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‘Maybe.’ I shook my head. ‘But either way, she didn’t know what was going on.’

‘I’m so sorry, Jessie. This is all so wrong. You should never have …’ Brooke trailed off, lost for words, and I tilted my head so I could kiss her bare shoulder.

‘It’s okay. Honestly. I feel so much better now that I’m out of there.’

We retraced our steps to the bar from last night, then kept walking with no obvious destination. I felt more relaxed here than I had anywhere else on this trip, except maybe the cabin in Illinois.

‘Is there anywhere specific you want to go?’ Brooke asked.

I wanted to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Grand Ole Opry, and explore Music Row, and go to the Johnny Cash Museum and maybe see the replica of the Parthenon. I wanted to stay in Nashville for weeks, not hours, but that wasn’t on the cards. The joy of being here, when it had been merely a dream of mine for so long, had been completely destroyed by the news reports. It sucked.

‘Let’s just walk for a while,’ I suggested, hoping to rediscover some magic along the way.

We walked around the city for an hour, stopping to pick up iced coffees but taking them to go. I paused outside the Country Music Hall of Fame and looked up at the giant building with a sour feeling in my stomach that I tried to chase away with coffee.

‘We can go in,’ Brooke insisted.

I shook my head. ‘It’s, like, thirty bucks each. It’s too expensive.’

‘We’ll make it work. This is important to you.’

I took her hand and tugged her away. ‘I’ll go another time. We need food and gas money and motel rooms more than I need to look at Dolly Parton’s sparkly stilettos.’

‘I’ll bring you back here one day,’ Brooke said, finally following me. ‘I promise.’

‘That works for me,’ I said with a smile.

She smiled back, and my whole body lit up in response.

‘Have you always been into girls?’ she asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

She threw her arm around my shoulders and I smiled as I leaned into her side. We’d been this close for a couple of days now, but I still reveled in it, the feeling of her bare arm against mine, the feeling that she’d chosen me.

‘I guess,’ I said.

‘Will you tell me when you figured it out?’

‘Oh, wow, you really are curious,’ I replied.

‘Sue me,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I don’t know anything about this shit. I need guidance.’

‘I don’t know when I started explicitly labeling it as being attracted to girls,’ I replied as we walked up the block on the shady side of the street. ‘But I was always super interested in girls, right from middle school. I wanted to be their friend, I wanted to know everything about them. Back then I didn’t know what those feelings were, though.’

‘Okay, go on,’ Brooke said encouragingly.

‘It actually took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize that what I was feeling wasromantic. I used to think I just had these awkward, weird obsessions with girls.’

‘When did youknow, though?’ Brooke pressed.

‘When I started high school, maybe?’

‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed.

‘What?’ I said, gently prodding her in the side.

‘I just feel stupid. I didn’t know until, you know … recently.’

‘Brooke, some people don’t figure it out until they’re, like, thirty. It’s not a race.’