Page 41 of August Lane

Luke had kept his eyes lowered as he spoke, but now he looked at her, drank her in just in case this was the last time they were close like this.

If she ran from him after tonight, he wouldn’t blame her.

“Then I thought about you. Because I always think about you, even when I shouldn’t.

I didn’t want it to be all you knew about me.

His death. Your song. None of it mine. I shoved that guy off me and got out of there. Checked into rehab the next day.”

She didn’t speak for a while. The pond was quiet, too, no croaking frogs or buzzing insects. Everything held its breath.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I knew you had a problem, and I never said anything. I never got you help.”

Luke was stunned. “We were teenagers,” he said, even though it felt impossible they were ever that young.

“Still. I promised to take care of you.”

At that moment, Luke realized something that made him want to hold her so badly that he had to lock his muscles to remain still.

This woman, fierce and loyal with the biggest heart he’d ever seen, would never reveal his lie.

She’d throw her future away to keep a thirteen-year-old promise because the only way she knew how to love was through sacrifice.

But no one had ever sacrificed anything for her.

August dug something out of her pocket and offered it to him. “I wrote it at work. Thought it might be the start of something.”

She didn’t wait for him to read it. He watched her climb into her car and didn’t look at the note until she was gone.

Summer nights were the coldest / I’ll regret those forever / ’Cause now you look like every moment / that could have been better

Luke reread the words. Then he texted Charlotte’s publicity manager, asking for a phone number. It didn’t take long to get a response: Bitch nearly ruined Charlotte’s career, but you do you .

Luke made the phone call with his stomach in knots.

“This is Emma Fisher.”

“Ms. Fisher? Luke Randall. I want to pitch you a story about August Lane.”

She laughed. “I think everyone else beat me to it.”

“Not this one.” He placed August’s note on the ground to keep her words in front of him. “It’s about who really wrote ‘Another Love Song.’”

File Name: Luke Randall

Audio Length: 0:46:23

Transcriber: Emma Fisher

Date transcribed: August 28, 2023

Luke Randall:

[ Excerpt ] I never went on vacations growing up.

We took a trip to see my mother’s family once, but that didn’t go well, so we never tried again.

Used to go to the lake with friends, but that was less than an hour from home.

I was still tethered during those trips.

This is a terrible metaphor, but we used to have cows on the farm that had to be tethered sometimes to keep ’em from grazing outside a certain area.

That’s what lake days were. Safe grazing.

I could look at the skyline and it would be the same sky I’d seen my whole life.

I’m telling you this so you’ll understand how different it was for me in Nashville.

I was alone. No one knew I was there. And that city was big.

Arcadia barely had four thousand people when I left.

The Nashville bus stop was the size of my high school.

Country Star was doing auditions, but that’s not why I went there.

Never thought I could make it onto a TV show.

I went because of August. She was always talking about moving to Nashville after graduation, and I wanted to be there when she did.

If she did. There was no set date or way to get in touch with her, but I was trying to increase the odds, I guess.

Sounds silly now, but I was in a bad place. Made sense at the time.

But back to the tether. I get off the bus and it’s gone.

I’m standing on some street I can’t name, surrounded by strangers staring at me like I’ve never been stared at my whole life.

Blank, empty eyes. “Hello, nobody.” When people say they want to be someone, they’re usually talking about fame, but this was different.

This was I’m a tree falling in the woods.

If someone shoved me into traffic, I’d bleed out and disappear.

My brother had given me a Country Star flyer and I showed it to people, asking them to point me toward the Ryman.

I walked there. Probably could have taken a cab, but I’d never done that before, either.

Got lost three times before I found it. There was a line of musicians camping out early, so I lined up, too.

People stared at me, asked what I played and did I know what kind of show this was, all so polite, like they wanted to point me in the right direction.

First, I’m nobody. Now I’m this odd thing that doesn’t belong, even though we’re all sitting there with guitars and drawls, playing shitty Bob Dylan covers.

Those white city kids were singing about missing a simple, small-town life they never had.

Meanwhile, I’m so fresh off the bus you could still smell the country on me. But I’m the one they think is lost.

If they didn’t let me audition, I had no place else to go.

So I smiled a lot. Made jokes. Laughed at their confusion because it reassured them it wasn’t racist to question my presence.

I played Johnny Cash and Hank Williams because everyone loves them, and it worked.

I made it to the quarterfinals. Then a producer asked for the title of my original song—not whether I planned to write one, but where is it, like “Hand it over, dummy.” And if you’ve ever been the person who knows nothing while being surrounded by people acting like they know everything, you’ll understand why I didn’t speak up, why I didn’t say, Hey, I’ve never actually written a song on my own or What do you mean by “original” or What the fuck’s a copyright?

I just kept smiling. Kept laughing. Then I pulled out August’s notebook to remind myself of what we’d written and the first thing I saw was “Luke’s Song.

” My name was literally on the thing. So, I played it for them, the real version, not the way it sounds now.

I had written some of the music before I left, but the rest…

I don’t know where it came from. Good melodies are like that.

All gut and feeling. Like you didn’t write it, you found it waiting for you.

That’s what I should have told them. I didn’t write this. Someone left it for me.

They came up with the title. Made it faster.

I hated the changes, but when I played “Another Love Song” in front of all those people, I didn’t get blank stares anymore.

They were screaming my name. Thousands of people at home were voting for me, saying yes, keep him.

We love this guy. And that was it for me.

I was hooked on the worst drug in the industry.

It convinced me that as long as I gave people what they wanted, I’d never be that lost country boy again.

But that wasn’t true. Standing up there, serving bold-faced lies with a smile, that would never be my tether. August is. She always finds me.