by Erin Hahn
I hired her on the spot and washed my hands of things. Good riddance. Until she came knocking on my door the next morning, saying she’d scheduled us studio time. Our label decided they wanted to ride the wave of our sudden popularity and needed an album to release by summer’s end.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it seems Connie is a force to be reckoned with. Behind her sugar-sweet image, she’s cut from the very same cloth as Trina. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were sisters in another life.
I don’t mind, really. It’s not comparable to the high I get from a live performance, but I’ve been stockpiling songs for years. While a good number of them are childish or more emo than I care to admit, enough are salvageable for an album. Besides, I would prefer not to have time to think right now. It’s as though the Muses heard my cry for distraction and answered posthaste. Between the hours spent in the studio and the hours preparing to be in the studio and the scheduled publicity appearances on various local radio stations, I can barely remember my last name most days (though there is no shortage of people willing to remind me). Thanks to my new manager, however, I now have a ready response to the “Clay Dilemma.”
I give a coy smile and a cute little wink. “No comment.”
Of course today, Long-Winded Larry with WPK out of Biloxi isn’t buying it. He shakes his head. “Oh, now, y’all cain’t see this, but the lovely Miss Annie Mathers just gave me a wink worthy of her momma. You ain’t getting off that easy, girl. Inquiring minds beg to know; are there any sparks between you and Clay?”
I glance at Kacey, who shrugs helplessly, and bite my lip. The thing is, in show business, only a sliver of the acting is confined to the stage. I let loose my Tennessee roots. “All right, Larry. Let me tell you about Clay Coolidge. That man can sure ’nuff fill out a pair of blue jeans. Whew!” I say, fanning the collar of my button-down before leaning closer to my mic and lowering my voice conspiratorially. “And what you ladies witness onstage, Lord, in person it’s a thousand times worse. Like staring down the sun. But I’ll be honest with y’all … Clay’s not to be tied down. It would be a disservice to the man to place a claim.”
Larry nods in approval. “Fair enough, fair enough. So, Miss Mathers, we like to do a little game with our guests called Twelve-Minute Tunes, where we give our callers a chance to come up with any topic of their choosing and you, our star guest, will have twelve minutes to write a song about that topic and perform it live on the air. How’s that sound?”
I squirm in my seat, but otherwise it sounds like a semi-fun challenge. “Can I request a second cup of coffee first, Larry?”
He laughs. “Of course! We want you to be ready.”
We got to commercial as Larry and his assistant field a handful of phone calls, choosing a few to air. The first offers the President, the second suggests the World Series hopefuls, and the third obviously was my headliner. They weren’t messing around.
“What’ll you chose, Annie?”
I take a slow sip of my coffee, the lyrics already clicking into place in my mind. “Well, I’d rather drink paint thinner than offer political insight, and I’m a fair-weather Tigers fan, so I guess that means I’m writing about Clay.”
Larry cheers, and Connie gives me a thumbs-up. Kacey pulls out her fiddle—always ready for me, even on the fly.
I reflect on how little I truly know Clay Coolidge so far. From the moment he turned up on my porch, hungover, to his defensiveness after our first show. He’s a conundrum, but I doubt many see that. His MO is straight-up Trouble with a capital T, but his eyes are full of something more.
Of course, I can’t fit all that in, and anyway, Long-Winded Larry and his listeners aren’t interested in me waxing poetic about Clay’s “something more” on their morning commute. They’re only interested in the trouble part and how that bodes for little ol’ me.
So that’s what I give them.
Larry comes back from a weather/traffic report and I still my strings, ready to go. I’ve jotted down a handful of notes on some scratch paper, but I don’t need them. When words mix with melodies in my brain, it’s nearly impossible to erase them, regardless of nerves.
“All set?” he prompts off mic.
I nod, and he comes back live. “All right, folks, we’re back with the lovely Annie Mathers and her fiery fiddle-playing cousin, Kacey. We’ve challenged her twelve minutes to write up a ditty about her tour headliner, Clay Coolidge. Take it away, Ms. Mathers!”
