“No. If I auditioned and got a scholarship, they’d want me to major in music or at least be in the orchestra, and I don’t want to do that.”
“You don’t want to major in music? What is the matter with you?”
A loaded silence settled between us. The truck zoomed on through the night. He watched the road. I couldn’t give him my go-to-hell stare effectively when he wasn’t looking.
Then he glanced over at me and let out a huge sigh. I hadn’t realized how tense he looked, hunched over the steering wheel, until his broad shoulders relaxed. “I’ve been giving you hell, Bailey. I have no right to do that. You just caught me off guard. I had a good friend who died driving drunk last year.”
“Oh!” In my own short exclamation I heard surprise, sympathy, and relief that he was as much like me as I’d thought when we talked at the mall. He only acted different because he’d gone through something lots worse.
He cupped my bare knee under his hand—just long enough for fire to shoot across my skin—and took his hand away. “I’m really sorry. The third degree about your boyfriend—”
“Ex,” I reminded him.
“—and your family, and Vandy . . . I’m sorry. That was none of my . . .”
Business. It was none of his business. If he didn’t finish the sentence, I would finish it for him.
No, I didn’t have the heart. He’d seemed so driven when we played at the mall today, when he upstaged his dad, and when he came to my granddad’s house to rescue me. Now he was still driving toward downtown Nashville, but the fire had gone out of his eyes. He seemed lost.
He shook his head as if to clear it, then flashed me a grin. Just like that, he was back to the glowing Sam I’d met that afternoon. “We’re going to have fun tonight, you’ll see.”
“What’s the name of this band, anyway?”
“The Sam Hardiman Band, but don’t look at me like that! Believe me, I’ve already caught plenty of flak for that from the other members. I had to write something down when I sent in the audition video, and we hadn’t discussed a name before. We need to think of something else.” Pulling to a stop at the next intersection, he thumbed through the MP3 player plugged into the dashboard. When a funky beat began, he drove on. “I wanted to play this for you. Have you heard it before?”
I listened for a second. “Yeah, but it’s been a while. Justin Timberlake?”
“Exactly. What key is it in?”
“F minor,” I said without thinking.
“Wow,” Sam said. “That is amazing.”
I didn’t think it was amazing. It was more of a nuisance. But after years of my mom telling me my miraculous ear was a hindrance rather than a help because of how much I complained about pitch problems she couldn’t even hear . . . if Sam wanted to call it amazing, I would let him.
“Hear the disco violins?” he asked. “The band’s been playing this song for a while without that part. It’s almost like I knew you were coming. I was hoping you could give the song a listen and pick up those licks after one hearing. I’ll bet you can do that, can’t you?”
“Yeah,” I acknowledged.
Admiration evident in his voice, he said, “Like a machine.”
Yes, that’s exactly what it felt like.
5
Parking in downtown Nashville was always crazy, but the biggest country music event of the year, the CMA Music Festival, was coming up next week, and the tourist area was even more crowded than usual. We parked near the riverfront in a dark deck that I would have thought twice about if I’d been alone.
“There are Ace and Charlotte.” Sam lifted his hand to an African-American guy driving by in a minivan that looked brand-new. “Good. They’ve unloaded Charlotte’s drum kit and the amps at the gig already.” Watching the van search the packed deck and finally stop in a space several rows over, he said, “I know this is kind of awkward, but if you would act like we don’t like each other very much when we’re around them, that would really help me out.”
As we pulled our instrument cases from behind the seat of the truck, I said, “Okay. Around my granddad, I’ll act like we are on a date, and around your band, I’ll act like we’re not.” I eyed Sam closely, wondering which scenario he thought was the truth.
“Great.” He flashed me a conspiratorial grin, revealing nothing. Then he took a few steps across the concrete to bump fists with Ace. Gesturing to me, he said, “This is Bailey Wright. She’s going to play fiddle with us tonight.” He turned to me. “This is my bud Ace Hightower.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shook Ace’s huge hand, looking way up into his deep, melty eyes.
“Pleasure,” Ace said. Maybe Sam had given him the speech about looking older, too, but unlike Sam’s shadow, Ace’s beard was carefully groomed into a goatee. If he was supposed to look like a rockabilly hipster, like Sam and me, he hadn’t gotten that memo. But if Sam was counting on a female record company executive discovering his band someday, between himself and Ace, they probably had that base covered. Ace wore tight jeans that hugged his muscular thighs and a tight red T-shirt with a chemical formula on it, a joke for nerds who’d paid attention in high school and forged a career path.
No, he hadn’t grown the goatee for the bar’s benefit. He’d had it for a while. I recognized this guy, and his last name. “Your dad owns the car dealership.”
“He does,” Ace acknowledged with a wry smile.
“You’ve been in some of the TV commercials.”
“So have I!” Sam called, waving.
Ace told him, “You were dressed up as a dinosaur.” Ace turned back to me. “Sam was convinced that if we put him in a commercial, he’d get discovered, and somebody would hire him for their big-time band.”
“I was kidding about that,” Sam protested. “Nobody would discover me if they hadn’t heard me sing and they hadn’t seen this face.”
“Oh, Lord,” said the girl standing behind them.
Sam looked around at her like he was noticing her for the first time. “And this is Charlotte Cunningham,” he told me.
She was a tomboy, a fierce one. She wore high-top Chucks and baggy cut-off jeans that came down to her knees so there wasn’t even anything Daisy Duke about them, with her drumsticks protruding from one back pocket. Her plain black tank was tight, showing off her cute figure and toned drummer’s arms, but she covered up her cle**age as best she could with her long hair, parted in the middle and placed in front of each shoulder. Her hair was medium brown and had a little wave in it—not curly enough to be stylish and not straight enough to be flat-ironed, like that was how it came out of the shower and she hadn’t bothered to have it cut since February.