2. Ivy
IVY
The room had gone quiet after my little speech.
My cheeks flamed red. I never was too good at staying in my own lane.
Mama often says I dive head first into a situation with even a hint of injustice.
She is always on me about my impulsivity.
Has been since I was a little girl. Later, after the school counselor had me tested for Attention Deficit Disorder, I found out impulsivity was a common characteristic in those afflicted.
They also told me I had dyslexia, which explained why I had so much trouble learning to read.
Since then, plenty of folks tried to shame me out of a lot of things, including following my gut. But I knew now that no one understood what I wanted or needed better than myself. Heaven knows it was a long enough road to accepting myself as I am. But once I arrived, everything fell into place.
That said, every once in a while, like now, I felt the old insecurity creeping up the back of my neck, and suddenly I’m eight years old again, walking into the room for slow kids, holding tight to my Barbie lunchbox.
Across the room, Madeleine caught my eye and gave me the smallest nod.
She probably knew what I was thinking, just like I knew her.
Knox hurt her every time he attacked what she did for Jack and his band.
If he knew the times she’d come over crying after one of the run-ins, he might treat her a little better.
I had half a mind to tell him so. Not now, obviously. Now we needed to record a hit song.
In a small booth. With Jack Wilder and his muscles and his fantastic smelling neck and that hair that kind of dipped over his forehead in a manner much too sexy.
Currently, he seemed to be staring at me.
I couldn’t tell if he was taking my clothes off in his imagination or planning his escape. It could go either way, really.
Knox, on the other hand, was looking at me with a note of approval in his eyes.
Despite all the times he’d hurt my friend, I couldn’t help but respect him.
He was an artist, through and through. The real thing is what my Daddy would probably say about him.
A man who had fought his way out of poverty and into this room.
If he only knew how much he had in common with Madeleine.
“Right.” Rhett clapped his hands together, sharp, and the spell broke. “We’ve got a studio booked and a song to cut. Roman can wait till after lunch. Let’s put these two to work.”
These two. Me and Jack Wilder. My stomach did the swooping thing again.
I walked through a heavy door into the live room where the actual music got made.
The live room was big, with high ceilings and hardwood floors, the walls covered in panels of dark foam and patterned wood that soaked up sound instead of bouncing it back.
The second the door shut behind me, the room went quiet, like cotton in your ears.
No echo at all. My footsteps didn't make a sound on the rug.
Microphones stood everywhere on tall black stands, each one angled toward an instrument.
Off to one side sat Grant's drum kit, boxed in on three sides by waist-high padded panels on wheels—gobos, they called them—there to keep the boom of the drums from leaking into everybody else's microphones.
Guitars rested in their stands beside a couple of amplifiers, and the big black piano sat along the far wall.
Cables ran everywhere, taped down to the floor in fat silver strips.
A woman I hadn’t met yet sat half inside the little vocal booth, fussing with a mic cable. She had dark, soulful eyes and a long silver braid that hung down her back. “Hey, doll, I’m Marisol. I run the board for Hutch.” She tapped the page on the stand. “Chart’s right here if you want it.”
I glanced at the sheet. A chart, in a Nashville studio, isn't sheet music—not a fistful of notes climbing up and down the staff like we all learned in grade school.
It's the song's road map. The chords come out as plain numbers instead of letters—ones and fours and fives marching down the page.
Thus, the very same sheet works no matter what key a body decides to sing in.
Sections stack up in order, verse and chorus and bridge, with just enough chicken scratch to keep a picker from getting lost. There were a few marks for the rhythm, where the harmony slides in, how many times you go around at the end.
Every player in town could read one as easy as their own native tongue.
A good session singer can glance at one cold and nail a song on the first pass, never having heard it in his or her life.
Most of us propped one on the stand, even with a song we knew by heart, just so we wouldn’t blank on a line with the tape rolling. Not me.
“I’ve got it,” I said to Marisol. A touch too quick.
I never let on how hard the written word came to me.
I didn't want a soul knowing I was dyslexic or that I'd spent my whole life faking my way past a page.
Only my family knew the truth of it. Letters never would hold still.
They slid and swapped and turned themselves backward the second I looked away.
And, for me, music on paper was the cruelest of all.
