“You okay?” he asks as he brushes my hair back from my forehead.
I nod. “Uh-huh.”
“Bird, if you ever—I mean—if things are ever too—”
I look up at him and smile.
“We can take it slow if you want,” he finally says, though he can’t keep those hands out of my hair, off my face. I feel like I can’t keep my heart in my chest. “I’m really into you. I want to see where this thing goes and I’m in no rush.”
“Me too,” I say, nodding.
“You know that song?” Kai asks. “The one you played for me last week?”
“ ‘Friends Don’t,’ ” I say. “It still needs some work.”
“Yeah, ‘Friends Don’t.’ ” He nods. “Well, friends don’t—”
“Make out?” I interrupt.
He chuckles. “Right. Or I was going to say: feel this way.” Kai gets serious. “Bird, you are the first thing I think about in the morning, the person I always want to text, the only girl that’s even been a blip on my radar for, like, two years.”
My heart skips.
“So, anyway, do you—I don’t know—want to be exclusive?”
I blink hard. “Do I want to be your girlfriend?” I ask.
He nods, looking adorably nervous.
A smile breaks across my face. “Yes, I want to be your girlfriend!” I say, too loudly, too excitedly, too not-at-all-playing-it-coolly. I throw my arms around him and squeeze tight. Immediately there is the electricity that always buzzes between us, but I pull far enough away that I don’t leave room for more kisses. We have to go to work.
He links his fingers through mine and squeezes, looking as happy as I am, yet considerably more chill. He stands and pulls me up with ease. When I open my dressing room door, the sounds of a busy tour greet us.
“So,” he says, as we walk into the hallway, “what will your dad think about you having an older boyfriend?”
I beam at him. Boyfriend. “I don’t think it’s the age that will bother him as much as the boyfriend part,” I say.
He drapes an arm across my shoulders and we head toward the stage. “Then I guess I’ll just have to win him over.”
I grin. “Guess so.”
14
“BIRD, BABY, ARE you okay?” my mom asks softly as she peeks into my bedroom.
“Yeah,” I answer groggily. I yawn wide, opening my eyes and smiling as I remember that I’m back home. Last night we played the first of our last three shows, in Nashville, and Bridgestone Arena was packed for my set. It was humbling, and a little mind-blowing, to see how dramatically five weeks on tour had increased my fan base. I really loved being back on the road, but now, as I stretch my long legs and arms, I’ve got to say that nothing beats sleeping in my own bed. I sit up and rub my eyes as my mom opens the blinds. “What time is it?” I ask.
“It’s nearly ten,” she says, sitting on the bed beside me. “We figured you’d be ready by now. Your father said you have a meeting with Dan and Anita and it’s not like you to miss that stuff—”
“Oh my freaking God!” I say, throwing the covers off.
“Bird Barrett,” she scolds.
“Oh, get over it, Mom. I didn’t cuss,” I snap as I rush past her out into the hallway. “Dad!”
“He’s in the kitchen,” my mom says snippily as she heads downstairs. “And I’ll thank you to keep the Lord’s name out of your mouth unless you can honor it.”
“Ugh!” I storm past her and find my dad finishing his coffee, his car keys on the table next to him.
“Dad! We’re late for our meeting. You should’ve woken me up.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “You can work every app on your phone but the alarm clock?”
I roll my eyes. “There’s no way I’m going to get ready and get down there in time. Can you call him to reschedule? See if he can meet in half an hour or something? One hour tops.”
“I’ll try,” he says with a heavy sigh.
“I can’t believe nobody woke me up,” I grumble as I head back upstairs.
“I did,” my mom calls after me. “And I’m starting to regret it.”
Angry, I take the stairs two at a time. I don’t have time to fight with her, and I don’t know why my manager isn’t on top of this. Also, it’s a freaking Saturday, but Dan clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of a weekend. He works 24-7, so I guess we all have to. I slam my bathroom door, grab my toothbrush, and sit down to pee at the same time, thinking that I don’t have time for makeup and will probably need to wear my hair in a ponytail.
