Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ASH
" S o you and Rusty went on a date?" Lou asks a couple days later. We're driving from our place to Jane & Co., and while we should be talking about her having flown out to Nashville to find the guitarist for her tour, she can't get past Rusty taking me to a bar to cook and then eat.
"It wasn't a date. And if it was, it was fake," I say.
"Fake for who?"
"For everyone! He was playing his part. Some of the people at the bar were from Sugar Maple, so they can attest to us being together."
"Y'all are together enough that no one needs any convincing. I'd venture to guess most people have felt it was inevitable."
"Inevitable?"
" When Harry Met Sally . Men and women who are best friends either fall in love or they part ways. There's no middle ground."
I turn up the air conditioning. "There's a middle ground."
She looks at my hand on the dial. "Uh huh."
"It's hot. This isn't a sign that I'm squirming, or something."
"Uh huh," Lou repeats.
I reach over and close one of her air vents.
She opens it back up.
We're pulling up to the stop sign on the corner of Poplar when we see Chick Hanks. With his shirt on, thankfully.
I stop on the side of the road before we reach the intersection.
"What are you doing?" Lou asks.
"Check out Chick Hanks," I say. "He was shirtless and shoving a hose in gopher holes last time I saw him." I roll down the window. "How's it going, Chick?" I ask.
He looks at me with wicked glee on his face. "I'm gonna get the little buggers."
"Oh, great!"
"Heard about you and Rusty," he says, fiddling with a little black remote in his hand. "You tell him to watch the harvest times on that okra. I bought some on Saturday, and it was almost woody."
"I'll pass it on along, sir," I say. "I hope you get the gophers!"
"Oh, I'll get 'em, all right." He laughs at the small remote control.
"D'you ever try Juicy Fruit?" Lou asks. "My papaw swears up and down that if you open a few packs of Juicy Fruit, they'll eat it and get all gummed up and won't return."
"Juicy Fruit?" Chick laughs coldly. "We're miles past Juicy Fruit, girl. I've tried gum, moth balls, traps. Dumped jars of cayenne pepper. Planted all these doggone castor oil plants. I flooded them out. Now we're trying sonic vibrations."
Chick aims the remote control in his hand at a control panel, and I sit up high enough to notice DJ speakers all around his yard.
"Chick, I don't think those are sonic — " I start, but then he presses play, and Lou and I slam our hands over our ears as a deafening noise explodes from the speakers.
There’s a huge popping sound, and then the music goes quiet.
A handful of gophers rush out of a hole and scatter through the fence, but Chick is clutching his ears too hard to celebrate.
"What in tarnation?" a neighbor runs out of his house, yelling. "My dang fuse blew out!"
Chick’s wife comes out next. “Chick, why’d the power go out?”
And now more and more neighbors are coming out from farther down the street. And they're all descending on Chick Hanks, who's grabbing his ears.
"What's wrong with you? Why aren't you answering me?" his wife yells.
"I forgot to turn off my hearing aids! But I got 'em! Did you see their little legs running?" he cackles. "I got 'em!"
I laugh while Lou holds her hand to her heart, chuckling as Chick rolls around, moaning and celebrating. "Poor Chick," she says. "I really love small towns."
"Speaking of which, how's your family doing?"
"Oh, fine. Same as always. Momma's teaching singing lessons, and one of her students? — "
"That brat Olivia, I bet," I say.
"That's the one. Olivia tried to get into one of those American Idol knockoff shows and didn't make it past the second round, and her mom said it was because my mom isn't connected enough to the judges like she 'should be.' Momma explained that she dated the lead judge, and if that's not 'connected' enough for her, she's welcome to find a voice coach in the state who did. And she pointed out that fewer than a hundred people in the country made it into the second round and Olivia exceeded expectations for a sixteen-year-old. But Olivia's mom thought she should have made it further and called my mom a has-been and said all this stuff about how Olivia is the best student she ever taught, and Momma said she just stood there and smiled."
"Oh man. I wish your mom could name drop you so hard."
"She's Winona Williams. She doesn't need to name drop me. I wish I could name drop her ."
Lou's mom was a huge deal in the country world once upon a time, though she retired from music years ago. In my middle school P.E. class, we even learned the line dance to Heartbreak Hustle , one of her biggest songs. Lou didn't tell us who her mom was until junior year, after she'd already uploaded her first few viral hits. She's always been afraid of people thinking she got to where she is because of her mom.
The crazy thing is that Lou's already a bigger deal than her mom ever was, thanks to social media. But it's hard to break out of the mindset that a big recording contract means legitimacy. The old school mentality of indie equaling amateur has yet to die on any platform, let alone music.
