I nod, feeling even more sure about the idea turning over in my head. I can feel everything clicking into place. “You can.”
Jefferson holds out his hand. “Excellent.”
We make plans for him to come back in toward the end of the week and workshop a few songs. He doesn’t seem in a hurry and I’m okay with that. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to go indie. It’s not about the hustle. It’s about quality and creativity.
Arlo ushers the guys out and I shove back in my chair, putting my feet back up and cracking my neck. It’s late. I check my phone. Definitely after eleven. I’ve been here eight long hours on my day off. I’ll definitely bum a ride off Arlo tonight. It’s too late to be walking home. Scrolling through my phone, I open Instagram and check Lorelai’s posts to see how the wedding went, thinking maybe I’ll text her if it’s over.
The first pic is a glamorous shot of Shelby and Cameron Riggs dancing together, completely lost in their own small world. Around them, the reception looks rustic and simple and fits perfectly with what I know of the pair.
The second is a beautifully decorated cookie with celiac as the hashtag. Lorelai’s new to her diagnosis, but she’s never been one to shy away from trying to use her name to do some good. Even if it’s just normalizing that people with special diets want to eat good things, too. The third is a gorgeous selfie, with Lorelai in a fluttery-looking lavender dress, toasting the camera with a flute of champagne. My bleary eyes skim over the caption, snagging on the familiar wording, and read it through again, a smile growing on my face.
Today was better than anything I could have dreamed up for my best friends. Only missing one scrawny thirty-six-year-old drinker of only the driest Cab.
I click the comment button to respond and write … what? How do I respond to that without sounding pathetic? Everything that comes to mind is … boring. Maybe she did want me there, after all. At least to keep her company. Like friends do. Unsure of what to say, I hit the like button and close out, opening my other account. My anonymous poetry account that was miraculously verified months ago because of the sudden uptick in popularity.
I let the words, always there, simmering just under the surface, spill over onto the keys
carefully uncork
her all-consuming bouquet
sipping
holding
soaking
swallowing
savoring sweetly, so lush upon my tongue
this insatiable thirst
only ever quenched by her
It’s the closest I will ever come to a confession, my poetry. My filthiest pining on a very public stage, but with the complete anonymity of the internet. It’s mostly fine, except for the one time my sister reposted one of my less evocative lines to her stories and I realized she follows the account, and I couldn’t tell her not to. So there’s that.
Better than my mom, I suppose. I may be a grown-ass man in my mid-thirties, but there are lines you don’t cross, and parents reading your erotic poetry account is one of them.
Arlo returns and I drop my feet to the floor, straightening up the space and making sure everything’s turned off before locking up and walking out into the humid night air. It’s late summer, so still warm enough that no one needs a jacket, even in the middle of the night.
He jingles his keys, aiming at his car parked behind our building and unlocking it with a beep. Even a few blocks off Broadway, downtown Nashville never really gets dark. Or quiet. For hours yet, the sound of a hundred open-air bars featuring the most talented musicians in the world vying for their chance at fame will float over pedaling bar carts filled with revelers celebrating everything from divorces to bachelorette parties. For the first few years, I used to pace these streets night after night. Sometimes with Drake, when we were young and dreaming of our shot, and still later by myself. Something about being surrounded by all this creative energy has always fed my soul. It’s why when I moved back, I found a place not too far from the center of it all.
Arlo is quiet as he drives. It’s late and he’s had a long weekend and we’re both worn through. I tell him to take his time coming in on Monday. Our first appointment isn’t until after one. No reason to be there earlier.
Besides, with a new baby coming, I imagine the days he and Josh have left to sleep in are few and far between.
I studiously ignore Lorelai’s lavender front door, extra pale in the moonlight, while unlocking the bright robin’s-egg blue one that leads into my place and latching it closed behind me before climbing the creaky wood stairs up to my loft. When I get to the top, I flick on the dim kitchen light and toss my keys on the wood-block island next to my glasses, wallet, and phone. Pockets emptied, I circle the counter to my sparsely stocked fridge and pull out a container of takeout and a fork and eat in silence. Then I open a new bottle of Malbec and pour a generous glass, carrying it out through the sliding glass door of my balcony. Two stories up, I lean my forearms on the railing and sip the semidry red while taking in the glittering lights of the city.
On one hand, I love this. It’s everything I’ve dreamed of. I have a job I can’t believe I get to do every day. I live in the greatest city in the country, maybe even the world. I have supportive and talented friends and tons of nieces and nephews to spoil and even an asshole cat somewhere around here. If kid-me could see all of this, he’d fucking freak. He’d never believe it.
I can hardly believe it sometimes.
I’m so lucky. I’m also fucking lonely.
Only missing one fiery thirty-three-year-old drinker of the bubbliest champagne.
6
LORELAI
IF I WAS A COWBOY
I knew I should have stopped. The literal minute the opening chords of “Ohio” lifted into the atmosphere, it was as though an enormous vacuum had sucked all the air out of the amphitheater, except for my lone voice. A hush swept over the crowd and sweat trickled into my eyes. This hadn’t been in the show notes. Carissa and Lanie were offstage grabbing a drink and catching their breaths before the encore and I just … well. I don’t really know what made me do it. It’s not as though I set out to obliterate my career tonight.
Things started innocent enough. Okay, that’s not true. “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is not exactly innocuous. It’s pretty on the nose, in fact. There would be no mistaking my intent. But for fuck’s sake, things were out of control in the headlines, and if I don’t use my voice to make a point, what am I even here for?
I digress. “Ohio” was not exactly approved by my tour manager, Cassidy Faulkner, but it also wasn’t not approved either. When I explained earlier in the day that I maybe wanted to do something possibly related to playing a cover of “Ohio,” cool gray eyes dipped in that unnerving way from the tip of my head to my toes and then to the side, as she dismissively took a drag from her cigarette.
“Christ,” she muttered, exhaling Marlboro Lights into the pink-hued Colorado sky. “Fine. Leave it at the song, though. For fuck’s sake, Neil Young’s Canadian.”
“Canadian American, and also gun control is universal.”
My manager glares, replacing her sunglasses. “Not in country music.”
I let her go, not really fussed, since she’s all bark and I never in a million years imagined things would turn out the way they would.