“Maybe if she was, you wouldn’t be so desperate to get a recording contract.” I felt ugly saying that, but I just wanted them all off my back now, because I wasn’t going to do what they were asking me to do.
“Wow,” Ace said flatly. That’s when I knew I was beyond hope. I’d expected Charlotte to get emotional, and Sam. But Ace had more sense than both of them put together. If he was disgusted with me, I deserved it.
“Even if my parents weren’t threatening me,” I spat, “I would never ask them for anything else again.”
“That’s really the problem, isn’t it?” Sam yelled. “You’re just too stubborn to ask for help, or forgiveness, or anything.”
“Oh!” I cried. “You were just asking me what is wrong with my parents. You understood perfectly well then where I was coming from. It’s only now that you want something from them that you suddenly can’t fathom why I wouldn’t apologize to them.”
Face dark with anger, Sam stalked toward me. As he passed Ace and Charlotte, Ace reached out and put one hand on Sam’s chest to keep him back. Sam brushed Ace off and kept coming for me, holding two fingers an inch apart. “We’re that close, Bailey.”
“If you can’t get any farther without me groveling to my parents, it looks like you’re going to stay that close.” I measured an inch with my own fingers.
“You—” Sam started, taking another step toward me.
Ace shoved him backward. “Man, come on. We’re arguing under a billboard at two o’clock in the morning, and you don’t have a shirt on.”
Sam turned on Ace. “What the f**k do—”
“Stop,” Ace said. He glanced toward the service road, where a cop car cruised slowly by.
Sam looked, too. “Fine,” he said, stomping toward the SUV.
“Let me drive,” Ace called after him.
We heard a door slam on the far side of the SUV.
“So, Bailey, things might have been better if you’d never showed up,” Charlotte said smugly.
“Can you stop? I swear to God.” Ace encircled the back of her neck with one hand and gave her a gentle shove toward the SUV. He seemed to be steering her toward the backseat with Sam. Her heart must be all aflutter, I thought bitterly.
I waited until everyone was inside the SUV. That way, any individual person would be slightly less likely to take a shot at me. I slipped into the front passenger seat again. As an afterthought—though that’s not what it seemed like to me—Sam half stood and jerked his wadded-up T-shirt out of the console beside me and put it on.
Ace drove the rest of the way to his father’s car lot. Nobody turned to me to say, “You’d better let Ace drive you home because Sam is done with you,” but that was the message, and I got it loud and clear. Sam pulled his guitar case out of the back of the SUV and drove off in his truck without a word.
Ace asked me for my address and plugged it into the GPS. As the robot lady commanded him to drive down the boulevard and turn at Music Row, he commented, “So. Not Bailey Wright. Bailey Mayfield.”
I said defensively, “Bailey Wright Mayfield.”
“It must really hurt to have your sister playing at the Grand Ole Opry,” Charlotte said.
I let that insult lie there, like an egg frying on the hood of a car on a summer day in the desert. She didn’t care what I thought of her, but she cared what Ace thought, and he wasn’t going to like that stab at me.
He didn’t defend me, though, just kept driving past the record company offices.
Charlotte tried again. “It’s a shame that your sister got the blond hair, and you got the jet-black hair. After seeing her, I’d almost say your hair color wasn’t natural.”
If she’d known how close we were to my granddad’s house, she might have started insulting me earlier. Now she’d run out of time. Ace pulled up at the bottom of my granddad’s cement stairs.
“Thanks, Ace,” I said genuinely. “It’s been a pleasure knowing you.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed like I was the one who’d insulted him. “We’re not done with you. You said you were in the band for four more days. This was day one.”
“What?” I protested. “No! Sam doesn’t want me playing with you now.”
“Sam does not cancel a gig,” Ace reminded me in a warning tone.
“There are no gigs.” I opened my hands. “I told him I couldn’t play tomorrow.”
“I know for a fact he’s scheduled us at Boot Ilicious on Wednesday,” Ace said.
“Oh, come on!” I cried. Toby had no idea I was playing in a band, I hoped. But he’d discovered a place to snag booze, and he wasn’t going to give it up anytime soon. I’d likely see him there, and now I would be doing exactly what he’d always made fun of me for.
“No,” I said. “Sam didn’t say anything to me about another gig.”
“He was probably waiting for the right time,” Ace said, “because you freak out every time he tries to get you to play with us again.”
Charlotte burst into laughter. I let her laugh. I felt stunned. It was the first time Ace had raised his voice at me.
He turned around. I didn’t see the look he gave Charlotte, but she stopped laughing.
“And Sam sent in our video to audition for a Broadway gig on Thursday,” Ace said. “Since it looks like you and Sam might not be speaking, I’ll call you both days to make sure you’re coming. If you don’t answer, I will come find you.”
“O-kay!” So much for my sweet parting with my understated friend. I opened the door and jerked my beach bag and fiddle case off the floorboard.
Just before I slammed the door, Charlotte chirped from the backseat, “Good night, Bailey Mayfield!”
I took a step back and opened her door. “Shut up,” I said to her face before closing the door again. I jogged up the steps.
Upset as I was, I had the wherewithal to stuff my fiddle case into my beach bag before opening the front door. If I had been harboring some inkling of an idea that Sam was right and I could make it big with his band, thereby breaking away from my parents completely, those hopes were dashed now. I needed more than ever to keep my moonlighting a secret from my granddad.
But as I entered the dark house and peeked out the front window to watch Ace drive away, I knew my Wednesday and Thursday nights with the band wouldn’t be all I saw of Sam. I had a mall performance to get through tomorrow afternoon, and then I was making a date.