“Oh, it was a mutual parting of ways,” Nico replies, scooping up the bags. “He found his calling, he says. Wedding planning.” Nico pauses halfway up the staircase to add, “Gwen, what did he say? About the… wedding romp? Is that what he called it?”
Gwen leans back, covering Cayo’s ears. “One hundred percent wedding hookup rate for him so far. I do believe he called it the ‘booty bonus.’”
Nico tsks. “That’s right,” he says, voice crisp.
Grady follows him to the loft, where Nico starts pulling clothes and jewelry from the bags and setting receipts aside. “Well, good for him,” Grady says, “Wait. Who did he hook up with at our wedding?” A one hundred percent hookup rate—when did Spencer turn into such a stud? Grady will have to talk to him about making sure he’s not looking for love in all the wrong places.
“It was uh—” Nico snaps his fingers and looks up, trying to remember. “The guy from the bike track. Ugh, what’s his name— Cute face. Tattoos on his arms. Says ‘yo’ a lot. I just described three-fourths of the kids who hang out there,” Nico says with a glance upward.
“Benny?” Grady questions. Nico points at him in affirmation. Grady had no idea. “Huh, what do you know.”
“Anyway,” Nico says, hanging a leather jacket on a garment rack. “He’ll still be around some. We’re letting him use the office as a home base for now; we’ve been tossing around the idea of offering personal stylist services for weddings. Expand a little.”
Grady hands him a pair of black pants and a red shirt so he doesn’t have to keep walking back and forth across the loft. “Do you have time for that?”
“Well,” Nico says making sure everything is hung neatly and the hangers are evenly spaced. “You’re focused on writing songs and getting the studio up and running, and I think we’ve realized that I boss you around enough at home, so it’s probably best to let Gwen take over all of your styling. And Clementine… What Clementine is really up to is anyone’s guess. She’s still committed to the careers of Ellis and Joaquin and now a few more kids still hoping to make it big, but she’s been extra cagey about what she’s filling her days with other than that.”
“She’ll come out of hiding soon enough,” Grady says.
Nico lifts his shoulders. “Until she does, gotta keep hustling, you know. Speaking of. Are you going by the studio later?”
Oh yes, his news—he got way off track, what with Spencer’s new career and surprising hookups. “Yeah, actually. I have exciting news. I’ll show you.”
36
“Well?” Grady asks, sweeping both arms out and stepping back, nearly turning his ankle on a pothole. They’ll need to repave the parking lot sooner rather than later. At least the weeds were pulled, all the trash and debris cleared away, and the exterior of the building power washed. And now, there’s the new sign on the awning that looks fantastic.
“Spotlight Studios. I like it,” Nico says. “The place is looking less and less like the scene of a final showdown between zombies and a ragtag group of survivors.”
Grady laughs, “Right on. Okay, there’s more.” He leads the way inside the old music store, and though it’s not finished yet, not by a long shot, it is finally starting to take the shape of the vision Grady has for it. He has been spending a lot of time composing and writing, and getting the songs release-ready, but he’s been here a lot, too, planning, guiding, and picking up a hammer to bring his vision to life with his own two hands.
“So, the stage just needs lighting work now, and we’ve left this whole wide space for the audience.” Grady walks backward and indicates the wide open floor in the front of the studio. “And it seemed like such a waste of space, just leaving it empty except for open mic nights.” Grady presses his palms on the back wall; thick foam sound panels have been installed all around the space to keep open mic night from disturbing the nearby residences and businesses, but the ones on the back wall—
Grady lifts one panel, and a tripod kicks out beneath it. “Cool, right?” He sets four of the movable panels to configure a cozy, high-walled, sound-absorbing cubicle. “It was Clay’s idea.” He’s been here helping out a lot, ignoring Grady’s concerns about his knees and overdoing it, until just recently, when he was forced to take a break for his replacement surgery and recovery.
