Behind the Strings

by Courtney Giardina

  16

  With a towel still wrapped around my head, I pulled out the last frozen dinner I had and plopped myself onto the barstool that sat under the island in my kitchen. I had never really gotten the hang of the whole cooking thing upon my move to Nashville. I tried for a while, but always found myself with more leftovers than I could manage, so I gave up. Frozen everything, cereal, and granola bars were staples in this house. It seemed like a classy choice for the night ahead of me.

  It was finally Friday and it was going to be a fun one. I had been invited to a party for a friend of mine, Kat Moore. It was an invite-only party for industry executives and I felt pretty special to be on the guest list. Kat had recently signed a publishing deal and wanted to celebrate. I met her at the same songwriter night where I met Brendan. We’d kept in touch since then and I was so excited to see her again. This was the perfect event for my next blog feature about the tidal wave of women in country music that was happening lately.

  One frozen dinner and a few twirls of the curling iron later, I was all dressed and on my way to the cocktail party. Logan and I hadn’t made any set plans after our burger date, so when I walked into the quaint bar down at the end of Nashville’s famous Printer’s Alley, my cheeks flushed when he caught my eye.

  He proudly wore one of those long-sleeved button-ups that I remembered fondly. He filled it out much better than he used to. His hair matched the neatness of his appearance and the smile he gave me from across the room completed it. I threw him a gentle wave before I pranced over to the bar where I found Kat amongst of group of execs.

  “Celia, you made it!” she said as I squeezed behind the curtain.

  “Of course I did. I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  I handed my camera to her manager as Kat set herself beside me for a picture. We both smiled, then squinted, blinded by the flash. From what I could see through the stars in my eyes it looked to be a good one. Perfect to include beside my blog post. I asked Kat and her manager a few questions and said my goodbyes just before she was pulled away for another interview.

  “Well, don’t you look stunning tonight?” I head a familiar voice say from behind me.

  I turned to see Logan, as expected, looking even more handsome up close, but he had not come alone. The voice I recognized was Jesse’s. His hair still flowed freely, but his face was freshly shaven and I couldn’t help but smile at his neatly ironed attire. He cleaned up well in black dress pants. My mind quickly wandered to the buttons on his shirt and what it was I would find underneath them. Again, I could feel my heart start to race with him in front of me. Thankfully the heaviness of each beat jerked me back into realty.

  “You okay?” Logan asked.

  Fumbling, I said, “Yes, I’m fine. Why?”

  “I don’t know, seemed like you left us for a minute.”

  “Oh no, not at all. I’m here, right here, surrounded by all of these people, in a completely public place.”

  Logan said nothing, nodded slowly and pursed his lips as he digested that last sentence. I said it more to remind myself than anything. I needed to get a grip on whatever impure thoughts tried to weasel their way into my head. I knew better than that, and blamed it solely on the lack of action I’d been getting lately. Jaycie was always throwing jokes my way about how I “just needed to get laid” on days my attitude was more frantic than usual. Even if she were right, right now was not the ideal time to be yearning for anything.

  “I didn’t know either of you two knew Kat,” I said.

  Logan looked over at Jesse, who shook his head toward the ground. Clearly there was something I was missing. The two of them laughed softly to each other before letting me in.

  “Good old Jesse here used to date her,” Logan said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I can see why. She’s a really great girl.”

  I tried my best not to sound the least bit jealous, but I could feel it inside of me. I didn’t know why, but I cared. I looked over at Kat right as she threw her head back laughing. She was deep in conversation. Her natural auburn hair fell off her shoulders to reveal her glowing skin. I cringed at the fact that I was secretly comparing myself to her as if there was a need to do so.

  “Great girl, she is,” Jesse said, “just not a one-man kind of great girl.”

  “No way,” I said. I leaned in further toward him as he began to whisper.

  “Not kidding, but there’s no hard feelings. We weren’t serious or anything. She wasn’t really my type anyway,” Jesse said. I let out of soft sigh of relief and joined in with the laughter to mask my thankfulness that there was and most likely would never be a Kat and Jesse. I looked over at him and smiled trying to picture what his type entailed. “Well, I hate to cut this short, but unfortunately I’ve gotta call it a night,” Jesse said. “It was great seeing you again, Celia.”

  I watched him walk away before I checked my watch and turned to Logan. It seemed quite early to call it a night, but in this town, sometimes that means it’s really only getting started. According to Logan, Jesse was playing with a friend at a gig outside town tonight. He stopped by quickly to congratulate Kat before he headed out.

  It wasn’t long before we were interrupted by a young girl who asked Logan if she could get a picture of him with his date. Knowing how much the rumors were starting to take their toll on me, Logan went to object, but the poor girl seemed so nervous, I didn’t want to let her down.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” I said.

  He slowly placed his hand around my waist and pulled me in. I tried my best to convince the camera that I was happy to be in the shot, but I’m not sure how convincing I was. The girl looked down at her camera with a strange look on her face.

  “Okay, then,” she said, “that’ll have to do.”