I start strumming.
“This little tune is gonna have a bit of a Creedence Clearwater Revival feeling to it. I figured y’all might dig that being in the Gulf bayou,” I start.
Well, I met me a man in the bayou
His voice gave me shivers and swirls
His last name was so presidential,
His first name was straight from the soil
I sang with this man in the bayou
He swung Levi hips to a beat
All the ladies went nuts in the bayou
All the fellas drank their whiskey neat
I was tempted by this man in the bayou,
Oh Lord, he was sin wrapped in vice
His lips are why kissing’s invented
His skin’s pure sun-drenched and spice
I met me a man in the bayou
I knew he wasn’t to be tied down
Y’all will fall fast for that man in the bayou
But that ain’t a road I’ll go down
For we all crave the man in the bayou
And his songs will serenade us late
He’ll make love to us all in the bayou
But my tour goes through many a state
So I’ll leave this here in the bayou
Our memories, we will hold dear.
With Larry and friends in the bayou
Perhaps y’all will call me back next year
I open my eyes as a sparkly-eyed Kacey is wrapping the final pull of her strings. For a half second, it’s all silence, and I can feel my face start to heat, but then Larry busts into a full-on belly laugh, and I sink back into my chair. I take my time putting away my guitar, composing myself.
Larry is beaming and wiping at his eyes. “We’ve had a lot of singers come on our show—young and old, newcomers and industry icons, and”—he turns to his associates, who are all smiling—“I think we can all agree that twelve-minute tune will go down as a favorite.”
My face feels hot as the sun, but I laugh. “Aw. I’m so glad. Guess Clay makes for easy subject matter. You’ll have to use him again sometime and compare the two.”
“I have to address the elephant in the room,” Larry says seriously. “You sang that you’ve been tempted by Clay, leading to even more speculation about you two kids. Are you saying that you’d be interested if you could?”
I decide to toss Larry a bone with some honesty. “It’s really impossible to say. I’m too busy having fun of my own. This is my first tour, Larry. I just graduated from high school! These are the best years of my life! I don’t want to waste them chasing after a mustang.”
Larry’s female cohost, Lisa Marie, gives me a fist bump. “Even a mustang as wild as Clay Coolidge?”
“Ain’t the chase half the fun, y’all?” I say.
Connie gives me an enthusiastic thumbs-up from outside the booth, and I allow my shoulders to slump the tiniest bit as Larry leads us into a commercial break. I pull off my headphones and shake hands all around. We hit the sunny street a few minutes later, and I stop in the middle of the sidewalk to let the warm rays seep into my skin and give it a chance to darken my freckles.
“Connie,” I say, not bothering to open my eyes. “What day is it?”
“Thursday. Show tonight.”
“So, no studio time?”
“Not today. You’re off until Tuesday.” I think I can hear the amusement in her voice. I open one eye to confirm my suspicion.
“So, technically, I don’t have to be anywhere until sound check?”
I suck in a lungful of humid air and can almost taste the sea salt. I grab Kacey’s arm. “I wanna find a piece of coastline and fall asleep with sand in my hair.”
Kacey grins, pulling out her phone and tapping at the keys. “I’ll let Jason and Fitz know if they want to join us.”
“Ask Jason to grab my bathing suit.”
Connie sighs, but it’s relaxed. A black town car pulls up to the curb. “Let me guess—you aren’t coming back with me.”
Kacey confirms the guys are coming.
I shoo Connie. “Go. Find your husband. I know I’ve been cramping your extended honeymoon.”
“Fine, but find me when you’re back. Southern Belle has called me three times already this morning.”
“Not happening, Connie,” I reply in a singsong voice.
She purses her lips but slides easily into the back seat without comment. A tinge of annoyance creeps up my spine. Southern Belle is a record label fronted by Roy Stanton. Who is not only a first-rate douchecanoe—who pimps out his all-lady clientele under the ruse of female empowerment—but also happens to be a former lover of my mom’s. So ew. I cannot for the life of me understand why Connie insists on pushing this meeting.
