theater marquis flashed. An evening with Eamon MacWard.

  Amy grumbled. “Katherine. She needs to inspect your bag.”

  The security woman radiated impatience.

  “Oh, right.” I scrambled to open the flap of my black leather cross-body bag, and let her rifle through my things. “Sorry.”

  “Next,” the woman said.

  We filed into the fancy lobby, walking on ruby red carpet past long tables of t-shirts, adorned with pictures of Eamon and his band. This was all too detached from the history I had with him—he was not a rock star when I knew him, although he was a star-in-waiting. I knew that much the instant I saw him in that pub.

  It was such a long time ago—eleven years. Maybe seeing him perform wouldn't affect me much. I'd changed since then. Not a lot, but some. He'd probably changed a lot, so much that I wouldn't recognize him as being the same person. He'd gotten married a little less than two years after I left Ireland, which had sent me into a bit of a downward spiral at the time. He got divorced a year later, and that slightly improved my mood until I reminded myself that we were half a world away from each other, I needed to get over it, and no marital split was a good thing.

  An usher showed Amy and me to our seats. My heart couldn't settle on a steady beat, behaving like a hyper puppy, saddled with too much nervous energy. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths through my nose while Amy and Luke exchanged texts that made her giggle. It's going to be okay. It's just music. No big deal.

  When the lights went down and the crowd rose to its feet, I stood, but that one bit of upward momentum left me feeling like I was floating a few inches off the floor. His band filed on to the stage and he brought up the rear. It was just like him to arrive with little fanfare and have it met with an intense roar of screams and applause from the crowd. He waved. He smiled. And I fought to stay in the present, to not allow myself to think this was a dream.

  Watching him as he strapped on his acoustic guitar and he squinted into the spotlight, I had to wonder if there was some part of him that sensed I was in the room. Were we still connected like we had been, all those years ago? My body was keenly aware of his presence—it was like I was in a tin bucket on a rolling sea, clutching the sides so hard that my fingers cramped, terrified of being tossed into the waves, even when excitement bubbled up inside my stomach. The temptation of the ride, however scary, was more fun than sitting on shore.

  “Hello there,” he spoke into the microphone, ‘there’ coming out like ‘dare’, his voice as rich and buttery as the best Irish shortbread. He'd said the very same thing to me that night in the pub. I was such a goner after just three syllables.

  The crowed responded in kind, but I let the applause and voices fade. That wasn't what I wanted to hear. The drummer counted off the beat and the band joined in. Eamon's glorious hands stroked the neck of the guitar and strummed the strings, and it was as if his voice picked me up, lifted me straight into the air, and set me on a journey I had no idea I was so eager to take.

  His music had always had a place between U2's ballads and Van Morrison's best love songs, but more sparse, which let his achingly beautiful, powerful voice take center stage. His lyrics stuck with you for days. Months. Years. Almost every song he wrote was about love or sex, with a Shakespearean slant—full of dark, romantic tragedy. Every perfect word and turn of phrase made you feel like you'd never be half as clever as him.

  From the strong, upbeat songs to the gentle, acoustic ones, my heart swelled in the most familiar way, as if it had been sitting idly by over the last decade, waiting for him. I realized then that I could soak up a lifetime of his poetic thoughts and haunting voice and it still wouldn't be enough. A profound, but comfortable sadness came with that realization. As beautiful and incredible as he was, being with Eamon was like flying too close to the sun. Eventually, you'd have to steer yourself away.

  Still, I was eager to hold on to every minute of his performance. I didn't want it to end, probably because it would mark a return to everyday life after a quixotic ninety minutes of escape. After two encores, time took its toll and Eamon his final bows. He walked off the stage, wiping his brow with a towel, and disappeared behind the curtains waiting in the wings.

  Amy and I both collapsed into our seats. The house lights came up.

  “Oh my God. That was amazing,” she said.

  “I
t was.” I nodded, but it had been so much more than that. It stuck me with a cruel case of wanderlust, making me question one of the hardest choices I'd ever had to make. When I left Eamon and came back to the states, it had seemed like the sensible thing to do. He'd landed a major record deal. He had a world tour ahead. And Amy needed me—Dad had started drinking again.

  “You're crying,” Amy said.

  I reached up to wipe my cheek. I had to prove that I wasn't, but my skin was damp with tears. “Only a little.”

  She looked me square in the eye. “He really meant something to you, didn't he?”

  I shrugged. “It's emotional music.”

  “Come on, let's get backstage. I really need to pee and I'm sure you're dying to say hi.”

  I grabbed her wrist as she rose from her seat. “We can't. We shouldn't. Backstage is just lame anyway, isn't it?”

  “Um, no. It's not. Don't you want to see him and talk to him? Catch up?”

  Catch up? I nearly burst out laughing. Nearly.

  “You can tell him how much you loved his performance.”

  Been there, done that. The people next to us squeezed past and into the aisle. “I don't know if I can do it.”

  “Whatever happened between you guys was a long time ago. Water under the bridge. He probably won't even remember.”

  “That's so reassuring.”

  She grabbed my arm. The next thing I knew, I was shuffling behind her as she pushed people out of our way. “Coming through. Pregnant woman.”

  I didn't bother to protest since I detest crowds and her insane tactics were working, but I had to wonder if I looked like I'd put on a few pounds.