“No. I want you, and I want us to be together, too.”
“Then come with me. Go to Nashville when you can.”
“But the farm. My sister…”
“You said yourself that the farm is easier now, and you said you have a general manager. And if your sister wants to come to Nashville, bring her. She can probably run her business from anywhere, right?”
I thought of Paige, thought of all the things about my sister that I had yet to admit. “You don’t understand…”
“What is there to understand? She’s an adult. But here’s the other thing.” She took a long breath before going on. “You have an amazing voice. You’re an amazing songwriter. You have a gift that others only dream about. You shouldn’t let that go to waste.”
“I’m not you,” I demurred, feeling suddenly trapped, needing another excuse. Any excuse. “You didn’t see yourself up on that stage.”
Her expression was almost wistful. “The thing is, you don’t see yourself, either. You don’t see what I see. Or what the audience sees. And you also understand that music is something powerful, something that people all over the world can share, right? It’s like a language, a way to connect that’s bigger than you or me or anyone. Do you ever think about how much joy you could bring people? You’re too good to stay on the farm.”
Dizzy, I could think of nothing to say, other than the obvious. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then don’t,” she urged. “Did you mean it when you said that you loved me?”
“Of course.”
“Then before you say no, even if you don’t want to go to Nashville because I think you should or because we could be together, then maybe think about doing it for yourself.” She drew up her legs, kneeling on the couch as she faced me. “Will you do that? At least think about it?”
As she’d spoken, it was easy for me to imagine all of it. Writing songs together, discovering a new city together, building a life with each other. Enjoying life, without the worries and stresses that defined my world now. And she was right about my aunt and the managers being capable of keeping things going. Now that we’d built a rhythm and routine, things were easier, but…
But…
Paige.
I took a long breath, so many thoughts and impulses racing through me.
“Yeah,” I finally said, “I’ll think about it.”
We didn’t speak about it again that night, and I found myself confused and preoccupied. Though I’d expected her to ask how to keep a long-distance relationship going, I was blindsided by her suggestion that I follow her to Nashville.
As we lay together on the couch, I admitted that my dreams of a life in music still flickered somewhere inside me. I also couldn’t bear the idea of losing Morgan, and when she began to kiss my neck, we wordlessly migrated from the couch to the bedroom, where our longing for each other was expressed without explanation or doubt.
In the morning I dropped Morgan off at the Don. Instead of going for a run, I showered and spent the next couple of hours walking the beach, mulling everything she’d said the night before. Gradually, I made my way back to her hotel. As I approached, I noticed the beach was unusually crowded, despite the early hour. I thought nothing of it until I realized that it had to do with the girls’ recording session.
There must have been several hundred people behind the hotel, mostly teenage girls. Pulling up TikTok, I realized that all four of them—and their group account—had posted multiple times in the last few days, offering previews of their rehearsals, along with behind-the-scenes footage of them putting on makeup or goofing around in the hotel room. All of it was accompanied by callouts announcing when and where they would perform their next routine and inviting people to attend.
Still, I was amazed by the level of genuine fandom. While I’d known they were popular, for whatever reason it hadn’t registered that hundreds of people would actually take time out of their day to attend one of their recordings in person.
I texted Morgan to let her know I had arrived, continuing to marvel at the size of the crowd. After a few minutes she responded, asking if I would be able to help them film, to which I readily agreed.
Noon came and went, but there was still no sign of the girls. The crowd, however, kept trickling in, dozens more making their way down the beach. I scouted the area, trying to figure out the best vantage point from which to record the performance, before realizing that I had no idea where to even start.