Never Say Never (4 page)

            “Thank
God you're back!” My mother embraced me. “The house is so
old
without
you. Your dad just wants to stay in, pop in a few Turner Classic Movies, eat
popcorn – I swear, you'd never believe this was the man who once bit the head
off a...” She lost her train of thought. “Although you wouldn't believe what
he's doing tonight!”

            “What?”

            “He's
invited his old friends around...for a
sit down dinner.
The Dark Knights
– sitting and eating with a fork and knife in a formal dining room – can you
picture that?”

            My
mom was a groupie back in the day when my dad used to trash formal dining rooms
with a vengeance. She found it harder than he did to let that go.

            “Are
they going to have a
cheese course?”
my mom laughed.

            “Probably,”
I sighed.

            “I
know I said it would just be us,” my mom put an arm around me. “But would you
mind hanging with those old fuddy-duddies for a while?”

            I
smiled. “Not at all.”

.

Chapter
3

           
I
f my mother had been worried that my dad had
gotten a bit too old for the rock and roll life, she certainly didn't need to
be. No sooner had David, Leroy, and John arrived – a bit fatter than they had
been, uniformly balding, their hair gray and tangled – than the four of them started
behaving as if a time warp had brought them back to 1979. The classy white wine
that Kyle had poured out for them at the beginning of the meal was replaced by
significantly less classy beer after the second course, and halfway through
dessert my father got raucously bored and decided to order thirty pizzas from
the local shop, laughing as he slurred his words on the phone to the
increasingly confused delivery boy.

            “Yes,
you got it. Thirty pepperoni pizzas for
the
Keith Knight. Exactly. And a
vegetarian one for Leroy Milford. No, I'm not joking – Leroy Milford, the
bassist, he's right here in my house...”

            My
father looked up in shock.

            “He
hung up on me. Told me to stop playing pranks. Didn't believe I was Keith
Knight.”

            The
band all branched into raucous laughter. I caught Kyle's eye, smiling at my
mother's consternation. My father might be strict “dad” to me, but to his band
mates he was still the cool, iconic rock star he had been twenty and thirty
years before. Before long, they were standing on the table, belting out hits:

“Every
time I look into your eyes/

I
feel the beat of your dark...”

My
father was shrieking, using the wine bottle as a microphone.

            “Careful!”
My mother narrowly avoided being decapitated by his cup. “Watch it, Keith,
you're going to...”

            John,
the old keyboardist, turned to me. “So, you got any thoughts of going into the
biz, girl?”

            “She
does not!” my father interrupted immediately. “She's going to go to law school
and become a lawyer and be the only responsible one in our family.”

“Actually...”

            “No
way I'm letting her anywhere near a recording studio. She plays for fun –
that's all...” Even standing on a table in leather pants, my father managed to
make the authoritative “dad voice” sound strict and imposing. I said nothing –
but Kyle and I had to resist collapsing into giggles.

            I
helped him clear the table and we escaped into the kitchen, laughing.

            “So
this is what celebrity does behind closed doors,” Kyle snickered. “I was afraid
your dad was going to bite the cork off the wine bottle...”

            “I
can't decide if having Keith Knight as a dad makes it more or less embarrassing
when you see him dancing on a table. Probably more.”

            “No
– he's still got it,” said Kyle. “At least, that's what all the fan mail says.”

“You've
read my dad's fan mail?”

            “He
pays me to open it for him and sort out the crazies...apparently a lot of girls
think your dad is
fiiine.”
He started teasing me. “There was this one
girl, she sent a picture of her boobs.”

            “Ew!”

            “She
had a very detailed list of exactly what she wanted him to do to her.” Kyle
grinned wickedly. “Let me see if I can remember it. “I want you to take off all
my clothes, spray whipped cream all over my...”

            “That's
my
dad
you're talking about!” I hit Kyle playfully.

            “There
was definitely some creative utilization of strawberries.”

