AnnieLee grabbed the lip of the bar. “Oh, wow,” she whispered. “Honestly, Billy, that’s the first time I’ve heard it.”
“You mean besides the five thousand times Ruthanna made us sing it, and then the ten thousand times we listened while Warren mixed it,” Ethan corrected her.
She shot a light punch at his well-muscled biceps. “I meant on the radio, dummy.” It was amazing—and so strange—to hear her own voice coming through the speakers. She couldn’t imagine ever getting used to it.
“Nice work, kid,” Billy said to her. “Reckon that’s about the fastest I ever saw someone go from begging for a set to getting herself on the radio.”
AnnieLee tossed her hair back. “I told you so when I walked into this place, didn’t I?”
“I guess you did,” he said. “The vast majority of Homo sapiens are full of BS, though, so forgive me for assuming you belonged in their ranks.”
AnnieLee laughed. “I don’t know what I’m full of.”
“Piss and vinegar,” Ethan said, scooting his stool closer to hers and slinging his arm ever so casually over her shoulders.
She thrilled to the warmth and weight of it, though she didn’t know what he meant by the gesture. Friendship? Flirtation? All she knew was that he’d showed up at her motel half an hour earlier and demanded that she come watch his set. “And you’re not allowed to just stand in the wayback and bug out the second I’m done,” he’d clarified. She hadn’t even pretended that she didn’t want to go. She’d loosed her hair from its braid, swiped on a hint of red lipstick, and jumped into his truck.
“You be nice,” she said to Ethan now. “I had big plans I had to cancel for this.” She waggled her fingers at him. “I was going to paint my nails something fabulous: Cosmic Glitter was the name of it.”
Ethan laughed, a low, thrilling rumble in his chest, and his arm tightened around her.
She was thinking about slipping her own arm around his waist—in a similarly casual way, of course, easy to laugh off if she needed to—when Billy said, “Well, Blake, you better get yourself ready. The mic’s looking lonely up there.”
Ethan released AnnieLee and swung off his stool. The bar was still quiet, especially for a Saturday night, but he’d asked to play early: his KJ shift at the Rusty Spur started at nine. As he grabbed his guitar case, he looked back at AnnieLee as if he wanted to say something. But then he frowned almost imperceptibly and walked toward the stage.
She watched as he took his place and adjusted the leather strap over his shoulder, the spotlight shining on his dark hair, his long, tanned fingers tenderly holding the neck of the guitar.
“Evening, everybody,” he said, and there was a smattering of claps from the room. He began to fingerpick the intro to a song AnnieLee didn’t recognize.
“What’s your name?” she shouted.
Ethan laughed and leaned into the mic. “I always forget that part. I’m Ethan Blake, and I’m looking forward to playing a few songs for you guys tonight.”
He started the song over again, and AnnieLee closed her eyes to listen. He sang about a person asking to be trusted and fearing that he wouldn’t be. The song was slow and sad and gorgeous.
No matter what’s gone on before,
Don’t hold it in a moment more
She whistled and clapped when he finished, and he shot her a grateful look.
“Now for a bit of the Boss,” he said, and he played a countrified version of “I’m on Fire” that made a trio of tipsy college girls scream in delight.
There were no bells and whistles at the Cat’s Paw, no possibility of showmanship beyond the skill of a person’s hands and throat. Ethan’s warm voice filled the room, sometimes vaulting into an old-fashioned cowboy falsetto before tumbling back down to a richer and darker range. As AnnieLee sat there, entranced, she felt like he was singing only to her.
And maybe he was. Because every time she opened her eyes, she met his from across the room.
He was halfway through a Gram Parsons cover—“$1000 Wedding”—when AnnieLee found herself pushing through the growing crowd to get outside. In the narrow alley, she could still hear Ethan singing, but only faintly. She leaned against the wall, a fingernail of a moon hanging in the sliver of black sky above her. She hoped he hadn’t noticed that she’d bolted. How could she explain it? I ached when I saw you up there, Ethan, because your voice showed me a picture of a life I never thought I could have. A summer evening, you and me on a porch, watching the sun go down. You’re playing and I’m singing, and we’re barefoot, and the porch is all ours because the house is ours, and oh, my God, I have to get air.