“Cold?” he asked, though I could barely hear him.
I shook my head.
We moved to the rear of the building and a man unlatched a length of chain barring entry to the upper level.
“‘Sup, Hill? Haven’t seen you in a long time, brother, how you been?”
Lawson shook his hand. “Evenin’, Arnie. Good, good. Chris and Savvy up here?”
“You know it.”
As we walked up the stairs, Lawson leaned in close. “We don’t have to stay. I just didn’t want to flake out on the girls.”
“You didn’t want to come?”
“Clubs aren’t exactly my scene. I’m not too big on crowds.”
“How can that be possible?” I said as we reached the landing. Tall tables dotted the length of the railing. To one side, small groups of people sat in semi-circle booths, talking, laughing, nursing drinks. “You’re in the entertainment business,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it’s different, when I’m on stage. Up there, I can be myself. Lawson Hill, the music-slash-Star-Wars geek.” He looked around anxiously. “Places like this, though, where there’s a lot of people? I’m pretty much like, ‘where’s the food?’”
I laughed, surprised, relieved. Ironically, that he felt as uncomfortable as I did, if not more, made me feel less uncomfortable. A thin layer of sweat had formed across his brow, above his upper lip. I swore I could feel his heart rate escalating.
“Hey.” When I squeezed his arm, there was no give. Just solid muscle. “Let’s find Chris and Savana, congratulate Chris on her set, and then go someplace with more food, less dubstep.”
His eyes. Gosh. I thought about what Savana said the other day, about people calling the eyes windows of the soul. She asked what I saw when I looked into Lawson’s. What does he make you feel? Honesty, I’d thought. And he was. In fact, his honest, humble demeanor was what drew people to him, whether they realized it or not. And kindness. He was so kind and considerate. Selfless, it seemed, especially when it came to the people he cared about.
But tonight, I felt the intimacy in his eyes. The warmth and depth I’d noticed the very first night I met him. He had my senses turning cartwheels, and I felt drunk on him. On his body heat, his scent, on the pressure of his hand in mine.
“You keep talkin’ like that, Columbus,” he said, “and I’m gonna have to keep you.”
We hung out with Chris and Savana for half an hour before Lawson announced he’d had enough for one night.
“Every. Time.” Chris shook her head, sipping something with an umbrella.
“You can stay, if you want, Harper Evans.” Savana grabbed my hand as I exited the booth. “Since Law’s bein’ an old man and all.”
Chris snorted. “As usual.”
“No way,” Lawson said before I could answer. “Columbus is mine for the night. You two have fun. Call an Uber.”
“Wait!” Savana said. “Where are you taking her?”
Lawson shrugged. “Bingo. Knitting class. Shopping for Geritol. The usual old timer things.”
Chris threw her head back with a peal of laughter.
“Swear to sweet baby Jesus, Law.” Savana raised her cosmopolitan. “You’re not right in the head.”
“Love you, too, Savvy.”
He didn’t look back as we made our way out, and I was more than a little grateful. The music, I loved. The crowd and some random person touching me every five seconds, not so much.
Besides, I wanted him to myself.
Selfish, maybe. Irrational, oh, for certain. Everyone wanted a piece of him. I wasn’t important.
But he made me feel different. The person I was with him, I liked her. She was brave. Fearless. This Harper craved the company of something other than a book or the vision of a successful college student four thousand miles away.
Neither books nor school were on my mind when I was with Lawson.
“Do you have a curfew?” he asked as we headed out of the city. “Savvy said you live with your dad.”
“No. I mean, I shouldn’t get home at an ungodly hour, but that’s got more to do with me than my dad. If I don’t get enough sleep, I’m unbearable. Even to myself.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep.”
Lawson’s decked out truck took us through the Nashville night, past colorful neon signs and glittering city lights so high I had to crane my neck to follow their towers to the starlit sky. Marquees boasted live music and people stood outside in long lines, waiting to get into clubs and restaurants. I wondered how many times he’d been on these stages, how many tickets he’d sold, how many of these people on the streets of Nashville would recognize him if he were to pull over. He’d probably never free himself from the onslaught of hands reaching out to touch him, flashing cameras and pleas for selfies.
“You look nervous.” His gaze slid to me. “Everything okay?”
“I’ve just never seen anything like it.”
“Hey, you’re hometown ain’t too shabby, either. I’ve been to downtown Columbus.”
“You have?” I turned toward him, surprised. “When?”
His head inclined. “Two? Three years ago? Nationwide Arena. Great crowd.”
As his words sank in, a sliver of warmth slipped down my spine. Our old house in Ohio, the home where I’d grown up, was less than half an hour from that arena. He’d been that close. People, maybe people I knew, had paid to see him. Bought tour souvenirs, waved lighters and lit phones as he performed. Sang the lyrics to his songs. Songs he’d written. How I’d missed his name in advertisements or mentioned among my peers at school, I couldn’t comprehend.
Clearly, I was way more clueless than I gave myself credit for.
“I may give you a hard time for lovin’ an overrated team—”
“Not. Even. You do not want to start that argument with me, Mr. Hill.”
