Stokes lets out a deep sigh beside me. “Yeah, he was.”
“Hey, they told me you want to sing a song of your own.” Jamie folds his arms over his chest. “What have you got for us?”
I grab my bag and dig inside past my notebooks, pulling out my phone to check the pictures I took of the five songs I sent Stokes when I woke up.
“Did you want to see them?” I hold up the phone.
“No, why don’t you read them to us?” Jamie asks.
“Yeah.” Cline coughs out a puff of white smoke and turns the folding chair around, sitting backward on it. “I wanna hear.”
I shoot him a look, trying to decipher if he’s serious. He looks it for the first time. I focus back on my phone; on the best song I have. The one I want to share most.
“Okay.” I lick my lips and Lucie passes me a glass of water. I take a sip and swallow hard, almost choking on it.
“You okay?” Stokes asks.
I nod, laughing, and clear my throat.
Dad said I wasn’t cut out for this, and this one’s about him. I wrote it not long after his death. I didn’t know it then, but writing was saving me from all the darkness, and helping me let it out, and hold on to the good.
“I want to go back to your eyes when they smile,
to your hands when they hold mine for a while.”
I can’t help but sing the words in a soft, slow rhythm I make up as I go.
“To your laugh ‘til you cry,
to your ear, I confide,
to the safety that I knew, when I was with you.
I want to go back, want to go back to you.
To the meals that you made,
to the songs you’d serenade,
to the work in your shop,
and the pain that you’d stop.
I want to go back, want to go back, back to you.”
I swallow hard at the lump in my throat and look up from my phone.
“Well, that’s a good one.” Jamie’s slow words break my spell. He’s smiling at me, but no one else is making eye contact. “Maybe we could hear another? Maybe something a little… darker? For the occasion—Halloween and all?”
“Yeah. Go for it.” Lucie puffs on the joint and giggles.
“Okay…” I flip through the pictures and stop at the first one I read after I’d been asked to join the band. Begin Again. I read it and after I finish, I look up at them. A few look at me, but no one says a word after I just poured my heart out.
“Umm, so not that one?” I ask.
“Not feeling it,” Royal says, finally breaking the silence.
“I think the issue is not with the songs.” Stokes stands and grabs his cup. “They just don’t fit with the story we’re telling.”
Is that it, or was my dad right? Are my words not enough? Not cut out to perform.
I purse my lips and take the forest green notebook out of my bag, flipping it to the page I read before. If they don’t like this, maybe it’s about me, not my songs, because I know they like hers.
“Missing a piece of me implies I could ever be whole.” The words don’t fit, like pants that are too tight. Like clothes that don’t fit me—that aren’t mine—because they aren’t. “Wanting a firefly in a jar. Eternal optimist, never, eternally grateful to know, I’m a stolen body left in a car.”
“Oh wow,” Jamie interrupts. “That’s good.”
“Keep going,” Cline says, leaning forward over the folding chair.
“My body knows me,
but I’m disconnected from reality.
Pile them high and ask them to stay.
Imagine the chills on a part of me that could fight them away.
Piece it together again, never, will we be together again.
Show me where you are.”
“That could work!” Stokes says with a smile and takes a sip of his drink.
“What’s it called?” Cline asks.
I close the book and shove it in my bag. “Doesn’t have a name.”
And it’s not a song I’m even interested in singing. I just had to give them something. I had to see if it was me or my writing. I guess I know now, my dad was right. They have nothing against me. It’s the songs.
“You’ve got the green light on that one from me.” Jamie turns for the door. “See you guys out there. Lyn, just tell them to put yours on my tab.” He leaves, shutting the door behind him.
“So, everybody cool with that song?” Stokes asks.
They nod.
“Sure,” Cline mutters and takes another pull from his joint. “When I’m finished with this, let’s get those drinks. Hey” —he turns to me— “Jamie doesn’t pay for drinks all that often. He hasn’t done it for anyone except Pasch—” He purses his lips and takes a hit of the joint again, releasing the smoke as he speaks. “Well, I’m just saying, enjoy.”
“Well deserved,” Stokes says.
I need to take some space from them right now. I stand and grab my bag. “I’m actually going to go get started on those drinks. See you guys out there.”
My boots clomp down the echoing hallway ramp closer to the door and the sound of the crowd is not as noisy as before. I pause before the door.
Those people out there all saw me vulnerable. They all connected with the words I sang, but they weren’t mine. If it felt that good to sing like that, I can only imagine how it could be when it’s my song. I’m not singing hers. I have to write something better. I can do that.
I open the door, pass the bouncer, and on the way to the bar, Jamie grabs my arm and leads me through the crowd to the end of it by the front door. “I’m going to buy you a drink, and then I want you to meet someone.”
“Okay.” I step up beside him. “I’ll have a whiskey on the rocks, please.”
“You heard the woman. And another rye and ginger for me.” Jamie
