But as I pulled back onto the street and puzzled through Sam, I decided he more likely was stuck with his dad like I was stuck with my family. He relied on his dad for the job like I relied on my granddad. I could tell from his enthusiasm that nothing had ever been more delicious to him than the taste of his own gig tonight. It took a lot for a big guy like him to give the impression of a wide-eyed puppy.
I felt like that myself—about the gig, and about him. I couldn’t wait for before nine.
I pulled up to my granddad’s house and walked through the front room, which he’d converted to a workshop and showroom. Most of the time even his living space in the back smelled like sawdust and varnish. At the moment it smelled like steam and spaghetti. He was a pretty good cook for only having learned ten years ago when my grandmom died, and I was hungry. My stomach growled, and my heart leaped. I missed sitting down at the dinner table with my whole family, but I still looked forward to eating with my granddad.
“Hi,” I called, popping into the kitchen.
“Hey,” he said, turning around from the pots on the stove with a spatula in his hand, wearing my grandmother’s apron over the denim shirt and jeans he worked in. When we were younger, Julie and I had made fun of him behind his back for cooking us dinner in the frilly apron. My mom had told us sternly that he missed her mother, and not everything in life was fodder for cruel little girls.
His eyes lingered for only a second on my asymmetrical hair—it seemed that in a year, he’d never quite gotten used to it—before he asked, “How was work?”
“This was probably the best day all week.” At least, the day sure had looked up after work was over. “I got invited to play another gig tonight.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
Stunned, I stared at him with his sauce-covered spatula in the air. Technically, I was forbidden by my parents to play any gig at all. But my granddad had gone out and gotten me the first one, so I’d thought he would agree to the second one, too, if I presented it the right way. I’d rehearsed my speech all the way from the gas station, and he’d just cut me off.
This couldn’t be happening. Not when Sam was involved. I took a deep breath, kept my cool, and started again. “This gig is in the District—”
“Even worse,” my granddad interrupted. “In a bar? You’re underage. And you’re more likely to attract attention playing in the District. That’s exactly what your parents said to keep you away from. I didn’t see the harm in the mall job, no matter what your parents thought, but even I can see you shouldn’t be playing in the District, like you’re trying to get your own recording contract. Julie’s record company asked us not to talk about you because they don’t want the public to hear she used to play with you. What if the record company found out?”
I stared at him a moment more, this rangy, white-haired man in a woman’s apron, controlling my life. He was the one who’d gotten me into this mess, in a roundabout way. He’d taught my mother to play guitar. He’d taken her and her brothers to blue-grass festivals. That’s where she’d gotten the idea that a drive for musical fame was fun for the whole family. My granddad still had one toe in the music industry. He might not have caught the bug that badly himself—he’d never seemed to crave the spotlight—but he was ultimately responsible for all our obsessions with it. And he was the one taking this gig away from me. If he wasn’t my ally against my parents anymore, I didn’t have a friend left.
He watched me uneasily for a moment, then added, “I’m just doing what your grandmother would have done.”
At his mention of my grandmother, I felt a heavy shroud of failure descend across my shoulders. I wouldn’t argue with him when he invoked my grandmother. He loved her too much, living his life as if she were still around. She’d been dead since I was eight, but I remembered her as a lady who liked pretty things and proper girls and never clapped loudly enough when Julie and I performed for her, as if music wasn’t what she was after.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down at the table, and you can tell me about work.”
Usually I helped him with dinner when I came in. If he was offering to serve me, he felt bad about forbidding my gig.
I wasn’t sure how far I could push him, though. We were close, but I still couldn’t pitch a fit to him like I had in the past to my parents. Getting angry and rebelling against my granddad because he wouldn’t let me play a gig, which I wasn’t supposed to play anyway, was another in a long line of reasons my parents could give for pulling the plug on my future.
“You know, Granddad . . .” There was no way I could sit down at the table and eat with him now. But I wanted him to know I appreciated the dinner, and I was sorry he seemed so lonely without my grandmom. All I could manage was, “Not hungry,” as I ducked out of the kitchen, rounded the banister, and jogged up the stairs. I felt like a bitch—because I was one.
As I burst into the room we pretended was my bedroom, I had an urge to chuck my fiddle, case and all, as hard as I could into the bookcase laden with sheet music and festival awards nobody had cared about in thirty years. The adrenaline rushed to my fingertips.
Face tight with an expression so ugly I could feel it, I closed the door behind me, carefully set my fiddle case on top of the dresser, then fished my phone out of my purse to call Sam.
First, though, I quickly scrolled through the texts from Toby that had accumulated while I was at work. Since spending Memorial Day at the lake, he’d been sending me insults when he was drunk, and apologies and pleas to see me after he’d sobered up. I’d thought about blocking him. I’d already written my fill of songs about him, and I didn’t need more material. But now he had the power to take away my college education if my parents thought we were still together. Keeping tabs on Toby seemed like the best way to avoid him. Fear of him had consumed big parts of my week, but I’d obsessed about him less today, since I’d met Sam.
And now my night with Sam had gone south, too. I texted him. Seconds later, my phone rang in my hands.
“What do you mean, you can’t go?” He sounded outraged.
“My granddad doesn’t want me to play a gig in the District.” That was as much of the truth as I could tell him without explaining way more about my sad life than I wanted to reveal to a guy I would never see again, except at the mall.