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“I can’t wait for it!” the manager said and ushered them both inside. Vivi met Remy’s eyes briefly and gave him a small, conspiratorial sort of smile. Remy was both delighted and annoyed by it, he found—delighted that they were getting in somewhere off-hours and annoyed that Vivi thought this was something conspiratorial. It was fame, simple fame, not something cunning on her part.
But then he decided he was being an asshole, so he shook it off.
The café was warm and inviting, even without any other patrons. Brick walls and checkered red-and-white tablecloths, rows of jellies and jams for sale at the counter. A fireplace was blazing despite the fact they were scarcely through summer, its light flickering off the frames of hundreds of celebrity patrons’ photos through the years. Remy reasoned Vivi’s photo must be up there somewhere but couldn’t begin to know where to look.
They were seated at a table for four—two seats had already been removed, giving them plenty of room. There were already waters at the table and a carafe of coffee. The manager pulled out Vivi’s chair for her, once again leaving Remy to help himself.
“I used to come here with my dad after gigs,” Vivi said, smiling as she looked around.
“They’re in Nashville, right? Are you going to visit them while you’re here?” Remy asked.
“They’re actually not in town. My brother has a play at his college, and I told them they should go to that instead,” Vivi said. She paused then said, “It’s weird now, with them.”
“Weird?”
“It’s hard to not…it’s like, when I’m in Vivi Swan mode, it’s hard to suddenly just be their kid. Even though obviously I’m still their kid. I don’t know.”
“You can’t go home again,” Remy said, nodding. “I get it. My parents are always my parents, but…I’m not sure we know one another very well anymore. I don’t know that they’d even recognize me if they saw me, to be honest.”
“Yeah, I think that’s it,” Vivi said, looking disheartened. “They’d recognize my face but notme.”
Their conversation paused when a heaping plate of biscuits arrived at their table, along with a dish of red gravy. The biscuits had a myriad of fillings—ham, eggs, fried green tomatoes, sausage, honey, sorghum. Vivi carved several into pieces to sample everything.
“You can order a meal too, if you want. But the biscuits are where it’s at,” she said, grinning. He followed suit, taking a whole sausage biscuit and a sampling of the others.
Once they were on his plate, he looked back up at Vivi. Remy watched the way she ate delicately to avoid smudging her lipstick. “Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Of course,” Vivi said without lifting her eyes.
“Has Noel ever seen you without lipstick on?”
Vivi looked alarmed by the question. She set her fork down thoughtfully. “I guess no. Not really. That’s a weird question. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” Remy said. “It’s nothing.”
Vivi looked bemused, licking strawberry syrup off her index finger. “So I was thinking—maybe we could try to do a rough recording of the song soonish?”
“Sure,” Remy said. “When were you thinking?”
She lifted the carafe to pour herself another mug of coffee. “Maybe in New York when we stop in East Rutherford? But it’d probably be easier to just do it at a studio in London.”
Remy blinked at her; when she stared back, he said, “Uh, it’ll have to be East Rutherford.”
“Why—oh!” Vivi said, eyes suddenly widening. She lowered the coffee, focused on wiping away the drip running down the glass for a beat too long. “You’re not going to Europe.” It was a statement but sounded like a question at best and a confession at worst.
“I’m not going to Europe,” Remy confirmed.
Vivi stared into her fresh coffee for a moment, brows drawn together in a way that created a wrinkle between them, the one girls in LA usually Botoxed away before it got too deep. “Huh.”
“Yeah,” Remy said and couldn’t help but realize that, for all their newfound similarities,thiswas the symbol of just how different he and Vivi were. She’d forgotten she hadn’t hired him for an entire world tour; he’d always known the day the paychecks would stop being direct-deposited into his account. He’d put it out of his mind, sure, but never forgotten.
“Maybe you should just come,” Vivi said. “You can, you know. If you want to.”
Remy inhaled at how the hope in her voice made him feel lifted. Yes. Yes, he wanted to do the Europe leg. Because Europe, because paychecks, but because it meant more strange and quiet and pretty moments like this. He’d never be able to get this weird arrangement with Vivi back, not once he went home. He’d be in LA, and she’d be wherever it is celebrities go, and they’d text, but then, eventually, she’d stop answering. Tour was its own little world where they could ignore their differences, but real life would only highlight them.
But the real world was inevitable, wasn’t it? It was better to get out now, to stop before the pull to be with her became a need rather than a want.
“It’s just—I can’t do that to the other guy,” Remy said. “I can’t take a guy’s job the week he’s supposed to fly to Europe. It’s hard enough to find work as a musician as it is.” It was the tiniest part of the truth but the truth all the same.