"You know," Lou says, "Connor told me my mom was his first crush. He had posters of her all over his room as a kid."
"Connor?"
Lou straightens. She doesn't get red-faced like the rest of us do. She doesn't have a blushing gene. It must be all that lawyer-training. Instead, when she's embarrassed or pretending to act nonchalant, she improves her posture. "Connor Nash."
"Oh, Connor? No big deal, or anything," I tease. "You're just sending flirty texts like he's not a massively hot star."
"We're not sending flirty texts.”
"You're right. You've obviously passed flirty and have reached the 'deep, soulful texts' level if you told him who your mom is." I say.
"No!" Lou says. "We were talking about musical influences, and he mentioned my mom, and I had to pretend I was a fangirl, too, because obviously she influenced my style. "
"Just a little," I say. "I cannot believe you're texting Connor Nash."
"We're performing together at the end of my tour. It's a publicity stunt."
"You're both gorgeous, famous, and single. It's a meet cute."
Lou laughs and looks out the window, denying nothing.
Ten years ago, Connor Nash was in a duo — Duncan and Nash — that recorded one of the best albums in the history of alt-country. But the two split up right after and Nash went on to release his next album solo. It went multi-platinum and won a ton of Grammys and CMT awards. Somehow it appealed to music snobs like Lou, everyday music fans, and girls like me, who like a little of everything.
Meanwhile, Duncan went on a drunken bender and trashed a hotel room, crashed a sports car, and disappeared off the face of the earth.
Good riddance to deadweight, frankly.
But this isn't about Connor Nash. If Lou hasn’t entrusted her secret to him yet, I won’t worry about him. If I’m being honest, I think Lou's secrecy is over the top, but she's the one who grew up as the daughter of someone famous. I don't know how that shaped her, so I trust that she has a reason for it all.
When we reach Jane & Co., Rusty's standing in the conference room with everyone's drink order from the diner, as well as breakfast burritos.
My stomach growls seeing him. His hair is still wet from his shower and his eyes are puffy. He doesn't have the gaunt look of being tired. He has the look of someone who finally slept in after days of not getting enough sleep, and your body doesn't know what to do about it, so you get weirdly puffy and feel more exhausted than if you were running on fumes.
Or is that just my body?
Either way, I know Rusty is tired. He’s sacrificed his own priorities for mine again and again, and here he is, showing me that he's not planning to stop anytime soon, because he's holding a to-go cup and burrito out to me. Not anyone else.
Me.
"You are an angel, do you know that?" I bounce into the room, grab the tea and burrito, and kiss his cheek. "Have I told you lately how much I love you?" I ask.
And then I stop.
What did I just say?
Did I tell Rusty I love him?
Have I done that before?
I'm still standing with my face next to his, my body nestled into that space between his arms where he was holding my breakfast out for me.
"You can tell me that anytime you want," he says, and his voice drops so low, I don't hear it with my ears, but rather feel it in my chest. I'm not sure another living soul could pick up what he’s saying. He's using a frequency that vibrates only for me.
I take a small breath, and that hint of eucalyptus and mint from his shampoo draws me the last few inches in. I stand on my tiptoes to smell him, and when I do, my nose bumps into his neck, and he moves his head toward mine.
His hands close the space that he's kept this whole time, and they press me close against him.
I keep my face in his neck, just below his ear, breathing more and more shallowly. "You smell amazing," I say, but when I do, my lips brush against the skin of his neck, and his hands on my back shift so that he's clutching my blouse.
"Ash, what are you doing?" he asks in that low Ash-only frequency.
"I don't know," I whisper, my lips fully against his neck now. It's not a kiss, but it's sure as heck not not one. His skin is so smooth, I want …
I can't think about what I want.
But I also can't stop .
Do I want to stop?
"Isn't this the moment someone's supposed to interrupt us?"
"No," a voice says from the door.
Rusty and I fly apart.
The Janes are standing at the entrance to the conference room watching us with amused expressions. "By all means, keep going," Jane says.
"Don't let us stop you," Millie agrees, taking a sip of her Diet Coke.
"We can wait." Parker says.
"Heck, I'll grab some mistletoe if it helps," Lou says.
"It's May," Parker says.
"So?" Lou asks.
"So why would you grab mistletoe?"
"To help speed things along."
"You think going to the garage, opening up a box of mistletoe, and coming back all the way here with it would speed things along?"
"And you think I was being literal?"
"I'm not the poet here."
"No, you're really not," Lou teases.
