“No,” Beth argues, swallowing, “Drew was right. It’s our last night.”
But she looks sad and exhausted and it’s clear she’s pushed herself too hard. “We have a very long day of travel together tomorrow,” I tell her. “Don’t stay on my account. I doubt I’ll be up that long myself.”
Beth allows herself to be led upstairs, and then it’s only me and Josh. He once said I was the glue holding them together, but it hardly feels that way. If I’d just left when Sloane did, maybe the four of them would be sitting at this table still. Josh sinks into the seat across from mine and kicks my foot.
“None of this is your fault,” he says quietly.
“It feels like it is.”
“I think you’ve just gotten very used to being blamed,” he says. “My brother started this by being a callous, spoiled little shit, and the only problem is that he continued to be one.”
“But your mom—”
“Wants the world for her boys. Every mother probably does. It’s not your fault she can’t give it to them.” He gives me a small smile. “We basically started this trip together alone. Might as well end it this way too.”
I smile against my will. “You want to hear something unsettling?” I ask, desperate to lighten the mood. “Your parents are the only ones on this trip who had sex.”
“That,” he replies “was so unnecessary.” And then he laughs, and as badly as this night has gone, I’m glad it’s turned out this way too.
We order drinks and food and it’s easy and hard at the same time. Being near him is like seeing exactly how happy you could be if you’d been born into someone else’s life. “Are you over there thinking deep thoughts?” he asks.
I smile. “I’m not smart enough for deep thoughts, only shallow ones.”
He shakes his head as he refills my wine glass. “That’s not true. And I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who hides as much as you do either.”
“Hides?” I ask. I pick up the wine glass and hold it to my chest. “I’m an open book.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks. “Then how’d you get that scar on your nose?”
“Taking down Bin Laden,” I reply, pushing my hair back. “I was a Navy SEAL before I went into music.”
He smiles. “That’s impressive. Especially since you’d have been, like, twelve.”
I shrug. “As you should know by now, I’m incredibly fit.”
He laughs and lets it go, thank God. Maybe I’m not an open book, but that’s how it is when you know every answer will only lead to more questions.
He excuses himself and walks up to the stage, to the guy playing guitar there. It seems bizarrely outgoing for Josh. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him willingly speak to anyone aside from his family.
I raise a brow when he returns. “What was that about?”
“He wanted to know where you got the scar on your nose,” he replies. “I told him you were in a fight club and couldn’t discuss it.”
I grin. “The first rule of fight club…”
“Is don’t talk about fight club,” he concludes.
The guy on the stage taps on the microphone to get everyone’s attention. I turn toward him and he’s looking straight at me. “I understand we have a guitar player in the house,” he says into the mic. “Lina, come on up here.”
I blink, looking at the smattering of people still sitting here, before I turn to stare at Josh.
“Dude, what the fuck?” I whisper.
“You were able to astonish everyone last night playing an instrument you’d never actually played before. And you sing in front of thousands of people. How could this be a big deal?”
I swallow. “That’s different.”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” he says, rising to his feet and reaching out a hand to me. “Maybe it’s time you tried doing something that does. Play your new song. Play the old songs you wrote. Just promise me you won’t play Naked.”
I laugh. “God, you’re the worst.”
He just grins. “That song is such a trainwreck.”
I’m still laughing, still terrified, as I make my way up to the stage. Which isn’t even a stage, really, just a two-foot-high platform big enough for four people at most.
A guitar is placed in my hands and I mess around tuning it simply to drown out the noise in my head. I’m tempted to simply play something old, something from the 70s that my father taught me. Fleetwood Mac, maybe, or The Eagles. It’s an older crowd. They’d like it and I could slink away.
But Josh is right. This is a chance to be that other version of myself, the real one I’ve spent so many years hiding, so I start with one of the songs I used to play, an original I submitted which led to my first record deal but never made it onto the album. Not sexy enough, Davis said. I should have known right there we had painfully different visions for my career, not that it would have mattered. I was hungry and desperate back then. I’d have sung anything if it led to a record deal. I was tired of being broke, yes, but mostly I wanted something to throw in my mother’s face after the years she spent telling me I was wasting my life.
I’ve played it so often that it comes now with no thought, but there are goosebumps on my arms. When the words are your own, it’s like standing naked in front of the world with no idea if they’ll cheer or boo at the end.
I play the final notes, and the applause comes fast and loud and sharp. It’s the sort of applause that comes when you’ve surprised people, in a good way. I remember this feeling from when I was a teenager, and the quiet hope that accompanied it: that maybe I was slightly less useless than I’d been led to believe, than I’d allowed myself to believe.
Before the applause starts to die down, I turn and try to hand the guitar back to the musician, but he waves me off. “You play way better than I do,” he says.
I hesitate, but then I glance at Josh and he smiles at me, and that’s all it takes. I sling the guitar strap over my shoulder and face the crowd again.
I play two more of the early songs, and then, with a deep breath, I strum the first few chords of the new song, trying to get a feel for it again.
I’ve played around with it, of course, but I’ve never performed it before and the two things are night and day. I’ve always kept the vocals simple and spare, whispered almost, because I’ve been singing them in hotel rooms, terrified of being overheard. “Umm, this is something I’ve been working on, but it’s a little rough,” I warn the crowd. “Bear with me here.”
My heart beats hard. It’s not simply that it’s mine. It’s that this song is more earnest and heartfelt than anything I’ve ever sung. It’s about knowing exactly the life you’d choose if you could step out of the one you were in, and it reveals more about me than I’d like to share.
I begin tentatively, still considering ditching out even as I begin to sing. But toward the end of the first verse, it suddenly starts to feel right. As if I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and it can’t go wrong because…I love this song. I love it more than I’ve ever loved anything, and in a way, it doesn’t even matter if anyone else feels the same.