Just a few miles outside the city, my parents’ neighborhood was a green and gorgeous series of rolling hills and small farms, a stark contrast to the neon lights of Broadway. I’d always loved it here. After being away for a week, I still thought it was beautiful, but the steam hanging in the air seemed sinister. As we passed, I didn’t point out the pond Toby had sunk his car in.
Sam’s truck crunched to a stop on the gravel driveway, in front of the newish farmhouse built to look like an oldish farmhouse. As I stepped out, something seemed very wrong, like I was visiting my deserted house again after the zombie apocalypse. Scanning the acres of pasture around us, I realized what the difference was. “My parents weren’t going to be here much this year, so they sold all the animals.” What had been a cacophony of off-key animal sounds before was now dead silence, save for the hot wind in the trees and the ominous dinging of the wind chimes hanging from the porch ceiling. Wind chimes were the bane of my existence because they weren’t tuned to actual notes. I had told my parents this and they had left the chimes up.
I fished my keys from my purse and climbed the wooden steps. “Wave to the security camera,” I told Sam behind me. I flashed a hand toward the lens hidden in one upper corner of the porch. “I want them to know I know they know I’m here. God forbid they catch me bringing a boy over here to adjust my wardrobe.”
“That is ridiculous,” Sam said, following me through the kitchen. “I am Grandpa-approved.”
It wasn’t until I crossed the den that I realized what a bad idea this had been. Sam was going to find out about Julie’s success sooner or later. Then our relationship, such as it was, would be over. I’d been hoping it would happen later rather than sooner. But the trappings of Julie’s upcoming career were everywhere. On the sofa tables sat framed photos of country megastars hugging her after she’d opened concerts for them. My mom had even framed the program from her biggest concert so far, as if to say, I am so proud! My baby got third billing! My tension mounted until I almost wished Sam would come to the realization that I’d been lying to him, and we could get the awful breakup over with before we were ever really together.
He didn’t seem to see the evidence against me, however. He saw photos of me with the stars at bluegrass festivals. As we mounted the stairs, he paused at a picture of me posing with my fiddle, decked out in cowgirl hat and shirt and boots and square-dancing skirt, age five.
“Awww,” he said, as though I’d been the most adorable child alive. For the hundredth time in a little over a day, my heart opened for him.
I’d told him to wave to the camera so my parents would know our visit was innocent. I’d implied to him that of course it was innocent and I never expected anything else to happen between us. But I wished he’d argued with me or at least acted hurt. I walked more slowly than usual up the stairs, making sure he caught up with me, wishing he would “accidentally” bump into me. I listened for his breathing behind me, so focused on his whereabouts that I hardly noticed my own until I’d reached my room. It was silly, but I knew that for the next few nights I would have fantasies about Sam and me getting too close for comfort on that carpeted stairway.
I was hyperaware of what he would see when he walked behind me into my room, but I shouldn’t have worried. Except for Julie, I had no secrets from him. My room looked exactly as it should, with the evidence of bluegrass festivals—posters, trophies, and photos—cluttering the room, but it all stopped this time last year. It was like my life had been put on pause.
“You can have a seat,” I said casually, gesturing to my desk chair, my comfy reading chair in the corner, and my bed. I walked into my closet and rifled through the remaining dress bags, pulling out an outfit that said I am the fiddler in a rockabilly band or possibly I am insane. I walked back into the room to show it to Sam.
Instead of sitting in a chair or lounging across my bed like a too-forward boy in a teen movie, he still stood awkwardly with his arms crossed exactly where I’d left him in the middle of the room. I got this vibe from Sam sometimes: deep down he was a gentleman, but he kept getting confounded by his striking looks. Women must throw themselves at him. It was possible the twenty-six girlfriends hadn’t been his fault.
For a moment he stared at the dress I was holding up as if he didn’t really see it and he’d been thinking hard about something else. He blinked. “Oh. Yeah, that’s okay. May I look?”
After doing a quick mental inventory of my closet and finding nothing embarrassing either way—no dolls that looked like I was still taking care of them and laying them down to sleep on their shelves at night, but also no pot pipes—I swept my arm in that direction: Be my guest. The closet wasn’t big enough for both of us to stand in. I walked over to my desk and looked through the junk mail I hadn’t bothered to read the weekend I got in so much trouble.
Because I was about to enter college, theoretically, I received a lot of catalogs trying to sell me college clothes and college bedroom sets. I flipped through one without picking it up from the desk, like it had nothing to do with me. Nice Girls in the photos towed pallets of the contents of their new dorm rooms, all matching in a pink flowered theme or a purple butterfly theme, across the quad. Nice Boys waved to them from the vaulted doorways of what were supposed to be dorms but looked like the original home of the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, which had started life as a church.
“This,” Sam called. He held up a shirt Julie had given me as a joke, printed with a cowboy boot and “NashVegas” in loopy letters, all outlined in sequins.
I took the shirt from him. Closing myself alone inside the closet, I exchanged the L.A. blouse I had on for the Nashville shirt that turned me into Sam’s centerpiece. After swapping my heels for shiny white cowgirl boots, I opened the door to show him.
He was staring at the doorway, waiting. “Oh, yeah.” His whole face brightened with his smile. “That’s it. Do you have a skirt?”
Obligingly I retreated into the closet and came out in a miniskirt with an electrified print that I’d thought fit my image last year but I’d never had the courage to wear.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, the admiration evident in his voice. “You should always wear skirts onstage. That should be your thing.” He held out his hand to me. “Ready?”
It seemed to me that the gig was over almost before it started. I had almost forgotten how time could fly when I was performing. I was tempted to put down the heel of my cowgirl boot to step on the night and anchor it there before it slipped away.