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."
"Oh," Nikki stood there, feeling like an ass. "I-I must have forgotten. Sorry, I'll go home." His head down, he turned to leave.
"You can invite him in. I don't mind if you want to play," Evie whispered to her father.
Mick thought for a moment. He wasn't sure if Evie was just saying it to be considerate, but it did pain him to see the bassist go away so pathetically.
"Are you sure," he asked his daughter.
She nodded. Mick sighed before stepping onto the porch.
"Nikki," he yelled to the man who was already most of the way down the driveway. "Come back, let's play."
The men set up shop in the garage. "I'm really sorry to come barging in like this," the bassist said while tuning his instrument. I genuinely forgot, I just had a...a long night."
"Don't worry bout it," Mick mumbled. Neither man said much else. They just played two tracks: "Too Fast for Love" and "Take Me to the Top." After the second song concluded, Mick realized he was rather thirsty.
"Evie," he yelled. In a couple of seconds his daughter appeared at the door. "Could you grab me a beer from the fridge?" The girl silently nodded. "Thank you, honey."
She went to turn around before Mick said, "hold on. Where are my manners? Nikki, you want something?"
"Uhm..." The bassist wasn't used to making other people take his requests. "I'll take a beer too."
Evie let out a quiet "okay" and walked back into the house, leaving the door open when she did.
"She's kinda quiet, isn't she?" Nikki said.
"Eh, yeah. She's always been a bit shy. She'll warm up to you eventually."
Before Nikki could say anything else, Evie came back into the garage with two cans of beer. She set them down on a small table near the interior door.
"Thanks, Eves," Mick said, walking over to the table.
"You're welcome," she said quietly and was about to make her escape back to the living room, when her father said, "you wanna stay? I don't think you've heard anyone but me play."
"Uhm, yeah."
The girl stood there, leaning against the wall of the garage, watching the guys play. They went through another two songs: "Live Wire" and "Come on and Dance." Evie couldn't contain her smile. They sounded really good. She couldn't even imagine what the whole band playing together was going to sound like.
Although Evie was impressed by the playing, Nikki felt a bit insecure. He wasn't sure why because his ego was normally too large, but he was afraid of making even the slightest mistake in front of his one-person audience. What is going on with me today? The bassist thought to himself. She's just a teenage girl, why, out of all people, do I need her approval? He figured it was because he had shown up on her birthday, severely hungover, and made her father play some music with him instead of letting him spend the day with her. The least he could do was give her a good show.
To Nikki's surprise and delight, though, the first time he looked up after beginning to play he saw happiness on her face. "That was really good," she said.
"Yeah," Mick responded. "Just wait until you see the whole gang playing."
"Wait til you see us live," Nikki added. Evie's face betrayed her surprise at hearing plans of live shows so soon after the band formed. "Vince," Nikki continued, "has been working to get a gig or two set up at the Whisky."
"The Whisky?" Evie asked, surprised.
"It's a little joint over on the Sunset Strip where the hottest bands in town play."
"She knows what the Whisky fuckin' a Go-Go is," Mick interrupted.
Evie did know what it was, and that was why she was so surprised. She understood the Whisky a Go-Go to be a venue for the sleaziest, dirtiest bands in L.A. The idea of her father playing there both scared her and made her think this band really was going to stick around.
"Yeah, I guess you probably do," Nikki was embarrassed to have made it seem like he thought the girl was stupider than she really was. "I mean, with Mick Mars as your dad, you probably know just as much as I do when it comes to music."
"Damn right she does," Mick answered on her behalf. "I've been dragging this poor girl to and from shows and band rehearsals since before you learned to count. She knows how to play, too. Give her a few more years, she'll probably be good enough to take both of our jobs."
Nikki didn't know what to say from there, so now it was his turn to be silently impressed. Evie broke the awkward silence: "well, I should probably go."
"Alright," her father said, "see you in a bit."
After Evie went back into the house and sat in her father's recliner with a book in her lap, the men went back to playing. After five more tracks, Nikki said he needed to go. He didn't really have anywhere to be, he was just hungover and hungry. Almost as if he was sensing Nikki's bullshit, Mick said, "somewhere you need to be?"
The bassist almost came up with a lie, but decided instead to just be honest: "no, not really, I'm just a bit tired."
"Yeah, that's what a long night of drinking will do to you."
Had he not seen the sardonic smile on Mick's face, he would have thought Mick was angry with him.
"Guess so," Nikki said, desperate to change the topic. "Anyways, sorry again for showing up here."
"It's fine. If anything, you should be apologizing to Evie, but she was the one who told me to let you in."
Nikki's heart warmed at this revelation. "Well, tell her thank you and sorry for me... So, what did you guys do for her birthday."
"Oh, nothing much. Just went to a museum and lunch and opened some presents. Luckily for my wallet, she's never been one for big parties."
"Yeah, me neither. What did she think about the gift Tommy gave her? What was even up with that?"
"Oh," Mick would rather not mention the topic. "I haven't given it to her yet. I'm not sure what that was all about, but I'm a bit scared to see how she's going to react."
"Do the two of them know each other? I think they're close enough in age that they could have gone to school together." Nikki was trying to pry without making it seem like he was prying.
"I have no idea. As far as I know, they have never talked. I'm hoping it's just a case of him wanting to get off on the right foot, and not some fucking monkey business."
"Yeah," Nikki was relieved to hear that Tommy and the girl weren't friends. "I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you. Tommy's a really sweet guy, super respectful. I'm sure he was just doing it to be nice." Nikki was trying to reassure both Mick and himself.
"That's good to hear."
There were a few moments of awkward silence, before Mick said, "I'll let you be on your way. And if you're going to show up to my house hungover ever again, just make sure it's not my daughter's birthday or Christmas, alright?
"Will do my best."
With that, Nikki collected his belongings and left the Deal residence.
____
He ended up back at the house about twenty minutes later. After saying his goodbyes, he drove to the nearest Ralphs, where he used a few of the twelve dollars he got from London's most recent album sales to buy a premade sandwich from the deli. Then, he headed to the card section of the supermarket and picked out a birthday card that had a dog in a party hat on the front of it. He looked around to make sure no one else was in the aisle before slipping the card under his shirt.
From there, he headed to the self checkout, rightfully paid for one of the items he was taking from the store, and got back in his car. He pulled a pen out of the center console and wrote the words
"Dear Evie,
Thanks for letting me crash your birthday
- Nikki."
Then, he drove to his guitarist's home and left it in the mailbox. From there, he drove back home and spent the rest of the day pissing off his neighbors with his musical genius, before getting drunk and passing out once again.