The one thing I loved more than anything in life had eluded me as much as words on a page always had.
Music had been designed into its own whole language in a code my eyes refused to follow.
Notes crawled up and down those lines like ants, chords hiding behind numbers that would stay put.
So I'd learned the only way left to me. By ear.
By heart. Plus, this song I knew better than any chart could've taught me, because I'd helped write it.
“Finally Home” already lived in me, every note, beating right alongside my own pulse.
“Good girl.” Marisol patted the stool. “Then let’s go make Hutch look smart.”
Hutch’s voice came warm over the talkback from the control room, where he sat behind the glass with his hands laced over his round belly. “Y’all good? Jack, get on in there with her.”
Rhett entered the booth with his phone in hand, asking me if it was okay to film us while we recorded. “I have a feeling it might come in handy for marketing purposes.”
Jack came in behind him. “But only if you feel comfortable.”
“Sure, it’s fine with me. I probably should’ve done up my face,” I said.
You don’t need any paint on that face,” Jack said.
“Well, thank you kindly.” I made a little curtsy, feeling pleased. Very much so.
“Good stuff,” Rhett said as he placed his phone on one of those portable tripods. “I’m hitting record, so don’t say anything embarrassing.”
“I’ll try my best,” I said, laughing.
And then it was just the two of us, in a room the size of a closet, with two mics on tall stands, each behind a round mesh pop filter, angled so close that Jack and I stood barely two feet apart, facing each other.
My gaze traveled from his worn Lucchese boots, to his muscular thighs in jeans that fit him just right, and a close-fitting black T-shirt stretched against his broad chest that made my fingers ache to feel what was under it.
He had a fermata tattooed on the inside of his wrist. In music, a fermata is a small curved arc with a dot underneath that tells the musician to hold that note or rest longer than its written value. To pause for as long as it feels right.
I wanted to know why he’d chosen it. I wanted to know about everything Jack Wilder.
Finally, I looked up at his face. I was just over five feet tall without heels, and I guessed him to be around six feet, so I had to crane my neck to look into his eyes.
It was worth the strain. His eyes were the color of my mama’s sweet tea, but I suspected they might change depending on the light.
No matter the color, they exuded warmth, but also curiosity and intelligence and, most of all, a steadiness.
A man people counted on. A man who came through.
“Howdy,” I said softly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Hey. Me too.” He reached down to tuck a lock of my hair that had loosened from my ponytail behind my ear, then he bent over to speak directly into my ear. “You’re about the prettiest thing I ever set eyes on.”
Before I could react, a tech came in to the booth and settled a pair of headphones over my ears. The outside world clicked off, and I entered the one that always welcomed me home.
Jack had his headphones on now too. He found my eyes across that little gap and held them, and, Lord, this near I could see the pulse at his neck.
“Whenever you two are ready,” Hutch said. A red light came on over the door. Rolling. “Just sing it to each other. Forget we’re out here.”
The click counted us in. Four taps. Recorded before we arrived, the band rose up under it.
Grant’s brushed drums, soft as rain on a tin roof; Beck’s piano, achingly beautiful; Knox’s guitar a perfect complement.
And under everything, steady as a faucet drip, the wooden tick of the click track—the metronome that’d hold us to the grid.
Jack opened his mouth, his voice cracking in just the right way, making my heart beat faster.
My mama said I was born with a restless soul.
Always on the move, looking for more than rain on a tin roof.
When it was my turn, I gave myself to the music and the moment, feeling like it was only Jack and me in this world of our own making. No one and nothing could come between us.
My daddy said Tennessee’s your heart.
Little girl, no matter how far you go, the whispering pines still call your name.
Emotion flickered in those tea-stained eyes of his. He knew about the whispers that brought a person home, no matter how far you’d let yourself roam.
But go chase those dreams—knowing you can always come back home.
We traded the verses like that, back and forth like we’d done it a thousand times.
The bridge came up and we sang together, his low and grained and mine high and smooth.
Gooseflesh spread up the whole length of my arms. I felt certain we were going to do this in one-take.
I’d never experienced anything like it in my life.
Almost made our peace with a beautiful but lonely life.
I’d written that line about myself. But it was for him too. I just hadn’t known it at the time.
