Leaving Amarillo

by Caisey Quinn

  Relief loosens some of the tension I’ve carried since learning we’d be sharing a room. The thought of sleeping—or attempting to sleep—in a bedroom with Gavin is daunting, and playing at one of the largest music festivals in the South on no sleep was nerve-racking, to say the least. But with Dallas between us as he’s always been, I’m probably less inclined to lie in bed wondering what it would be like to have Gavin in mine.

  The truth is, while I don’t need the fame and bright lights that my brother chases relentlessly, my desire to see the band become legitimate is just as strong. The alternative is a fate I try not to think about. I don’t belong in an orchestra pit playing music that feels stifling and far too fancy for me. I belong here, with these two men I love in vastly different ways, playing the music I was raised on.

  Once we’re settled into the room and Dallas has spoken with Levi about a rehearsal space we’ll be able to use during the week, I step outside to call Papa to let him know we’ve arrived safe and sound. He doesn’t answer so I leave a message.

  When I step back into the room both of the boys are already asleep. Chewing a barely warm, slightly spongy waffle leftover from our drive-through breakfast, I think about Papa. Since his heart attack—which he only refers to as an “episode”—I haven’t been away from him for more than a night. He’ll turn seventy-six this year and his hearing is nearly gone but his voice is still strong in my head.

  The first time I picked up his fiddle he chuckled and said if I could tame it, it was mine. For weeks I pissed off the neighbors and every animal in hearing distance. And then he began to show me the basics. Major one, major four, and major five. Where to stroke the strings to get a richer sound, how to make it sing. “Amazing Grace” was the first song I ever played on it from start to finish. It was wobbly and rough, but Papa declared it officially mine that day.

  When my parents died, it felt like everything good inside of me had been scooped out and thrown away. Memories hurt, any ideas about what my future might contain hurt. The strange looks from the kids at my new school made me want to turn myself inside out and hide. But playing Papa’s fiddle filled me with something special, something magical. It gave me back something I’d lost with my mom and dad. Hope.

  I ran home from school every day and woke up early in the mornings on weekends, itching to get my hands on Oz. Papa said I could name it, and I’d just seen The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy left behind her drab gray world and went somewhere magical and colorful and that’s what playing was for me. Which is why I don’t look over at Gavin’s chiseled, tattooed body sprawled across the other bed in the room even though I want to.

  I fall asleep thinking about song lyrics and pushing out of my head thoughts of how it would feel to have his hands on me and his lips on mine.

  I woke up several times to see my brother sitting up and staring intently at song lyrics I know he’s struggling with. But I was too tired to give any worthwhile input so I dozed off each time. I was still groggy when he roused Gavin and me so we could head out to rehearse our final set list at an empty storage space Levi had managed to procure for the week.

  “Let’s play ‘Ring of Fire’ before ‘Whiskey Redemption,’” my brother commands. “We’ll get their attention with covers then mix in our originals and try to keep the momentum upbeat throughout the entire set.”

  Gavin writes our set list down on a piece of hotel stationery he snagged from the room and raises his eyes to mine. “Dixie gonna play her opener?”

  Dallas turns toward me wearing his worries plainly on his face. “You up for it? This is the real deal, Dix.” Bright blue eyes just a shade darker than mine bore into me. I swallow hard and attempt a quick calculation of the odds of my getting distracted by some half-dressed, completely wasted groupie flashing Gavin. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  “I am. Promise.” I give him my most confident grin and he gives me a taut smile in return. I don’t bother commenting on his lack of confidence in me because the tension is already tight enough as it is.

  “All right then.” He nods at me before returning to his mark and strapping on his guitar. “Let’s do this.”

  I am focused while we play, careful to concentrate on the nuances of each piece of music. Just as this is my ticket out of the orchestra pit, I know this is Dallas’s shot to finally make a name for the band—to make us more than a little-known group that plays local gigs. Barely getting by makes him feel like a failure, like he isn’t taking good care of me or giving me the life I deserve. I’ve overheard him telling Gavin that more than once.

