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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
December 24, 1983
The last time Evie sat in an airport was about a month and a half ago. It was crazy to think about it like that, because it felt like she had lived half her life during the time they had been touring. She remembered being excited at first because she would be reunited with her dad and have a job she actually enjoyed, all while traveling the world. But her excitement faltered when she remembered she had to work with Nikki: the arrogant, drug-addicted cheater who broke her heart and simultaneously tiptoed around her and looked at her in a way that said 'I don't give a shit about you at all.' If you asked Evie, she would have said that the most difficult moments of the tour— the night at the pool, the time Tommy beat her up, the night in the hotel lobby, lunch at the spaghetti restaurant — all happened over at least a month. In reality, it was less than two weeks.
And now, it felt like Evie and Nikki had been in love for years (because maybe she never stopped loving him), but they had only been dating for 28 days. In fact, the last time she was at an airport, Nikki irritated her because he and Tommy were causing trouble, punching a rando for some petty reason. In one aspect, it was embarrassing to be associated with them, but deep down, she remembered being a bit upset that Nikki wasn't giving her the attention she craved.
Now, Tommy and Vince were at the airport bar and her and Nikki were walking around the Parisian terminals, looking at all the shops they had but not actually buying anything. The airport was incredibly busy, being that it was just past midnight on the day before Christmas, but after spending almost every night in arenas that held thousands of people, Evie had gotten over her dislike of crowds.
Nikki followed her for the whole half an hour. If there was anything he learned about Evie during their time in Europe, it was that she could walk aimlessly for hours, just taking in the sights around her. Whether she was window shopping at a mall, killing time backstage before the show, or going for a 'short' walk around the block, she was bound to take her time and stop to examine anything that caught her attention, no matter how mundane it looked to others. Back in the day, this trait of hers was annoying. Nikki just wanted to get on with his day and get back to his drugs, not stop to watch every half interesting bug or look at every used scratch card that was thrown out a car window. Now, he saw it as cute and figured he could learn a thing or two from her harmless impulsiveness.
Nikki was also overjoyed to be going back home. He wasn't very excited for the sixteen hour flight ahead, but he knew it would all be worth it. He didn't know how exhausted they would be when they arrived back in LA, but Evie already agreed that she'd be coming over to Nikki's place. If everything was going as planned, they'd land at around 8 am local time, giving them plenty of time to sleep and fuck before going over to Mick's place for a nice Christmas Eve dinner. Nikki would do the one thing he was never able to do when they were sneaking around: sleep in Evie's bed in her room. Then, they'd wake up in the morning and have the first real Christmas Nikki had in years.
"I wanna go sit down," Evie said. She put down the lifestyle magazine she was flipping through and grabbed Nikki's hand. They went back to the terminal and waited until the boarding call.
