At first he didn’t seem to notice I was looking at him. He didn’t seem to concentrate on his music, either. His fingers moved automatically over the guitar strings, playing an old tune brought to the Appalachians from Scotland and written before the system of chords in Western music had been regularized, so it was full of progressions that sounded strange to the modern ear. The chords were minor, as if the song was meant to be sad, but the lyrics were ironically upbeat. Sam wasn’t singing them, but I knew the words. He stared into space, in my vicinity but beyond me, through me, like he was thinking hard about something else. His dark brows were knitted, and he squinted a little. The hot breeze moved one dark curl across his forehead, which must have tickled, but he didn’t brush it away.
I considered standing in front of him until he acknowledged me. What did I want out of that, though? He wasn’t interested in me, and I shouldn’t be interested in him. So I just kept walking and hoped he wouldn’t notice me.
I was all the way past him, stepping from the concrete ramp to the asphalt road, when I heard him call behind me, “Bailey!”
I stopped automatically, then wished I hadn’t. Now I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard him. He was making everything more difficult. The more I interacted with him, the harder I was going to fall, and the worse the rest of my summer without him or anybody else was going to be.
The damage was done, though. I turned to face him as he jogged the few steps between us, holding his guitar by the neck. “I’ve been waiting for you. I almost didn’t recognize you.” He stared at me, taking in my eyes, then my hair, but not with the appraising expression girls wore when they commented on my looks. A small smile played on his lips like he appreciated the way I was done up but also—a little disturbingly—found it amusing.
To break the silence, I finally said, “I don’t wear the June Carter Cash wig home. Or the Dolly Parton Does Vegas outfit on my Dolly Parton days.”
His brows shot up. “You have Dolly Parton days?”
“And Willie Nelson days, and that’s just the first week.” I confided, “Mr. Nelson was a bit fried.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam sounded genuinely sympathetic.
“The outfit was okay, though, in comparison. How did you get away with wearing your own jeans and shoes while Ms. Lottie sewed me into a circle skirt? Only your hair got caught in the time machine.”
“Yeah.” He laughed, putting one hand through his damp waves. “I’ve been doing this awhile. I know what Ms. Lottie will put up with and what she won’t. The real question is, how did you snag so many days a week of work so soon after you started?” He lowered his guitar to rest on the toe of his shoe and spun it as he said, trying to sound casual, “Your granddad must have a lot of sway.”
“Somebody at the casting company owed him a favor,” I acknowledged. “But he doesn’t have any real clout in Nashville. If he did, everybody in my family would have had a recording contract years ago.” I shifted my fiddle case to my other hand and gazed impatiently at the parking lot like I had something to do tonight besides watch television with a seventy-year-old man and hate myself. “Why were you waiting for me?”
“Oh.” He swallowed. “I just wanted to apologize for all the drama between my dad and me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I did worry about it, and I wanted to know more, but I waved the drama away with one hand. “I was playing at the very same place in the food court on Tuesday when I got into it myself with Elvis.”
“Oh, man, they stuck you with Elvis, too? Who didn’t they give you to? Was he a prick to you?”
“You could say that.” I decided not to inform Sam about my night of intense anxiety or the fact that in my mind, Elvis had caused me to become a homeless prostitute. “Anyway, maybe there’s something about standing between Baskin-Robbins and McDonald’s that drives us all batty and makes us turn on each other. In high school I knew groups like this were playing around town. I might have passed Loretta Lynn once or twice on my way to shop for shoes, but I never pictured myself actually having this job. And I sure never knew the concert in the food court turns into a reality show. They should advertise it. People would come to the mall just for that.”
“We musicians are impossible,” he said in a dead-on imitation of Ms. Lottie.
I almost laughed. Almost. I opened my mouth, but all that came out was a short noise. I did want him to know how funny I thought he was, so I said dryly, “You sound just like her.”
“Ms. Lottie is full of wisdom,” he said. “She used to do makeup and costumes for the Grand Ole Opry, and once upon a time she was married to a record company executive.”
“I guess she doesn’t have the sway to get anybody a contract, either,” I said. “Everybody in this town knows somebody who was Somebody with a capital S at some point.” When he didn’t say anything, I finished with a zinger that reflected what I’d suspected when he mentioned my granddad. “If she had any clout, you would have used her by now.”
He lifted his chin and turned his head, as if he couldn’t see me clearly, and looking at me with the other eye might help. “Why does that bother you?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you do anything to get a recording contract?”
“No,” I said too loudly. My voice echoed against the flat, blank concrete walls of the mall. “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t use somebody.”
His dark eyes widened in surprise—which surprised me in turn. Though I’d walked around the mall with him for hours, I hadn’t had the chance to watch him much. He’d stood on the other side of his father most of the time. Only now was I noticing how expressive his eyes were, and how tall he was, and how young he seemed all of a sudden, like he hadn’t been tall for long and he wasn’t yet used to his own height.
But what he said next surprised me more than anything else he’d said or done. “I am so disappointed you feel that way, because I wanted to use you.”
He uttered this with such confidence that I thought his innuendo was intentional. And despite the fact that I did not—did not—want to be used, chill bumps popped up on my arms in the hot sun.
His eyes grew even wider. “That’s not what I meant.” He closed his eyes and cringed. “God, what else can I say to embarrass the f**k out of myself?”