  “Take care of each other” was the last thing my father said to us before he and my mom found themselves directly in the path of a drunk who’d fallen asleep at the wheel. My brother took these words to mean so much more than I think my father probably intended.

  Nana and Papa barely had two nickels to rub together when we moved in with them. They were simple folks living happily within their means. The funeral and burial ate up our parents’ meager life insurance policies, and even the money from the state wasn’t much. I can remember going to the thrift store for school clothes that the girls at school would only laugh at. Though not as much as they made fun of how I looked in my brother’s hand-me-downs. Through it all, Dallas promised me over and over that it would get better.

  He’s still trying to make it better. Trying to keep a promise he never needed to make. I’ve told him a million times that I am okay. That I don’t need expensive things or designer clothes to be happy. I didn’t need them back then and I don’t need them now. But Dallas feels like he failed Mom and Dad somehow and I’ve accepted that that’s his cross to bear.

  “Let’s take five,” Dallas calls out after we hit the halfway mark in our set.

  We talk about changing my opener during the break. Dallas is nervous for me; I can tell by the worry lines creasing his forehead.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it,” he tells me. “I’m just not sure it’s the right thing to open with.”

  “How about I play this one instead?” Tucking my chin down, I lift my bow and jump into Alabama’s “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas.” The music carries me to a place where the stress and the pressure can’t touch me.

  When I finish, Dallas and Gavin are both grinning at me.

  “That work?”

  “Yeah, Dixie Leigh,” Dallas says with a smirk of approval. “That’ll do.”

  The rest of our set is a combination of songs we’ve written together interwoven throughout a stream of both contemporary and classic country songs. We play a few numbers by Johnny Cash with a rock-and-roll edge added to them, and then a few more recent hits with our own flavor. We’ve even countrified a few rap songs by Jay-Z and Bruno Mars just for fun, but strangely enough, those are the ones the audiences really seem to get into.

  After a successful rehearsal, the tense lines on Dallas’s face have smoothed and even Gavin seems more at ease.

  “Can we grab some dinner? I’m starving,” I tell them when we’re finished.

  “Let’s just order pizza and have it delivered to the room. I want to work on our song some more. Try and get something workable down before tomorrow night.” Dallas strides purposefully over to his guitar case and begins packing up.

  We’ve been working on this song, the band’s anthem my brother insists we need, for the better part of a year. If I have to go back to that room, where Dallas’s worries are breathing up all the oxygen, I might wither and die. He isn’t verbalizing them, but I can feel his concerns emanating from him, growing more intense every minute as we approach performance time. Maybe it’s a sibling thing.

  Gavin must be able to read my thoughts—a terrifying possibility, really—because he steps between my brother and me before I say anything.

  “How about we go to that Italian place we passed on the way here? It’s in walking distance. D, you can still get pizza and we can talk about the song without being stuck in that room.”

  I watch Dallas, waiting for his respon
se. He rakes a hand through his hair before huffing out a loud breath and looking from me to Gavin and back to me again.

  “I’d really just rather work, to be honest.” He looks at each of us in turn again, frowning when he sees the disappointment on my face. “I know I’m being kind of slave driver lately, but I promise I have the band’s best interest at the heart of my madness. Does that make me any less of a pain in the ass?”

  I give my brother a gentle shoulder nudge of understanding. I know he means well, and Gavin knows, too. “It’s okay, Dallas. We know that,” I tell him. “It’s just . . . sometimes—”

  “Sometimes we throw darts at pictures of you for fun,” Gavin breaks in.

  Gavin’s comment makes Dallas laugh out loud. The tension dissipates as if it never existed. This is why we work. Why Leaving Amarillo is still together. I love the music but hate the business side of it. Dallas lives for the business side of it. Meanwhile, Gavin keeps us from murdering each other with our instruments.

  And this is why I’m afraid. If our dynamic changes, if I lose the thin white-knuckle hold I have on my feelings for Gavin, it will ruin everything. It will ruin us.