  Logan and I both looked at each other as she walked away and laughed. One picture was plenty for me, but as the night went on, I felt more and more eyes focus in on us. I could hear the whispers and see the fingers pointing in our direction. Sometimes I would play along, grabbing his arm when I’d laugh or pulling him close to me when I’d talk just to see their reactions. Other times I would look around at the obscene number of people clicking away at me and pull back in fright. In a short time I felt like Logan and I had become pawns in their little game. That we were no longer people, but objects and dollar signs to up their paychecks.

  I excused myself to grab a drink from the bar and on my way back I watched as Logan chatted with a couple of people I didn’t know. Both were extremely well-dressed gentleman. I stood and watched for a little, enjoying my peace from the heavy staring until Logan spotted me and waved me over. He introduced the men as two of his label executives by the names of Rick and Tom.

  “What a lovely girl you have here,” Rick said.

  Logan laughed before he responded with, “We’re just friends.”

  “That’s too bad,” Tom said, chuckling. “In that case, I wish I were about a decade younger so I could take her out.”

  My cheeks flushed as I thanked him for the compliment and we went back to talking about the industry. It was all going well until my dumb self asked Tom how long he’d been with the label. It seemed that country music, though it had grown on him, wasn’t his first choice in genre and he’d had quite a list of impressive bands under his belt when he lived out in L.A., one of them being the one and only Black Horizons.

  “You might have been too little to remember them, but man, were they good. I wonder where they are now,” Tom said.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.

  Logan squeezed my shoulder and tried to change the subject, but it didn’t work. Apparently Rick was very up on the current state of the Black Horizons and updated us on them all. Actually, all of them but one.

  “Shoot, I’m missing someone,” Rick said.

  He and Tom thought long and hard, counting on their hands each member who had come in and out of the band over the years. First they thought they were missing a drummer. Then they t
hought maybe it was a lead guitarist, but they went through them again and got them all.

  “Jack,” I said. “You forgot Jack Coleman.”

  “Yes!” Rick said. “Wow, how did you know that? You a fan?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  Suddenly I felt a pit in my stomach. I didn’t think of my father often, but when I did nothing good was usually associated with it. If they knew where he was now, I didn’t want to know. Before anyone could actually answer though, a sudden flash of lights came surging toward us. I turned around to see a few photographers pointing their cameras in our direction. When I looked back at Logan he had become a blur through my vision. All I could see was bright spots with every blink. Suddenly, I felt nauseous. I excused myself in the politest way possible and stumbled my way to the bathroom.

  I leaned against the sink and stared at my shimmering eyes for some time in the mirror as new girls would come and go from the stalls. I hated how the mention of my father’s name could ruin everything. Nights like this were supposed to be for celebration, but just the sound of his name brought me back to that little girl who would run after him, yelling his name as he kept walking. I’d watch the bus drive away and would scream his name until I was sure he wasn’t coming back. Eventually I stopped running, but it never stopped hurting.

  And now I felt like I had so much more to run from. Usually I was the one chasing stories, but now I was becoming one.

  “Celia, you in here?” I saw Logan’s head peek through the door.

  “I’m coming.”

  I wiped away a stray tear and gathered my purse before meeting Logan in the hallway.

  “You ready to go home?” he asked.

  I nodded. He let me lead the way and we both waved goodbye to those we knew on our way out. Logan was nice enough to escort me to my car. We walked past row after row of flashy cars in the parking garage as I pressed the button on my keychain, listening for my car to sound.

  “Okay, I could’ve sworn I parked it on this level,” I said.

  “You mean like that time you could’ve sworn you saw a mouse in the kitchen?”

  “That was an honest mistake. Anybody from my angle would’ve thought it was a mouse.”

  I slapped him for bringing that up. Gosh, I think I was maybe sixteen. Logan was on his way over for pizza and a movie on a Friday night and he walked in to find me screaming on top of the kitchen table pointing underneath the sink. He had absolutely no idea what I was trying to tell him, but he followed my finger and leaned down to pick up a lonely gray sock. Of course, he didn’t tell me it was a sock until after he covered it with his hands and threw it at me. I stumbled backwards and my foot slipped off the back of the table, but thankfully the cushion of the nearby couch caught my fall.

  “I could’ve gotten seriously hurt that night, by the way.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t,” he said. “And I don’t think you parked on this side of the lot, either.”

  He was right. I was completely turned around. We had to walk around a couple more levels before I saw my flashing headlights.

  “You alright?” he asked, rubbing both my arms with his fingertips.

  “You know me, I always am.”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and he pulled me close. When we let go our cheeks brushed against each other. His hands were still on my waist and he looked deep into my eyes. He leaned into me and I didn’t stop his lips from touching mine.

