I rolled over on the mattress—carefully, so my hair didn’t get crazy—and looked at her, as we’d gazed at each other up here a million times as children. Julie had understood me better than anybody. I thought I’d lost that in my life, and maybe I would never completely regain it. But as she grinned at me, I felt like I was getting a little piece of it back.
“Are you sure that’s the only reason you don’t want to go onstage?”
Her pretty face fell. “I screwed up at the Opry, Bay.”
I poked her. “Of course you didn’t. You looked a little nervous, but it was your first time at the Opry, for God’s sake! You’ll do better tonight, and even better when the Opry asks you back.”
She shook her head, and now her eyes were welling up with tears. “You don’t know how bad I sucked. You weren’t there.”
“I was there.”
She stared at me and sobbed once. “You were?”
“Yes.”
“Even after we didn’t invite you?” she wailed. “Even after I wouldn’t talk to you on the phone?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. I felt around on the mattress and took her hand. “Listen to me. Whatever happens between us, I will always come to your Opry.”
She squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek. “Thank you.”
I slid off the mattress and climbed down the ladder. I hadn’t even reached the bottom when my mother asked, “Did you tell her to get onstage?”
As I set my feet on the floor of the RV, my mother patted the seat beside her at the table. I kept standing and folded my arms. “I told Julie that she’s worked hard and she’s done everything you asked her to do for a year. If she wants you to fight for one item in her contract, she’s within her rights to withhold something you want until you promise her what she wants.”
“I knew you would pull something like that,” my mother sneered. She turned to my dad and asked, “Why didn’t you stop me from calling her?”
My dad opened his mouth, and my granddad moved toward the table, but I didn’t need their help this time. I said, “You can’t ask for my opinion, then say my opinion isn’t worth anything when you don’t like it. I am part of this family, too. You are one of the many reasons Julie is a success, but so am I. I worked hard and did everything you asked me to do, too, for seventeen years. The way you raised Julie made her want a career in music. You raised me that way, too, and you can’t penalize me now for doing what you raised me to do.” My mother took a breath. Before she could speak, I went on, “Granddad got me a job playing fiddle with those tribute bands that walk around the mall.”
“You did what?” my mother shouted at my granddad.
I continued in a louder voice, just as she’d yelled over my protests my whole life. I quoted her line that she’d used on me so many times: “Excuse me, but I have the floor.”
She stopped talking and stared at me with wide blue eyes. I’d been shocked in the past at some of the similarities between us. She was having that reaction now.
I said, “I’m in another band, too, that has a gig on Broadway tonight. Or, I was in a band. And it’s not right for you to take away my college tuition because of that. Parents pay for their children’s college if they can, and you certainly can. It’s not right for you to take that away because I pursue the career you taught me to pursue. But if that’s what you’re going to do, so be it. I will join another band. I will try not to embarrass you or Julie, but I’m not going to live my life denying this huge part of myself just because you want to keep me a secret.”
For once in her life, my mom seemed shocked into silence. It was my dad who said quietly, “We don’t have time to talk about this right now, sugar bear. We’ve got to get Julie onstage. We’re back in Nashville for the next few months. You can move back home, and we’ll have plenty of time to work it out.”
“You just made me move to Granddad’s,” I said. “I’m comfortable where I am, if he’ll let me stay.”
I felt my granddad’s hand on my shoulder.
“Well, come by tomorrow afternoon,” my mother said weakly, “and we’ll talk.”
“I can’t. I have a gig from two to six.” I looked at my parents’ forlorn faces. Standing firm had felt good, but I did want to work this out with them. I said, “I can come by your house in the morning.”
As I stepped from the RV onto the pavement, the hot sunset hit me full in the face. It was a moment before I glimpsed Sam, Ace, and Charlotte talking behind the orange tape with the security guard watching them from a few yards away. When they saw me, they waved me over.
Part of me didn’t want to go. But I couldn’t spend the rest of the night going around being firm with people. That felt good only while I was doing it, and I knew better now than to take rash action that I would regret for a year. I walked toward them. When Sam held out his arms, I ran the rest of the way in my cowgirl boots and didn’t bother crossing under the tape before I lost myself in his hug. The tape stretched between us, and we hugged around it.
“I’m sorry,” he said in my ear. “I was wrong. I didn’t mean it. What you said about cutting your hair, that you knew as you were doing it that you would be sorry for the rest of your life, but you were so angry that you couldn’t stop . . . that’s how it was when I was saying that to you. And I don’t want to be sorry for the rest of my life. Please come back to us.” He held me at arm’s length. “Please come back to me.”
I looked into his dark, intense eyes, then over at Ace and Charlotte. They both gazed at me somberly, with Ace’s arms wrapped around Charlotte’s chest like they couldn’t believe they’d finally gotten together and now they had no intention of letting each other go.
Finally Julie’s voice came from behind me. “You’d better say yes, Bailey. You haven’t had a boy that cute come on to you since that blond guitar player at the bluegrass festival. The one you looked for for years? The one you had such a crush on?”
Sam stared dumbfounded over my shoulder at Julie. His eyes slid to mine.
I felt myself blushing hard. There was nothing left to do but duck under the tape and walk forward into his arms again.
“Thank God,” Ace said.
“Hi, I’m Charlotte,” I heard Charlotte say to Julie, “and this is Ace, and that’s Sam. We’re Bailey’s band.”