“—but their city’s pretty cool. Miss Evans.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Different than here, though.”
“Well, yeah. Everywhere’s different than here.”
“Okay, then. Favorite place you’ve ever performed?”
“Ford Field’s pretty awesome. In Detroit?”
“That’s a stadium. That’s the Lions’ stadium.”
“Know your football, too, eh? Impressive.”
“Whatev.”
“But yeah, last tour we hit stadiums across the country. Ended the year at the Ryman, where we recorded the live album.”
I’d seen the cover of that one: a beautiful black and white photo of him jumping in the air with his electric guitar. Snippets from the show were on YouTube, part of a song, an interview backstage. Girls threw roses and stuffed animals onto the stage. Security had to restrain several of them from climbing over the metal barricade. His energy was unmatched. His charm, off the charts. A single smile, paired with an arch of his eyebrow, and the female-heavy crowd roared.
But even I knew videos online couldn’t paint the authentic picture.
He must’ve been incredible live.
“But that was a year and a half ago.” His smile waned and his stare out the windshield turned reflective.
In the enclosed cabin, I could almost feel the pain vibrating off of him. The inspiration lost, the search for a tangible nothing he’d tried to grasp too many times and failed. She’d done this to him—or her memory had. Whoever she was, whatever she was to him, her absence had left a hole where completeness used to be.
“Lawson?” I looked down at my hands. “Tell me about her.”
* * *
1 Whitman, W. (1855). Leaves of Grass. Self.
chapter seven
His eyes cut to me then refocused on the road as we left the gleaming city behind. “How much did Savvy tell you?”
“Not much. Enough.” But not enough. I wanted to know more. Wanted to understand why this mystery girl’s absence in his life had put a stopper in his career. “She said you haven’t been able to write.”
�
�That’s not all true. I’ve written. Just not what people are used to hearing from me.”
“And that’s a problem?”
“In this world? It can be.” His hand adjusted on the wheel. “Writing lyrics no one’s ever heard from me before, changing the formula I’ve followed since I was fifteen? That kind of insubordination can make or break an artist.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Worked for Taylor Swift.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but she’s Taylor Swift. She could record a polka album and it’d hit number one on release day. Me?” His head swayed from side to side. “I’ve had success, yeah. Good success. But my life’s not what it was anymore. My music’s different. I’m different. It’s been five years since that first album,” he said. “Five years of riding a rollercoaster made up of the road and concert venues, meet and greets, recording studios, interviews, remotes, festivals, endorsements and all that comes with not only having an album at the top of the charts but having three albums at the top of the charts and watching them sit there for weeks. And with watching and riding the high of popularity, which is great, don’t get me wrong, but there’s expectations. The fear of disappointing everyone if, to quote Molly Weasley, I put a toe out of line.”
Kickstart my stuttering heart, a hot guy who could quote Harry Potter? Swoon.
“Have you, though?”
“What?” His eyes met mine. “Put a toe out of line?”
“Disappointed anyone?”
He took a second to answer. “Other than myself? I don’t know. Probably. Can’t get on this ride without disappointing an agent, manager, producer, fan club president, director, receptionist—”
“Is that all?” I teased.
“Gets worse when a record goes platinum.”
“Seems like that’d make a lot of people happy, your success making them successful.” Paying their bills, feeding their families, keeping the lights on. Normal human needs for survival. I could only imagine how many depended on Lawson’s success just to make ends meet.
“Ah, but then greed settles in.” He pulled up to a fast food drive thru. “You good with a burger and fries? I’m starved.”
This boy. He spoke my language. “Throw in a chocolate milkshake and I’m game.”
His grin was back. “My kind o’ girl.”
We ordered and Lawson paid the bill. He showed me how his mom did fries, pouring both mine and his into the fast-food bag, rolling down the sides, and sticking it between us. Resourceful, I had to admit. Plus, our fingers kept brushing. We rode down country roads, while we ate our burgers and drank our milkshakes. Took turns talking about our childhoods.
“Mom moved us to Nashville when I was fourteen,” he said. “She didn’t know what to do with me, said I was bursting at the seams. We’d been touring local music festivals all over Louisiana and Texas since I was old enough to stand up with a guitar. And then, for my twelfth birthday, she bought me a recording session with a local studio, and I made my first demo.”
“You sent it out?”
“To every record label in the country. Pretty much, yeah. But,” he said, “it was too juvenile. All covers of artists I admired, nothing original. Mom couldn’t afford another session, so a couple of weeks before my freshman year, we moved.”
“And your dad?” I asked.
“Never been in the picture. Not even when they were still together.”
My chest felt tight. “Same with me. Well,” I said, “my mom, that is. She left when I was a baby.”
“It’s just been you and your dad this whole time?”
“Just the two of us.”
“What does he do? For a living, I mean.”
“English professor at the community college. Before, he taught English-Lit where I went to high school.” I played with my straw. “But when I got accepted to Cambridge, he decided he wanted to start fresh. Kind of like your mom, I guess. He applied for the position here and got it. There was no reason for me to stay behind, not when I’m leaving in four months, so,” I said, shrugging, “I came with him. Took a job at the library.”