  Instantly I knew this kiss happened for all the wrong reasons. My heart was hurting, I was angry and frustrated. I just wanted to forget my problems, and I used Logan to do it. I pulled away, cursing my own selfishness.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, staring down at our feet. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  I kissed him softly on his cheek before falling into the driver’s seat. He smiled as he placed his fingertips on the window. Even with the glass between us, I did the same. I could tell he was disappointed, but he understood. As I looked up at him through the window I saw my friend, my confidant, my most loyal companion. I saw the boy who had always looked at me the way he was doing right then, as the girl who hung the stars. The girl who could do no wrong and the girl he would spend his whole life waiting for.

  17

  That kiss consumed me for that entire week that followed. I felt incredibly guilty for my actions and was so angry at myself for what I had done that I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Jaycie right away. I kept it bottled up inside and let it eat away at me. It wasn’t a secret that there was a time Logan wished we could be more than friends. I know it’d been years since he said it, but I could see it in the way he looked at me that it was still there. I didn’t want him to think that kiss meant more than what it was, a lapse in total emotional judgment to rid my mind of my deadbeat father.

  I had never been confused about where Logan and I stood, not until now. But that whole night that it happened seemed out of the ordinary for me. My excitement when I saw Jesse, the intimate thoughts going through my head, and then the kiss. It was all a big jumbled mess and I had wrestled alone with it long enough. It was time for a voice of reason to help me make sense of it all.

  “What a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” Jaycie sung as she waltzed through my door. It was mid-afternoon on Saturday. The two of us were trying to stick to our promise of going out beyond the scope of work. “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m starving,” I said, standing from the couch.

  “Good,” Jacyie said, “let’s go get lunch. I’m totally in the mood for some pizza.”

  “And beer?” I asked.

  “I thought that was a given.”

  I grabbed my keys and the two of us headed downtown, where I swerved my car into a side street space right outside the heavenly smell of pepperoni and marinara. The sounds of live music filled the air for blocks. We could hear it loud and clear even as we stepped through the door of the pizza shop.

  As soon as we sat down I blurted it out: “I kissed Logan.”

  It wasn’t the most graceful way for me to talk about what happened, but it was eating me up inside and I needed to get it out. I needed someone to answer what I’d been asking myself.

  Beer sprayed from Jaycie’s nose, and as she cleaned herself up she seemed to replay the words in her head. It took her a minute to catch her breath before she asked me the expected when, where, why and how.

  “The night of Kat Moore’s party. Something happened and I was frustrated.” I glossed over what that something was and continued on. “He walked me to my car and it just happened. One minute we were hugging each other goodbye and the next I was watching him lean in. I didn’t stop him and he kissed me.”

  “Did you kiss him back?” She asked, leaning in closer to me. Her eyes were wide.

  “I think so. I mean, I don’t really know, it all happened so fast. I didn’t pull back immediately, I know that.” I leaned my forehead on my fingertips. I pressed my eyes closed and shook my head.

  “I feel like you’re regretting it,” Jaycie said before taking her first oversized bite of her slice.

  “More like trying to figure out why it happened.”

  “How did you feel afterwards? Was it a cloud nine, out-of-the-park kind of feeling?”

  I was mid-bite when she asked, so it took a minute for me to answer.

  “I don’t think I would describe it that way. It was…sweet. And in the moment it made me forget what was going on around us, but I didn’t forget to breathe because I was so enchanted by it. It didn’t leave me floating my way home,” I explained. “And there’s more.”

  “Oh boy.”

  She prepared herself this time by taking a quick sip before I went on to tell her about Jesse. I hadn’t mentioned him before tonight, so I did some quick backstory before telling her about all the impure thoughts I had had when I turned around to find him with Logan.

  “Oh, Celia, you are a hot mess.”

  “Thank you,” I said, tossing a black o
live in her direction.

  “You know I love you, I really do, but it seems to me like you have a serious case of boy fever right now. You’re all over the map. I think you might need to back away for a bit and figure out what the hell you’re doing.”

  I took a long sip of my beer as I held onto those words. I didn’t really answer any of the questions I had before, but at least Jaycie was there to help me talk them out. It was clear my feelings were all scrambled and I needed to spend some time working through them.

  “Oh, I love this song,” Jaycie said as the melody of an old George Strait song strummed through the entrance as the front door opened, floating in from the venue next door.

  “His voice actually sounds pretty amazing,” I said. “We need to go over there.”

  Jaycie sighed heavily. “We’re not working today, remember?”

  “Only for a minute,” I said, leaning closer to the window. George Straight had now turned into classic Rhett Akins and the voice was still as intoxicating. Whoever it was, I needed to see them and I needed to see them now. I threw my belongings into my oversized purse, stood and tossed some cash on the table. “Follow that voice when you’re done eating. I’ll meet you there.” I ran out without turning back.

  It was my job to find the real, true, raw talent in this ever-growing city of aspiring musicians, the ones who sometimes get overlooked today because of the miracle of overproduction used on those who would otherwise be mediocre. Sometimes I’d walk this area for miles, listening to song after song, but nothing would stand out. And then there would be days like today, where I hear it and I know it’s special. The voice, the song, and everything that came with. I needed to find the person behind those vocals.