"For some people, they were just ... always there.
And that was Rory."
Aurora "Rory" Marquez was a teenager with stars in her eyes and a book full of songs in her pocket when Graham Dunne approached her in 1968. He wanted to start a rock band and n...
┏━━━━ •❃°•°❀°•°❃• ━━━━┓ chapter eighteen "Dancing in the moonlight Everybody's feeling warm and bright It's such a fine and natural sight Everybody's dancing in the moonlight." ┗━━━━ •❃°•°❀°•°❃• ━━━━┛
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NOW PLAYING: "DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT" by KING HARVEST (1972)
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___________
RORY IS ANGRY WITH herself.
Here, she has the perfect guy. He's sweet, considerate, funny, incredibly handsome, and just as interested in music as she is. Tommy has checked all of her boxes so far. He doesn't smoke. He's responsible. All of her friends have liked him. But where there should be butterflies in her stomach and tingles whenever they touch, there's... nothing.
At first, she thinks it's a fluke. It was their first kiss, so maybe her jitters got in the way of her true feelings. But even after the second one, and the third, it starts to feel like a chore instead of something she actually wants to do.
What makes it worse is that Tommy obviously doesn't have that same sense of crushing disappointment. As they start to mingle with the crowd again, he keeps touching her — putting an arm around her waist, holding her hand in his larger one — and sometimes she catches him looking at her out of the corner of her eye. Karen notices his enamored expression and grins triumphantly.
Rory should be head-over-heels for him. He's everything she's wanted in a partner and it's only been two dates. Tommy looks at her with stars in his eyes, his gaze never straying from her for long like she's a magnet drawing his attention, earnestly listening to her every word and making her feel seen.
She must be putting on a pretty good front, though, because nobody seems to notice that anything is off. Until a wrench is thrown into her mask in the form of Daisy Jones.
The woman steps outside in a brown coat accentuated by an ornate fur lining, messy strands of russet hair tucked inside. Her gaze flickers around the partygoers. For a moment, when Daisy doesn't think she's being observed, Rory notices an expression she's never seen on her face before— uncertainty. She scrutinizes the backyard as if desperate to find someone familiar.
