His voice broke as he said, “He took his bags, which were already packed because he’d just gotten home from his bender, and my mom drove him to rehab.”
I slapped my hand over my heart and sighed with relief. “Sam, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Isn’t it?”
Nodding, he said, “My dad thought now would be a good time. He said he’ll be gone for a while, but I’m about to go to college, and I don’t need him anymore. My mom, on the other hand, said I’ll always need him, and he’ll always need me. She said he should go to rehab now anyway because it’s never a bad time to stop being a jackass.”
I laughed. “I love your mom.”
“Me too.” His eyelashes were wet, but he grinned at me. “And when I told my dad we’re auditioning for a contract, he said he knew it all along, and it was about time.”
I slid my hand on top of Sam’s. “It was.”
He nodded slowly. I knew he was worried about his dad. But I could tell by the way his eyes moved to the ceiling of the porch, and the sky beyond, that he was already thinking through what else we needed to do before Monday.
I helped him. “I’ll make a hair and makeup appointment for Monday morning before our meeting, for me and for Charlotte. I’ll try to enlist Ms. Lottie.”
“For Charlotte?” he asked me dubiously. “Good luck with that.”
“They want a whole look for the band,” I reminded him. “If the execs are on the fence about us, Charlotte’s makeover could make all the difference. We’ll ask Ace to explain this to her.”
“Ah! Deploying Ace.” Sam beamed at me. “I like how you think.”
“And we have to choose another name for the band,” I warned him, “pronto.”
“Now, wait a minute,” he protested. “Redneck Death Wish is very catchy.”
“Tell you what. Julie’s learned a lot about marketing music over the past year. Let’s go back inside and run it by her. If she laughs us out of the house, we’ll think of something else by Monday. Deal?”
“Deal. I know she’ll love it.”
“Redneck Death Wish,” I grumbled. Then, as I thought through the coming weekend, I realized that what he’d been telling me hadn’t quite sunk in. I stared at him with my mouth open for a few seconds. But as a grin slowly spread across his face, I realized what this meant.
“Oh, Sam.” My hands found his and clasped them. “You’re about to get what you wanted.”
He nodded. “I already did.” He leaned down and touched his lips to mine.
As he kissed me, I was aware of the morning sun slanting onto the porch and across my legs, and the sound of birds, and the smell of freshly cut grass. The wind swayed us in the porch swing. After all the work to become a star, the dashed hopes, the heartache, and trying to heal myself in all the wrong ways, I was still living my life inside a country song.
Only this one had a happy ending.
Julie snagged us VIP tickets to her show in the Titans stadium at the CMA Festival that night. I looked around for my granddad but didn’t see him. He must have been backstage with my parents. This time around, I didn’t resent that they were with Julie and I wasn’t. They had their hands full. They couldn’t worry about me, and I didn’t need them to. My place was here with my band, because our gig on Broadway started at nine.
“How are y’all doing?” Julie called over the mike. In response, the crowd emitted a nondescript moan—not an excited scream, but Julie hadn’t made a name for herself yet, and there was just so much she could expect.
The crowd’s unenthusiastic reply didn’t faze her, though. She was a professional musician. She murmured into the microphone, maybe more to herself this time than to the crowd, “It’s good to be home.” The audience roared. She cut them off as she started her first song.
I jumped a little at the noise as the drums kicked in. I hadn’t expected the music to be so loud, like a real concert. Then Julie’s clear, strong voice sang the tune she’d started with at the Grand Ole Opry. My doubts fell away. Maybe the song didn’t make a lot of sense, but the tune was catchy, the beat was infectious, and she sounded like a pro.
In the instrumental break between verses, Charlotte leaned around Ace and Sam to shout, “She’s so good!” Ace nodded. I nodded, too, smiling. She was so good.
“She’s the real deal,” Sam said in my ear. “She’s going to make it.”
Several songs later, as she waited for her rhythm guitarist to switch from electric to acoustic, she asked the crowd, “Is everybody excited about all the great singers you came to hear tonight?”
The crowd gave her an enthusiastic answer this time. Maybe they were responding to the idea of the bigger acts who would follow her, but I thought they were more into Julie herself now that she’d shown them what she could do.
“Me too,” she said. “And after that, if you’re on Broadway, be sure to stop by between nine and eleven to see my big sister’s band, Redneck Death Wish.”
This time the roar of the crowd was unmistakable. The hair on my arms stood up and my heart raced as if Sam were kissing me. There must be a lot of locals in the audience, and they must have stumbled into our sets in the last week. Either that or they were responding to our awesome name.
“I told her I’m not sure about this band name,” Julie said, laughing, “but my sister has been my rock for sixteen years. She’s an incredibly talented musician and songwriter. Do yourself a favor and go hear her play.” Reading what she’d inked in her palm, she named the bar and its address.
Nobody sitting in the first four rows had turned around to look at us. Nobody had recognized us. With all the spotlights in her eyes, even Julie couldn’t seem to see me close to the stage. But I felt my face flush anyway, like I was the one in the spotlight instead. I turned to my band.
Ace was gaping at me. Charlotte was grinning—Charlotte was grinning!—and giving me a thumbs-up. Sam looked slyly over at me as he rubbed his hands together like he finally had Nashville exactly where he wanted it. Dipping his head, he whispered in my ear, “You asked her to mention us. I’m glad you did, but I promise you didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t ask her to,” I admitted, looking at Julie again, who was talking about why she loved the next song so much. And then she announced it: “A Lady Antebellum tune called ‘Dancin’ Away with My Heart.’ ”
“Hey!” Sam exclaimed over Julie’s guitar intro. “That’s one of our songs about finding and losing each other.”
“That I did ask her to do,” I told him. “I asked her to play it for you and me.”
Here in the comparative dusk away from the bright lights onstage, no one else could see the look he gave me. His lashes cast long shadows across his dark eyes as he looked over his shoulder at me. He was wearing the red T-shirt I’d decorated with a heart on the sleeve.
He surprised me by standing, moving in slow motion as though Julie’s music were water around us. I took the hand he offered me. He led me past Charlotte and Ace, into the aisle. I didn’t ask what he wanted. He didn’t ask me to dance. That’s just what we did. I laid my head against his shoulder. He slid his hands down around my waist tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure how to hold me, or whether I wanted to be held. One of his hands found one of mine. I pulled his hand close and tucked it under my chin.
He bent to whisper, “Maybe we should dance only the first part of the song. The finding each other, and not the losing each other.”
I kissed his knuckles and looked up at him. “Maybe we should enjoy it and feel lucky we’re together. I feel very, very lucky.”
And for the first time, I did.