5. Ivy
IVY
Ishowered in the pool house before getting dressed. I should’ve felt self-conscious. Instead, I felt warm and loose and strangely at home. I washed my suit out in the sink, wrung it dry, and hung it on a towel rack, figuring I’d come back for it after it was dry.
When I returned to the kitchen, he was already there, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, no shoes.
We walked back through the great room, hand in hand.
Knowing what I knew now about his childhood, I saw the house through a different lens.
That of an eight-year-old dreamer, building a house for the family he hoped to have.
Oscar had decided to accompany us on the tour, following silently behind.
The kitchen opened into a wide living space with ceilings that seemed to go up forever.
On one side, a stone fireplace rose nearly to the second-story windows, with a thick wood mantel.
Cream-colored sofas faced each other over a broad square coffee table, and behind them a long console table held books, lamps, and a couple of framed photographs turned at angles.
I itched to poke around, looking at each one and asking questions, but I decided to save that for another time.
The whole back wall was glass. Tall black-framed doors and windows looked out over the patio, the turquoise pool, and the dark Tennessee hills beyond. At night, with the pool lights shimmering and the house reflected back in the glass, it looked almost dreamlike.
He led me through a set of double doors into a den that felt like the opposite of the great room.
Darker. Cozier and masculine without being cold.
The walls were painted a deep smoky green, and there were leather club chairs angled toward a television hidden inside a cabinet.
Bookshelves lined one wall, filled with biographies, poetry, books on songwriting, music history, and a few old paperbacks with cracked spines.
“This is where I watch football with the boys,” Jack said. “I don’t trust them on my cream-colored sofas.”
“It seems like the perfect spot for football parties,” I said, imagining the whole gang here, sprawled in chairs and on the floor.
From there, we went down a hallway where photographs were displayed on the walls.
Jack and Rhett as teenagers, scrawny, with Justin Bieber hair, standing in front of a trailer.
Jack had a guitar around his neck. Rhett had a stack of books in his arms. There was another of a little girl missing one front tooth I assumed to be Luci.
Another was of an older woman on a beach with a giant rock behind her, blonde hair blowing around her face and grinning at the camera.
“That’s my mother,” Jack said. “From last year when Luci and I went out to see her in Oregon.” He tapped the glass in front of the photo. “That’s Haystack Rock. Famous landmark in Oregon.”
“I’d like to see that,” I said.
“You will.”
I tucked that away to think about later.
Oscar rubbed against my bare legs and, without thinking, I picked him up for a snuggle. He didn’t protest, which surprised me. Instead, he started purring.
“Aren’t you the sweetest?” I said into his ear, before putting him back on the floor.
“He’s really friendly for a cat,” Jack said. “No one knows why.”
We climbed the wide staircase, the dark wood banister polished smooth under my hand.
Jack showed me three guest rooms, each with its own personality.
One had a brass bed, white quilts, and navy ticking stripe pillows.
One had twin beds under the eaves, plaid blankets folded at the foot, and a window seat overlooking the pool.
The third was softer, with pale blue walls, gauzy curtains, and a little writing desk positioned in front of the window.
“Who stays here?” I asked.
“Mostly nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“My band sometimes. Luci when I can convince her to stop working long enough to visit. Rhett, if he’s too tired to drive home after we’ve been working late.
My mom once in a while. She doesn’t stay with me often, though.
Says the house is too big. Isn’t that funny?
After all those years in a small trailer, I’d have thought she’d welcome space. ”
“Small spaces make her feel safe,” I said. “I understand that. Less chance for chaos.”
“That’s the second time you’ve used the word chaos tonight.”
“I want you to understand up front what it’s like to be with me,” I said, only half joking.
We passed a closed door at the end of the hall, and he kept walking.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“My room.”
“I don’t get to see it?”
He glanced at me, something warm and wicked glinting in his eyes. “You asked for a tour of the house, not a test of my self-control.”
Heat rushed my cheeks. “Very gentlemanly of you.”
“I’m trying.”
“Are you succeeding?”
“By the skin of my teeth. Which means we better head downstairs before it gets ugly up here.”
I laughed. “I doubt it would be ugly. Whatever happened in there.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “There’s one more room. Downstairs.”
