“Just because you think they’re wrong doesn’t mean they’re not going to do it.” My voice rose. I had a fleeting thought that my parents’ ban on misbehaving in public probably included making a scene in late-night restaurants, but I was so angry that I couldn’t help it. “God, Sam! I swear the only way you would take anything like that seriously is if it happened to you. If it happens to anybody else, for you it’s like it didn’t happen.”
“Nothing’s happened, Bailey,” he said soothingly—except I knew he wasn’t really trying to soothe me but rather to make me feel crazy, because he never stopped eating French fries. “Your parents haven’t found out.”
“They will,” I insisted. “You keep telling me, ‘Just one more gig. Just one more gig.’ But I know what you really want. It’s like you’re saying, ‘Just let me touch it. That’s as far as we’ll go.’ ”
I’d meant it as an angry joke. We were eighteen years old, adults. We could make sex jokes to each other.
He didn’t laugh. His eyes widened. He looked cornered, like a tender fourteen-year-old boy overwhelmed by a forward girl. He put his elbow on the table and balanced his temple on his fingers as though he had a headache. Then he cut his eyes sideways at Charlotte, as if she had anything to do with the conversation.
“You obviously know what you’re talking about,” Charlotte said.
“What?” Sam asked sharply at the same time Ace turned to gape at her.
“Isn’t that what she’s doing?” Charlotte insisted. “Dressing like that”—she nodded to my tight NashVegas T-shirt—“acting like a tease, just to get a gig?”
“No,” I said so calmly I was proud of myself. “You’ve gotten me mixed up with Sam.”
Sam and Ace hardly seemed to notice my attempt to defuse her sharp comment. “Apologize,” Sam told her. That rare angry edge had entered his voice, the one I’d heard at the factory.
Her mouth opened and her eyes widened like she was astonished he’d betrayed her. Then she gathered her wits and said haughtily, “It’s true.”
“Apologize,” Ace repeated calmly but firmly.
Charlotte turned to look at Ace. Their eyes locked for a moment. Something passed between them.
She muttered, “Sorry,” but she wasn’t looking at me as she said it. She was rolling her eyes.
Still glaring at Charlotte, Sam sighed a huge sigh, shoulders sagging so low against the back of the booth that I realized how tight and tense he’d been before. To me he said, “I told you from the beginning that I wanted this audition video. In case the bar calls me, we need to figure out when we’re all available to play from now on.”
“There’s no ‘from now on,’ ” I said instantly, holding my ground. “I told you, I’m not in your band.”
“Are you quitting?” he challenged me.
As his dark eyes drilled into me, my adrenaline spiked, and for once it wasn’t because of the yearning that took hold of me when he offered me a glance. It was a fight-or-flight reaction to a threat: the threat of never being able to play with the band again. I couldn’t keep on playing with them, because my parents would find out eventually. I couldn’t stop playing with them, because my heart would shrivel up and die. There was no solution to this problem. The only tool I had was putting off the decision.
“I can’t quit the band,” I said. “I’m not a member.”
Charlotte raised her hand. “I don’t like this game.” She still wasn’t looking at me. This time she wasn’t looking at Ace or Sam, either. She stared above Ace’s head at the far wall. But in the stubborn set of her jaw and the hard look in her strange blue-green eyes, I saw what I was doing to her. I wanted desperately to play with the band. So did she. She’d enjoyed the comfort of stability with the band before I showed up. I had thrown the band into a tizzy and ruined everything for her.
And I realized she was right. While I was in this limbo, so were they.
Echoing Sam, I sighed and relaxed my shoulders against the back of the booth, directing my gaze above his head at the Hatch Show Print poster of Johnny Cash so iconic that every business in town displayed a copy of it. “I can’t tell you when I can play from now on,” I said, “but I can tell you for . . .” I held up my hands while I thought about how long I might safely play with them without ruining my future. I was so deep in limbo that I couldn’t even answer my own question. If they’d asked me two days ago, I would have said I couldn’t play with them at all. The deeper I fell in love with the band’s gigs, the longer the safe time stretched.
“A week?” Sam suggested.
I shook my head no.
“Five days?” Ace asked, exasperated. His words moved me more than anything Sam had said. Sam lived life in a constant state of near-exasperation, whereas Ace rarely showed any emotion at all. If even he was exasperated with me, I deserved it.
I owed him better. I owed them all better.
“Four days,” I negotiated. Julie and my parents would be coming back to town tomorrow, but I would still be staying with my granddad so he could keep tabs on me, theoretically. They would be busy with concerts and parties for Julie’s single release and the CMA Festival. That meant my parents would be even angrier if they found out I’d disobeyed a direct order right under their noses, when Julie’s record company was so concerned about her image and theirs.
It also meant my parents would be totally preoccupied with Julie, my granddad would likely go with them to her concerts, and nobody would be watching me. If they cared so much about what I was doing, they ought to be monitoring me more closely. This would serve them right.
But there was one night I wasn’t sure about. “Maybe not Tuesday.” That was the day Julie’s single was scheduled to hit stores. It was also the night of her Grand Ole Opry debut. The venue wasn’t the biggest in Nashville. It certainly wouldn’t get her as much exposure as her CMA Festival concerts on Thursday afternoon and Friday night. But it was the stage every country musician dreamed about playing on, and Julie had scored it for her single debut day. No matter how big her career got and where her tour took her, she would always remember this concert.
And I was still holding out hope that my family would invite me.
“Today’s Sunday,” Sam reminded me. “You can’t say, ‘Maybe not Tuesday.’ Either you’re in or you’re out.”