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.”
She smiled up at me with all her teeth.
“I wish I could sing like you and Ariel. Did you know all the best princesses sing?”
I touched her little button nose. “Did you know that if you can talk, you can sing?”
“Not like you.”
“Do you want to try and sing with me?”
“I’m scared of singing to strangers. I only sing to my Elsa microphone.”
“Well, I used to be afraid of singing aloud to strangers, too.”
She opened her jaw, her blue eyes widening against the wind in disbelief.
“It’s true. Do you know what helped me sing in front of people?”
“Your mommy promised you a chocolate?”
“No. But I do love chocolate. What helped me is I would search for the friendliest face in the audience. Because when you’re new to singing in front of other people, there’s always one person you love in the audience.”
“So, I’ll make my mommy bring my Ariel Barbie next time I sing. I love her.”
“It’s nice that you love your mom.”
“I love my Ariel Barbie the most.”
“Oh.”
“Whose mommy are you?” she asked.
I fought to keep the smile on my windblown cheeks.
“I’m actually no one’s mommy.”
“Why?” she asked, patting my wanded curls.
Several years ago, I started seeing a therapist. She told me that the father wound I thought I’d skirted had in fact punctured deep below the surface. It was why as a teenager I was afraid to sing to a crowd, because I had a special kind of anxiety when it came to rejection. She also let me know that I was using the trauma of my childhood to put off my feelings about having children of my own. It was ironic, but in doing the emotionally exhausting work, I realized what I wanted for myself. I realized I wanted children, and I had just been told that they were nearly impossible to get. If only I’d stayed in the shadow of my childhood, convincing myself that the fear of being a neglectful parent meant I shouldn’t become one—convincing myself that the genes my father gave me could break some little kid’s heart one day. If only I’d stayed frozen in my past, then I wouldn’t be aching the way I was right now, staring at this tiny little girl who wasn’t even mine. I wanted to be able to say I was someone’s mommy. I wanted to give a child the emotional support I rarely got from my mother and the time of day I rarely got from my father. I could one day do both, but I didn’t have many days left to try.
“One day,” I whispered to the little girl, with hope strangled inside a sea of tears in my throat.
I patted her on the head, and she grinned and ran back to the other side of the boat, into her mother’s arms.
Maybe it was because there were the ashes of a successful dead old man inside me, or the fact that a little girl had just made my ovaries weep, but the service only reaffirmed that I needed to create a legacy. I pulled my shoulder blades back and untucked my phone from my purse, dialing Summer.
“Hey. Did you find anything on Asher?” I asked.
“Top of the morning to you, too. You used to be so much more timid about asking for favors, you know.”
“What can I say? Your lack of personal affection has rubbed off on me.”
“You wish. I was just about to call you,” she said. “I did some digging, and my colleague is best friends with Reyes’s PR person. Asher’s here, in New York City. Did you know that?”