33. Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
Grady
S aturday night the concert hall buzzed. The heavy red curtains were drawn, and it was thirty minutes to showtime. The ornate gold-and-red décor of the Stanley was too regal for tonight’s performances even if Trent insisted on calling the strip show classy. How many classy strip bars had Trent frequented over the years to be so sure the two places had even a passing resemblance?
With the clock ticking, I rushed around with a clipboard, trying to get a handle on who was performing and when. Emily had been slated to manage everything backstage, but with the Sullivans staying home, the four of us who were left had taken on multiple jobs. Part of me was grateful for the chaotic rush because the madness gave me less time to think about Maggie.
I’d sent Trent to talk to her since she was refusing to have anything to do with me. When I’d asked Trent later, he’d said Maggie “wasn’t in a good place,” “wasn’t herself,” and “needed time to sort out her shit,” which hadn’t exactly been comforting. What would more time do? Probably give her too many reasons to avoid me, convince herself we’d never work. We were supposed to be together. Years of being apart hadn’t smothered my feelings. I had no doubts, and Maggie telling me to go to LA had turned my certainty from cement to concrete. I’d do whatever I had to do to get her back.
From the other side of the stage, Joseph Goldtooth, who had been moved to props to compensate for their missing members, held up a pair of handcuffs. “Which box?”
“That one.” I pointed with more confidence than I felt to a cardboard box labeled with a performer’s name. We had sorted all those boxes. I didn’t know why Joseph was moving things around, but I didn’t have time to micromanage. There was no way tonight would go smoothly when our seven-person team had become four. Panic beat its wings against my chest. What if the event was a colossal flop?
We’d sold out. Maybe because I’d secured famous singers like Mia Malone, maybe because so many of the men in the town had stepped up—and out—for the cause. But if this fell apart, it would be on a grand scale, and it might burn some of my professional bridges to boot.
When Jason, a local groundskeeper and the third nervous man, hovered to say he was having doubts about performing, my head threatened to pop off and whirl around the stage. I was on the verge of letting loose with some not-so-carefully chosen words when a manicured hand snatched the clipboard from my grasp.
“Let me handle it,” Emily said, smiling. Without missing a beat, she looped her arm around Jason’s shoulders and talked about his hard work and the good cause. The performance was only a few minutes of his life, but the money they were raising might rebuild a resident’s house or fix a local business. When Jason walked away, he was nodding his head, a smile on his face. She had a gift I did not possess.
“Thank fucking God,” I muttered before assessing her appearance. In many ways, she was like Maggie. There wasn’t a strawberry-blond hair out of place despite the circumstances. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
She nodded but didn’t make eye contact. “I couldn’t stay at home. The—the funeral is tomorrow. It’s just all… you know.”
My frustration dissolved as I assessed her. “Yeah, I know.”
“Tyler came too.”
Maggie’s name was on my lips, and I couldn’t decide if I’d be relieved to see her, or if it would cause more stress.
“Maggie’s not coming. I’m sorry. None of us are doing well, but I think she’s doing worse.” She glanced down at her sheets and then at me. “She said you two were taking a break.”
“That’s what she called it? She told me to move to LA.”
“Can you blame her? You didn’t tell her about the job. Sends a clear signal.”
I sucked in a deep breath and tried to keep the annoyance from spilling out. “I wasn’t trying to send any signal which is why I didn’t tell her. I didn’t think I wanted the job, and by the time I decided I might, the timing was terrible.”
She flicked through the pages on the clipboard without reading them. “Have you told her how you feel?”
Of course I had. Hadn’t I? We’d talked about so many things in the days leading up to Jim’s death. But I hadn’t said the words, probably the most important ones I felt, not really. Circled them, definitely. I’d been having trouble reading Maggie. What did she feel? Still, the other night, I’d told her she had my heart. How much clearer could I be?
“Unless you’ve told her you love her,” Trent said, approaching from the side, “and we all know you do, then she doesn’t know how you feel, man. Maggie overthinks things. Even if she thought you might feel that way, her brain will talk her out of believing it, especially if you haven’t said the words.”
I raised my eyebrows at Trent. “Not those exact words, no. But I thought I’d been pretty clear.”
Emily gestured toward Trent. “Pretty clear is not clear. And that is my sister in a nutshell. Sometimes she thinks too much about the wrong things.”
“It’s not like I’ve abandoned her.” I surveyed them all. Had I read her and the situation wrong yet again? I flicked my wrist at Trent. “You told me she needed space to sort her head out.”
“Yeah, well. You fucked up, man.” He shrugged and ran his hand over the top of his hair. “Right now, she needs comfort and certainty.” He hesitated for a beat. “And I might have told her weeks ago you’d never stay in Little Falls. That you’d leave no matter what.”
“You did what?” I raised my voice, and people turned to stare at us.