“Yeah, but what is it for, exactly?” Nico smooths his hands over the outside of the foam cubicle. “You starting a telemarketing business? We’re doing okay now, financially. You know that right?” He knocks on a panel; it barely makes a sound. “Saved a ton on the wedding by having it in a parking lot.”
“Hah! No. I was thinking about what Clem is doing with the kids lookin’ to make it in the business who might not have a chance. Like maybe I could do that, too, so I’m offering the studio for that.” He nods toward the far left corner, where the glass-walled recording area is very nearly finished. “But then it’s like— What about the kids who can’t even get that far? I mean, if someone hadn’t put a guitar in my hands and believed in me long before I set foot in Nashville, I wouldn’t be here at all. So I want to offer music lessons. Scholarships or sliding scale or— I dunno. I’m not a business guy, but—” Grady finishes with a shrug. He’ll figure something out.
Nico searches his face and rests his thumb against his bottom lip the way he does when he’s considering something before speaking. “I’ll call Lucas. He’ll know how to arrange all of that on the up and up. And Dad gives free haircuts, just once a year at back-to-school time. Though Mom handles that stuff…” He looks around. The wheels are almost visibly whirring in his head. “I wonder if we can make the whole thing a nonprofit, actually. Hmm.”
“All right, before you get too carried away, there’s one more thing.” Grady arcs his hand, palm up, to the door down the hall, on the right. “Step into my office, please.”
His office was the back storage area and it’s still all concrete and smells of mildew. They’ve replaced the heavy steel door with light-weight Masonite; its etched glass panels and the new track lighting make the space much less mausoleum-like. Grady sits in his new office chair at his new desk. He never really saw himself as a desk guy, but he doesn’t mind this. “Have a seat,” he says to Nico, and gives a lopsided smile when Nico primly crosses his legs and arches an eyebrow.
“So. Can you pencil me into your busy schedule?” he says, dipping his chin and batting his eyelashes.
Grady barks a laugh and then pretends to page through a pile of papers. He only has a few papers, really, and he slides one of them to Nico. “I don’t know. I’m awful busy. Little pushy, to demand I just fit you in like that with so little notice.”
Nico taps his finger on his lips. “I mean, who would do such a thing, right?” They hold heated, flirting eye contact, then Grady breaks it to look pointedly at the paper he put right under Nico’s nose, but Nico is far too busy giving Grady bedroom eyes to look down. Normally, Grady wouldn’t say no to that, and there is the matter of officially christening his new office, but— “Nico, look at the paper,” Grady says with a laugh.
“What? Oh.” Nico blinks back into awareness, then picks up the paper and reads, lips pulled in and eyebrows low. “This is…” He looks at Grady from behind the paper. “This is a contract.”
Grady bounces in his seat, he’s so stoked. “Yep. I signed with Sovereign Records. They’re an independent label. Signed Ellis and Joaquin, too. They’re new, but really committed to bringing unique voices to Nashville and supporting queer artists. And look at who’s on the letterhead.”
Nico squints and looks back at the contract. “Clementine Campbell. I should have known.” He shakes his head. “This is the one that was courting you recently, right? Wait, did you know when you signed?”
“Nope.” She sent an agent, who wined and dined him and everything. Of course, if he knew it was Clem who started this new label, he would have signed automatically. That’s likely why she di
dn’t tell him, and he’s glad he made the decision with a clear head and no outside pressure. Sovereign wants to release “Blended Notes” right away, on the album Stomp declined, and then “By the Bye” and all the others he’s been working on while waiting for things to settle. They wanted all of his music, not reluctantly or with grudging acceptance that isn’t acceptance at all, but enthusiastically.
When he finally talked to Clem about it and asked how she managed to get out of her own contract at a different label, she winked and said simply, “I just asked real nice, sugar.”