            “I
don't want to hear it,” I joked.

            “That'll
be you one day with the creepy fan mail.”

            “I
hope not. I'm allergic to strawberries. Besides, without Geoffrey, we're not
even going to make it to the D-list.”

            Our
concerns about finding a replacement guitarist were not alleviated by the end
of the weekend. Sunday morning our booker called me to say she'd scored us a
gig at Club House, the coolest coffee-house-cum-brewery on the whole West
Coast. Overwhelmed by our good fortune, I neglected to mention to her that our
lead guitarist had a broken arm and several bruised fingers – and the next
night, when we all met for dinner at Luc's house to jam in his basement, my
nerves were beginning to get frayed.

            “We've
only got five days!” I was saying to Steve as we tried – in vain – to help Luc’s
mama, Mrs. Alamo in the kitchen, before being shooed away with an Italian curse
word or two. “How are we supposed to find a lead guitarist in five days?”

            “We
can hold auditions,” Steve said. “Don't worry. I've already put out an ad on
Craigslist and posted adverts in all the music shops between here and San
Francisco.”

            “But
who's going to be as good as Geoff?”

            “We'll
find someone – and someone who knows how to hold his liquor at that.” Steve
grinned. “Don't worry, Neve. You'll get full rights of refusal over anyone we
find.”

            “He's
got to be incredible – whoever we find. I mean, if Slayton's looking to see how
much we improve, he'll send his scouts to our shows; the pressure's going to be
intense. We can't afford to do anything but the best job – we have to
absolutely blow his mind.”

            “I
know,” said Steve. “Believe me – we'll find something incredible.”

            “Enough
worry!” Luc's mother interrupted, placing  an enormous family-sized plate of
spaghetti with tomato sauce on the table. “First pasta – then you can worry.”

            I
couldn't think of a family more unlike my own than Luc's. Luc's mother – a tiny
woman from Naples who taught Italian at the local public school – was as
traditionally maternal as mine was unconventional: she was warm and vivacious
and always concerned that I wasn't getting enough nutrition. “Too skinny!” she
informed me. “Sophia Loren always said she got her amazing curves from
spaghetti. You could be as beautiful as Sophia Loren – but you have to have a
little more meat on your bones, eh?” She reserved equal amounts of worry for
her two daughters, Jennifer and Amy, who were fifteen and fourteen,
respectively. “Why are you not eating? You will look like a scarecrow!”

            As
it happened, Jennifer and Amy
did
look like scarecrows – not merely
because they were terribly slender, puberty not having quite caught up with
them yet, but more pertinently because they sat in absolutely petrified
stillness. They quite evidently had crushes on Steve and Kyle – unsure of which
they thought was cuter – and managed to get by in their presence through an
awkward combination of flirtation and freezing up in terror whenever one of the
boys asked them a question.

            “Careful,
Steve,” I whispered. “Don't start breaking their hearts young, or I'll have to
come after you myself.”

            “Please,
they're
kids
!” Steve whispered back. “Although I could have sworn we had
some girls their age in the club last week – I'm convinced they're letting them
in with fake IDs. One girl barely looked old enough to watch a PG-13 movie.”

            Still,
they managed to accept the girls' crushes with charm and grace, being friendly
and warm without ever leading them on. When the meal was over, they both kindly
offered to help the girls with washing the dishes, sending them both a shade of
scarlet even darker than the tomatoes left on the plate.

            Luc
smiled and rolled his eyes. “Come on, Neve,” he said. “Let's get out of here,
sit in the garden. It's getting hot with all these people in here.”

            We
walked out into his garden. It was a beautiful, balmy September night. I closed
my eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of the magnolias blooming in his backyard.
Luc sat down on a tire that swung from the old oak tree. “Remember this,” he
said, motioning for me to sit next to him.

            “Yeah,
of course I do. We used to swing on this all the time when we were kids.” I sat
down, and Luc laughed, springing to his feet and beginning to push me.

