“I didn’t peg you for a religious person.”
“I’m not.”
“Or a giving person.”
“Thanks.”
“I just mean—”
“That you’d expect me to buy a new amp with it?” He shrugged. “I’m cheating a homeless person out of panhandling money. This is my way of giving it back. The church feeds them sometimes. You’re not supposed to give cash to the homeless in case they buy booze with it. Come on.” He took my hand.
I didn’t pull away. We really were playing with each other, toying and testing. I let him swing my hand a little as we made our way back down the hill toward the lot where we’d parked.
“You have a great voice, too, you know,” he said. “It’s not very strong, but if that was your goal, you could take lessons.”
This wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. I walked beside him in stunned silence. His hand around mine now seemed ironic.
“That didn’t come out right,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“You’re not taking it back, either.”
He turned to me as we walked, watching me silently.
“Wow. Nobody ever told me that before.” With a few words from him, I was reevaluating everything that had happened between Julie and me. “I guess the record company picked my sister because her voice was stronger. And here I thought it was just because she was the one singing melody and getting the attention—and that was only because she got confused when she sang harmony. Nobody ever sat me down and said, ‘Julie is a better singer than you.’ ”
“You have the ideal voice for harmony, high and sweet, and you have perfect pitch. I would kill for perfect pitch.” He squeezed my hand. “Just because she got a development deal doesn’t mean anything is going to come of it. A lot of those deals never pan out. The singer drags herself back to town with her tail between her legs.”
That was not going to happen to Julie. Her development deal had panned out just fine. And the instant I said this to Sam, he would never leave me alone about using her as a door into the industry.
As we walked down Broadway hand in hand, I felt the strangest sense of peace. Resignation might have been a better word. Sam hadn’t meant to insult me when he said my voice wasn’t strong, and he hadn’t. He’d opened my eyes. I was seeing everything, including myself, more clearly than I had in a year.
And my relationship with him was the clearest of all. In the next few days he would start hearing Julie on the radio and find out exactly what her development deal had turned into, and how successful she was about to become. Everything would change then. For now, Sam was mine, and I would enjoy this moment.
He dropped my hand and put his arm lightly around my shoulders. “Bailey, you’ve been avoiding the subject, but please come play with us tonight. I want to play with you. And I just want to be around you. You’re the only person I know on Earth that I can have a conversation about songwriting with who doesn’t have sideburns.” He reached around to touch my other shoulder and stop me. “Be my friend and play with me, please.” He wore a pitiful face with his bottom lip poked out. “Just this once.”
“Just this once,” I mocked him. “That’s what you said last night. Repeatedly.”
“It is for just this once,” he insisted. “Every time. It’s like a movie rental at one of those kiosks. There’s no contract to sign or membership fee. I’m not asking you for anything beyond tonight.”
“Okay,” I said.
His lips parted. He was ready to argue with me. He didn’t seem to know what to do with my agreement. Finally he repeated, “Okay,” and we rounded the corner to our parking lot.
He glanced at his watch. “The gig isn’t for hours. What say we grab some dinner? Then I have to keep a promise. It won’t take long. You can come with me. And then we can swing by your place and let you change.” He nodded to my shoes.
“What about you?” I gestured to his regular-guy, not-a-country-crooner-wear.
“Normally I wouldn’t go in this,” he said, looking down and brushing an imaginary piece of lint from his T-shirt, “but nobody’s going to be looking at me anyway.” He unlocked his truck and opened the door for me. “They’re looking at you.”
9
After twenty minutes on the interstate pointed south of town, we pulled off and stopped at a meat and three that looked a bit dubious to me from the outside. Sam said he’d eaten there a million times, though, and the nearly full parking lot indicated he wasn’t the only fan. As it turned out, he was right and I was wrong. We stuffed ourselves with black-eyed peas and collards and sweet potatoes like candy.
Between bites I asked, “Is there something going on between Ace and Charlotte?”
He seemed surprised. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“They rode to the gig together last night. I got the impression they’re used to doing that.”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t have a car. He can have any car he wants on loan, anytime. They can get her whole drum set in the back of a minivan. My truck bed is open. We couldn’t stop anywhere if we wanted to. We’d be in trouble if it rained.” He sipped his tea, eyeing me over the rim of the glass. “Do you think there’s something going on between them?”
“I think Ace has a thing for Charlotte, and Charlotte has a thing for you.”
He grimaced. “I don’t want to hear it.”
I nodded slowly, thinking about the near-date we were on, and everything Charlotte had warned me about. “I hear you’ve had fifty-two girlfriends in the past year.”
He rolled his eyes. “I wish people would stop saying that. I don’t know who started it, but it’s an exaggeration. I doubt I’ve dated half that.”
“So, more like twenty-six?” I echoed Ace.
Sam shrugged noncommittally, then busied himself with scraping the last forkfuls of food off his plate. He changed the subject to a new song we’d heard on the country station as we drove down here . . . and in midsentence a tune came to me, and lyrics using the trope of the twenty-six girlfriends. I pulled my notebook out of my purse. Angling it carefully so he couldn’t see the staffs, but holding my body casually enough that I hoped I didn’t look like I was trying to hide anything, I scribbled this idea. The illustrations in colored pencil would have to come later. “Just writing something down,” I said defensively when he spoke, though I hadn’t registered what he’d said.