The four of them take a seat, filling in around Rusty and me. We take opposite ends of the conference table, which doesn't make sense because we typically sit together. And we're fake dating.
Right. We're fake dating! I'm an affectionate person, and I'm getting carried away. Being all warm and touchy with Rusty comes as easy as smiling because we're already so close and because I really love cuddling. And hugging. And kissing. And Rusty, it turns out, is good at faking all of these.
Because we're faking! Because he GIVES ME NOOGIES.
Yeah, that argument is as weak as it sounds even in my own head .
"All right," Jane says when she sits. "Let's rebrand Sugar Maple."
By the end of the week, we have three videos ready. Sonny, Duke, and Tripp all show up to see our handiwork, so it's a full house when we press play in the conference room.
A time-lapse video starts from the perspective of a car driving into Sugar Maple. The video slows just long enough to see the Sugar Maple exit. And the voiceover is Lou sounding all throaty and ethereal.
"POV: You're in South Carolina and want a day trip to a cute southern town off the beaten path. So you take the exit for Sugar Maple."
The video speeds up and the car parks on Maple Street.
The rest of it is an ode to "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," with one craving leading to a fascination leading to something new and then leading to an adventure, all of which are unique to Sugar Maple. The video speeds up for movement and slows down to highlight attractions, like we planned. And Lou's voice is even better than I expected. She has her friend voice, her lawyer voice, and her Lucy Jane voice. They have subtle differences, but the Lucy Jane voice gives me chills. She ends the day in a cabin — Strawberry Fields — and her voiceover says, "Feel so content with your day that you never want to leave, so you find a place to stay that inspires you to write a song … "
And then the first chords of Strawberry Fields for Never start as it fades to black.
The conference room erupts into applause.
"That was perfect! "
"Genius video, Ash! Genius!"
"It's gonna be huge. "
Their words lift me up. I can feel how good it is. "We have two more, and then need to make another dozen," I say.
"Let me take a couple," Sonny says.
"I'll take the 'what to do with kids' video," Duke says.
The nagging self-doubt and fear of what Philip will say makes my ears go hot, but I push past it. I'm too grateful. Like Rusty said, I've developed deep friendships with people who care about the same things I care about. This is a win-win-win.
And I helped make it possible.
"Thanks, guys," I say. "I'll work on those over the weekend and see if we can post them ASAP. We're up against tradition, fear, and deep wallets offering a quick, easy payout rather than a slower, stronger legacy.”
“This is good, Ash,” Tripp says, “I was worried I’d have to buy the town myself to keep them from turning Sugar Maple Diner into a Vox ," Tripp says. “But you nailed it.”
Ugh. Vox is the epitome of wannabe hipster chains. It's a tapas restaurant that Dumfries Holding puts in every town it takes over. The food is overpriced, the music is too loud, and even the lighting tries too hard. I hate it.
I don’t hate the kind words from Tripp, though.
"I don't know much about marketing, but my grandpa taught us a lot about sales when we were kids. Remember?" Tripp asks Rusty and Duke. "That first summer at that fruit stand when we were 14? We were awful. We kept trying to push the wrong things on people. We wanted people to try the exotic stuff, and Tag kept redirecting us. What was it he said?"
Rusty smiles, looking lost in thought. "He said selling isn't about pushing something on folks that they don't want. Good selling is about taking the time to understand someone's needs and finding the product that meets it."
"I like the philosophy, but I'm not sure what it has to do with marketing Sugar Maple," I say.
“That’s what you did here,” Rusty says. “You made a video directed at people who want to fill a certain need and you’re showing them what Sugar Maple has that will fill it. It’s awesome, Ash.”
“Listen to your fake boyfriend," Tripp says. "He ain’t wrong."
Rusty ducks his head, and his hair falls in front of his face. What I see isn't a smile on his face, but … it's not a grimace, is it? What could he be grimacing about? Is he regretting our earlier … whatever it was? Affection connection?
Ew. That sounds like a mail-order bride service.
"Thanks, y’all,” I beam. “Now, should we hit post on this sucker?”
“Yes!”
We pull up the “Visit Sugar Maple” account we created and prepare the post. After every person in the room has given her or his blessing, we make it a collaboration with "Lucy Jane Official."
And I hit post.
Lou squeals and hugs me, while I tell my nerves and doubts to shut it. This campaign means a lot, and it's the first one I've ever taken lead on, but it’s good. My brain may want to second guess everything, but I can feel how good this campaign is in my bones.
We review the next two videos and make a posting schedule, and then Rusty stands up at the opposite end of the table.
"All right, y’all! Who's ready for some Double H hockey?"