Chapter 28
The Festival
Renée
Jonah stands next to his Yukon, now parked in our driveway, with all four doors open as wide as his arms. He’s wearing dark jeans with a white undershirt and lighter denim shirt over that.
His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and he’s pulled half of his hair back.
He’s delicious. His enormous smile and the way his eyes light up when we step off our front porch has me soaring.
“Ladies, your chariot awaits.”
The girls bound for him, each giving him a hug and gushing about their excitement for the festival today. He hands each of them a four-leaf clover that he’s pressed between two strips of clear tape, and I can’t stop my laughter when they lose their marbles over it.
He’s already installed their booster seats, but I double-check that they’re installed correctly.
He simply grins at me when I’m satisfied and leads me to the passenger seat.
His large hand cradles mine before he assists me high up into his SUV, and I catch a whiff of his decidedly sexy sage and citrus cologne.
“You look beautiful,” he whispers, so close he knows only I can hear it.
“Thank you.” It’s then I realize my thin denim dress is the same shade as his shirt... and I like that we match. I like it a lot. “You’re very handsome yourself,” I whisper back. To my great pleasure, the apples of his cheeks burst into a shade of pink, and he bites his bottom lip.
I straighten out my dress once he closes my door.
It’s shorter than any skirt I’ve worn as an adult, but Amber insisted I wear the dress.
The hemline ends just below mid-thigh, and it’s modest by most people’s standards.
I’ve paired it with tall suede boots and there’s something about the combination that has me feeling myself.
I like the way I look, and when Jonah hops in the driver’s seat, I catch his gaze going straight to my exposed knees.
The corners of his mouth only curl more devilishly when his eyes crawl up my body.
Oh yeah, I think smugly. This boy likes the way I look, too.
My oldest cuts through the tension. “Can we please go?”
The drive takes an hour, but it passes quickly with all the questions Jonah has for the girls. He asks about their favorite subjects and their favorite songs. I play passenger DJ with his phone, and he happily listens to all their suggestions.
When we arrive, he leads us past the long festival line, heading straight to the front.
“We’re cutting,” Delta says worriedly.
“No we’re not. We’re VIPs.” He hands the tickets to the staff member who scans them and sends us through with wristbands.
The grounds are filled with music,1 and people milling between vendor tents, food trucks, and a beer garden. On the far end of the festival grounds is the stage, set low into an amphitheater. All at once a memory hits me upside the head and I stop.
“I’ve been here.”
Jonah flicks his eyes from me to the stage and back. “For a concert?”
“I’ve performed here with my parents. I remember this stage.”
“When you used to be a singer with Grandma and Grandpa?” Delta asks.
I nod. My girls knew a little bit about their famous grandparents before their father passed away.
Amber helped me open up more to them in the years that have followed, but this last week I’ve been spilling my guts to them.
I finally felt ready to teach them the significance of bluegrass in our family.
Online, I showed them pictures and videos of our performances.
What shook them the most out of everything wasn’t that they had famous grandparents or that we toured across the country—it was that their mom could really sing.
Not just a little tune hummed into their copper heads before bedtime.
“Yeah,” I reply. “When I was a singer.”
Jonah hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward the stage. “Want me to go backstage and see if they need a world-famous bombshell to headline?”
I giggle, “Don’t you dare. I think I would die if I went up there right now.”
He scoffs. “I was talking about me.”
“You’re famous?” Delta asks.
“Oh yeah!” He hoists Lo up in his arms as we make our way down an aisle. “Have you ever heard of a band called Agony Nectar? It’s... pretty much the coolest band ever. But do you know what we don’t have? A pretty mandolin player.”
I roll my eyes and Lo points at me.
He feigns surprise. “Really? Y’think she’d do it?”
Loretta’s smile is crooked and she’s missing a tooth, but this moment, with her little arms wrapped around his neck as he carries her through a throng of people, she’s never been more happy.
And neither have I.
“Here we are,” Jonah says, stepping into an intimate, sectioned-off area with outdoor lounge seating and a coffee table.
“This is where we’re sitting?” I ask.
He sets Lo down and the girls flop into cushioned armchairs. “We’re so close to the stage,” Delta cheers.