There is a knock at the door. “Bird,” my dad calls from outside. “Dan’s waiting. He wants to do our meeting over Skype. Let’s go.”
What?
I open the door, and my dad passes me my laptop. “Sounds good,” he says into his cell phone. “We’ll call you right back.”
“I’m still in my pajamas!” I protest as he ends the call.
“Looks like sweats to me,” he says. “Let’s go. The man’s waiting.”
He leads me across the hall to his office and we sit down to call Dan. As soon as his face pops up on-screen, I notice my Albert Einstein hair in my thumbnail image and cringe, trying to smooth it as nonchalantly and yet quickly as possible.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he says, grinning.
“Dan, I am so sorry!”
“No worries,” he says. “No worries.”
Dan reaches for a piece of paper and snaps into business mode, his slight frown making me nervous. “I’ve got another meeting in a little bit so I want to get right down to it.” He looks up and takes a deep breath. “We got the new song yesterday. Thank you for that, Bird.”
“Sure,” I say. Please like it, please like it, please like it.
Dan stalls, as if he’s considering his words. “It’s—well, it’s not what we were expecting or even, quite frankly, what we associate with the Bird Barrett sound. Shannon agrees. We sort of—well, it was a head-scratcher, to tell you the truth.”
I sigh heavily, feeling my shoulders droop and my heart sink.
“Have you heard it, Judd?” he asks.
Reluctantly my dad shakes his head, looking the way I feel: surprised and a little ashamed.
“Huh,” Dan says, nodding. “I would figure Bird’s manager would be listening to her demos before she sends them out. Maybe you’ll want to be a little more hands-on in that regard in the future.”
I glance over at my dad, who nods curtly.
“Bird, this track just isn’t you,” Dan continues, no longer worried about choosing his words carefully. “I don’t even know who this is. It’s—well, Shannon called it ‘emo’ and Anita said ‘sad.’ As for me,” he says, “I guess I’m just confused. We talked about more of a pop sound, right?”
“Right,” I say, my throat tight.
“So what happened?”
I exhale loudly. I think about my first kiss with Kai, when I played “Friends Don’t” for him last week. On the way to Tulsa, he helped me finesse it, encouraging me to use a broader vocabulary and slow down the tempo. I know it’s not exactly like my other stuff, and it’s certainly not pop, but we wrote it together and it’s special to me now.
“I was toying with the idea of when a friend becomes more than a friend,” I explain.
“It’s not the subject matter,” Dan answers. “We love love songs.”
“Right. But when I played it for a friend of mine, it sounded so mainstream and just—ordinary—that I decided to go in another direction.”
“Well, if you choose a new direction in the future, make sure it’s up.”
Ouch.
“Remember, we were aiming for at least six new songs by the tour’s end,” Dan says firmly. “You aren’t just a singer, Bird. You’re a singer-songwriter. But I need you to let me know if I should be flagging potential songs for you, contacting publishers for material.”
“No, I want to do my own stuff,” I say quickly.
“Well, that’s what
we want, too,” he says. “Listen, I have to go, but take another look at the concept and give this song some life. Or maybe just start fresh.”
“Okay,” I say quietly.
“Judd, everything else going smoothly?”
“Great,” Dad says. He’s nodding so vigorously, it’s as if he’s convincing himself. Embarrassed, my stomach sinks even further. It’s already been a long day and I’ve only been awake for ten minutes.
“Okay, Barretts, we’ll talk again soon. Have a good one.”
“Bye, Dan,” my dad and I say together. I disconnect the call and for a couple of seconds, we don’t move as we let it all sink in. Then my dad’s cell phone rings and he looks relieved, walking out into the hall to talk to somebody about a local morning-show appearance.
I pick up my laptop and walk back into my own room, humiliated. I shut the door, set the computer on my desk, and crawl back into bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it goes around and around. I replay the conversation with Dan in my head. Emo and sad definitely don’t fit my “brand,” but those words also don’t describe my life at all. Since I met Kai—and especially since he asked me to be his girlfriend—I’ve never been happier.