The downside of a smaller independent label is lack of clout, even with Clementine as the force behind it, but the benefit of creative freedom far outweighs any fame or big-league dealings for Grady. Nico moves around the desk, lands in Grady’s lap, and cups his chin to kiss him. Grady scoots the chair back, situates Nico’s ass into a more pleasing position, and then he remembers.
“Shoot, Clay’s coming by to start installing the stage lights.” Grady checks the time and, unfortunately, has to nudge Nico off of his lap. Clay’s got the go-ahead from his doctor to get back to work; he called Grady from the parking lot at the doctor’s office with the news. The poor guy must have been going stir crazy. He comes at the exact time he said he’d arrive, pulls up in Vaughn’s now-working car, and walks in leaning on a cane, but getting around much faster and easier than before.
Grady greets him with a handshake and a squeeze to his shoulder. “How’re the new knees doing?"
Clay sets the cane aside, secures his tool belt, and says with a flat tone, “All right.” He limps off to get to work. After all the time he and Grady have spent together here, he’s still a man of very few words. But he shows up, and that’s all that matters. On this occasion, though, Grady would have preferred a little communication, because Clay didn’t come alone. Lillian is hovering by the doorway.
She lifts a hand. “Hey, Grady.”
Nico says hello to her, asks how she’s been, and the whole time they talk she keeps sending Grady furtive, nervous glances. It’s as if he’s a snarling stray dog that she’s afraid to approach lest she get bitten. Grady regrets that he’s made her feel that way, though he’s certainly had his reasons for being angry and guarded. Maybe those reasons don’t matter so much anymore.
“I need to get back to work,” Nico announces. “Unless you need me to… help with anything.” He darts an obvious look toward Lillian.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll meet you at Flora and Gwen’s for dinner, all right?” Grady kisses Nico’s cheek, and Nico leaves after a lingering squeeze of Grady’s hands. Then, to Lillian, Grady says, “I didn’t know you were in town.”
She scratches at some of the peeling black paint on the doorway. “I, uh, he needed some help after his surgery, though he’s so stubborn about it—” A fleck of paint chips off, landing on one of her sneakers. “We’re not technically kin, you know. But he’s alone and he’s been there for me like family, so I wanted to do the same for once.”
She starts on another peeling patch of paint; the whole thing needs to be painted. Grady bets if he let her stand there and stew for long enough she’d strip the whole thing and save him the hassle. There’s something he’s been putting off doing though, somewhere he thought he’d need to go alone. “Would you come with me for bit?”
Grady explains as they pull out of the parking lot that they’re shooting the cover for his next album at the trailer park where he grew up. They have permission and permits, but he wants to scout it himself first and feel whatever he needs to feel without a photographer and crew and makeup artists tagging along. Then the silence is like a third person taking up all of the space between them on the bench seat of Grady’s truck.
Halfway there Grady asks, “How’ve you been?”
“Still sober. I know that’s what you’re really asking.” The uncomfortable silence pushes them even farther apart for the second half of the trip.
The trailer park has a new swing set, and they finally patched up the section of fence that looked as if a car plowed through it. Mostly, though, the place looks the same as ever. It’s always been worn and tired and broken down, as if it started out of the gate defeated, but to Grady it looks like home, like simplicity, like honest hard-working people just trying their best. No one is home at their old trailer, so Grady parks in the driveway and hops out.
“I haven’t been here in a long time,” Lillian says when she comes to stand against the truck bed next to him. “Since after her funeral.” Her voice wavers. When Grady looks, he can see that her face is drained of color. He starts to suggest that they go, that this was a bad idea, but then she continues in the same trembling voice, “I remember you were there and I couldn’t even comfort you I was so out my head with grief. Then I left because all I wanted was to disappear. I deserved to disappear. I punished myself for so long.”
Grady moves incrementally closer to her. “I did, too. I blamed myself.”
She releases a heavy breath. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”
“We can go, I— I come back here from time to time. I can feel them here, never did when I went out to their graves.”
“No,” she says, voice a little steadier. “I’ve needed to do this for a long time.”
