Done. “Thank you,” Sam said into the mike. “Y’all have been kind.” With that understatement, ignoring the wild “Woooooo!” that erupted, he simply handed his guitar and mike across the aisle to Ace and jumped down from the bar, holding his hat with one hand.
I was surprised by the band’s sudden bustle, but of course they’d done this many times before. Ace packed up his bass and slipped out the door—to fetch the minivan, I assumed. Charlotte and Sam took turns, one carrying an instrument case or piece of equipment or drum from the stage out the door while the other waited with the pile on the sidewalk. I joined in. There was a lot to clear away and some pressure to hurry because the next band was already unloading their own van in the street. But as I muscled a tom onto the sidewalk where Charlotte was waiting, I realized Sam was gone.
Reading my mind, she said flatly, “He disappears like this. He doesn’t care as much about us as you think.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, not wanting to get in a fight with this damaged girl, and not wanting to betray Sam by agreeing. I let her sit there on her drum stool while I went back for Sam’s guitar. Inside, the crowd milled from bathroom to bar again. Way back on the second level, Sam stood at the rail, talking to a man with a full gray beard. He could have been anybody—especially since Sam probably knew as many losers on the Nashville music scene as I did.
I’d made a few more trips, with Charlotte now watching me contentedly and making no effort to trade jobs with me, when Sam bounced outside, beaming. There was no lead-up in Sam’s world, no “Guess what?” He immediately burst out, “They asked us back!”
“Dude!” Charlotte exclaimed, raising both fists.
Sam looked at her, then at me. I think he would have hugged me or her if he’d been with either of us alone, but he sensed that something was broken out here and he was not going to step into the middle of it.
Luckily Ace drove up then, his athletic physique an ill match for his pristine mom-mobile. While Charlotte and I each picked up a drum, Sam opened the passenger door and leaned inside to shout to Ace, “They asked us back!” I couldn’t make out what words Ace used in response, but I could hear him crowing. I wished I could see his excited reaction, because it seemed about as typical of Ace as driving this van.
“When’s the next gig?” Charlotte asked as Sam deigned to walk back and help us pile the drums in the van.
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “Cool?”
“Cool,” she said.
I waited for him to ask me if it was cool, and I didn’t know what I would say. I wanted to say yes. I needed to have this night again. I ought to say no, because every night I played put my future in jeopardy. A gig this good couldn’t last forever, and then I would have thrown away college for nothing.
The new band started with a blast. “In,” Sam said, gesturing with his head to the van. We all closed ourselves inside so we could hear each other. He took a wad of cash out of his back pocket—what the bearded bar owner had given him, probably—and then dumped out the tip jar on the seat between us. I helped him flatten and count the money. He handed a stack of bills to me, one to Charlotte, one to Ace, and stuffed one back in his pocket.
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to seem unseasoned or unprofessional, but I had never. In my life. Seen so much money.
Of course, I’d never actually gotten paid for a gig before.
I folded the bills into my fiddle case rather than my purse. If the scary man came back and I was mugged on the street, I would give up my purse and let him steal my license and credit card and identity before I let him get my fiddle.
“Bailey and I will walk back,” Sam told Ace. “See you same time tomorrow.” He and Ace bumped fists. He gave Charlotte a high five.
“Good night, Bailey,” Ace called as I rolled the door open. “Nice work.”
“Same to you.” I opened my mouth to acknowledge Charlotte, but she was staring pointedly out the window.
Deposited on the sidewalk, watching the van drive toward Broadway, Sam and I picked up our cases and headed in the same direction. “Do you mind walking?” he asked. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“You just wanted to stay in the District a little longer,” I accused him. But I didn’t blame him. As we reached the intersection, the excitement was palpable. Happy barhoppers swayed up and down the sidewalks, and music poured from every door.
We stopped outside a bar that seemed particularly rowdy. As on the stage we’d just left, the drummer and the bass player were backed up to the window. Between songs, the bass player looked over his shoulder at us like he was just as curious about the people staring as they were about him. He locked eyes with Sam and lifted one finger off the neck of his guitar in greeting. Sam gave him a little wave.
“You sound better than them,” I told Sam.
“We sound better,” he corrected me. “And you sound better than everybody. The tips prove it.”
“You told me this was your first gig in the District,” I reminded him. “You don’t know what the tips would have been like without me.”
He lowered his dark brows at me. “It’s a compliment, Bailey. Take it.”
“No,” I joked. But I really did wish he wouldn’t say things like that. So far I’d done a fairly good job of enjoying the night without thinking about the consequences or the future.
His brow wrinkled with confusion, just for a moment, before clearing to its usual pleasant default setting. As we crossed Broadway, I watched the road ahead of us, knowing he was looking up the hill at the promised land.
Safe on the opposite sidewalk, I commented, “Ace and Charlotte are really good.”
“I know,” he said appreciatively. “I can’t tell you how many bands I’ve tried to put together over the years. This is the first one that’s stuck. Ace and Charlotte have been in bands before. They just needed a new place to call home, you know? Ace was playing R & B until now. You can really hear it in his bass line.”
“Yes!” I said, realizing only after I’d exclaimed that I’d sounded way more enthusiastic than I’d intended. Sam smiled at me like I’d just given away a secret. The truth was, I used to have nerdy conversations about music with Julie. It had been too long.
I cleared my throat and said more calmly, “I noticed Ace was adding a seventh sometimes that wasn’t in the original.”
“So cool, right?” Sam asked. “It makes the whole game more interesting to watch, like throwing an elbow. And I rescued Charlotte from our high school jazz band. She has a lot of experience playing for the local middle schools and old folks’ homes.”
