Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Good,” she says. “We can work with that.”
She taps the notebook against her thigh, nods once more, and heads back into the booth to start her post-show notes.
Six words and a nod. That’s all I get, and coming from Bex it’s enough. It feels about as good as the first time Josie heard me play and didn’t get up and leave.
I sit in the empty studio for a few minutes. The sound panels eat everything. No echo, no hum, just me breathing. On stage there’s always something after the last note. The roar. The techs tearing down the kit. Harrison spinning a stick between his fingers, asking who’s got the first beer. Here, there’s nothing. The room goes dead the second the light does, and it’s just me and the callers and the question of whether I helped a single one of them or just liked the sound of my own voice.
I replay the calls. The anniversary woman. The kid with the social media ultimatum. The sister. The man with the workshop. I think about what I should have said to the kid. I should have asked if the girlfriend had been cheated on before, should have dug deeper into why she was scared. I think about the man with the workshop and whether I pushed too hard, whether I should have validated his attachment to the house before I pulled the rug.
I grab my jacket from the back of the chair and kill the lights.
The drive home takes twelve minutes. Twelve. In the touring days it was twelve hours on a bus to a city I’d forget the name of by morning, and here it’s twelve minutes to my own bed and my own wife. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. I roll the windows down. The air has that late-October bite to it, cool enough to sting my eyes, carrying the smell of damp leaves and woodsmoke from someone’s fireplace a few streets over. The adrenaline drains out of me in slow waves, leaving behind the hollow, jittery feeling I used to get after arena shows. The come-down, the quiet reckoning with what just happened.
I drive past Ralph’s. The neon in the window is on, the parking lot half-full. I think about stopping in. The old version of me would have, to take the edge off with a glass of something brown. That man cost me ten years and damn near everything. The woman who took me back anyway is a few blocks from here, still awake, waiting up. I keep driving.
The house is dark except for the lamp in the living room. The porch light is on. She always leaves the porch light on.
I step inside and pull the door shut behind me. The house is warm after the cold drive, quiet except for the hum of the dishwasher finishing its cycle down the hall. These are the sounds I spent a decade on a tour bus learning to live without. I’m not doing that again.
Josie is on the couch. She’s wearing one of my old tour shirts, the faded 4225 West logo cracked across the front, the collar stretched out where she’s pulled it to one side. Her legs are tucked under her. Her wine glass sits on the side table, half-full, a ring of condensation marking the wood beneath it. She was waiting up.
“How was it?”
I drop onto the couch beside her. She shifts, swings her legs across my lap. I run my hand up her calf, over the curve of muscle behind her knee, and let it rest on her thigh. Her skin is warm through the fabric of her pajama pants.
“I think I liked it,” I say.
She reaches for her wine. Takes a sip. “Good. Because I listened to the whole thing.”
“You did?”
“Every minute. I sat right here with my wine and my phone, listening to every single call.”
I tighten my grip on her thigh. She watches me over the rim of her glass.
“You told that woman to hold her sister when it falls apart,” she says. “I almost called in to tell you I love you.”
I pull her closer by the leg. She comes, sliding across the couch cushion until her hip is pressed against mine, her knees draped over my lap, her shoulder tucked into the crook of my arm.
“I would’ve taken that call, Jojo.”
She sets her wine down. Her fingers find the collar of my shirt. She traces the edge of it, her fingertip running along my collarbone, light enough to make my skin prick.
“You were good, Liam. You were really good.”
“I told a twenty-something to ask his girlfriend what she’s afraid of. I’m not sure that qualifies as good.”
“You told a man to figure out what he’s protecting. You told a woman to hold her sister.” Her finger stops at the hollow of my throat. “You meant every word. People can hear that.”