She wore no makeup, which arguably she didn’t need because her skin was porcelain and perfect, her eyes an arresting blue-green. But the fact that she was a chick my age without makeup made her look aggressively plain. I got the impression she was trying to give off the same vibe as me—leave me alone—only she was coming at it from the opposite direction. I cared very much how I put my look together. I suspected she did, too, but the look itself was supposed to say that she didn’t give it any thought at all.
I was about to step forward with my hand out to this girl. I stopped myself when she said flatly, “Hi,” and then turned a pouty face to Sam. “I thought you wanted to make a big push to get a gig on Broadway while all the industry bigwigs are in town for the festival.”
“I”—Sam’s eyes slid to me—“do.”
“And suddenly you invite somebody else?” she insisted.
He grinned at her. “This is just for tonight, to see how it works out.” When she continued to scowl at him, he set down his guitar case, wrapped both arms around her, and pulled her into his chest. “Now, Charlotte. You’re the beauty of this operation. I’m the brains. Let me do the thinking.”
“Wow, if you’re the brains, we are in trouble.” She pushed him away. Both of them were laughing. Ace stared across the garage and huffed out an exaggerated sigh.
Sam scooped up his guitar again. Turning as one unit, he and Charlotte headed for the stairs down to the street. With no other choice, Ace and I fell in behind them. Charlotte asked Sam in a lower tone, “How’s your dad?”
“Sober.” Sam held up his hand with his fingers spread.
“Five days!” Charlotte exclaimed. “That’s great.”
I’d been thinking again how calculating Sam was, and how careful I needed to be not to lose my heart to him when he only wanted me for his band. But listening to him and Charlotte talk, I got the feeling there was a lot more depth to him. He obviously had real problems with his dad, if his friends knew about them, too. And I could tell from the concern in Charlotte’s voice and the way her eyes never left his face as they entered the stairwell how much she cared about him—even if the relationship was, as I suspected, one-sided.
I nodded toward her as I asked Ace, “How do y’all know Sam?”
“We went to the same high school,” Ace said. “Sam and I played football together.”
I refrained from saying, That explains a lot. It explained why Sam and Ace had chests like trucks. It also explained why Charlotte was trying so hard to stake her claim on Sam now that a new girl had arrived. I hadn’t even known Sam a full day, and I was already getting myself tangled up in his drama. I reminded myself that none of this was worth my college education.
But as Ace and I emerged behind Sam and Charlotte onto the street, I changed my mind. A singer wailed one of my all-time favorite country songs from the stage in the first restaurant we passed. Before her voice had faded, the voice of the singer in the next bar competed with it for my attention and affection. I loved that song, too. I loved the music and I loved Nashville. I was walking down the street toward my first gig on my own, without my parents controlling my every move. If my granddad found out what I’d been up to tonight, I’d be in big trouble whether I went ahead with the gig or not. Might as well.
“How about you?” Ace asked, startling me out of my thoughts. I’d gotten so lost in the neon lights on the dark, crowded street that I’d almost forgotten he walked beside me. “How’d you meet Sam?” he asked.
“At the mall today. I played in a trio with him and his father.”
“No way,” Ace said. “Were there groupies? A lot of times girls from school follow him around. Pisses his dad off.”
“Not today,” Sam said, turning around, my first clue that he’d been listening to us. “It’s the weekend after Memorial Day. They’re probably still at the beach. Oh, man, it smells like a strip club.”
Ace laughed, but I thought that was a weird thing to say. Sam was pretty desperate to change the subject. Then I caught a big whiff of the air being forced out of the next bar and onto the street: stale cigarette smoke and air freshener. I tried to breathe more shallowly.
Charlotte turned to Sam. “And how do you know what a strip club smells like?” Her tone was light and teasing with a hint of ugly jealousy somewhere at the bottom, like a dirty film nobody ever scrubbed off the strip club floor.
Sam said simply, “I had a gig.”
“In a strip club?” Charlotte shrieked.
“I’d forgotten about that,” Ace said, and chuckled. “He was the pride of the ninth-grade football team.”
“How old were you?” I asked Sam, trying not to sound like a shocked church lady, but ninth grade?
“Fourteen,” he said. “Fourteen when I started, and then fifteen. It was my longest gig to date.”
“How could your parents let you do that?” Charlotte pressed him.
I thought: They weren’t paying attention. Like my parents. In my case, my parents were gone. In his case, maybe something had happened to his mom—I was afraid something had, since he hadn’t mentioned her—and his dad was drunk.
“Oh, it was my dad’s gig,” Sam said.
I couldn’t hide my shock anymore. “And your dad took you into the strip club with him?”
Sam spread his hands. “It was a gig!” As if that explained everything.
“The strippers were very nice to him,” Ace offered.
I looked to Sam for confirmation. He nodded at me. “They brought me Cokes. One of them wanted me to go out with her daughter.”
“Ew!” Charlotte shrieked.
“Strippers aren’t ew,” he scolded her. “It’s just another way to make a living.” But he turned around and winked at me, like he’d enjoyed the strippers more than he wanted to let on to Charlotte. And like I understood something about him that she didn’t.
“How was the band before us?” he asked Ace.
Ace shrugged. “It’s never a good sign for a band when they ask a waitress to take the lead for a couple of songs. I don’t think we’re following a whole lot.”
“Depends on how good the waitress was,” Sam said.
“She wasn’t as good as you,” Charlotte said. Sam grinned at her and chucked her gently on the chin. I wanted to throw up.
“That’s positive, right?” Charlotte insisted. “We’ll look great in comparison.”