“And met Savvy.” He smiled. “Lucky, lucky me.”
We drove a while. Listened to the radio. 80’s, 90’s, one of the local country stations, back to 80’s. There was nothing he didn’t like, nothing he couldn’t appreciate. The bass line in a song, a well put together fence alongside the road or the cattle grazing beyond. He pointed out barns so big they looked like miniature castles. Then he’d go back to the radio, telling me to listen, Columbus, listen to that harmony. Perfection.
He was perfection.
I gave him my address and he GPS’d it, thank goodness, because I hadn’t a clue where we were. Long as we’d been traveling, I was surprised he still had a signal. Or that we hadn’t crossed a state line somewhere.
“So, tell me, Columbus.” Another glance in my direction. Only this time his eyes looked different. “Boyfriend back home?”
I once read that the first true beauty of human life is our determination to endure; that we have a unique aptitude for pushing forward. The second is our memories. Our ability to memorize details depending on the magnitude of the given situation. Scent memories, of course, are among the most powerful, as are any details which play upon the five senses.
In those seconds, my mind cataloged every detail, tucked them inside a box. The anxiousness in his eyes. His hands as he white-knuckled the steering wheel. The sudden shallowness of his breaths. Chocolate milkshake lingered on my tongue. The leather seat felt cool beneath my legs. His cologne—clean, expensive, masculine—wafted over me, dialing up nerve endings, making blood rush between my thighs.
A Lifehouse song was on the radio. You and Me, a favorite of mine since I could remember.
“No,” I answered. “No boyfriend.”
His tension seemed to ease a fraction. “Hard to believe. Smart girl like you?”
“Lawson Hill, are you hitting on me?”
The side of his eye crinkled. “Am I hitting on you? Is that still a thing?”
“Most definitely. Yep. Still a thing.”
“Then, yes, guess I am. Although, for the record,” he said, “I’m a little rusty, so, you know…” His grin made me feel like I was beautiful, desired. “Be easy on me.”
His hand took mine, and I stared as his thumb slowly moved back and forth across my knuckles.
“So, you’re not with anyone,” I said after a few minutes of silence. “Do you date?”
“No, I don’t date.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t have the time. Usually, I don’t. Truth is there’s not much to tell. Well, there is. We were together for three years. So, yeah, there’s history.” He sighed. “I’m trying to get back in the saddle, so to speak. With songwriting? I’ve written a few. Several, actually, but I’m just, I don’t know. Not quite there yet.”
I gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. “What’s your process?”
“Ooh.” He pulled in air sharply through his teeth, shifted in his seat. “Loaded question. How much time you got?”
“Plenty.” But I didn’t. I had four months. Four months—less now, actually, and I would leave Nashville for good.
I couldn’t think about that. Didn’t want to. All the mattered was Lawson, and that he was opening up to me when we’d only known each other for a couple of days. I wanted to know everything. What he liked, what he didn’t. How he took his coffee, if he drank coffee. What his philosophies were on life and what kind of ice cream was his ride or die.
“Sorry,” I said as he appeared to contemplate how to answer, “I didn’t mean to poke in on your personal life.”
“You are pretty nosy.” He glanced at me from the side.
I tightened my clasp on his hand. “I could say the same about you.”
“I concede.” He sighed. “Okay, my process. How I can explain this and not sound certifiably insane?”
“Is there an asylum on the way back?”
“Arkham,” he said. “Didn’t you kn
ow?”
Gosh, I liked him. A lot, actually. Plus, a guy who knew his comics sang to the inner geek in me and Batman was my favorite.
“My process is a little unpredictable,” he said, “especially when pretty much everything inspires me. Music, movies, newspaper articles, online articles, people, experiences. Once, I was having a cup of coffee at a local breakfast joint, and the couple in the booth in front of me were totally into each another. Laughing, whispering, stealing kisses. But the guy,” he said, smiling thoughtfully, “he started quoting poetry to her. It was amazing. Like, full lines that I had to look up on my phone, because I’d never heard or read them. Poe, Whitman, Emerson. I must’ve sat there for thirty minutes, eavesdropping and punching things into Notes. But that’s what inspired me to write Annabel. People thought it was for a girl, but it was because of Poe’s poem, Annabel Lee, and the couple at the café.”
“I’ll bet they’d love to know they inspired an original song by Lawson Hill,” I said and made a mental note that he was, in fact, a coffee drinker. Bonus.
He raised his eyebrows, his eyes focused to the road. “‘But our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we,’” he said and the hairs on my arms stood on end, “‘of many far wiser than we. And neither the angels in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.’”
My heart stopped and my lips parted. In the space of a handful of moments together, Lawson had not only severed every belief I’d ever had about falling for someone—genuinely falling head over heels for another person practically overnight, but he’d made every guy I’d ever had even a tiny amount of romantic feelings for seem childish. It wasn’t only his talent or his ability to recite Poe as if he’d done an extensive study of 19th century literature. It was this. The ease of being with him.
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