“But?” she prodded.
I thought about it again. All of it. “He backed off. Said we needed to go slow. He didn’t want us to make the same mistakes we made the last time.”
“That’s good,” Lyric said. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what to think. We’re like a powder keg waiting to go off. On one hand, I don’t see the point in any of it. On the other? He excites me in a way no one else ever has. He looks at me, and my heart jumps. My insides go all hot and bothered, and I can’t think straight.” I looked at my sister. “You know how much I like to be in control. It’s not fun.”
“Sounds pretty damn fun to me.”
I chuckled at that. “I suppose so. But he doesn’t know everything about that summer. He doesn’t know the extent of how petty and mean-spirited I was.” My voice lowered. “He doesn’t know what I did.”
“You have to tell him.”
“He’ll never speak to me again if I do.”
She watched me closely. “There was a time you couldn’t care less about Boyd Appleton. What happened at the cabin?”
What happened?
He saw me.
“What does that mean?”
Startled, I was momentarily tongue-tied. I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud. “It’s hard to explain,” I began. I took a moment and organized my thoughts. “For those few days I was there, I didn’t have anything to hide behind.?
?? I waved my hand in the air. “No Snapchat or Instagram. I didn’t even have my phone. It was dead.”
Lyric made a comically horrified face. “You went more than five minutes without using your phone? Holy shit, I need to call Hollywood Tattler right now. This is big news.”
I giggled. “Right? I don’t even know where my phone is.” I didn’t tell her about the singing and the songs. Didn’t tell her that we’d made magic in that cabin, because, for the moment, that was still my secret. And maybe as long as it was a secret, I could keep Boyd close as well.
“We were in this cocoon, and I had a lot of time to think. I realized that I want more than the latest Chanel bag, you know? I realized that getting twenty million likes on a photo I post of myself might give me a high. But it’s an artificial high. It doesn’t matter because it’s not real. I want something real in my life. Something that lasts. I want to matter to someone, not just to Instagram or Snapchat.”
“That’s pretty deep.” Lyric twirled the remnants of the wine in her glass. “Sounds like you want to make some changes.”
I sat back on the sofa and wrapped myself in my blanket. “I want to,” I whispered.
The question was…
Would I do it?
12
Boyd
Malcolm James is one of the craziest dudes I know. I met him in Nashville when he threw a punch at some obnoxious prick who made an offside comment to a waitress. It was some dive bar way off the strip in Nashville, and the punch kick-started a brawl that ended with the two of us tossed in the back of a cruiser. The only reason we didn’t end up in jail was because the officer who’d tossed our asses into that cruiser was dating the waitress Malcolm had defended.
He is an amazing bassist with the ability to pluck out an intricate melody on an instrument meant for rhythm, and he’s been with me since the beginning of my career. He still practices every day and has been known to kick a chick out of his bed to make room for his bass. When it’s time to blow off steam, he’s a level of extra that most folks don’t come close to.
He’s big and loud with a killer smile that gets him all the booze and women he wants, and he fucking knows it. His heart is as big as he is, and the guy would do anything for me. He’s currently in New York City, doing some session work with a jazz band.
I called him up from my place in Tennessee. Said I needed to get away and wanted him to hear some of the new music I’d been working on.
“Get your ass to New York.”
And here I was. It was Friday afternoon, and I’d landed at LaGuardia twenty minutes earlier. I looked like a lumberjack, with layers of plaid and a ball cap pulled low, but I managed to make my way through the airport without being recognized.
The air was the kind of crisp that made your nostrils constrict, and the fresh snow glittered under a sharp January sky. I pulled on my shades and headed for the pickup area, shoulders hunched against a brisk wind. I caught a few glances tossed my way, but pulled my cap lower and kept moving. Normally, I was the kind of guy who was more than happy to take a selfie with someone, but I was focused on something else entirely.