I looked down at my T-shirt. “What do you want me to wear?”
“I believe in you. Just give it another try. The band is counting on you. And don’t forget to bring the guitar case down casually, like, ‘Hey, Sam, you totally left your guitar case upstairs! It’s totally empty and not suspicious at all!’ ” He backed out of the room, then paused. “By the way, your granddad told me you were upset with him and you hadn’t eaten your dinner. You need to eat. I’ll be working you hard tonight.” He flinched as he heard his own words. “That didn’t come out quite right.” He pulled the door shut.
I stood there stunned for a moment, not believing what had happened. In the past year I’d gotten used to bad shit happening out of the blue. This was good—the best—and I wasn’t convinced it was real until I heard Sam’s footsteps headed down the creaky wooden staircase.
I sprang into action, running for the tiny closet with a tinier space cleared out for my dress bags, which I’d lifted whole from my closet at home, lacking the energy last weekend to pick and choose what to bring. Sam had said he wanted me to look older. Facial hair wasn’t an option, but I could definitely dress like a college student. I ripped through one of the bags for the dress I had in mind, black sprigged with red rosebuds. I’d worn it at a festival and Julie had worn a matching one. At the time they’d looked countrified. Now, though, the dress could pass for sexy vintage, especially since I’d gained another half a bra cup size.
I pulled the dress on over my lacy black bra. As I’d thought, I had actual cle**age, not imitation cle**age that Ms. Lottie constructed out of tissues stuffed into my Dolly costume. My bra straps showed underneath the thin straps of the dress. Back when Julie and I had worn the dresses as costumes, she hadn’t needed a bra at all, and my mom had bought me a strapless bra. She never would have let me out of the house with my bra straps showing like this—but she wasn’t around.
I stepped into the red cowgirl boots I’d worn with the outfit back then. They still fit. I slipped on dangling red earrings and bracelets faceted enough to sparkle in the dim bar, but lightweight enough that they wouldn’t clank up and down my arms when I played fiddle. Then I went to peer at myself in the bathroom mirror. My mascara hadn’t smeared as badly as I’d thought, and I cheered up even more now that I knew Sam hadn’t seen me looking like a heroin addict. I cleaned my eyes up a bit, adding glittery highlights underneath my brows, and applied another coat of blood-red lipstick. I removed my contacts and slipped on red horn-rimmed glasses I’d chosen on a whim at my last eye exam a couple of years ago. My mom had said they made me look like a granny. Power surged through me as I put on this accessory my mother specifically and vocally disapproved of. So there.
Looking at my reflection, I decided that if my mom wouldn’t let me go out with my cle**age and bra straps showing, my granddad, though unlikely to say something to me directly, would mention it to my mom the next time he talked to her. I pulled a black shrug out of the closet and buttoned it over the neckline of the dress. I’d worn it on some cooler nights at festivals up north. Now it would get me out of the house.
Then I disentangled Sam’s handkerchief from the pocket of my discarded jeans and secreted it in the pocket of my dress.
As I clomped downstairs, lugging Sam’s not-quite-empty guitar case in my best imitation of nonchalance, gradually I relaxed, and finally I just walked on through the living room and dumped the case by the door. My granddad wasn’t listening for me. He was doubled over at the kitchen counter, holding his sides.
I was alarmed at first that he was having a heart attack, but he was just laughing, harder than I’d ever seen him laugh, at something Sam had said. He’d lost my grandmom’s apron at some point. Sam chuckled, leaning against the kitchen counter, spinning his fork on a plate to snag the last bite of spaghetti and sautéed zucchini. He glanced up at me, reached behind him, and handed me a full plate, as though he’d cooked it himself. He probably had scooped the food out. He seemed to have taken over my granddad’s house.
He placed his own empty plate in the sink as he said, “But baggage claim found it eventually. Want to see? It’s held up great.” He grabbed his guitar from the kitchen table. As he turned around, he caught my eye, twirled his first finger, and glanced pointedly at my plate, telling me to hurry.
He extended the guitar toward my granddad, who ran his thumb across the “Wright” inlaid on the head. “This is the most delicate part,” my granddad said. “If it held up here, it held up every where.” He nodded toward me. “Bailey did the shading on that inlay, you know.”
Sam gaped in astonishment.
My mouth was full, so I just shook my head and gave my granddad a perplexed look. I’d seen him burn wood inlays to make them look three-dimensional. I hadn’t burned them myself. The most complicated piece of equipment I’d handled at his shop in the last week was a wring mop.
“It was a selling point,” my granddad scolded me, “and you were supposed to go with me on this.” He grinned at Sam. “I guess not everybody can be a salesman like you and me.” He put the guitar strap around his own neck, then plucked the strings, ran his hand along the bottom curve of the body, and launched a fast series of chords. He wasn’t thinking, just testing, more by the feel of the guitar under his hands than the sound of it, from what I could tell. Over the music he asked Sam, “Are you playing anywhere these days?”
“I’m playing with my dad at the mall,” Sam said, “which is of course where I met your beautiful granddaughter today.”
I rolled my eyes, which he didn’t see. He was schmoozing with my granddad, not talking to me.
“Other than that,” Sam said, “no way. I’m going to college on a music scholarship, but my dad says I have to switch my major to business and get a good job before it’s too late. My dad says a band would be a terrible distraction.”
My granddad grimaced. “I think your dad’s probably right about that.” He pulled the strap off over his head and handed the guitar back to Sam.
“Oh, yes sir,” Sam said with a straight face. “My dad has me totally convinced.”
With Sam giving me the hairy eyeball, I ate in record time, then grabbed his guitar case and escaped out the door while he carried his guitar separately. No, this did not look weird at all. I held my breath as I descended the ancient cement stairs down the hill that passed for a front yard, waiting for my granddad to call me back. He didn’t. We placed the guitar case behind the seat of Sam’s truck, on top of his electric guitar case, with his actual acoustic guitar on top of that. My granddad just grinned to us and waved from the front porch.