Evie Deal's life is turned upside down when her father's new band takes America by storm. She goes from being a shy girl living in poverty to riding with one of the craziest bands of the 80s, all while trying to manage a rocky relationship with the...
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April 28, 1981
Evie's seventeenth birthday was one of the best birthdays she could remember having. Not because she had a big party or because she got a ton of gifts, because neither of those things happened. It was because she got to spend it with her dad and it was one of the first birthdays where her family was something resembling financially stable. Instead of a party, her and Mick went to the Medieval Torture Museum in LA, ate at one of her favorite Italian restaurants, and then went home to receive her gifts and eat her cake. Her father got her four secondhand books, a gift box full of assorted candy, and a gift card to Hobby Lobby.
Mick had spent quite some time debating whether or not to give Evie the gift Tommy got her. He didn't know how she was going to react to it. He didn't even know how he reacted to it. On one hand, he thought it was nice that Tommy was making an effort to be kind to his daughter. On the other hand, he thought it could be a sign that he was interested in her. And that brought up an even bigger internal debate.
Mick pushed those thoughts out of his head and decided he didn't want to ruin Evie's birthday if she was uncomfortable with it, so he chose to save Tommy's present for later. He would find a way to bring it up casually, not make a big deal out of it and gauge her natural reaction.
As Mick was laying in his recliner, watching TV, drinking a beer, and trying to think if now was the right time to mention Tommy's gift, Evie was sitting on the adjacent couch. She was crocheting a stuffed shark, which she would sell at the LA farmer's market in a few weeks to bring in a few extra bucks to their home. The girl was deep in concentration when both of them were startled by a knock on the door.
Evie started to rise when her father gestured for her to sit down. "I'll get it, I'll get it." Her father always looked like an old man when he tried to stand up, his ankylosing spondylitis causing him to groan in pain and put his hands on his back. It hurt him, but Mick had no clue who was at the door and didn't want to risk putting his daughter in danger if it was someone with not so good intentions.
He opened the door to reveal a tall, scary-looking delinquent who reeked of liquor.
"What the fuck do you want, Nikki?"
"What?" He was there to practice, obviously. The same reason he had shown up there every other day.
"Why are you here?" Ordinarily, Mick would be angry. But Nikki's pathetic appearance and genuine confusion made him a bit softer than usual. "We aren't practicing today. Didn't I tell you?"
"What? Why, what happened?" Nikki knew he got blasted last night but he was still too hungover to realize he may have forgotten some conversations he had.
"It's--" Mick noticed the man was now looking behind him, and he followed Nikki's gaze to see that Evie had come up behind him. She was staring at Nikki with wide doe eyes. Mick looked back at Nikki, determined to keep his cool in front of Evie. "It's my daughter's birthday," he said, gesturing to the girl. "I called off practice so we could celebrate."
