2. Savannah #2
“You have four.”
“Cruel.”
“Efficient.”
The interview took seven.
The interviewer told me the show had been incredible, then asked the same questions I had answered in Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Tampa.
How did it feel to sell out the arena?
Unbelievable.
What was my favorite part of touring?
Meeting the fans.
Was the next album more personal?
Every album was personal in a different way.
Was I dating anyone?
Sophie coughed loudly behind the camera.
I smiled.
“My schedule is my most committed relationship right now.”
The interviewer laughed.
Everyone laughed.
The answer would appear online within an hour under a headline suggesting I had made a devastating confession about love.
The meet-and-greet came next.
Fifty people in twenty-five minutes.
Smile. Hug. Turn slightly toward the light. Ask names. Sign posters. Accept bracelets. Avoid promising things. Never look rushed, even when someone was already guiding the next person forward.
Most interactions lasted less than a minute.
A girl named Kayla told me she wanted to become a songwriter. I told her to write the songs people advised her not to write.
A man in a cowboy hat asked me to sign his chest. I signed the hat.
A woman brought a photograph of herself and her wife dancing to one of my songs at their wedding.
“They wouldn’t play it on the country station where I grew up,” she said. “But we played it anyway.”
Her wife squeezed her hand.
I looked down at the photo.
They were laughing beneath a string of lights, foreheads touching, completely unafraid of being seen.
For a moment, I forgot the cameras beside us.
“I’m glad you did,” I said.
The woman hugged me.
It was against the usual rules, but I hugged her back.
When they moved on, Sophie leaned toward me.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
The word came automatically.
Always fine.
The label dinner was held in a private room at a steakhouse ten minutes from the arena. Richard Greene sat at the head of the table, smiling as he talked about numbers.
Streaming growth.
Radio adds.
Merchandise sales.
International expansion.
My name passed around the table more frequently than the bread.
Savannah was outperforming projections.
Savannah had tested strongly with younger listeners.
Savannah should consider a deluxe version of the album.
Savannah needed to capitalize on momentum.
I ate three green beans and half a roll while six people discussed how much more of Savannah the market might absorb.
Rachel sat beside me, occasionally changing the subject when my expression became too honest.
Richard raised his glass.
“To the biggest tour of the year.”
Everyone lifted their drinks.
I did too.
“To Savannah.”
“To Savannah,” the table repeated.
The name sounded different there than it had in the arena.
Smaller.
More expensive.
After dinner, they went to a private bar on the hotel roof.
I claimed I needed vocal rest.
That was not entirely false. Speaking to another human being felt increasingly ambitious.
The hotel suite was on the thirty-second floor and large enough to host a small wedding or a deeply uncomfortable corporate retreat. There were two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a dining table for eight, and a living room no one would ever live in.
A welcome basket waited on the counter.
Wine. Chocolate. Fruit. A handwritten card from the hotel manager.
WELCOME, SAVANNAH!
Someone had placed one of my albums beside it.
I turned the album facedown.
Then I ordered grilled cheese from room service.
The woman on the phone called me Ms. Brooks four times.
I changed into an oversized T-shirt, removed my makeup, and spent ten minutes trying to pull the rhinestone pants off without contacting emergency services.
When the food arrived, a hotel employee wheeled in a table set for one.
White cloth.
Silver cover.
A tiny vase with a single yellow rose.
“Anything else, Ms. Brooks?”
“No, thank you.”
He hesitated near the door.
“My daughter is a big fan.”
I smiled.
“What’s her name?”
“Lily.”
I signed a hotel notepad for Lily while my grilled cheese cooled beneath the silver cover.
After he left, the suite became quiet again.
Not normal quiet.
Hotel quiet.
Air-conditioning humming through rooms no one needed. Traffic thirty floors below. The distant click of an elevator opening in a hallway that smelled like carpet cleaner and expensive perfume.
I sat at the table.
The grilled cheese had been cut diagonally.
At home, my mother always cut it straight down the middle and insisted diagonal sandwiches were structurally unsound.
I picked up my phone and opened her messages.
Mama: Call me when you’re done, baby.
Sent three hours ago.
It was after midnight in Tennessee.
I typed: You awake?
The reply came almost immediately.
Mama: Unfortunately. Your father is watching a documentary about bridges like we don’t have enough problems.
I laughed.
Then I called her.
She answered in a whisper.
“Hey, Annie.”
My throat tightened before I could stop it.
Not Savannah.
Not Ms. Brooks.
Not the biggest tour of the year.
Annie.
“Hey, Mama.”
“You eat?”
“I’m eating now.”
“Something green?”
“I had green beans.”
“How many?”
“That feels invasive.”
“Three?”
“Possibly.”
“Annie.”
“I had a roll.”
“That’s not green.”
“It had emotional vegetables.”
She sighed the way mothers sighed when their adult children were famous enough to own houses but still could not be trusted to eat dinner.
“How was the show?”
“Good.”
“Only good?”
“Very good.”
“That’s better.”
I looked at the untouched rose in the middle of the table.
“Twenty-two thousand people.”
“My goodness.”
“They sang the whole last chorus.”
“I bet that was something.”
“It was.”
She waited.
My mother had always known when silence was doing more work than words.
“You sound tired,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.”
I pulled a corner from the sandwich.
“It’s just a long run.”
“How many more?”
“Eleven shows.”
“And then?”
“Three days off.”
“And then?”
“Rehearsals for the award show.”
“And then?”
“Europe.”
“And after Europe?”
I smiled faintly.
“Are you trying to prove a point?”
“I’m trying to find the part where you come home.”
“I was home last month.”
“For thirty-six hours. You slept through twelve of them and spent six talking to a camera crew in the kitchen.”
“They liked the kitchen.”
“I like you.”
The simplicity of it hit harder than it should have.
I looked out through the windows at Dallas glowing below me. Thousands of windows. Thousands of people behind them, brushing their teeth, arguing over television remotes, forgetting to move laundry into dryers.
Ordinary lives.
The kind people thought I had escaped.
“I like you too,” I said.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes.”
The answer came gently this time.
It was still a lie.
Not a large one.
Just large enough to live in.
After we hung up, I ate half the grilled cheese and left the rest beneath the silver cover.
I washed my face again even though there was no makeup left.
Then I stood in front of the bathroom mirror.
Without the stage lights, my skin looked tired. There was a faint red mark where the microphone tape had rubbed my back and another at my waist from the rhinestone pants. Glitter remained near my hairline despite two attempts to remove it.
Famous people always looked tired.
Ellie had been right about that.
I did not know it yet.
On the counter beside me lay the laminated pass I wore backstage.
My photograph.
My name.
SAVANNAH brOOKS — ALL ACCESS.
All access.
I turned it over.
Then I walked into the bedroom, climbed beneath sheets I had not chosen in a city I would leave before breakfast, and listened to twenty-two thousand people disappear from my life at once.