Keeping my distance was excruciating when I knew what it was like to drown in grief. I’d fucked up by not telling her about the job offer. I understood that. Somehow, instead of protecting her, I’d made her think I didn’t care enough. Nothing could be further from the truth. And I’d never make that mistake again. I’d tell her everything, forever.
At the back of my mind, my chat with Jim played. He’d said Maggie glowed when she talked about me. Glowed . That was a beacon to stay the course, to believe maybe there was hope. The way she’d leaned into me before I’d left her house, as though she was one stiff breeze away from toppling over, had convinced me that I could salvage our relationship. Eventually, with enough time, Maggie would come around. Giving up wasn’t an option.
“I was still mad at you,” Trent said. “I didn’t know she meant that much to you. I was afraid you were killing time, and she’d get hurt. I wasn’t wrong. You did hurt her.”
I only half heard him, my mind consumed with ways to fix what had broken between me and Maggie. Comfort and security. I could give her those, I think.
I needed to lay myself bare, embrace enough discomfort for her to realize she was the most important factor in any decision. LA meant nothing if she wasn’t there, or here in Little Falls with me in spirit or on weekends, or whenever I could convince her to fly to LA to snatch fragments of time. I wanted her, and I would take her in any capacity she’d allow.
Time was precious. Like my father, Jim had died with no warning. The last two days since she’d asked me to leave, I’d done a lot of thinking. I was done hiding my feelings and decisions. Instead of spending my life guarding my heart, I intended to live the rest of this life with my heart open.
“Add me to the bottom of the schedule for tonight.” I glanced at Emily and ran a hand along the back of my neck. Impulsiveness hadn’t always been my friend.
“What’s going on?” Lila approached their group from behind Trent. “We have fifteen minutes to showtime. Isn’t this when we panic because we’ve forgotten something? Has anyone looked at the crowd? It’s insane. Kelvin is downstairs with his boyfriend running through dance moves with every panicked would-be stripper.”
“Grady’s going to close out the show.” Emily flipped her pencil around and wrote my name at the bottom of the list.
“What?” Lila frowned. “But Maggie said you didn’t enjoy performing in front of big crowds anymore.”
“That’s when I’m trying to be somebody I’m not. I’m just gonna be me tonight.” I looked down at my feet before staring hard at Lila. Just the thought of what I was going to do made me squirm with discomfort. “Do you think Maggie loves me?”
A soft laugh escaped her. “I know she does. She’s been half in love with you since she was seventeen.” A wry smile touched her lips before she met my gaze. “Nobody else measured up.”
A crease formed between my eyes as I looked at Emily. The phrasing clicked something into place which had been nagging me. “ I’m the measure? She was measuring other men to me ?” I needed to stop being such a fucking coward and ask the hard questions. Emily had said something similar a week ago, and I’d thought she meant I wasn’t measuring up either, not that I was the standard. I’d been so sure I wasn’t capable of meeting whatever invisible checklist Maggie had.
Emily’s mouth twisted into an almost smile. “Yep.”
“Jesus Christ. I’m such a fucking idiot.”
They all made various gestures of agreement.
“All right,” I said, my gaze shifting between them. “I’m going for it. Tonight, I’m laying it out there. No more misunderstandings.”
“Thank fucking God,” Trent said with a grin. “I was starting to think I needed to run a Communication 101 seminar for you two lemmings.”
“Fuck off.” I smiled to take the edge off the words. “Communication 101 with you as the professor?” I scoffed. “What textbook would you use?”
Trent pointed to the side of his head. “My superior brain.”
“Useless.” We grinned at each other. Our old comradery wasn’t always there, but when it appeared, I embraced the moment.
“So,” Emily said, running her finger down her list. “You’ll be on right after the group number. We’ll have to get Tyler to do an announcement at some point about the special performance or no one will know. It’s not in the program.”
The mention of the group performance brought forth a flood of memories. I’d spent hours helping Jim nail the footwork for that number. We should have been dancing together. My throat closed at the memory, and I was reminded again of what the Sullivans were enduring right now, what Maggie was trying to endure alone.
“Where’s Tyler?” Emily looked around, blinking rapidly, a sheen across her eyes.
Had her mind gone to her father too?
“Helping Mia Malone,” Lila said with a flick of her hand. “Some sort of wardrobe malfunction.”
Grateful for the distraction, I cleared my throat. “Should I help?” I turned in the direction of the dressing rooms.
“No,” Lila said. “She needed something sewed. Tyler found a sewing kit and is doing the mending in her dressing room.”
“Oh, yeah,” I agreed. “I guess he’d be the best one to help.” If anyone could rectify a wardrobe malfunction with a standard emergency sewing kit, Tyler would be the guy. His creativity and ingenuity were truly amazing. All the costumes he’d cobbled together for tonight’s performances were like pieces of art.