            “You
thought that if you swung high enough, you'd be able to jump off and land right
on the moon.”

            “I
remember that. I figured I just had to try a
little
bit harder.”

            “That's
my Neve,” Luc said, pressing his hands against my back as he pushed me harder
still. “Always so driven. So ambitious.”

            The
tire slowed to a stop and I couldn't help but smile at his words.

            “See,
there it is.”

            “There
what is?”

            “That
smile. That smile that says 'everything's going to be fine.' That smile that
makes me know everything's going to be okay, and that you're not going to
worry.”

            “Worry?”

            “You've
had a frown on your face ever since you met with Slayton.” He put a hand on my
shoulder. “Listen, Neve – I know you care. We all do. But if RRR doesn't sign
with us, it's not the end of the world. There are always other opportunities to
knock. Other doors.”

            “But
right now we have
this
opportunity,” I couldn't help replying. “
This
door.
He liked what he heard, Luc. He didn't say 'no.' And that means we could do it.
We
can
do it. Or at least, we could, if it weren't for this thing with
Geoffrey. But we've got what it takes, Luc. I can feel it. I'm sure of it.”

            Luc
pressed his warm lips against my forehead. “I believe in you, Neve. I trust
your instincts. If Slayton feels right to you, then let's go with that; I'll
follow you, 110%.”

            I
took his hand and squeezed it. “Thanks, Luc,” I said. “That means a lot to me.”

            “Good.”
Luc held my hand against his cheek. “Because you know how much you mean to me.
I don't like seeing you worried. I just want to see you happy.”

            I
felt vaguely embarrassed at his kind words, and blushed in the moonlight.
Usually Luc and I traded witty banter, not serious sentiment.

            “You're
so sweet,” I said.

            Yet
as Luc leaned in, his chocolate-brown eyes grew dark, and I saw a pain there I
had not seen before. “I'm not trying to be sweet, Neve,” he said slowly,
carefully. His whole face seemed transformed in the moonlight, and I could feel
a strange shiver run up and down my body. He put one strong arm around my
waist, sitting next to me as he pulled me into a tight hug. “I remember when we
first met, Neve. We were just kids. I always figured you were the prettiest
girl I'd ever seen. You still are, you know, but that's not all you are. You've
got something else – something different. You're funny, fun to be around, and
interesting, and smart – but more than that...you're
ambitious.
You have
something I've never found in another girl – in another person...”

            “What's
that?”

            “This...like
this relentless drive in you. This passion that makes you always work so hard.
And that's what makes me sure that you've got what it takes, Never. That you're
going to make it. And I'm so excited – so lucky – to be a part of making that
happen. To be a part of this.”

            As
he spoke, I suddenly became aware of his lips mere inches from mine. A feeling
– strange, indescribable, overwhelming – passed over me like a tidal wave, and
I pulled back...

            “Luc...”
my voice was full of warning.

            He
stopped. He hesitated, as if making a decision. “Don't worry, Neve. I'm not
trying to freak you out or pull a Geoff or anything. But...you're my friend,
Neve. I care about you. We're friends, right?”

            “Of
course!”

            “And...uh...I'd
never do anything to get in the way of that. Or hurt you. You know that,
right?”

            “I
know...”

            But
deep down, I felt that something had passed between us. My cheeks were bright
red. “We should go back inside, Luc. Before your sisters make Kyle and Steve do
all the dishes.”

            “Of
course,” said Luc, forcing a smile. The moonlight hit him as he walked and I
involuntarily gasped. For a moment, I forgot that it was Luc standing before me
– instead there was just a gorgeous man with dark Italian eyes and caramel-colored
hair that made my heart involuntarily race.

            I
shook my head and tried to ignore it. What was going on with me today? First
Kyle – then Luc? Was there something about going off to college that had sent
all our collective hormones into a tizzy?