  I don’t know who I am without Leaving Amarillo. What’s even more frightening is I don’t know who Dallas or Gav are without it, either. Maybe in another life I’m a bank teller and they’re construction workers or something. But in this life, we are this band. Each of us an integral part of something much bigger than us.

  “Y’all go ahead,” Dallas begins as we leave the empty warehouse. “I’ll grab something at the hotel.”

  I frown at him. “Dallas—”

  “Seriously. I’ve got half a dozen ideas about how to make this song work. I need to get on it before I lose the lyrics in my head.” He opens the back of the van and puts his guitar inside, then reaches for my case. “Promise I’m good. I just want to get on this while it’s fresh.”

  Gavin finishes loading his kit and slams the back door. “Dude, it’s fine. We can come on back with you. We’ll order pizza, like you said.”

  I sigh, because I know my brother has won and it’s back to the room of doom we go. Between our luggage and equipment and the cot Gavin sleeps on, the overcrowded space is a cramped maze.

  “Dixie looks like I just sentenced her to death,” Dallas says with an eye roll in my direction.

  I toss him a dirty look. “Or a life sentence in room 306 at the Days Inn, which is pretty much a fate worse than.”

  Just as Gavin turns to open the passenger door of the van for me, Dallas stops him. “Seriously. Go. Eat. I kind of need to be alone anyways. This song is kicking my ass and I’m sick and tired of it.”

  Gavin arches a brow, but I don’t waste any time.

  “You heard the man, Garrison. Let’s go. Feed me.”

  “You sure?” Gavin asks, turning back to Dallas and prompting me to contemplate strangling him.

  My brother reaches behind his head and rubs his neck. “Yeah, man. I’m sure. Just, uh, don’t be too long. We all need our rest for tomorrow.”

  They exchange a look loaded with something I can’t read from where I’m standing. But I can make an educated guess. Typically the three of us stay together. Gavin and I grabbing dinner alone, without my brother, shouldn’t be a big deal. And yet, I see it. The warning in my brother’s eyes any time Gavin and I do something without him chaperoning us. It says “sit across the table, don’t let her have any alcohol, and keep your hands to your damn self.”

  Gavin nods at the unspoken agreement and we both call out to my brother that we’ll see him later.

  Walking the two blocks to the restaurant is an exercise in patience and restraint. Gavin walks close enough that I can feel the heat from his arm swinging next to mine. Just as I’m about to say to hell with it and link my arm with his like it’s 1926 and we’re strolling along the promenade instead of a cracked sidewalk on the run-down industrial side of town, a horn blows and we both jump. Glancing over my shoulder I see my brother drive by and throw his hand out the window.

  All I can think is, the ass did that on purpose. Gavin tosses my brother a quick two-fingered wave as the van pulls away toward the hotel. I cut my eyes to his profile. He’s walking an extra foot away from me now and I already miss the warmth. The horn blast was a reminder: Keep your distance.

  Chapter 4

  GAVIN KEEPS AT LEAST AN ARM’S LENGTH BETWEEN US FOR THE rest of our walk to the restaurant. It leaves me more than slightly irritated with my brother.

  Deep down I know that it’s not that Dallas wants to hurt me, or that he wants me to be unhappy. Just like I can feel his constant anxiety about the band’s future, I know that he hasn’t missed my burgeoning feelings for Gavin. And I suspect he knows what could happen if I act on my feelings and get them crushed under the heel of Gavin’s boot like so many other girls have.

  My brother doesn’t subscribe to the same belief system about love that I do. He seems to have very little faith in the magic ability of it to make everything better, or at least bearable. His high school girlfriend, Robyn, left for college at the University of Texas the summer after graduation and they did the long-distance thing for two years before calling it quits. From the bits and pieces I caught of their final days together, Robyn wanted to make it work. But for reasons my brother won’t discuss, they broke it off. Robyn Breeland was gorgeous and funny and smart. And real. And most important, she was nice to me. Always. No matter what drama she and Dallas were dealing with, she was always there for me. She still checks in with me from time to time. She’s like the big sister I never had.