Without the costume distraction, my previous idea returned, and I considered the wisdom of what I was about to propose. If Maggie couldn’t talk to me directly, I’d talk to her. “You guys think you can live stream the show and convince Maggie to watch?” I looked between Emily, Lila, and Trent. There would be people in the audience who’d post the concert to YouTube, but I didn’t want to take a chance she might not see it, might not know.
“I already told you she loves you, which is against best friend code. But she’s hurting. I think being with you makes the hurt less.” Lila took a deep breath. “If what you’re planning to do will embarrass her—”
“It might,” I said, running a hand along my chin and down my throat. “Not in a hurtful way, I promise. I need her to hear me, really hear me. Maybe having my words recorded will help them sink in. She can play them back as much as she needs.” Comfort and certainty in a video. Maggie needed time to sit with a decision or a dilemma, to let it process. Putting my feelings out there so publicly might give her the distance but also the repetition she needed to see I was offering her my heart. That if we both hadn’t been a little on the back foot, letting our past cloud the present, she’d already know she had it.
Truthfully, I’d give her anything she asked for.
Lila, Emily, and Trent exchanged glances.
“I’ll go over to Maggie’s toward the end of the show, if everyone can run this without me for the last hour or so,” Lila said.
“We’ll be fine.” Tyler stepped into the circle. I wondered how long he’d been listening.
“Oh, hey.” Emily smiled. “You get Ms. Malone all fixed up?”
Tyler gave a sheepish grin. “Something like that. She’s… uh… interesting.”
Mia was into the spectacle aspect of her performances. Probably a phase, but I’d heard from lots of industry people she could be a bit much—demanding, childish, crazy clauses in her riders, blunt bordering on rude. I’d never had a problem with her or the things she’d wanted for her album. I liked straightforward, direct people, and Mia, for someone who was only twenty, was good at cutting to the chase. Her mother was a slightly different story, and I sometimes wondered if Laura was the root of the ugly rumors.
“If Lila is going there, I need someone to film.” I glanced around.
“Filming,” Kelvin said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I love to direct people.”
Kelvin had reappeared from the basement with his boyfriend in tow. They must have managed to calm the mass of nervous men before the curtains parted. “Think you can handle the pressure?”
“Of course.” He scanned the group, and he must have read their eagerness and uncertainty. “Wait. What am I filming?”
“Grady will fill you two in,” Emily said while she checked her watch. “The rest of us have things to get done before the curtain disappears in five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Lila squeaked. “Ahh. Panic! This is what panic feels like.” Her heels clacked across the floor as she strutted away with Emily. Tyler, Kelvin, and his boyfriend followed, chatting as they made their way to their places.
Standing in front of the heavy curtain, Trent turned to me.
“I don’t need to hear I fucked up again,” I said, holding up my hand. My own version of panic was seeping into my gut. If I did this and she still rejected me, the performance would live on the internet forever. Not exactly an appealing thought. I really valued my privacy. Songwriting, rather than singing, had a lot of perks.
“Nah, I wasn’t going to say that. I mean, you did, but I don’t need to say it again.”
I gave him the side-eye and scratched the stubble emerging on my cheek.
“I’m proud of you,” Trent said. “Yeah, the rest of us did a lot. But you brought big names here tonight for the town, people who drew the sold-out crowd.” He stared at his feet and shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “And when Jim died, you didn’t buckle. I thought you might. You carry Dad’s death differently than me, and it’s been pretty clear during the Small Town Saviors practices that Maggie’s dad meant a lot to you. I didn’t know how far you’d be set back.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and then cleared it, hoping my voice didn’t portray how much Trent’s words meant. “I’m trying. I’m really fucking trying.”
“It shows. She’s no fool. She’ll see it too.” He drew me into a hug before wandering to the side of the stage to talk to the first group of performers.
With a sigh, I followed his lead and grabbed the box of props to dish out to the dancers, a group of four men dressed as coal miners.
The show would open with a bang, and if I was lucky, it would finish with one too.
Two songs later, things were ticking along, and Trent was up for his solo performance. From the sidelines, I saw Emily straightening Trent’s bow tie on the other side of the stage, and then she snapped one of his suspenders. Lila and Emily had decided to make Trent a straitlaced nerd. The image was the opposite of the rough, tattooed bad boy most of the town believed him to be. Trent took his spot in the middle of the stage with a clipboard in his hand. He glanced over at Emily and flashed her something on the clipboard. Whatever was there made Emily burst into laughter. My brother had never been short on charm.
The curtains rolled back, and Trent pushed his glass-less frames up his nose and pretended to read through the clipboard. When the opening beat of “SexyBack ” by Justin Timberlake hit, Trent dropped the clipboard and looked around as though he wasn’t sure who the song was talking about. Then, with a shrug, he peeled off a suspender, and the crowd went wild. The body rolls and the hip-hop dance moves followed in quick succession.