“This is a good thing?” I asked.
“Yes, because she’s hungry. She lives in an apartment. She can’t practice at home because the neighbors complain. It’s not even her drum set—it’s her set from the high school band, and she’s just neglected to give it back yet. That driving beat she gives us comes from a lot of years in the marching band. But you can also hear how much she appreciates having a place to play and people to play with, and how bad she wants to keep doing it.”
I felt guilty about every uncharitable thought I’d had about Charlotte that night. But as I worked through it, I felt a little less guilty because Sam was trying to make me feel guilty.
Or was he? I’d suspected over and over that he was manipulating me, yet his delivery was so honest and guileless that I was never quite sure.
However, I was sure after what he said next. “And then there’s you, miss ‘I don’t want to be in a band right now,’ miss ‘I don’t want to major in music when I go to Vanderbilt.’ ”
“Oh, boy.” Why couldn’t he let me live another hour in my fantasy world, starring him, where I didn’t need to answer questions?
“If you’re not majoring in music at Vanderbilt,” he pressed me, “what’s your major?”
We were passing the strip club again. I pretended I was holding my breath to avoid breathing great lungfuls of smoke and air freshener, but really I was hoping a piano would fall out of the second story of one of the bars, changing the subject. Sam wasn’t going to like my answer.
After several moments, when the piano crash was not forthcoming and Sam continued to watch me with an “I told you so” expression, I conceded, “Biomedical engineering.”
He gave me a sideways look like I’d said I was majoring in the literature of Antarctica. “Biomedical engineering. Like, inventing new cancer drugs?”
“More like working on one tiny part of one chemical that might someday be a component of a cancer drug.”
“Mm-hmm,” he said in a tone that sounded like I’d proven him right. “So you’d work in a lab.”
“Or a cubicle, at a computer.”
“That sounds like fun.” I heard no sarcasm in his voice, but I knew it was there. “Did you pick the major that was as far away from music as you could get?”
“No, the guidance counselors at our school gave us a personality test and matched us with professions we’d be good at.”
He nodded. “Your personality is analytical.”
Intellectual, unemotional, cold. “Yes.”
He held open the door to the parking deck for me. After it squeaked shut behind us, he said, “You’re so analytical that you would turn your back on a profession you love just because a standardized personality test told you what career you should have.” His voice echoed around the stairwell.
“You’re doing it again,” I said quietly.
“Right,” he said, opening the door at the top of the stairs and watching me as I passed under his arm. We wound through a couple of rows of parked cars to his truck, then deposited our instrument cases and his hat behind the seat and got in. All this time he didn’t say a word—which is what I’d wanted, for him to leave me alone. But now that I had my wish, I missed his nagging. His brows were knitted and his lips were pursed as he stared out the windshield of the truck with his keys in his hand, slack on the seat. Thinking hard didn’t suit him.
His eyes shifted to me. I never forgot how handsome he was, but when he looked straight at me, his brown eyes fringed with long, dark lashes gave me a shock. A guy should not be this handsome when a girl wanted desperately to keep her boots on the ground.
“Do you want me to take you home now?” he asked in his husky voice, barely above a whisper.
I licked my lips. “What are my other choices?”
His intense gaze never left me as he asked, “Do you want me to kiss you?” His normally expressive mouth quirked into the smallest smile. He’d worn the same look that afternoon when he held open the door of Borders for me. I had something he wanted. He was going to convince me to give it to him for free.
I didn’t want him to feel like he’d gotten the better of me. There was something about his question that put the responsibility for kissing on me, not him. But even with that smug look on his face, he was so handsome with the dim glow of the parking deck lights shining in his dark waves and glinting in his friendly eyes. The responsibility was only a little one, negligible, casual, like picking up a lipstick at the drugstore.
I said, “Yes.”
7
I expected him to lean forward immediately, but he didn’t. His lips parted and he watched me like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly.
He was a lot shyer than I’d thought. Either that, or he suspected I wasn’t serious and I would hit him. Either way, I decided I’d better take charge. I leaned toward him and to the right, aiming to start with his ear.
He crashed into my forehead. It took me a second of seeing stars to realize he’d started forward in the same direction, and we’d bashed heads.
“Oh, God,” he said, covering my forehead with his palm. “Are you okay?”
My face turned white-hot. I was blushing, and I knew it, which probably meant I didn’t have a concussion. “Yes.” I put my hand on his forehead, too. When he dipped his head, my fingers slipped back through his waves. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I have done this before.” His hand slid down to cradle my cheek. “I’m going this way.”
“I’m staying still,” I assured him.
Now his thumb traced down my chin. My heart sped up at his touch, but I told myself he was trying to get better traction so I wouldn’t unexpectedly jerk and cause us to bash heads again.
That’s honestly what I was thinking. I could take the sweetest situation and make jokes out of it. If I expected nothing, I was never disappointed. But as he moved toward me, there was a point when our eyes locked. He looked so sincere that in that moment, I believed him. I believed in him. I believed anything he wanted to tell me.
His gaze slipped down to my lips. I closed my eyes.
His lips touched mine, a tickle on one side of my mouth, then a pressure that sent tingles down my neck and across my chest. My instinct was to slip both hands around his waist and pull him closer, but he wasn’t some guy from school I was making out with at a party. He was special.
So I didn’t push him. And he didn’t push me. We kissed like that for a long time, exploring each other’s lips and nothing else, while electricity ran along my skin and set my fingertips on fire.
Finally he pulled back. I couldn’t read his expression clearly in the dusky truck, but I thought he looked almost frightened, his dark eyes hooded and his brows drawn into a worried crease.
I whispered, “What’s wrong?”