They stand quietly, facing the old trailer. It has a newer porch now, and the eaves and skirting were long ago stripped bare of Memaw’s flowers, wind chimes, and holiday-appropriate flags. There’s the dent still on the aluminum siding just off the porch where Grady used to throw his bike, and the warped gutter over his bedroom window that would rush like a waterfall during heavy rain is still warped as ever. Grady can close his eyes and almost hear Memaw hollering to him for dinner, his steps as he runs past Granddaddy cursing up a storm at his finicky old car, the screen door screeching closed behind him, the hollow pattering of his feet across the kitchen. Grady would have likely had a skinned knee, wild hair, and even wilder peals of laughter.
The idea for the album cover was simple: Start at the beginning, a symbol of tenacity and strength of spirit, of achieving his dreams but never forgetting who he is or who helped him get there. Lillian is still sniffling and pale as a ghost, so Grady says, because maybe she needs to hear it, “I was happy here. I had a good life, I felt safe and loved. I was happy, really.”
Sorrow breaks across her face, and tears fall in splotches into the dirt at their feet. “Good. That’s— I’m really glad.” Her eyes dart over his face and his hair, as if she’s seeing something there she can’t quite make sense of. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking away and swiping at her cheeks. “You just— You look—”
“So much like him, yeah.” It doesn’t feel like a kick in the gut anymore; he’s made his peace with it, as much as he can. He wishes only that Vaughn had the chance to find some peace in his own life, before it was too late.
“You remind me of him, too,” Lillian says, and Grady’s face must twist into something awful because she quickly adds, “In a good way. Vaughn was the kind of person who walked into a room and commanded everyone’s attention like a magnet made of charisma.” She shifts to face him, propping her arm on the edge of the truck bed. “So many people loved him, but he never believed them; he wouldn’t take it. Not like you. I’ve watched you, I’ve seen you take the love everyone gives you and send it back even stronger. You’re the best of him, Grady.” She looks at the trailer. “You’re the best of them. And I’m sorry it took me so long to get here, but I am…” She wavers out a breath. “I am trying.”
Grady swallows the lump in his throat. For so long all he had of her was the way she left him behind, he had to harden his heart to her. He came to believe that he always would be left behind, that everyone in his life was going to leave in the end and he had to be okay with that. And now—he is so loved, isn’t he? Not just Nico, but so many people love him and he loves them just as much.
“I think you’re i
n there, too,” Grady finally says. “I must have gotten all my blind, stubborn optimism from somewhere.”
She smiles, watery and crooked, but with a hint of sunshine. “Oh, I don’t know—”
“You’re here aren’t you? Still standing.” Standing with a heart chipped and cracked and stitched back together, a soul charred at the edges from the burns suffered along the way, a life of shattered, scattered bits gathered up and blended into something odd and unusual and unexpected, but whole. Still whole, still standing, still here. And now—he climbs in the truck with his mama, with clouds of dirt flying behind them and taillights flashing at the stop sign. He’s heading home to his husband, his friends, his family, to his perfect, messy, chaotic life—now no longer alone.
The End
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who believes in me, encourages me, and loves me (you know who you are). This book would not exist without you. I hope that I’m able to take some of that love and encouragement and kindness and send it back out into the world even stronger. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.
About the Author
Lilah Suzanne has been writing actively since the sixth grade, when a literary magazine published her essay about an uncle who lost his life to AIDS. A freelance writer from North Carolina, she spends most of her time behind a computer screen, but on the rare occasion she ventures outside she enjoys museums, libraries, live concerts, and quiet walks in the woods. Lilah is the author of the Interlude Press books Spice, Pivot and Slip, Broken Records, and Burning Tracks.
To sign up for Lilah’s monthly newsletter for exclusive content, free stories and updates, visit lilahsuzanne.com.
ALSO BY
LILAH SUZANNE
Blended Notes Page 20
