Page 75 of Resonance

Ryder held out his glass, and I filled it as his gaze moved over me, narrowing. “Time hasn’t made you any less bullheaded.”

“Nope. That’ll probably take another century at least.”

* * *

I wokethe next morning with the acrid sweetness of whiskey in the back of my throat, a crick in my neck, and an ounce of lightness spreading through me like the dawn I could see beyond the curtain of my bunk. I thought of Owen and that motel room in Arkansas. And I thought I should’ve pulled him into my arms that night when he reached out for me.

A pen was digging into my hip, and my notebook still lay open at the foot of the bunk.

I’d written page after page last night. It’d come on like a deluge, ink trailing like it couldn’t keep up with the nib of the pen. I had no idea whether the lyrics were garbage or gold, just that I couldn’t stop.

It’d felt pretty fucking good.

On my phone was a series of messages from Owen sent at three in the morning. I opened the thread to find a picture of him with a goofy smile on his face, slitted eyes crinkling at the corners, those golden curls framing the elfin scrunch of his nose. The message beneath read:obligatory late night selfie.

Next came:P.S. I’m only a teeny tiny bit tipsy.

Followed by:Have you ever noticed how Jez looks at you sometimes like she’s measuring out your fate and deciding where to cut the string?

And then:Ru brought me home, by the way, just in case you were worried I’d drive. I wouldn’t. Ru is cheaper than Uber, but he wouldn’t drive through White Castle.

And another:Aiden keeps staring at me like I confuse him.

And finally:For all your obvious differences, some of y’all’s similarities of mannerisms are fucking frightening.

Chapter 26

You think you know yourself. Twenty-four years? That’s a solid amount of time to figure some shit out. I knew, for instance, I liked five sugars in my coffee. Not six, not four. I knew that at any given point, there was a 75-85 percent chance I’d put my foot in my mouth or stumble over a sentence. That my hair looked better parted slightly to the left over the right, but that it looked best when it was a little bed tousled, and no product or finger combing could create the same effect.

I knew my music was pretty decent, and that my lyrics got better if I let ’em rip the first go round without censoring myself and then went back a week later with fresh eyes, pruning as carefully and attentively as a gardener.

So you’d have thought I’d have figured out sooner that I really didn’t belong on a stage.

But it was more like a slow wave of recognition washing over me as I spent the morning at the small recording studio on Les and Evan’s property.

The nerves that plagued me onstage and the few times I’d busked downtown were absent in the closed setting, even with Les and Evan there. I’d been nervous, sure, but after the third run-through on the first song, I’d loosened up. It helped, of course, that they were both down-to-earth and enthusiastic about recording my songs.

And I’d loved how we could go back and fiddle with the sound, rerecord if something was off. Evan had downplayed their equipment; the studio was state-of-the-art, and I’d lost an hour and a half just letting them show me around. “You know you don’t have to be playing onstage to call yourself a musician, right?” Les had said toward the end.

“Or to make a living as one,” Evan tacked on.

They weren’t even the first ones to tell me that. But I guess it was the first time I really considered it as an alternative.

I’d left with a sense of both relief and anticipation fluttering through me that hadn’t been there when I’d arrived.

When Les called me later and asked if he could send a couple of the tracks to one of his publishing friends, I’d said yes immediately, my words stumbling end over end upon themselves with excitement until we were both laughing.

I got backto Dan’s midafternoon. I had no idea where Aiden was, but he didn’t appear to be around. He came and went a lot, and we navigated around each other well enough. Not that we were going to be bosom buddies anytime soon.

I stretched out on the couch, unlocked my phone, and queued up a replay of the Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon tour, losing myself in it until a text notification popped up over Mick Jagger’s wide open mouth.

Dan:You available?

Owen:Isn’t the point of a cell phone 24 hour availability? Why don’t you call and find out?

I grinned to myself, imagining him scowling at the screen.

Dan:Smartass