Kelvin had mentioned that Trent had gotten extra lessons from Amy, the dance coordinator I brought on board. I’d assumed that was a euphemism for Trent charming Amy into bed, but he’d definitely learned a thing or two.
On the other side of the stage, Emily and Lila stood in the wings, admiring their handiwork. Seeing them look so proud and happy was a nice change from how they’d both appeared the last couple of days. Would Maggie have stood beside them? Had the same pleased look on her face?
Trent was winning over the crowd with each hip thrust, each piece of discarded clothing. When Trent ripped off his tearaway pants, the sound of the crowd was deafening. I grinned. Were the citizens of Little Falls ready to welcome Trent back into the fold? Or were they just so rabid for a naked, ripped body they’d take anyone as long as he danced well and looked good? I hoped there were people in the crowd who scanned the organizing committee on their programs for the night and recognized Trent’s name as a founding member.
“What do you think?” Kelvin asked.
“Feeling pretty proud of my little brother right about now.”
“I hope you aren’t the only one.” Kelvin stared out at the crowd. “You nervous? Do you still get nervous?”
Nerves should’ve been fluttering in the pit of my stomach. The signs of an impending performance were almost always the same. Fluttering stomach, cold sweat down my back, a sinking feeling I’d fuck something up. But when I considered Kelvin’s question, I realized something. “I’m not nervous, actually. Doing this feels right.”
On stage, Trent was down to some tight, white boxer briefs. Had he gotten a spray tan? I rubbed my face at the thought.
As the song came to a close, Trent tossed his glasses across the stage and turned his back to the crowd. With his fingers in the waistband of his boxers at the back, he looked over his shoulder at the crowd.
Please let him remember we agreed there’d be no total nudity.
The final words of the song rang out and the lights cut out just as it appeared Trent was going to lose his last piece of clothing.
Thank God .
I breathed a sigh of relief while the crowd went wild with cries for an encore, and the curtains closed.
Joseph Goldtooth rushed around the stage gathering Trent’s discarded items.
“What’d you think?” Trent asked, ambling over to us.
“Those lessons paid off,” Kelvin said, grinning.
“She was an excellent teacher.” His answering grin told me he hadn’t been wrong about what the lessons had entailed.
“You definitely worked the crowd.”
“I got a little nervous.” Trent admitted, his smile fading. “I recognized a couple people right at the front. But then when they started cheering, I don’t know, I just went for it.”
“Definitely memorable.” I clapped him on the shoulder. Other than Kelvin and the guys in the group routine, Trent was probably the only other solo performer I knew who could dance with some rhythm.
“I hope so.” Trent accepted his discarded clothes from Joseph Goldtooth as the next performer took center stage. “It’d be nice to be known for something else, something positive.”
I kept my gaze focused on the heavy red curtain and took a deep, steadying breath. Most of the buzz behind the stage had quieted down. The final huge group number had passed. Mia Malone had come and gone. A few of my other musical friends had left in limos, and now it was just me, a stage, and a guitar.
Unlike when I played in the open mic night months ago, I was wishing to see Maggie’s face for an entirely different reason.
“Where do you want the camera?” Kelvin scrolled through some of his apps to find the one he and Lila had agreed would be best for recording and live streaming.
“Maggie needs to know I’m doing this for her. So, the tighter you can frame me, the better. I want her to feel like she’s in the room with me.”
He tapped some buttons on his phone and tested the volume. “It’s been a good night,” Kelvin said as Tyler continued his spiel out in front of the curtain. “I hope Lila can get her to watch.”
The guitar was slung across my back, and there was a stool a few feet in front, which I might use after I’d spent time wooing the audience, which was really Maggie. I couldn’t care less what anyone in the crowd thought when this was over.
I closed my eyes and sent a little prayer out into the universe, hoping it landed with Maggie’s dad. Jim would want us to be happy, and he’d want Maggie to feel comforted and secure.
“Even if she can’t watch tonight, I’m counting on all those people out there with their phones and cameras and curiosity to compel her to hear me out.”
Jim’s advice was at the forefront of my mind. I was meeting the hard things head-on and fighting for what I wanted.
Maggie.
I wanted Maggie, and I needed her to know exactly what I should have told her weeks ago.
From the other side of the curtain, Tyler said, “And now, to close out the show, a special performance from Grady Castillo. It’s a real treat, ladies and gentlemen. What you’re seeing tonight, you’ve never seen before, and you’ll never see this exact performance again.”
I sucked in a deep breath and looked at Kelvin. “Don’t fuck up.”
He laughed. “Same, man. Same.” Then, Kelvin took a few steps back and raised his phone to me as the curtains parted.