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It only takes Bobby three weeks after the deaths of his best friends to decide he doesn’t want to be Bobby Basset anymore. Bobby Basset was a part of Sunset Curve, and Sunset Curve is no longer known for their good, up-and-coming music, but for the deaths of three-quarters of the band. If his name is Bobby Basset and he was a part of Sunset Curve, then he’s the only part of Sunset Curve still breathing, and he sees everyone from close friends to acquaintances to complete strangers make these connections as if it’s their life that depends on it. A friendly smile drops to furrowed brows, a tilted mouth, a “where did I hear that name before?”
And then it clicks.
He watches their eyes widen, their jaws drop. One woman brings her hand to her chest, as if she has a pearl necklace there that she’s used to clutching, as if she’s used to hearing about tragedies like his. They all try to salvage their reactions, of course—they try smiling again, lips wobbling, or they go to shake his hand, their mouths open to spill apologies they feel obligated to give.
They’re not the ones Bobby wants apologies from, though. No, he wants one from Luke, for the wet willy being the last thing he ever gave Bobby. He wants one from Reggie, for making him deal with the mess he left in the studio. And he wants one from Alex, for choosing to eat street-dogs of all things when he was supposed to be the smart one. Bobby wants apologies from all of them, for those things and for more, for everything else they made Bobby face in their absence. But most of all, for leaving Bobby alone.
So, yeah. Bobby reaches week four, month one, and he starts trying out new names. He avoids the Ls, and the Rs, and the As, and he even steers clear of the Bs, but that still leaves him with 22 more letters of the alphabet. His parents resist the change, at first. He goes through Matthew, Sonny, Joseph, Charles, Hank, and half a dozen other names before his mother finally clues in that he’s not budging.
She asks if she can help name him, again, and he can barely hide his relief when she picks Trevor. At age 18 he legally becomes Trevor Wilson, no longer a part of Sunset Curve.
Reggie’s parents sell their beach house.
Luke’s refuse to move.
He doesn’t check on Alex’s.
On the first anniversary of their death he finds his parents’ liquor stash and helps himself, and his father comes downstairs in the dead of night to find him crying on the couch, trying to strum along to “Now or Never” with clumsy, drunk fingers. He can’t even get past the first chorus.
His father kneels in front of him, places a hand over his, and Trevor leans over, still crying, to dig his forehead into his father’s shoulder and wish he could get drunk enough to escape this.
“Why don’t you sing their songs more?” his mother asks in the morning. Trevor’s head is on the kitchen table, pillowed in his arms, and it hurts, but he still looks up at her, squinting in confusion.
“They were the band’s,” he says. ‘Luke’s,’ he doesn’t add, but his mother knows. “It would feel wrong.”
“But it would be a healthier outlet, wouldn’t it?” she says. She pours him a glass of orange juice, sets it in front of him, and leans down to kiss his forehead. “Just think about it, alright?”
And he does, hard. It’s been awhile since he played, besides that one drunken night, and he misses it. He misses their songs. He misses busking with his best friends out on the beach, hoping for tips. He misses playing with them in small, crowded bars, bumping shoulders in tandem when they spot a familiar face, a possible fan, in the crowd. He misses them.
Trevor Wilson plays his first performance on the beach exactly where Sunset Curve made their busking debut.
He plays “Now or Never,” and “Get Lost,” and even “Crooked Teeth” when he thinks he won’t get through the night without a little laughter. And the crowd loves them. Him.
So he does it again, two weeks later. And again, after another week. And then he hits one bar, two bars, and he’s playing all of Luke’s good songs now but two—“My Name Is Luke” and “Unsaid Emily.”
By the time he’s 25 he’s a household name.
His parents are proud of him, and tell him as much, but there’s two stones in his gut that refuse to leave. One is grief, the ghosts of his friends following him in persistence even now, eight years after the fact. And the other is guilt.
He tells himself he can stop at any time, that he can reveal who the real songwriter was, but every time he tries he sees that woman with the invisible pearl necklace. He watches as her hand clutches at thin air, as her mouth drops open, as she turns to her husband as if looking for the right words to say because she didn’t understand that there were none. That those words still, even now, don’t exist.
He can see the tabloids’ headlines screaming, “Trevor Wilson, Current Heartthrob, Former Teenage Tragedy.”
So he doesn’t say anything.
It’s not as if he’s hurting anyone, after all. His friends are dead. He has his parents make sure that Reggie and Luke’s families get part of the profits, anonymously of course, and staunchly refuses when they ask about Alex’s parents.
And then he meets the love of his life, and they have Carrie, and his producer begs him for at least one more hit. And he does try for the original stuff, at least at first. But his producer shakes his head, then keeps shaking his head, and all he can think about is what if he’s not able to play their music anymore? What if he has to raise Carrie on something other than their music?
So Trevor drops the hit single “My Name Is Luke.”
He laughs about it in interviews, of course. What else could he do? He claims it’s the name of an old friend—true. He says he used the name for the rhyme—false. He tells the audience, and the interviewer, and anyone else who will ever see it that he wishes his friend Luke could see him now.
“I’m sure he’s very proud,” the interviewer says, and Trevor smiles, strained.
“I’m sure.”
Except over the next few years, his life falls apart. Carrie’s mother leaves. Sunset Curve’s songs are dried up; he refuses to play “Unsaid Emily,” leaves it tucked away in Luke’s old notebook where it will stay, unsaid, unsung. He’s still well known, still makes appearances at charity concerts, but his last album didn’t sell well and both he and his producer agreed that he was done. He focuses on Carrie, makes sure to spoil her rotten even as his own parents protest.
And then, one day, he hears them again. Sunset Curve.