When I finally silenced the guitar, she leaned toward me. “That was beautiful,” she breathed. “You’re amazing.”
“It still needs work,” I said. I’d never been comfortable receiving compliments, but I already knew it was a song that I would eventually add to my rotation, if only in honor of my memory of her.
“What was that one you sang last night? The one about feeling lost?” She hummed a fragment of the top melody. “Could you sing that one, too?”
I knew the song she meant; the lyrics had come to me after a particularly hard day on the farm, and it was full of angst and uncertainty. It was also a crowd favorite, something I could probably play in my sleep, so I went right into it. After that, I rolled into another song that I’d written years ago—one with echoes of Lady A—then kept going. Morgan would sway or tap her foot in time to the music, and I found myself wondering whether she’d finally ask me to play something that she’d be willing to sing.
But she didn’t. She seemed content to listen, and I felt myself drawn into the music in the same way she seemed to be. Each song carried with it a memory, and with the moon bathing the shore in its milky glow and a beautiful woman sitting across from me, it struck me that there was no better way to end the evening.
When I finally set my guitar off to the side, light applause drifted down from the hotel. Turning, I saw six or seven people clapping and waving from the deck.
Morgan tilted her head. “I told you your voice was special.”
“It must be an easy-to-please crowd.”
“Did you write all those songs yourself? Without anyone?”
“Always.”
She looked impressed. “I’ve tried to write my own music, and I can put together really good bits and pieces, but I usually have to partner with someone else to finish it.”
“How many songs have you written? On your own, I mean.”
“Twelve or so? But I didn’t start until a couple of years ago. I’m still learning.”
“Twelve is still pretty good.”
“How many have you written?”
I didn’t want to tell her the whole truth, but I offered part of it. “More than twelve.”
She laughed, knowing exactly what I’d done. “While you were singing, I kept thinking about you in your high school band days. I find it hard to imagine you with long hair.”
“My aunt and uncle weren’t too fond of it. The few occasions when my sister saw it on FaceTime, she absolutely hated it. More than once, she threatened to drive back home and cut it all off when I was sleeping. And the scary thing is, I was afraid she was actually going to do it.”
“Really?”
“When she gets something in her head, it’s sometimes impossible to change her mind.”
Just then, I heard someone calling Morgan’s name. Glancing up, I saw Stacy, Holly, and Maria stepping off the low wooden deck onto the sand, making a beeline for us.
“I think they think they’re coming to rescue me,” Morgan whispered.
“Do you need rescuing?”
“No. But they don’t know that.”
When they reached us, I watched them quickly assess the situation, no doubt still trying to figure out why a girl who was as pretty as Morgan would have left with a guy like me.
“Were you just singing out here?” Holly asked.
Morgan jumped in to answer. “I insisted. He wrote a new song and I wanted to hear it. How did it go at MacDinton’s?”
They gave a unified bored shrug. “It was all right,” Stacy said. “Once the band took a break, we could actually hear ourselves and that was nice, but then they started up again, so we figured it was time to call it. It’s getting late.”
There was something almost parental in the way she said it, and when Morgan didn’t respond right away, I cleared my throat.
“I should probably get going, too.”
I started to put away my guitar, regretting the end of the evening. If Morgan and I had more time alone, I might have tried for a kiss, but Morgan’s friends seemed to read my mind and had no intention of allowing us a final moment of privacy.
“That was fun tonight,” Morgan said.
“Definitely,” I agreed.
She turned toward her friends. “You ready?”
“Don’t forget your boots.”
She seemed amused that I’d remembered, offering up a brief wave before starting toward the hotel with her friends. I waited for them to reach the deck, where Morgan retrieved her boots, slinging them over her arm. In time, I heard their voices fade as they disappeared into the hotel.