  Any time I’ve tried to pry my brother for information about what exactly happened between them, he has shrugged it off and grumbled some nonsense about long-distance relationships and priorities. But I was doing laundry the last time we were home and under his bed was a box Robyn had given him in high school. I glanced inside and my heart swelled when I saw the sweet pictures of them together. They looked so pretty and shiny in their homecoming and prom photos. The little notes she’d written him weren’t covered in hearts, but I could tell they were private by how tightly they were folded, so I didn’t read them. Just the fact that my brother still had the box nearly three years after their breakup told me that he still cared about her. He wasn’t the type to hold on to things, ever. Even Mom and Dad’s belongings hadn’t held much sentimental value for him.

  “What’s keeping you so quiet tonight, Bluebird?”

  Gavin’s voice shakes me from my thoughts and I look over at him. His forehead is creased and he seems genuinely concerned. Still slightly peeved by his keeping his distance, I consider saying “nothing” and ignoring him. But those eyes have always pulled the truth right out of me.

  “You think Dallas ever misses Robyn?”

  His expression indicates he didn’t see this particular question coming. “Breeland?”

  “Did he date another Robyn I never met?”

  He rolls his eyes and flicks the lighter I didn’t notice before in his right hand. “No, smartass. I just didn’t expect you to bring her up. What made you think of her?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Just seems sad to me. I liked her. A lot. I kind of hoped they’d get married one day.”

  Two more harsh flicks of the lighter and Gavin looks like he might be ill. “Married? He’s only twenty-two for fuck’s sakes.”

  “I didn’t mean soon. I just meant one day. They were happy together. Not everyone can handle Dallas the way she did. In fact, I’m a little worried he won’t ever be able to find anyone able to put up with his crazy self. I don’t want him to end up alone and sleeping on my couch for the rest of his life.”

  Gavin chuckles and the musical sound tightens the muscles in my stomach.

  There are a lot of different types of laughs in this world. Contagious ones, high-pitched ones, annoyingly out-of-control ones. But Gavin Garrison’s laugh is low and deep, and so seldom heard that it slides into the cracks in my heart, filling them with the melodic sou
nd like a habit-forming narcotic I can’t get enough of.

  Thankfully we reach Mangieri’s and I have a few minutes to compose myself while we’re seated and given menus. Perusing the menu covered with pictures of food that makes my stomach growl, I inhale the sweet, tangy scent of tomatoes and garlic.

  “What are you gonna get, Blu—”

  “Oh my gosh,” a waitress standing beside our table exclaims before he can finish. “Y’all are in that band. Leaving Amarillo, right?”

  Apparently the red-haired chick recognizes us, which is odd. But at least she got the name of the band right. We’ve been called everything from Loving Eldorado to Losing Armadillos. Score one point for her. I’m flattered and grateful that we actually have a fan. But when I glance up at her, she’s fawning over Gavin in a way that makes me want to gouge out her big brown doe eyes.

  “Yes ma’am,” Gavin answers, his drawl a little more pronounced and his voice a little deeper than usual. I raise a brow but he doesn’t notice. Because apparently I’ve turned invisible. “You’ve heard of us?”

  A wide smile brightens her face and I have to admit she’s not unattractive. She’d probably be even prettier if she washed off a good portion of the gaudy makeup she’s wearing.

  “I saw you at Beale Street last year and I pretty much stalk you online.” Her cheeks darken with embarrassment and she lowers her head. “I mean, not stalk, but I have all the songs available on my iPod and, um, yeah. I’m a fan. Obviously. Wow, I am totally making an idiot out of myself.”

  Yes, you are. Now go away.

  Gavin leans back in his chair and does elevator eyes on her and I have a sudden urge to throat-punch him. “We don’t think any of our fans are idiots, darlin’. All five of you are wildly intelligent with excellent taste.” He winks, and I swear, she nearly strips her clothes off right there.

  In that moment, I’m extremely thankful that no one’s brought us silverware yet because I’m feeling pretty stabby.