“Bird,” my mom says at my door, “I’ve made you some breakfast. Are you hungry?”
I look over at her, standing in my doorway with a tray of scrambled eggs and bacon, and feel bad about the way I treated her. “Yeah,” I say, sitting up. “Sorry about earlier.”
“Teenagers.” She shakes her head dramatically and I know all is forgiven as she walks into the room. She sets the tray on my lap, and I notice that she went out of her way to cut the crusts off my toast. “How was the meeting? Did they like the new song?”
And I don’t know if it’s this kindness that I don’t deserve or the shame I feel at letting down my label, but suddenly my throat closes up and I’m on the verge of tears. “No,” I say quietly.
She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “Judd?” she calls out.
My dad paces past my door and holds up a finger. “If I’d confirmed it, I would’ve put it in my calendar!” he booms into the phone.
Mom shakes her head. “Always on his phone. Did you ever get to spend any time with him? On tour?”
I shrug, thankful for the change of subject. “Yeah. I mean, we shared a bus.” I think about it. “We’d watch a movie sometimes, but I think with everything else that was going on, we liked to keep to ourselves on travel days so we could just rest up.”
She nods and I take a bite of toast. It looks like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t.
“Sorry,” my dad says, storming into my room. “But, Aileen, you can’t just interrupt me like that when I’m on the phone. It looks unprofessional and I’m trying to take care of our daughter here.”
“I understand that, but there are a lot of ways to take care of your daughter that don’t involve the people at the other end of that cell phone. I haven’t gotten the details, but it seems to me that a meeting didn’t go well this morning. Maybe you’d like to talk to her about it.”
Cue extremely uncomfortable tension. I study my food, not daring to look at either of my parents’ faces. My dad’s cell phone rings again, but he doesn’t answer it. Instead, he walks over to my bed and lets it ring… and ring… until it finally goes silent as he sits at the foot of my bed and sets his phone down next to him. When he gets a voice mail alert, we all glance at his screen, but to his credit, he doesn’t check it.
“Are you okay, Bird?” he asks.
I nod.
I’ve thought a lot about what Dan and Anita said, about getting a new manager out in California, about relocating even. At the time they approached me, I wouldn’t have considered replacing my dad, but their words have made me take closer notice of him the past few weeks, and I’ve seen how he’s struggling. It’s hard, but I think they may be right. And I think I was looking at it all wrong: I’m not replacing my dad, I’m hiring a manager and getting my dad back.
I take a deep breath and look up. This will be a tough conversation, but hey, that seems to be the trend this morning. “So, I’ve been thinking—” I start.
But then my dad’s phone lights up with an alert and I see that he’s changed his wallpaper to a picture of the two of us from when I was little: him strumming his banjo and me standing awkwardly next to him, my fiddle half my size. My face is screwed up in deep concentration while his is twisted in a smile that he was obviously trying to hide.
“About…?” my mom prods when my words trail off.
“Um—well—um,” I stammer. I decide to start with the easier sell. “I had a conversation with Dan and Anita a few weeks ago, and they mentioned that Open Highway is opening a Los Angeles office.”
My parents’ expressions of surprise mirror each other. Maybe this won’t be an easy sell.
“Anyway, they think that if I move out to California, even just part-time, it would really open a lot of doors for me.” My father is already shaking his head, and my mom’s face is blank, like she doesn’t register my words. “Think about it. TV, commercials, sponsorships, movies—it’s all out there.”
“You’re a country music singer,” my mother says slowly. “Isn’t Nashville where you need to be?”
“Most of the time probably,” I say. “But Anita says we should strike while the iron is hot and that a move to the West Coast could really grow my brand.”
“And just how is that supposed to work?” my dad asks skeptically. “There’s no way you could get an apartment by yourself, so we’re supposed to leave your brothers behind again and move whenever you get a notion to? Jump when you say ‘jump’?”
