Chapter 20
July, Now
Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Denver.
Bozeman, Boise, Salt Lake.
City after city, stage after stage, and their energy doesn’t fade.
The band feasts on the crowd’s applause.
They dine on what their fans give them like kings and queens, lapping it up, indulging in it, and then they serve it right back while the crew does its best to keep things going as seamlessly as possible.
In Denver, at the Red Rocks Amphitheater, Penny and Misha pull me onstage during sound check when the guys are running late. We’re still workshopping a few things, and I offered up an idea yesterday Penny is currently running with.
“Imagine in prod,” she says, “we layer the chorus under the third verse, except the key for that one is in G minor, like you originally suggested. Can you try mimicking the layer?”
“How loud?” I ask.
“Very soft.”
We try it, Misha messing around with a simple piano accompaniment, Penelope on the guitar and me on bass, mostly so I can hear my own key.
I sing her chorus in G minor as softly as I can while she belts the words of the verse in B flat, and I know she’s happy with the way it sounds together when she smiles at me halfway through.
“What was that?” Gretta shouts below us, hauling along a bag of paper-wrapped sandwiches.
Henrietta’s trailing behind her sister, her grin wide. “Sounded new.”
“That was ‘Better Luck Next Time,’” Penny says into her mic, “coming to a recording studio near you this fall!”
The twins hoot and climb onstage.
“When do we get to hear your stuff, Paige?” Henrietta asks, handing me a bag of chips.
“Oh,” I say. All their eyes turn to me as we sit in a circle, unwrapping our lunches.
I’ve avoided talking about my own work with the others as much as possible to avoid the accompanying unknown of what I’m really doing here.
Some days, I can even convince myself that the deal is cancelled, that my place here with them, with Liam, is honest.
But then I remember all the ways Liam won’t touch me. Which means he doesn’t trust my intentions yet and maybe the others wouldn’t either.
“Whenever you want!” My voice is a squeak. “I’ve been writing some of my favorite songs ever on this tour. But I have other tracks from school, and I envision most of those having collaborators in the future.”
“Maybe if you let us hear them,” Misha says, “we can be your collaborators.”
I clear my throat and say, “I’d be honored. And if you want to record anything of mine, you can have it.”
Penny studies me. “You don’t want to record?”
“Not really,” I say. “I’m more focused on booking songwriters’ sessions right now. I think it’d be cool to get into producing one day, but I don’t have plans for an album of my own.”
“Me either,” Misha agrees, bumping my shoulder with hers. “No offense to you three. I’m just not interested in my empty yogurt cups getting sold on eBay.”
Penny snorts. “That was one time. But fair.”
“If they’re anything like what you riff on during sound check, I’d love to help work on your songs, Paige,” Gretta says. “My favorite cowriting experiences have been when I’ve gotten to work with friends.”
“Mine too,” Penelope agrees softly.
Friends. As in, multiple. Musicians who understand me, and who I trust.
This is exactly what I wanted for my songs even though I couldn’t articulate it to Paul Friedman in the moment, why I hated his suggestion of an unknown lyricist. I wanted my songs touched by my own community. I just had to go out and develop one.
“Tomorrow, during sound check,” I promise them. “We’ll run through a few.”
I glance at Liam near the top of the amphitheater, a lone body doing something with a measuring tape against nature’s rocky backdrop.
While the others keep talking, I reach up to the keyboard and start playing “Good Day.” Just the first few notes, so he knows I’m thinking about him.
From high up in the stands, Liam pauses whatever he’s measuring and fakes like he’s swinging a bat. I laugh under my breath.
“What was that?” Penelope asks.
“It’s Liam’s walk-up song from college,” I explain.
She frowns. “Like, baseball?”
My eyes narrow. Is it possible no one here knows? Not even Penelope?
What a shame.
And then the irony of that thought smacks me between the eyes, just as a memory pushes forward: Paige, for the record, I think that’s a shame.
“He was a pitcher,” I tell my friends, smiling gently. “He was really good. Had a full-ride scholarship. He was a top draft prospect for the majors before his senior year, but then he developed a shoulder injury that took him out of the game for good.”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“I had no idea,” Misha says.
“Me either,” Penelope adds, looking suddenly nauseous. She glances up at him. “Fuck. I can’t believe I didn’t know that. How narcissistic was I? Am I?”
It’s the first time she’s let slip around me that it’s something she ought to have known.
Misha laughs, but I think Penelope is genuinely having a crisis of conscience right now and I feel kind of bad for her.