Jonah joins them and spreads his muscled arms over the back of the couch and crosses one foot over his knee. “Heck yeah, this is where we’re sitting. VIP treatment, remember?” He winks. “It’s reserved for us all day. We can come and go as we please.”
A young man in a red polo and holding a note pad comes up to us and tells us he’ll be our server. He explains that he’ll fetch us any drinks we’d like and directs us to help ourselves at the VIP buffet at any time. He also offers to bring us blankets if it gets chilly later.
I grew up well-off. No, my parents weren’t rockstars, but they did well enough that this kind of treatment was fairly standard for me. But it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced this.
Our server takes our drink orders and the girls eagerly ask to see the buffet. We take them, and Jonah loads up a couple plates with hors d'oeuvres and the giant soft pretzel Lo needed.
A funky bluegrass band of women has taken the stage when we get back to our private patio, and our server delivers our drinks.
The girls chow down like the dainty and refined women I’ve raised while bouncing around to the music.
Jonah resumes his spot on the couch. He holds a beer in one hand while the other rests behind me.
“Cheers,” he says, before our plastic cups clink.
“Cheers.”
For more than the last decade, if I went out to eat, I was mindful of prices and only ordered water.
But Jonah seems like the kind of man who orders pre-dinner cocktails and appetizers and dessert.
It’s mind-blowing that I’ve somehow found myself a part of this scene I didn’t think I’d ever be a part of again.
As every second ticks by, I’m rudely aware that our bodies are not touching. I’m also tantalizingly aware of the heat pouring from his body and how it’s amplifying his scent. I could easily lean a couple inches closer and I’d be cradled under his arm.
“I’m sorry Amber couldn’t come,” he says.
“She is too. But the country club was hosting a banquet today, so she had to work.”
“I’m glad you have each other again,” he says. “I’d be lost without my siblings.”
I weigh his words. “I was lost for a long time. Amber can be chaotic, but she has my back... even when I didn’t think I needed support. Even when she was pushed out of my life, she didn’t blame me.”
He juts his chin forward. “And she loves these two like they’re her own.”
I sigh, “That she does.”
“But that’s not hard,” he grins, watching them inhale garlic shrimp and sway to the music. “They’re amazing, Renée.”
I have to take a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart.
If he would have said that to me after he first moved in, I would have snarled at him because those are my babies.
I know exactly how amazing they are and if another man told me that, I’d consider biting their head off.
But now I’m sitting next to a man so pure and kind and wholly unbothered by our age difference, a man who has done nothing but respect my boundaries and push in where it was safe. Somehow, this himbo made me trust him.
With one more steady inhale, I lean into him. “They like you.”
Without skipping a beat, his arm falls over my shoulder, like he was waiting for me to do exactly this. “I like you.”
I can feel his heartbeat and the slight way his chest puffs out.
From the outside (and from an antiquated heteronormative facade) it may look like he’s the leader, the one in charge.
But he knows as well as I do I’m the one captaining this ship.
And the pride that’s obviously swelling inside him right now?
It’s feeding me while a dull ache forms between my thighs.
“I like you too,” I murmur.
For as smart as my girls are, they don’t blink an eye when they finally catch us snuggled into one another. I was mentally preparing for a reasonable explanation, but they’re more concerned with lemonade refills and visiting the vendor tents.
That’s how we find ourselves hand-in-hand, strolling back through the festival thoroughfare, with my youngest on his shoulders while my oldest holds his other hand.
There must be over a hundred vendors selling everything from banjos and records to T-shirts and jewelry.
“Mom, look!” Delta gasps, and ducks into the next tent up. When we come into view of her find, my jaw drops.
“No way,” Jonah breathes. A T-shirt hangs on the end of a rack with stylized portraits of me and my parents.
All three of us are frozen in time with our mouths posed in song—our instruments hung around our shoulders.
And arching at the top in familiar font, just below the neckline, it reads "The Band Wilde. "
Jonah’s excitement only skyrockets my daughters’. He gently lowers Lo down to the ground before searching for more sizes. “Can you believe this?” he asks, holding the garment against his body. “I mean look how cute you are!”