“Judd.”
I bristle. “Dad, it’s not like that.”
He shakes his head and looks out my window.
“Jacob’s going to be at UCLA in the fall,” I go on. “And Dylan’s twenty years old. Most kids are on their own at that point anyway.”
“California,” my dad scoffs. “Might as well be Mars.”
“It would be a big move, hon,” my mom says, softer in her delivery, but I can see from her expression that she’s just as against the idea. “Your father is stretched pretty thin as it is, so you go adding on a whole other house across the country and… I just don’t know.”
“Well,” I say, “that’s actually another thing they wanted me to talk to you about.” I pause, trying to find the right words. “Dan and Anita know this manager who’s supposed to be really great. He’s based out of LA, and they think since he already knows the business and everything… it might be time to hire somebody outside of the family. Somebody who already has connections and all that.”
My dad blinks as if I’ve just slapped him in the face. “Are you firing me, Bird?”
“No! Oh my gosh, no, Dad,” I say. “I just see how stressed out you are all the time, and this guy would have a whole office and assistants and—”
“No way,” he says, standing up. “Absolutely not.”
“Dad—”
“You get some big-shot manager who already has a ton of other glitzy celebrities as his clients and you think he’ll take care of you better than I will?”
“Not take care—”
“Those guys are so busy you’re lucky to even get ’em on the phone!” he says, picking his up. “I should know! It’s ridiculous, and I’m telling you another thing, Bird, they sure as spit won’t have your best interests at heart. They’ll just be thinking of ways to line their own pockets while working you to the bone.”
“I don’t think it’s like that, Dad.”
He shakes his head and stands up. “Since I am still your manager, I’m going to go make some more calls. And then send some follow-up e-mails. And then maybe I’ll take a good hard look at myself in the mirror and ask what in the world would make my own daughter not see how much I care about her.”
“Judd!”
“And you can just forget LA,” he says, really worked up now. How did this conversation get so off
course? “Drugs and drinking and what is that thing they’re all doing? Twerking? Hell no.”
“You honestly think I’d be into any of that?” I ask, getting angry, too.
“You think Billy Ray expected any of this?”
“Dad, seriously? Get a grip.”
“Oh, I’ve got a grip. I’ve got one on my baby girl and I’m holding on tight. No to LA. No to some Slick Rick manager.” He stomps toward the door, shaking his head. “You have no idea what it’s like out there.”
“Neither do you!” I say, pushing the tray off my lap. He slams the door and I spring out of bed, opening it behind him. He’s halfway down the stairs and I lean over the balcony, calling after him, “Why can’t you trust the girl you brought up?”
He stops and grips the banister and then turns back to me. He looks exhausted, worn thin, old. He exhales heavily. “I shouldn’t storm off when I get frustrated,” he says quietly. He clenches his jaw and looks away, then turns back to face me. “I’ll think about it, okay? I’ll talk to Dan and I’ll think about it. But that’s all I can promise right now.”
I nod, feeling a huge lump form in my throat.
“I just want what’s best for you, Bird.”
“I know, Dad,” I squeak out, and even though I’m a little mad and even though I wish he’d lighten up, I run down the steps and hug him. Because as upset as I am, honestly, he’s the one who looks like he needs it.
15
“THANK YOU, NASHVILLE!” I call. I can’t believe we’re doing the last show of the tour already—that this is it. It’s been crazy. I wave big as I walk offstage. “Jolene Taylor has a great show for y’all, so get ready!”
“Wait, wait, wait a minute,” I hear Jolene say over the speakers. Astonished, I look over and see her strutting my way in her tight pants, her microphone glittering. I notice as she approaches that none of that sparkle has made it to her eyes and wonder what in the world I’m in for. “Now quiet down, y’all, quiet down,” she says, laughing into the mic. She really is a beautiful woman; too bad it only seems to be on the outside. “Did y’all out there enjoy Bird’s singing?” she calls.
The Road to You Page 10