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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December 24, 1983
"You're speeding, Nikki," Evie had to holler over Brian Johnson singing about dynamite.
"'You're speeding, Nikki,'" he replied in a mocking high pitched voice. But then Nikki laughed and took his foot off the accelerator until they were going five over the speed limit instead of twenty.
It was fifteen minutes after Nikki had woken her up with a gentle kiss to her forehead. Nikki thought she was just pretending to be asleep, because the alarm had gone off for a solid thirty seconds before he gathered enough strength to lift his arm and hit the button. But Evie was actually still out of it. It took a few seconds of shaking her shoulders without getting a response for the first glimmer of panic to rush over him. What if she's dead? The voice inside his head said. She can't be dead, he tried to reason with himself. But she could be, after all those sleeping and pain pills he had given her on the plane. It made sense, after all: the second Nikki got a glimmer of hope and happiness in his life, it would be stripped away from him by the forces that be. It was that thought that made him realize how much he loved her, because if Evie was dead, he wanted to be dead too.
Luckily for both of them, Evie was just a deep, drugged-out sleeper and she came to after Nikki shook her a few more times and called her name. Nikki was so overcome with relief when he saw her eyes open that he kissed her forehead and told her he loved her. She didn't need to know about his monetary panic.
Now, they were on the way to Ralph's to pick up some ingredients to make cookies. The store was packed, but the two of them still stuck out like sore thumbs—Nikki with his rockstar hair and outfit looked very out of place in suburban LA, and Evie was gorgeous to Nikki, but everyone else in the store could probably tell that she had gotten off a sixteen hour flight, gotten in bed for a little bit, then immediately made her way to the store.
Nonetheless, they ended up with a bag full of cookie making stuff. By the end of the hour, Evie's forty-hour-old makeup was off, her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was in Nikki's kitchen.
Nikki wouldn't leave her alone the entire time she was trying to make the dough. His hands were bound to be found on her waist, under her shirt, or on her thighs. His lips were practically glued to her neck. By the time she was using the cookie cutters to create snowmen and gingerbread men, Nikki was pushing his erection into her back. Finally, when the dough had to chill in the refrigerator for an hour, he picked her up, carried her to the living room, and fucked her on the new fur carpet until he had nail marks in his back.
Afterward, they remained laying on the carpet, talking about what Christmas usually looked like in the Deal house. The truth was, there was not a sure answer. What their Christmas looked like depended on how much money that had. Usually, the only constant was that Mick tried to get her a present, she tried to make him a gift and cookies, and they would have Christmas Eve dinner together. The rest —if they had a tree, if Mick woke up from his drunken stupor before noon on Christmas, and if there would be more than two items involved— that was never guaranteed.