I take another deep breath of ocean air and brush it off. Summer is in full bloom on the Gulf, and all I want to do is take off these espadrilles and stick my toes in the surf. I wasn’t lying when I told Larry I want to have fun and experience these so-called best days of my life. What good is traveling the country if I don’t see any of it except the inside of sound studios or my bus?
Kacey and I duck into a hip little smoothie-and-bagel shop to wait for the guys. Jason walks in as we’re finishing our drinks. “Your boyfriends are down at the pier.”
* * *
We’re not quite at the point where we’re recognized in public yet. Maybe if I carried around a mic and my guitar, but without music paraphernalia, I’m pretty forgettable. Clay and Fitz? Not so much. They can hide behind shades, but Clay radiates charisma wherever he goes. Not to mention, we all have security shadows. So once we get down to the pier, it takes me no time to find the guys. Jason lets out a shrill whistle, and they pull off the railing they’ve been leaning against like a couple of Abercrombie models.
I slip into the public restroom and strip off my jeans gratefully. I look at the suit, and my stomach sinks. It’s not mine. “Kacey?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I got your suit.”
“One of them, probably. I have my other.”
I bite back a cussword. I’m a good deal curvier than my pixie-stick cousin. “I am going to kill Jason.”
Slipping on the scraps of material, I unlatch the door and step out to where Kacey is gathering her short hair up into two spiky pigtails in the dull mirrors. She raises dual brows and smirks. “If you mean because you’re going to give him a coronary, maybe.”
“Sweet Jesus,” I mutter. “I can’t go out into public like this.” I try to adjust my cups, but shifting one sends the other off course, and it’s a fine line to my very own Nipplegate.
“Don’t be so dramatic. You look fantastic. Who knew you had all that going on underneath your T-shirts?”
I huff. “No one. That’s sorta the point.”
Kacey drops her hands from her hair and turns to me, her smile understanding. “The way I see it, girl, you have two options: embrace or retreat.” She holds up her phone. “I can call you a ride and you can spend the afternoon on the bus alone, or you can own what God gave you and show that dweeby ex of yours what he’s missing.”
I roll my eyes playfully. “Oh, please. Jason doesn’t care what I look like.”
Kacey pulls the strap of her beach bag over her shoulder and reaches for the door. “Maybe he didn’t before, but he sure will now.”
I glance once more at my reflection and throw my shoulders back, experimentally, before letting them drop naturally again. I slip on my sunglasses. I really don’t want to go back to the tour bus. Logically speaking, this is probably as good as my boobs are ever going to be. I might as well show them off. Besides, I have a feeling Jason thought he could rile me up with this, and I’d hate to give him the satisfaction.
I shove through the door into the streaming sunlight. Even in the fifteen minutes I’ve been in the bathroom, I feel like the beach has gained a zillion more people, and every one of them is staring at me. They aren’t, of course. That’s ridiculous.
One sure is, though. I spot our group down by the water. Jason is tossing a Frisbee back and forth with Fitz in the surf, and Kacey is already laying towels close to the water. Clay might have been getting in on the Frisbee with Fitz and Jason, except he gets nailed in the back of the head because his eyes are locked on me. I nervously fidget with my glasses and keep the course. Remember what you said this morning, Annie. Wild mustang. You aren’t your momma.
But for some reason, all I can think of is when I said staring at Clay was like staring down the sun. Because it is. I see him and I’m blind to everything and everyone else on this godforsaken coastline.
“Holy hell, Mathers! When’d you grow up?” Jason, the idiot, thankfully interrupts my inner turmoil.
I take a second to catch up and glory in my best friend’s slack-jawed expression. Now that I can cope with. I even stop my approach to lower my shades and jut out a hip like T. Swift on a runway. “Who, me?”
Kacey snorts from her towel. “Who feels like an asshole now, Diaz?”
Jason mock-tips his hat and lets out a low whistle. “Well played, Mathers. Well played.”