And then the chorus.
But the moment I saw you
I saw everything
All the torn pieces of my heart
Stitched into a patchwork quilt like my mama made
The only warmth I'd ever need
Jack was looking at me and I looked right back, and I knew like a lonesome girl does when she meets the right cowboy—I’m never going to be the same again. He’s gonna become my whole world and there’s not a darn thing I could do to stop it. Not that I wanted to.
No more restless soul
No more searching for more
Just you and the rain on the tin roof
And those whispering songs of the pines
We held the last note of the outro till it died on its own.
To tell me I’m finally home.
The click of the metronome went silent. Neither of us moved.
Nothing from Hutch for a good three seconds, before he said in a hushed voice through the headphones, “That’s the one, kids. We can all go home now.”
I turned away from Jack to look out at the control room.
The boys in the band were all staring at us like they’d just witnessed something holy. Beck had his glasses off, wiping the corners of his eyes. Knox was shaking his head like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. Grant had gone perfectly still.
Rhett and Madeleine were sitting together. He gave the thumbs-up. She gave me a slight smile, but the awed expression on her face was one I’d not seen before.
We exited the booth, and I excused myself to use the restroom. By the time I returned, the guys and Madeleine had already left for lunch. Only Jack, Hutch, and Marisol remained.
Jack seemed to be waiting for me, his back against a wall, arms crossed over his chest.
“You still here?” I asked.
“Can’t leave before I ask you something.” He took my hand and pulled me close. “Wanna go out to dinner with me tonight? I’ll take you to my favorite place in Nashville.”
“I love dinner.”
“Great. So do I. I’ll send a car for you. How’s six?”
“A car. How fancy.” I touched my fingertips to the collar of his shirt and looked up at him from under my lashes. “What should I wear?”
“Whatever makes you feel most like yourself.”
“You want me to show up in my birthday suit?” I asked.
His eyebrows raised as he placed a hand over his heart. “Good lord, pretty girl, you don’t want to give this old cowboy a heart attack on our first date. That would be a terrible story to tell our children.”
“We’re having children?”
“Maybe four or five. Depends.”
“Goodness. You’ll have to meet my mama and daddy before then. Regardless, I’ll wear my favorite sundress, so don’t you worry about your ticker.”
“You could bring your swimsuit. That’s almost like being in your birthday suit.”
“Does this restaurant have a pool?”
“We’re going to my house, and yes, I have a pool. I’m also a fantastic cook.”
“Jack Wilder, you know the way to my heart. I do love to eat.”
“What’s your favorite supper?”
I shook my head. “You won’t be able to make that.”
“Try me.”
“My mama’s chicken and dumplings. But don’t set yourself up for failure. I like a good burger too.”
“Challenge accepted. Chicken and dumplings it is.”
“The old-fashioned kind. Flat, not fluffy. The way they’re supposed to be made.”
“Flat, not fluffy. Got it.”
“I’ll see you later, then,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am. The car will be there at six.”
“Do you need my address?”
“That might be a good idea, yeah,” Jack said, chuckling. “You’ve got me so flustered, I’m losing my good sense.”
“Give me your phone,” I said. “I’ll put it in your contacts.”
He reached into his pocket and handed his phone to me. “You’ll need my password to open it.”
“You’re giving me your password?”
“That way you’ll know you can always check my phone because I’ve got nothing to hide.”
I smiled. “Good to know. Okay, then. Shoot.”
“It’s my sister Luci’s birthday. LW052394, followed by an exclamation point. I’ve had the same password since 2012.”
“No way that’s possible.”
“I never lie,” he said.
“I change mine all the time, mostly ‘cause I can’t remember what they are. It’s an unending circle of resetting.”
“You could write it down.”
“But then someone might see it,” I said. “And then they’d know all my secrets.”
“You have secrets?”
“One or two,” I said. “How about you?”
“One or two.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” I said.
“Deal.”
I headed toward the door, knowing he was watching my hind-end as I walked.
I wished it was a little rounder and plumper.
However, my whole family was cursed with bottoms as flat as a hotcake off the griddle.
Maybe Jack Wilder liked his girls flat in all the places they weren’t supposed to be.
I guess I’d find out when I put on my swimsuit and dove into his pool.