Page 43 of Resonance
I stood and retrieved the Dolly guitar from the wall, tuning it as Owen watched, that smile creeping higher over his lips.
“Can’t resist, huh?”
The funny thing was, I usually could. I usually didn’t have even a remote desire to meddle in someone else’s songs. But as we sat there playing through Owen’s and fiddling with different chord progressions and vocal rhythms, I found myself falling into the pace of our back-and-forth. Even enjoying it. Owen could sense where I was trying to go and join in before I finished. And I could do the same when he was leading. Then, we launched into a few Eagles covers, as if we were both reluctant to break the tether between us.
At the end of “Hotel California,” he shifted the guitar off to one side and smirked at me. “Bet this was one of the first songs you learned.”
“Correct.” I chuckled.
I took both guitars and hung them back on the wall, then turned back to Owen as he drifted among the shelves of records. “You ever busked downtown before?”
“Busking?” He made a face. “Seems like a waste of time; no one’s paying attention, and the tips are for shit. Feels like begging.”
“The tips aren’t the point. The point is doing it. The point is observation and experience. Get cozy with a patch of pavement and play. Most people aren’t interested; they’re focusing on where they’re going next, or the person beside them, or their upcoming mortgage payment. Their kid who’s being a little shit.” I rested my hand on the shelf where he’d stopped and was idly tilting record sleeves out, examine their covers and pushing them back. Owen didn’t want to hear what I was saying, I could tell. But he was listening. “Your job is to make them pay attention, make them care, give them something that sneaks into their brain and draws them out, turns their head. When you do that, you know you’ve got something. That’s what it’s all about. Emotional communion, making someone say your story is my story and my story is yours. It’s pure and primal and can’t be tainted like blood or water or politics because it goes deeper than all that shit.
“So you want to know real time if you’ve got something good? That’s how you do it. You make people stop because they can’tnotlisten to what you’re telling them about themselves.”
Owen considered in thoughtful silence.
It was easy to see he didn’t want to do it. Hell, I’d never wanted to, either. “I like your songs,” I told him. “I would’ve stopped for both of them. They feel real to me.” They were, like him, engaging and vibrant and all encompassing. The impact was lost when he got nervous onstage, and that was a damn shame. But it was fixable.
Owen blushed under the praise and ducked away with a mumbled thank-you, heading toward the bank of windows. I trailed behind him after nudging some records back into place. The yard beyond the windows rolled in verdant greens toward a pond.
“I’d love a view like this,” Owen said wistfully.
“It’s nice, yeah. But nothing you can’t see from a single story and a third of the mortgage payment,” I tagged on, and caught his smile in profile.
“Are you buying anything today?”
“Nah, don’t think so.”
He nodded and continued staring out the window for a few seconds before turning abruptly to face me. He squared his shoulders, and a flicker of unease moved through me.
“Did you bring me here to fire me?”
I barked out a laugh, because goddamn that had come out of the blue. “What the hell put that idea in your head?”
Owen swallowed visibly. “I… well, you said you weren’t buying anything, and usually you wouldn’t ask me to come… and… Ivy…” He cut himself off with a wince.
“Ivy what?” I prompted him, gaze narrowing.
He grimaced. “Well, it’s possible that she overheard something maybe she wasn’t supposed to overhear about all the shops being in trouble, so I figured…”
I rubbed the back of my neck.Shit. “There’s some truth to that, yeah, but I’m working on it. The Nashville store is okay for now, so I haven’t wanted to say anything just yet.”
“Is that why Ru has been out playing more?”
“Partially, yeah. He’s a stubborn ass. Insisted on giving up his manager’s salary. Threatened to walk altogether if I didn’t agree.”
Visible relief flooded Owen’s expression, and as he let out a long breath, that unsettled feeling stirred restlessly inside me that he’d thought for even a second I’d brought him here to fire him.
I lifted one hand to the window casement beside his head. Owen tracked the movement, big green gaze flickering between my mouth and my splayed fingers, and damned if temptation didn’t rocket through me like I’d swallowed an 80 proof shot of it. I leaned in, one inch closer tocomplicatedas his gaze locked with mine.“Owen, I wouldn’t do that. I—”
“Gentlemen, is there anything in particular that’s sparked your interest?” The voice belonged to a woman with her blonde hair in a severe bun that looked like it was pulling the skin of her face taut. Her expression suggested she was afraid Owen and I were about to do something to make her clutch the pearls around her wrinkly neck. She might’ve been right, but she was for damn sure a good cooler.
I spun a half step away from Owen as he smoothed a strand of hair from his forehead self-consciously. “It’s a nice collection, but I think I’ll be passing today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Grim. I hear you’re quite the collector.”