I readjust my glasses, careful to avoid Clay even though I can feel his eyes burning a trail down my skin, and make my way to the towels. It feels like the longest walk of my life, though I’m positive it takes less than a minute.
I finally make it to Kacey and drop down beside her. I roll up my bag and tuck it behind my head and lean back immediately, my heart still thudding in my chest.
Kacey grabs my fingers. “You made it,” she whispers. “And he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
I don’t need to ask who. I slowly release the breath in my lungs, trying to calm myself down. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.
An hour later, a dark shadow falls over us, and it’s Fitz trying to cajole my cousin into a swim. Her resistance is futile. He could ask her to go Siberia with him and she’d be down. I plug in my earbuds and listen to some Hailee Steinfeld, feeling my muscles melt deeper into the white sand. I can’t keep my hips from swaying slightly and prop up on my elbows, tapping out the backbeat with my fingertips and watching Fitz grab up a screeching Kacey, tossing her in the rolling deep-blue waves. A grin spreads across my lips. Clay saunters up the beach toward me, and I take advantage of my mirrored aviators to study the way the salt water drips and clings to his torso. He reaches down to pick up a spare towel and rubs it stupidly slow down his biceps before ruffling his wet hair and spreading the towel next to me. I pretend to be focused on Kacey and Fitz’s antics while surreptitiously turning down the volume on my earbuds. Jason walks up trailing two girls in athletic-looking bikinis. One is holding a volleyball. He says something to Clay, and I watch as the foursome walk off to a net set up in the sand. One of the girls shoves at Clay’s shoulder playfully, making it all look so easy. Her fingers graze his sun-warmed skin, and he tilts his head back, laughing.
I reach back for the volume toggle on my phone and turn the music so loud a fighter jet could fly overhead and I wouldn’t hear it. Then I close my eyes and sink back into the white sand, ignoring the empty towel next to me.
* * *
I shake out my freshly showered hair a few hours later, knowing in this humidity, resistance slash professional elegance is flat-out futile. Not that it matters, I suppose, as Jessica, my newly hired stylist, will just torture it into perfection before I hit the stage anyway. Wardrobe has set out a pair of artfully torn jeans and a black leather vest with gobs of fring
e dangling off the edges. It’s actually sort of cute. When I was little, I had a favorite suede jacket that was pale pink and covered in rhinestones and fringe. I probably looked like a walking BeDazzler infomercial, but I didn’t care. Kacey has a pair of dangling feather earrings that would look perfect with this, but she’s MIA, so I set off to find her.
After checking the food trailer and the soundstage, I decide she’s probably with Fitz. He’s taken it upon himself to teach my bandmates how to play Texas Hold’em. I approach the trailer Clay and Fitz sometimes share with their grizzled, leather-clad drummer, an older man named Jackson Colter.
I make out guitar playing through an open window and slow my approach, sneaking closer to the trailer. Rows of goose bumps pop up on my arms at Clay’s voice, but I don’t recognize the words. I freeze in place and close my eyes, leaning against the side of the bus, letting his smooth tenor wash over me.
It’s so different from his other music. It’s like his soul is bared and naked before me. Gone is the bravado of his stage persona. The beer-drinking frat boy ladies’ man has been replaced by a tortured boy who speaks of a hurt that wrenches his heart and burns in his gut.
I’m breathless. It’s too much. I’m feeling too much. But it’s everything. This man has such a gift. Up until this point, his voice has been wasted. This is his life’s work right here. I’m shaken and thunderstruck and electrified to the point of jittery. He’s a fiery summer storm and I’m in the middle of an open field.
His voice fades, and before I can stop myself, I raise my hand to knock on the bus-trailer door. I know Kacey isn’t in there, and anyway, I can’t remember what I wanted her for in the first place. I don’t wait for his response, just climb in.
It’s dim inside, and Clay is sitting on a sofa in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a faded T-shirt. His hair is still stiff with ocean spray, and his face glows with too much sun after the beach this morning. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out at first, and I feel my cheeks warm.