He led me back down the staircase, across the great room, and into a short hallway I hadn’t noticed before. At the end of it were two old sliding doors, darker than the rest of the house, the wood nicked and scarred in a way that made me think they hadn’t come from any showroom.
“These are vintage, right?” I asked, touching one with my fingertips.
“Salvaged from a grange outside Memphis. Place was being torn down.”
“Why’d you want them?”
“Because there were dances in that grange and music that brought people together. I thought it was a good omen for my music room.”
Lord, this man.
He slid one door open, and I stepped into a room that felt so familiar I had a moment of déjà vu.
Warm wood covered the ceiling, darker than the rest of the house and rich with grain.
A black grand piano sat near a pair of tall windows.
Along one wall, built-in shelves held rows of vinyl records, old songbooks, framed album art, and little stacks of notebooks held together with rubber bands.
Guitars stood in racks beneath a row of gold and platinum records, some shiny and expensive, others scuffed and worn.
There was a listening corner with two low leather chairs and a turntable.
A couple of acoustic panels were tucked discreetly between framed posters, and, in the far corner, a microphone stood ready beside a stool and a tangle of cables.
“We rehearse here sometimes,” Jack said. “But mostly I write here. Sometimes alone. Other times with Beck or Knox. A lot of tunes have gone down here.”
I walked farther in, my bare feet sinking into the rug. On the piano, a notebook lay open, lines scratched out and rewritten. An old guitar hung by itself on the wall. It was smaller than the others, battered at the edges, with a place worn smooth below the sound hole.
“Is this the one?” I asked. “Your first.”
Jack came to stand beside me. “That’s right. We all have one, don’t we?”
“Sure do. My mama and daddy got me my first one for Christmas. Ten years old. Some girls wanted a horse. All I wanted was a guitar.”
“An older gentleman at church gave it to me. Said his hands were too old to play it anymore but that he had a feeling I’d get some good use out of it.
I’d learned to play on one of our neighbors old guitars.
It wouldn’t stay in tune—like it was stubborn—but it was all I had.
When I got my hands on this one, it felt like destiny. ”
“How old were you?”
“I was twelve. Started learning to play when I was eight. Self-taught.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
“Once I got my hands on a good guitar, there was no stopping me. I played every chance I got.”
“When did you know you could sing?” I asked.
“Church,” he said. “They kept asking me to perform, so I did.” Jack lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, slow and sweet. “It’s getting late. I can call you an Uber. But we’re far enough out that it’ll take a while, and I don’t love the idea of sending you off alone this late.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve taken an Uber before.”
“You can stay in one of the guest rooms,” Jack said. “If you want. There are locks on all the doors.”
“Do I need a lock?”
“If it makes you feel less nervous to stay here, yes. However, I am a gentleman, although it’s difficult when Ivy James is in the house.”
“You’re doing a pretty good job.”
“Do I hear disappointment?”
“Not at all. I’m charmed. Most men try to get me into bed before they even feed me dinner.”
“Things that are important shouldn’t be rushed,” Jack said. “Anyway, if it’s up to me, you’ll never have another bad date. Or any more first dates.”
“That would be a relief,” I said, smiling up at him. “And yes, I’d love to stay. Thank you.”
We walked down to the room with the brass bed.
“This is where my mom stays,” Jack said. “She says the bed’s just the right amount of soft, but she hates the pillows. Always brings her own in her suitcase.”
“I’m sure the pillows will be fine,” I said.
“They should be. They’re the same ones that a fancy hotel chain has. But leave it to my mother to like her flat pillow.”
“Like my mother’s dumplings?”
He laughed as he opened a drawer and pulled out a new toothbrush and a small tube of paste.
“There are towels in the bathroom. And another robe if you’d like a dry one.
” He paused. “Hang on, let me grab one of my T-shirts for you to sleep in.” He was gone only a minute or so, returning with a shirt folded into a neat square, which he placed on the end of the bed.
“I should let you get settled,” Jack said.
“Are you tired?” I really didn’t want to say goodnight yet.
“No.”
“Me either.”
Outside, a cricket started up somewhere in the dark. The pool lights rippled against the guest room windows. I knew the correct thing to do was say goodnight. Close the door, crawl into bed, and spend the next six hours staring at the ceiling, replaying the way his mouth had felt against mine.
Instead I said, “We could put a record on. Talk some more.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “We could.”
“Not too long.”
“Of course not.”