Jake, Marlowe, and Josiah choose that moment to grace the stage.
“Jake.” Penelope turns to him with hopeful eyes. “What did you major in?”
“I didn’t go to college.” He looks at her funny. “Only Misha and Siah went.”
Her expression deflates.
Also: Penelope and Jake? I look to Misha for clues, but she’s distracted by Marlowe’s new tattoo he’s showing off.
Later that night, on the way to Boise, Penny writes the beginnings of a song called “one-way pillow talk” that is easily the most self-critical thing I’ve heard from her.
It might never make it on a Penelope Parker album, but I learn something invaluable from her that day.
Sometimes the heaviest hitters have always been there for you to write about.
You just have to pull back the curtain and give words to it.
Between Boise and Salt Lake City, I ride in the backseat of the car with Liam, my guitar splayed across my lap. I’m making new recordings of just the melodies I played for Paul, no words.
Liam’s in the front seat, his eyes on the road, but every now and then I’ll catch him watching me in the rearview.
“Are you ever going to let me drive?” I ask.
“I like driving.”
“I believe that’s true, but I also think you like sleeping and could use more of it.”
“I sleep like a baby, in your arms, every night.”
I flush and go back to strumming. The melody is good. It doesn’t need to change. I just can’t come up with any words for this one. I’m probably going to offer it to my friends.
“Writer’s block?” Liam asks.
I scrub a hand over my face, setting the instrument aside. “I thought I would spend this whole summer rewriting the lyrics for my preexisting songs. Instead, I’ve written six new songs and haven’t touched any of the old ones.”
“Can’t you get someone to write to track?” he asks.
I lift my eyebrows, leaning forward so my elbow is on the front console. “Look at you.”
“Picked up a thing or two.”
“I remember when you didn’t know what a pre-chorus was.”
“I remember when you didn’t know what a shortstop was.”
“Liam. I still don’t know what a shortstop is.”
He laughs, one of his hands reaching out to grab my forearm. His fingers skate across my wrist, down to my knuckles, and our fingers interlock over the cup holders.
I stare at our linked hands, my chest thrumming. He’s been doing things like this since Tucson, and I’m trying not to read into it, but the dominant part of me hopes it means Liam’s confidence in me is solidifying.
“I was against the idea of a stranger writing lyrics to my tracks when Paul suggested it,” I explain to Liam. “But now I think maybe if it was a friend…”
“You’d feel like they’d understand,” he finishes. “What the song is supposed to sound like.”
“Exactly.” He’s quiet, and since he doesn’t know we already discussed it, I say, “You’re not going to suggest I work with the songwriters we’re touring with?”
Liam frowns at the road. “I’m done pushing you into doing things you aren’t ready for.”
My breath stalls out in my throat. “I needed that push, Liam.”
“That push,” he says after a moment, “cost me the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I’m right here,” I whisper.
He shakes his head, tightening his hold on my fingers. “Yeah, but. We’ll never get those four years back.”
I watch his side profile for a moment, then crawl into the front seat and strap in. He lets me go while I’m readjusting but immediately grabs for my hand again when I’m settled.
“Did you know I was planning to follow you?” I ask. “If you’d gone to do a fall or winter league for practice before the majors, I would’ve tried to come. And I would have moved with you again that spring to whatever city drafted you.”
He sighs softly. “I knew.”
“How? We never talked about it. We weren’t even officially together.”
“We were together in every sense,” Liam argues.
“Except the part where we made it official out loud,” I say. “I never explicitly told you I was planning to leave Knoxville.”
“You didn’t have to, Paige.”
“What made you so confident I’d follow you?”
He turns to look at me, realizing I’m goading him into saying it. Saying that I had nothing, no one, no plan.
Only Liam.
“Because what else were you going to do?” he says.
A tear springs loose, and I wipe it out quick.
“I planned for my purpose to be you. And you planned for my purpose to be me. And yes, I was furious at the time, and hurt, but going to college for music changed the course of my entire life—my whole perspective on my future. Maybe those four years were never supposed to be ours.”
He glances over at me, smiling gently. When he speaks, his voice is a rasp. “I still thought of you every day. I ached for you. Some days it felt like I was only showing up for myself, for you.”
I nod. “It was the same for me.”
We arrive at the hotel a while later. Liam and I pile into an elevator, our expressions sleep glazed. We schlep our things into a corner of the room, pad to the bathroom to brush our teeth.